Iāve seen a few conservatives use MLKās quotes to complain about discrimination against white people and then get mad when you actually look at the content of their character. Donāt be that guy.
Got back recently from a vacation in Canada. While everyone I spoke to was polite to me even after finding out I was American, the one thing I caught flack for wasā¦still using imperial.
Watched Netflixās Midnight Mass and Iāve been thinking.
Good show through episode 5, but where I think it loses me is with Bev. Actually, I think Bev crosses the line into flat out irresponsible film making. Because the character is such a strawman depiction of a religious extremist and a bigot that you can watch and think āoh, Iām nothing like her, Iām not racist or anything.ā
When most of us are more at risk of being Sturges and Ooker. Of doing horrible things and then turning to each other and saying āwoah, I got carried awayā and āme too, but I forgive you.ā
And then walking away like nothing happened.
I assure you, youāre not Bev, but donāt be Sturges or Ooker either.
P.S. the actress who played Bev killed it. No notes
Trump has been quoted as looking into nuclear power. No one expected green energy investment but I was surprised in seeing this over fossil fuels.
I wanted to link the Wikipedia on Franceās nuclear energy program. There are issues, sure, but it has been responsible for over 70% of their power in a country with no domestic access to petroleum. Its approval rating in France sits at 75% today.
France has kept a relatively safe record because of continued efforts to ensure safety. Iām not sure Americaās current trend of deregulation is the right match.
Nuclear energy could work in America if we heavily regulated itābut this administration wonāt.
All books are actually ghost written by Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson is not actually Brandon Sanderson but his books are also ghost written by the real Brandon Sanderson.
Spoilers ahead for Aladdin (1992), The Little Mermaid (1989), Coco, and Encanto. And Kpop Demon Hunters.
Obviously.
We need to stop claiming that we donāt want people to lie and admit we more donāt want people to lie to us.
Let me explain.
The Liar Revealed trope is a bit controversial. I hate it. But in the morality story trend of kids media it is pretty common. And to be clear, lying often has bad consequences but weāre just not being honest if we say parents tell us never to lie. Mine at least taught me to smile and say I love a gift, no matter how heinous the sweatshirt from grandma is. My parents told me not to say āwoah, the house is so cleanā when we have guests over and my mom furiously tidied the house for appearances. And frankly, many parents tell their kids āitās okay youāre gay/trans/autistic/hyperfixated/awkward/whatever elseājust hide it because other people will judge you. (And I donāt want other kids to think itās okay)
Now onto the spoilers.
I love Aladin. It has its issues but Robin Williams does such a good job I love it all the same. Of of the problems that grinds my gears is its use of the Liar Revealed trope. This trope usually involves a character who has lied for the first two acts being found out and humiliated leading to their lowest point and eventual change of heart. Aladin is told throughout the movie to be honest with Jasmine and eventually he apologizes and comes cleanābut only after the liar revealed trope has run its course. You could argue that the movie more wants him not to lie to Jasmine since being honest to Jafar or the guards would be very bad for his health. But the tone of the movie is simple: lying is bad.
Disney movies didnāt really evolve for a while but eventually we got Coco. The main character Miguel spends most of the movie lying to people about his love of music. There is also the layer of him balancing his own dreams with standing by his family but they do absolutely tell him to conform. By the end he comes clean and decides to be a better more obedient boy. By happenstance they do begin supporting his music but that isnāt part of the bargain. And frankly no one in the family apologizes for their treatment of him that led him to his actions. No one apologizes for his grandma breaking his guitar.
It gets better with Encanto, a movie about family pressures to conform and perform while struggling to express yourself. The least realistic fantasy in this movie about a magic house is that her Abuela does apologize in the endāa noticeable shift from Coco. You could argue that this movie is less about lying and more about learning to be yourself, but Mirabel is explicitly told to hide the truth about who she is. She may not be told to tell mistruths but she is absolutely told to mislead.
Her family is telling her to lie.
Aaaand now Kpop Demon Hunters. I love this movie and you should stop reading to go watch it if you havenāt. Iāve been thinking of it in this context of the Liar Revealed and how it subverts it. To be clear, lying in this movie has bad consequences. Jinu and Rumi suffer for lying and both of them would have a much easier time if they had been honest. This is not even to cover Mira and Zoe who tie themselves up into anxiety knots knowing that something is going on with Rumi that she isnāt telling them.
But Mira and Zoe tell her to lie, they just donāt want her to lie to them. Early in the movie when Rumi admits her voice is struggling, they do tell her to hide it from her mother figure Celine.
And Celine. Now for Celine. She teachesRumi from childhood not to tell anyone about her patterns and not to confide in her friends. She explicitly tells Rumi at one point to actively lie and pretend that her patterns are a demonic trick. Rumi lies to Mira and Zoe because she has been repeatedly told to do it. The movie doesnāt fully resolve this subplot but it is very clearly condemning Celine in the end. Weāve gone from Encantoās apology from Abuela to flat out condemning a parental figure. Weāre not even asked as an audience to sympathize.
