Posts Tagged ‘Morgan Freeman’
Monday Morning Links! All of Them! ALL OF THEM
* Of course you had me at Zelda propaganda posters.
* Special issue of Deletion: Punking Science Fiction.
* Editorial: We Should Create a Honors College to Propagandize on Behalf of the People Who Already Control Everything.
* A surprisingly large number of Obama-era ICE and HHS horrors got rediscovered as if they were new to Trump this weekend. This is a case where Trump’s horror truly is as much continuity as break.
* Even despite that continuity, though, we seem to be moving to a new energy state: Taking Children from Their Parents Is A Form of State Terror.
* Fighting spectacle with snores, or why Trump could easily win a second term.
* Is America heading for a new kind of civil war?
* Fascism is back; blame the Internet.
* I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous.
* After a white supremacist killed a protester in Charlottesville in 2017, Facebook pushed to re-educate its moderators about hate speech groups in the US, and spell out the distinction from nationalism and separatism, documents obtained by Motherboard show.
* Wisconsin Prisons Incarcerate Most Black Men In U.S. Milwaukee PD Misconduct Has Cost the City $22 Million Since 2015.
* When a Nashville man named Matthew Charles was released from prison early in 2016 after a sentence reduction, he’d spent almost half his life behind bars. But in a rare move, a federal court ruled his term was reduced in error and ordered him back behind bars to finish his sentence.
* Man, 79, sentenced to 90 days of house arrest in 5-year-old girl’s rape.
* She Went to Interview Morgan Freeman. Her Story Became Much Bigger.
* This has created a problem that has not been seen before: voluntary, intentional, migrating, mobile, functional, litter. The bikes and scooters are disruptive to the locations where they are abandoned and, because they are constantly moving, the issues of abandonment and refuse are constantly cycling (sorry) throughout an urban region. Yesterday’s bike or scooter blight might be around today, or it might move for a few days and then return. In short, the bikes and scooters share a civic pattern similar to that of homelessness. Thus, in an unexpected way, the dockless bikes and scooters are also competing with the homeless for pieces of urban space upon which to temporarily rest.
* Mike Meru, a 37-year-old orthodontist, made a big investment in his education. As of Thursday, he owed $1,060,945.42 in student loans.
* Executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further. Also, rich people are going to be needing your blood so they can stay young forever, just FYI.
* Be more like Chipotle, Jerry Brown tells California universities.
* Report Says Rising CO2 Levels Are Ruining Rice. Allergy Explosion Linked to Climate Change.
* For Women of Color, the Child-Welfare System Functions Like the Criminal-Justice System.
* Now that’s what I call ideological state apparatus™.
* A new front in the drug war.
* HUGE IF TRUE: Hollywood isn’t on the side of the resistance.
* Teen Vogue and woke capital.
* Antonin Scalia was wrong about the meaning of ‘bear arms.’ I think a better description here is “not even wrong”; originalism is a rhetorical style, not a claim of fact.
* Sexpat Journalists Are Ruining Asia Coverage.
* A People’s History of Superstar Limo, Disney’s “worst attraction ever.”
* Solo crashes and burns, even underperforming Justice League. I haven’t seen it yet, but it certainly sounds like it had it coming. Relatedly: The Ringer takes a deep dive into the now-decanonized Han Solo prequels from the EU.
* Wakanda fans might be interested in the very odd turn the comics have taken. Relatedly: ‘Black Panther’ meets history, and things get complicated.
* Janelle Monáe for President.
* Conducting a posthumous interview with science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler. Your People Will Find You: A Podcast with the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network. And Ayana Jamieson’s authorized biography of Butler has a Patreon.
* Built in 718 AD, Hōshi is the second oldest ryokan (hotel or inn) in the world and, with 46 consecutive generations of the same family running it, is hands down the longest running known family business in history.
* Wendy Brown at UC: What Kind of World Do You Want to Live In?
* Interesting Twitter thread on emergency and the suspension of the law.
* Half the budget, half the fun: A Star Trek World May Be Coming to Universal Studios.
* Power vs. responsibleness. Politics y’all. Existence is objectively good.
* This is an urgent reminder: Mindflayers are not sympathetic.
* As Kip Manley said, this is the flag of the Anthropocene.
