Archive for 2024
November 15, 2024
I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING: Trump picks former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
I’M NOT SAYING THAT ALL LEFTY HATE-VICTIM STORIES ARE FAKE, BUT THAT’S THE WAY TO BET:
@coke_zero_000
I’M TEMPTED TO SUBMIT MY NAME: Elon and Vivek’s ‘DOGE’ Looks for ‘Small-Government Revolutionaries.’
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Yale University offers new course on Beyonce’s ‘boundary-transgressing’ cultural impact.
I REMEMBER WHEN TECH COMPANIES WERE PRO-FREEDOM: Software Development Goes Full BrownShirt On 3D Printing. “Software makers have solidified their place as useful idiots for the anti-Second Amendment agenda by leading the charge when it comes to the development of programs that detect gun parts being made by 3D printers, block those prints and in some cases, automatically notify the authorities. Claiming that these advances are aimed at curbing the illegal printing of firearms and firearms parts, these companies have donned their brown shirts a bit too quickly and have not the first clue regarding the tradition and constitutionality of homemade guns in America.”
ARTIFICIAL EVERYTHING: Is everybody cheating? “A few weeks ago, she emailed a student to say that she knew the student had cheated on a minor assignment with AI and if she did it again, she would fail the course. Clukey also noted there were several missed assignments. The student replied to ‘sincerely apologize,’ said she was ‘committed to getting back on track,’ and that she regretted ‘any disruption [her] absence or incomplete work may have caused in the course.’ But her next paper was essentially written by artificial intelligence. Curious, Clukey asked ChatGPT to write an email apologizing to a professor for plagiarism and missed work. . . ‘It spit out an email almost exactly like the one I had gotten.'”
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: From ‘Fast & Furious’ to ‘Stopped & Humiliated.’ “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news and this week Florida Man went full “Miami Blues,” Florida Woman’s Corvette theft gone wrong, and Michigan Man’s attempted lawnmower murder.”
READER FAVORITE: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Blanket – 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned
WINNING: Hands off our Gas Stove: Washington Voters Approve Initiative 2066. “The successful passage of the measure will protect families and businesses against state or local restrictions or disincentives affecting natural gas.”
Go on and take the red pill, Washington.
SAVAGE ENTERTAINMENT: A new version of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione’s notorious 1979 film Caligula provides a valuable record of one of the most fascinating disasters in cinema history.
Almost everybody involved with the production is made to look faintly silly, including the documentary’s narrator, Bill Mitchell, whose basso profundo voice makes him sound as if his vocal cords have been marinated in bourbon. His voiceovers, for all their florid verbosity, do not sound nearly as pompous as the monologues of Gore Vidal, who bullshits grandly on historical subjects he plainly knows nothing about in his magnificently resonant voice. Still, he maintains a certain sense of style throughout the proceedings.
The same cannot be said of Caligula’s director, Tinto Brass, who turns out to be a pudgy, hairy, and excitable yet melancholy little man with no obvious sense of the impression he makes on others. He often wears a floppy khaki-coloured fisherman’s hat that resembles a dead octopus or a piece of wet cardboard. He does not always seem to be in control of either himself or the production, but he clearly gets along well with the cast, including Malcolm McDowell, who appears in an even more unfortunate hat.
Nobody in the documentary looks more comical than producer Bob Guccione, who seems to be desperate to rival Vidal as a Serious Intellectual, despite his resemblance to a middle-aged divorcee who has decided to show everyone that he’s “still got it.” Clad in leather trousers and tight shirts unbuttoned to expose his gold medallions, he surrounds himself with Renaissance-style antiques to show off his taste and power. Guccione was no fool, though. By the mid-1970s, he was already one of the richest men in America, and Penthouse was selling over four and a half million copies a month.
The star of the documentary is Caligula’s production designer, Danilo Donati. His sumptuous sets and costumes steal the show, and look far more impressive here than they do in the film. Of course, this is thanks to the craftsmen caught on camera from time to time as they patiently transform Donati’s visions into something approaching reality. Admirably, they simply get on with their jobs, heedless of all the self-indulgence and bickering around them. Not everybody involved in this production was an unhinged egomaniac.
The most engrossing element of The Making of Gore Vidal’s Caligula is the palpable tension generated by the power struggle between Guccione, Vidal, and Brass. Each of these men had a radically different notion of who Caligula was and why he turned out that way and each had his own idiosyncratic views about how to make a movie and what the purpose of the production ought to be. There seems to have been absolutely no agreement on the point of the whole exercise, let alone on who was really in charge of it.
