VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: I Know Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret. “Maybe we got it backward: Hollywood is Washington for beautiful people. That’s the lead crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap, an entire week’s worth of the best bad news.”
Plus:
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
SHIPS PROPELLED BY WIND! WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? A cargo ship with 123-foot ‘WindWing’ sails has just departed on its maiden voyage.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: John Nolte: Good News! Artificial Intelligence Can Resurrect Classic Movie Stars.
People under 40 have no idea how good life was when movie stars walked the earth. Because people mattered, the movies used to be about real human experiences we all shared. These movies brought us together through laughter, thrills, and tears. Those movies weren’t hollow amusement park rides and jump scares. We used to care about the characters and get lost in their emotional journey.
Thanks to stars, movies almost always had something interesting and important to say about who we are, where we came from, and where we might be going. We were taught to aspire, never to give up, and that we’re imperfect people who can always be better.
What if AI could bring back John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Barbara Stanwyck, Better Davis, Clark Gable, Burt Reynolds, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Ingrid Bergman, and the rest all in their prime? What’s the downside?
Oh, I realize some terrible producer could pull a Kathleen Kennedy. What I mean is this… In the same way, Kennedy resurrected Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker just so she could dump all over them; some hideous producer could make Humphrey Bogart gay or Jean Arthur a transsexual. But I go back to what I said last week about AI taking over screenwriting…
Can things get any worse?
I’ll take a new Veronica Lake/Alan Ladd movie over whatever the insufferable Rachel Zegler and Seth Rogen are serving. At the very least, Lake and Ladd have actual charisma and appeal. Most every so-called “star” today sucks. Zero charisma. Zero appeal. Very little talent… Given the choice, I’ll watch Ava Gardner read the phone book over Jennifer Lawrence’s next project.
The resurrection of past stars via AI was something that Arthur C. Clarke predicted in his 1986 book, Arthur C. Clarke’s July 20, 2019: Life in the 21st Century. In addition to virtual movie stars filling the big screen, this technology will likely open the floodgates to dead artists promoting the newest products. Remember when Fred Astaire was dancing on the ceiling — and vacuuming it as well? Or John Wayne shilling for Coors Beer?
Eventually, AI may allow home viewers to create their own movies and mashups, such as Han Solo once again shooting Greedo first, Darth Vader preventing the rebels from destroying the Death Star, and Adam West starring in a Christopher Nolan Batman movie in place of Christian Bale. Or allowing the computer operator himself to don the cape, cloak and utility belt.
SKYNET SQUEEZES: A deep learning technique to improve how robots grasp objects.
YOUR INBRED MEDIA-POLITICAL CLASS: The Washington Post’s New Hire Shows Media Will Never Hold Themselves Accountable.
The Washington Post just announced they hired Alexi McCammond to be a new opinion editor. Having any idea who Alexi McCammond is, much less caring about her, is exactly the kind of political inside baseball I don’t expect anyone to know. I do this stuff professionally, and the news business has been so dispiriting for so long that I don’t remember when my professional duty to keep up with developments in the news business started to resemble rubbernecking.
But if you’re looking for a tale of why the media establishment deserves every ounce of righteous anger you can muster — these stories are not in short supply, I know — it’s hard to top the continued professional failing upward of Alexi McCammond.
So here’s the whirlwind recap: McCammond arrived on everyone’s radar as a plucky young reporter covering Democrats for Axios. She started covering Biden’s presidential campaign, where she met Biden campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo, and shortly after Ducklo was diagnosed with lung cancer in December of 2019, she was driving him to his treatments. “When TJ was diagnosed … I had a sense then how much he meant to me,” McCammond said.
The details of how and when the relationship that followed got started are hazy — McCammond was supposedly in a relationship in the beginning, Ducklo was not — but they told their respective bosses about their relationship in November of 2020, rather conveniently after the election. Had the two been public about a relationship before then, McCammond almost certainly would have been pulled off of covering the 2020 campaign. This would have been very bad for an ambitious young McCammond’s career. It wouldn’t have looked great for Biden either, but that depends on how willing the D.C. press corps is to criticize one of their own for being physically intimate with a Democratic campaign rather than just metaphorically so.
Then:
Since then, the media landscape hasn’t gotten any better. McCammond told her bosses all her reporting on the campaign was effectively compromised, and this time around her employer’s public response was “we stand behind her and her coverage,” and she was “a valued member of the Axios team.” Not only was she not fired, a few months later she participated in a gauzy PR campaign to make the relationship public. Said PR campaign was almost certainly coordinated with White House participation, or at least it appeared in the Biden White House’s favorite outlet for ludicrously obsequious news dumps: People magazine. Actual quote from Ducklo about their relationship: “We’re both really happy, and we wanted to do it the right way.”
Read the whole thing.
UNEXPECTEDLY! Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘on board’ crashed Russian plane.
Fritz Todt could not be reached for comment.