In the end, the movie is telling us that honesty is an easier way to live. Rumi does open up to her friends but the important line isnāt āI donāt know why I lied to youā but āI donāt know why I didnāt trust you to be on my side.ā
And thatās hard. Whether weāre talking about being queer in a homophobic society or wanting to wear makeup as a boy. Being honest does sometimes have punishing consequences but hopefully we can build a support system for ourselves and a society at large that is more loving and accepting. Iām not going to tell an abuse victim to be honest with their abuser.
Now, it isnāt always like this in kids media. The Little Mermaid (1989) does have some semblance of the liar revealed trope where Ariel is confronted and punished for hiding her boy bandāerāhuman collection from her dad. But noticeably this happens at the end of the first act and the movie is very clear that her dad is the one who was wrong and needed to change.
Honesty is just better most of the time. It has fewer consequences and hurt feelings but we need to stop pretending it is always easy or even a good idea in a particular moment.
But hopefully we can find people who are on our side enough to build an environment where it is safe to just be ourselves.
Iāll still always thank my grandma for her ugly presents.
If pearl clutching American conservatives are so hell bent on raising their kids without empathy, respect, emotional resilience, or inclusion mark my words:
In 20 years these kids are gonna grow up and conservative America is gonna be stuffed full off assholes so spiteful they make Vance look like a sweet guy.
As a Jewish conversion student in liberal spaces, I am aware that Israel is a bit of a challenging issue.
Now, Iām not crazy enough to try to cover the full issue here, but I want to focus in on this one teeny tiny piece:
Ever since Tucker Carlson has come out against Israel, Iāve been seeing more and more anti Israel comments in conservative subreddits.
Donāt give him credit.
Iām not seeing comments about the treatment of Palestinians, Iām seeing complaints that Christians are being prevented from traveling to holy sites.
Okay, sureā¦
But posts like this one make me real uncomfortable.
So, I got my MS in CS from 2016-2018. Back then there were two hot topics that came up in basically every class:
Data Science and AI
The complicated relationships between governments, censorship, free interchange on the internet, and privacy.
Now, AI has obviously become big since then but I want to wax poetically about that second point.
So, back in the late teens, about half of my classmates were students from China. And the topic would frequently come up of Chinese censorship and the Great Firewall of China. None of these students would ever deny it and a few savvy ones would point out that America has always had its own priorities on censorship.
Case in point child porn. Iām not saying we shouldnāt, but I am saying it definitely happens.
You might be aware that the Great Firewall of China is so fine tuned that it can identify dissenting trends in real time and censor within 20 minutes images. Itās wild how good their ai identification is. China is able to go packet by packet for data traffic going in and out of the country to find this stuff.
Another related issue is the access of the American government to social media data. This isnāt anything new and Iāve commented on it before, but this is why American social media companies are largely banned or strictly regulated in countries like China: the US gov has access to an enormous amount of data. (I did point out a while ago the humor and outright hypocrisy relating to TikTok)
Also, weād often highlight countries like Iran that are largely cut off from the rest of the worldās internet traffic. If there are only a handful of hard lines connecting your network to the broader network, it is very easy to censor and control the flow of data.
To be clear, Iām pointing out countries like China and Iran because there are topical. I am not ignorant to the US human rights record that is growing darker by the hour.
Since I graduated, topics like TikTok, Starlink, Russian internet trolls, and astroturfing have become important parts of the conversation as well. Keep those in mind.
Now, fast forward to now and consider the US governmentās plans to use Palantir or the push to support EU created technology. Thereās been a shift from Chrome to DuckDuckGo to improve privacy and avoid ai. Iām loving the stop killing games petition.
Starlink was this promising tech to allow people in all corners of the world to have access to the internet but we all know how a company run by Elon Musk turned out. Anyone else remember that time Musk didnāt like Ukraine destroying Russian tankers so he just turned Starlink off on them?
Back to the point. We have a US regime that is demonstrably becoming more and more reliant on AI to understand trends to identify perceived threats and control sentiment of the broader public. This is explicitly being done with the cooperation of American social media and other tech companies. And while itās funny at this stage of incompetence, itāll be a lot less funny when it gets implemented on a broad scale.
China has known for years: if you want to avoid the US having enormous information on and control of your populace, you need your own social media. We need social media and tech in general produced outside the US. We need EU created social media. Canadian made. Latin American, Asian, African, Australian.
We need enthusiastic teens the world over writing software. We need open source projects. We need the EU and Canada supporting non profits. We need to fill that gap.
Because letās be real: even if the US has a regime change with the next few elections, the model of corporate sponsored tech will always be dangerous for privacy and freedom of speech. If profits are more important than justice, this is where we get.
Itās not fair that we need to depend on the EU for the right to be forgotten or for dumb things like Apple abandoning the lightning cable. Its not fair to depend on the EU to save games made five years ago. Itās not fair that liberal Americans like me are looking elsewhere for someone to help.
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