If you’re at all curious about how one of the biggest train wrecks in cinema history occurred (at least until Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which played in virtually empty theaters last month), read the whole thing.
CHRIS WALLACE IS CUTTING ALL THE CORDS:
On Monday evening, Chris Wallace, the veteran newsman, CNN anchor, and ultimate Washington establishmentarian, called the network’s talent chief Amy Entelis to inform her that he intended to leave at the end of his contract. Minutes later, to the consternation of his bosses and presumably their P.R. department, he gave a reporter at The Daily Beast the green light to publish a precooked exclusive about his departure. The piece asserted that the 77-year-old broadcaster was walking away from a seven-figure contract to find a new home in “streaming or podcasting,” which, as Wallace told the reporter, is “where the action seems to be.”
The story, with its Onion-worthy headline—Chris Wallace Quits CNN to Build Future in Streaming—described Wallace’s exit as a “watershed moment for cable TV,” a remarkably rare defection by a lifelong TV veteran who had determined he would rather forgo his lucrative salary and test new arenas than continue to suffer through the cable business’s slow but inexorable decline. Indeed, the piece seemed to portray Wallace as the news industry’s own Adrian Wojnarowski, the star ESPN NBA reporter who recently gave up his own $7 million-a-year gig to run the men’s basketball program at his alma mater in rural northwestern New York. As it happens, Wallace was also making $7 million a year at CNN.
And perhaps to offset that sudden lack of cashflow: Chris Wallace lists DC home for $6.4M mere days after announcing his shock departure from CNN.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES HAVE BEEN FLYING FAST AND FURIOUSLY: In This the Real Reason Why Trump Nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General?
CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL: Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing.
CHICAGO: City Council Votes Unanimously to Reject Mayor’s $300M Property Tax Hike Proposal. “Because the City Council is nearly certain to raise property taxes by at least $45 million to allow it levy taxes on newly constructed homes and commercial properties, it is a symbolic vote to reject the property tax hike proposed by Johnson, which would have been the largest increase since 2016 and the second largest in Chicago history.”
THIRD OBAMA TERM WINDING DOWN NICELY: Israel destroyed active nuclear weapons research facility in Iran, officials say.
JIM TREACHER: Here’s Why I’m Quitting Twitter or X or Whatever.
No, I’m not quitting. That headline was just to get you to click. Ha ha, gotcha!
Once again, liberals are so stupid and insane that they’re forcing me to defend Elon Musk. Twice in one week! That’s how bad it’s gotten.
I don’t know if it’s a delayed reaction to the election, or Musk’s weird new job in the Trump administration, or what, but a bunch of libs suddenly decided to quit Twitter this week. And what’s the point of finally going away if they don’t make a whole big drama out of it?
In addition to the usual suspects, there’s a bridge too far, Treacher writes:
Hell, even inanimate objects are getting in the game. A suspension bridge in the UK has its own Twitter account, and it just collapsed. The account, not the bridge:
That’s a stretch! And so was that joke.
Surprisingly, given the poor communications from the front at the end of WWII, even Hitler quickly discovered that the Clifton Suspension Bridge has collapsed its Twitter account:
— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) November 14, 2024
Curiously, while individual leftists (and bridges) are leaving Twitter, corporations, including those that produce rather left-leaning media, are returning to promote their wares: Comcast, Disney, and IBM Are Among Advertisers Returning to X After Ad Freeze.
I’D SAY, “MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE,” BUT THERE’S ALREADY MUCH MORE OF THIS ON THE WAY: Thousands of ICE Officers Will Be Reassigned From Desk Jobs to Field Work.
SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites in back end of coast-to-coast double launch.
YES:
An observation I’ve made before is that people tend to think that the eventual expiration of the boomer generation will be a win for progressives, but I think we’re actually in the very early days of people noticing that these terms no longer have meaning. The default boomer… https://t.co/SWe9oSUlNx
— wanye (@wanyeburkett) November 15, 2024
Anecdotally, my teenage sons and their friends seem immune to this stuff.
I REALLY LIKED USING THE WORD “ERUCTATION” THIS TIME [VIP]: Eye Candy in Honor of the Gassiest Week in the News
IT NEEDS TO BE COMPLETELY REDONE: What Happened to Higher Education? How Bureaucracy and Ideology Hijacked Our Universities.
READER FAVORITE: DASH Rapid Egg Cooker: 6 Egg Capacity. #CommissionEarned