LINCOLN BROWN: How to Screw Up a Free Lunch. “Even kindergartners know when they are being conned. Welcome to the Democratic Party, kids. If I were you, I’d get used to it. This is about as good as it’s going to get.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Former SF Mayor Frank Jordan criticizes London Breed’s approach to solving homeless crisis.
“When you look at the homeless issue, we spent $2.8 billion in 7 years,” he said to California Insider. “We are averaging more than $700 million a year just on homeless. But when break that down, nobody seems to know if it’s 7,000 homeless or 17,000 homeless.”
Jordan criticized Mayor Breed’s efforts to put the homeless in local hotels for housing. He says 70% of the homeless have mental health, drug, and alcohol problems and need around-the-clock supervision.
“They start fighting with people in hallways or lighting fires in the room, so we have 30 of those 70 hotels that are now suing the city because of the damage that’s been caused in those hotels,” he said.
At the high-end estimate of 17,000 homeless, that’s an average of $41,176 spent per person. I’m curious how much of that is actually spent “helping,” and how much goes to administers.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Outgoing Ivy League Presidents Get Sweetheart Home-Loan Deals.
WELL, YES: Washington Post: China’s COVID coverup was the system operating as intended. “The information in this piece isn’t new but it’s nice to see it presented in the context of how China’s one-party system was intentionally geared to lying, first to their own people and then to the entire world. ”
The thing is, our own uniparty system canceled people for pointing this out a couple of years ago. Am I saying that our system is the same as China’s? No, but I am saying that the people running our system would like for it to be.
CHANGE: The Rise of the Female Pickup Artist. I’m sure of one thing: Male pickup artists bad, female pickup artists good. Because patriarchy, or something.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (EURO EDITION): Economic data in Europe just went from bad to worse.
In terms of the breakdown between services and manufacturing, the former dropped to a 30-month low at 48.3 and the manufacturing PMI rose slightly from 42.7 in July to 43.7 this month.
“Considering the PMI figures in our GDP [growth] nowcast leads us to the conclusion that the euro zone will shrink by 0.2% in the third quarter,” Rubia added.
The euro zone, the region of 20 nations that share the same euro currency, grew by 0.3% in the second quarter, having grown by 0.1% in the first quarter. This lackluster growth shows the impact of higher interest rates and energy prices and subdued external demand.
However, it also masks sharp differences within the region. Germany, for example, reported the deepest contraction in business activity in August.
Of course they did. Germans are enjoying the results of Berlin’s mandated deindustrialization.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Dick’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s Flash Warning Signs on U.S. Consumer Spending.
The sporting-goods chain slashed its profit targets for the year after missing Wall Street forecasts for the second quarter. Sales slowed after a pandemic-fueled surge for outdoor gear, leaving it with excess inventory. Executives said thefts of merchandise were also higher than they expected.
Macy’s reported declining sales in the June quarter and warned that more shoppers are late on their credit-card payments. Delinquencies are viewed as a proxy for consumer health, and missed payments endanger a key source of revenue for the department-store chain.
“We expect the pressures consumers are under to continue through the balance of the year,” said Macy’s Chief Executive Jeff Gennette, adding that additional challenges will come once students and graduates resume repaying their federal student loans. He added that international tourism has yet to return to prepandemic levels.
And: Top retail execs call out crime wave that has cut into earnings.
CHANGE: UNC Chapel Hill, which led fight for race-based admissions, now works to fully abolish it. “This is a moment of humility. A lot of people thought that we were fighting a good fight that needed to be fought, but as it turns out, we were actually doing something we should not have been doing.”
Here We Go Again: Remember President Obama’s “Operation Choke Point” in which financial and insurance industries were pressured to “choke” industries of which the far left disapproved?
And I’ll give you two guesses which industries — although entirely legal — those are. (HINT: Firearms dealers, Adult film industry…pretty much all the fun stuff.)
Ah, good times, good times.
President Biden has brought the Good Times back! JustTheNews.com has reported that:
“One of the first acts that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency did under President Joe Biden was put a hold on a Trump-era rule that would have ensured fair access to banking services from going into effect. The rule would have prohibited major financial institutions from arbitrarily discriminating against businesses.”
To be fair, Republicans on the state level have passed laws to restrict minors from being able to access porn sites. But at least those laws have been debated in public and voted upon, and are currently undergoing challenges in court.
But the far left has long weaponized the IRS, DOJ, EPA, and other executive agencies in ways that circumvent Due Process. Again, the administration does what “paternalistic socialism” always does: Enforce their restrictions about what you can read, eat, save or spend without public hearings, notice or debate.
And these people say “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? Really?
WELL, NOBODY WANTS TO TEACH THEM: Students, politicians reveal ignorance of 1A constitutional rights.
SOD OFF, SWAMPY: These 14 American Cities Have A ‘Target’ Of Banning Meat, Dairy, And Private Vehicles By 2030. “C40’s dystopian goals can be found in its ‘The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World’ report, which was published in 2019 and reportedly reemphasized in 2023. The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.”
I can’t wait to hear what “progressive” celebrity chefs like Tom Colicchio will have to say about that.
Much more here from Kevin Downey Jr.
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