Archive for 2024

SO THE MOSCOW ATTACK IS LIKE A SMALL-SCALE VERSION OF Kurt Schlichter’s The Attack. I had some thoughts on that sort of thing here.

SOMEONE HAS HACKED MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT and is posting scams about investments and Bitcoin on it. I have tried to report it, as have many of my family members, but the reporting function keeps giving me an error. So, 2 things:

1. If you follow me on Facebook, please do not fall for any scams! I am not trying to sell you something. Nor will I ever do so on Facebook.
2. If you have any suggestions about how to get through to Facebook that I have been hacked, so they can at least shut it down and stop them from trying to scam people, I’d appreciate it in the comments!

N.B.: I had two-factor authentication on, too, so I really don’t know how they managed this. So it might be worth changing your password, or what have you, if this is some kind of new exploit. It’s probably not – I probably did something dumb, somehow – but you never know.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

There are lots of hard-working “below the line” positions in Hollywood who have been directly impacted by the decisions that execs have made in recent years. Perhaps continuing to generate “woke” content and going on strike after the pandemic was over were very bad ideas in an industry that needs to put butts in seats.

Flashback: Hollywood writers to go on strike, slam ‘gig economy.’

Television and movie writers declared late Monday that they will launch an industrywide strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with potentially widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era.

The Writers Guild of America said that its 11,500 unionized screenwriters will head to the picket lines on Tuesday. Negotiations between studios and the writers, which began in March, failed to reach a new contract before the writers’ current deal expired just after midnight, at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.

The board of directors for the WGA, which includes both a West and an East branch, voted unanimously to call for a strike, effective at the stroke of midnight. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”

As I asked last year, maybe wait and see if the film industry itself survives its own existential crisis before hitting the sidewalks with placards?

And from John Nolte last year: The Six Reasons Hollywood’s in Real Trouble This Time.

SMART DIPLOMACY:

Flashback: Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.

JAMES CARVILLE: “A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females [dominating the culture of the Democratic party].”

Ya think? Plus: “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’ If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?'”

OPEN THREAD: It’s Saturday night!

PUTIN TRIES TO BLAME UKRAINE for Moscow terror attack. “Kyiv strongly denied any involvement in Friday’s assault on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, and the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility. Putin did not mention IS in his speech, and Kyiv accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the assault to stoke fervor for Russia’s war in Ukraine, which recently entered its third year.”

IS said it was retaliation for Putin’s military action in Syria, which would make this sort-of Putin’s responsibility, so he can’t talk about that. Besides, he needs something to drum up enthusiasm for the Ukraine quagmire.