* And I want to believe! US aircraft carrier was stalked for days by a UFO travelling at ‘ballistic missile speed’ which could hover above the sea for six days, leaked Pentagon report reveals.
Notes for a Future Paper on Disney World
0) Let’s just get it out of the way: Micky Mouse appears to have a serious drug problem, most likely speed or crystal meth.
1) The Carousel of Progress, sad to be Walt’s favorite ride, depicts how white American males’ obsessive pursuit of the dream of progress systematically destroys the lives of everyone around them.
2) We didn’t see WALL-E anywhere—and we looked. Our conclusion was that the WALL-E’s critique of consumerism in general and Disney in particular was too dangerous to be allowed inside the park; this made me like the movie quite a bit more.
2a) Or else maybe he was at EPCOT.
3) There’s also the question of Pixar’s relationship with Disney and Disney World, which is still being visibly negotiated. The only costumed characters we saw in the entire park that day were Pixar characters—not one Mickey, Goofy, or Pluto—and the two most prominent new attractions of Tomorrowland were Buzz-Lightyear- and Monsters-Inc.-themed. Pixar, defined by its technological apparatus and always figured as the future of animation, is a natural fit for Tomorrowland, and this is the region of the park where Pixar is foregrounded. (We did see Woody and the female cowgirl from Toy Story 2 in Frontierland, and billboards for some sort of Finding Nemo thing in Disney’s Animal Kingdom.) But where then was WALL-E? Who mourns for WALL-E?
4) For a theme park with a forty year history, Disney is remarkably unprepared for rain. Little or no attention seems to have been paid to drainage in its design; after an hour or so of heavy afternoon rain, there was flooding everywhere.
5) The Hall of Presidents and Pirates of the Caribbean had both been completely redone since I’d last visited as a young teenager. The Hall of Presidents film is narrated by Morgan Freeman now, naturally, and alongside our trip to Kennedy Space Center this was our second huge heaping spoonful of unapologetic American exceptionalism. I was careful to keep my sarcam to just a low whisper in Jaimee’s ear.
For the record, here is Disney’s list of official “great” presidents:
* George Washington
* Andrew Jackson (He’s just like us!)
* Abraham Lincoln
* Teddy Roosevelt (He’s the sort of guy you’d like to have a beer with!)
* Franklin Delano Roosevelt (I was a bit worried they’d leave him out altogether, though if America is your object of devotion I guess you have to mention WWII)
* John F. Kennedy (though the end of the story depicted only in image and a vague LBJ soundbite)
Poor, poor Jefferson, unpersoned again.
After Kenendy—presumably to avoid politics—presidents only exist as authors of public mourning:
* LBJ: JFK assassination
* Reagan: Challenger explosion
* Clinton: unspecified disaster; we think it was Oklahoma City
* Bush: 9/11 (yes, they use the “I can hear you” clip, though not the “the people who knocked down these towers” part)
None of these disasters are actually named, though adults and older children can identify the context from the images.
Both Animatronic Nixon and Animatronic Bush’s faces seemed to us to have been deliberately hidden by shadow; aside from the brief moment in which the spotlight hits them and they get to say their names, they’re basically deliberately invisible. I was pleased by this.
Obama, as the current president, gets a pass on the tragedy trap, and Animatronic Obama gets to give a short speech and recites the oath of office. I confirmed later this was Obama’s real voice; he recorded it for the show last May.
6) Space Mountain remains pretty rad.
Saturday Night Fever
* Fredrick Pohl has been blogging about his friendship with the young Isaac Asimov: 1 2 3 4 5. Via io9.
* Not only are young people stealing all our jobs, they’re criminals! Wake up, sheeple!
* David Neiwert links to Justine Sharrock’s Mother Jones piece about the Oath Keepers, a right-wing fringe movement focused on recruiting disaffected personnel in the military and law enforcement. It’s not good.
* Well, that’s unexpected: Texas Judge Rules Death Penalty Unconstitutional.
* Gawker salutes the time Karl Rove got beat up by a little girl.
* Judging from my treatment on Twitter I’m apparently the second-to-last person in America to remember Morgan Freeman was on The Electric Company. Only my old friend @drbluman is less informed…
Gerry Canavan 