Archive for 2025

MARKETING: James Gunn Says ‘Superman’ Is About an ‘Immigrant That Came From Other Places’ and How We’ve ‘Lost’ the Value of ‘Basic Human Kindness’: ‘Yes, it’s About Politics.’

James Gunn is opening up about what “Superman” is really about.

In his Sunday profile with The Times of London, the DC Studios head went deep on the themes and ideas that drive his highly anticipated “Superman.” He explained that the superhero epic encompasses “the story of America,” and at a basic level, is about a man searching for a better life away from his original home.

“I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” Gunn explained. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

All he had to say was, “It’s about truth, justice, and the American way” to get people buying tickets.

UPDATE (From Ed):

And as Frank J. Fleming writes:

That was the topic of a sketch during Saturday Night Live’s earlier, funnier years, when Jane Curtain asked, “What If Superman grew up in Germany, instead of America?”, leading into an appearance from Dan Aykroyd as Hitler-supporting Uberman, and as Klaus Kent, his not-so-mild mannered disguise as a clerk in the Nazis’ Ministry of Propaganda.

PUNISH THESE INSURRECTIONISTS:

MARK STEYN: Drowning in Lies.

I have said before that we live in “a blizzard of lies”, but the gap between the Diversity Myth and reality widens daily, and the lies are becoming more brazen. In Germany the government has now launched a new campaign to warn patrons of its public baths that groping is verboten:

As you can see, in one poster, a white man is invading the privacy of a brown woman; in the second, a white man is grabbing the bottom of a brown woman; in the third, two white men are assaulting a brown woman; and, in the fourth, a predatory redhead is groping a brown man with a peg leg — presumably a Somali pirate whose storm-tossed galleon was forced to put into port at the Cologne municipal baths.

As Europe’s bestselling newspaper was obliged to point out, this advertising campaign is the precise inversion of German reality:

Elf Tage ist es her, dass acht Mädchen in Gelnhausen bei einem Schwimmbad-Ausflug sexuell belästigt wurden. Die mutmaßlichen Täter waren vier junge Männer. Alle vier sollen derselben syrischen Familie angehören.

Which means, more or less:

Eleven days ago, eight girls were sexually assaulted on a trip to the swimming pool trip at Gelnhausen. The alleged offenders are four young men. All four are said to be from the same Syrian family.

There’s a surprise — not.

Read the whole thing. At Hot Air, Beege Welborn adds: Apparently, Germany Is Facing a Plague of Teutonic Butt Grabbers. “Now, these brilliant behavioral efforts were designed by exactly the sort of person you might conjure up in your head if someone asked you to.”

Exit quote: “White women only distribute swords in ponds anyway. They haven’t molested one-legged boys in years. This will never work.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Homes for Hipsters. “Mamdani’s ‘cost of living’ campaign – offering rent control, free buses, childcare and city-owned supermarkets – seems to some leftist pundits a potential road back to power, under the guise of the burgeoning YIMBY (‘yes in my backyard’) movement that seeks to lower rental prices through massive housing construction. Although Mamdani claims his focus on affordability appeals to working-class voters who shifted to Donald Trump, his core constituency lies elsewhere – with relatively affluent, young, single and childless professionals. For them, rent control is a true blessing, although they may not need free buses or want city-financed grocery stores, unless they resemble Whole Foods.”

POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: Google Bets Big on Nuclear Fusion.

In the U.S., Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) engineers are developing a fusion project consisting of a doughnut-shaped machine known as a tokamak and called SPARC, which they hope will achieve a nuclear fusion reaction. CFS is a company that spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. The firm has raised over $2 billion in funding to develop the machine, although it is not certain how long it will take and whether it will be able to achieve a net surplus of energy once it is up and running. However, the company’s target is to construct the world’s first fusion-fuelled power plant in Virginia by the early 2030s.

This week, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, came to an agreement with CFS to purchase power from its nuclear fusion project. Google signed the technology’s first direct corporate power purchase agreement, according to the tech company. CFS CEO and co-founder Bob Mumgaard stated, “Without partnership and without being bold and setting a goal and going for it, you won’t ever reach over those challenges.” The financing forms part of a new funding round for CFS, after Google invested $1.8 billion into the firm during its previous 2021 round.

It would be nice if this pans out, but commercial fusion power has been just around the corner since I was a kid — at least.

PRETTY MUCH, YEAH:

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT GLENN REYNOLDS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT: Kylie Jenner flew her lavish $73 million private jet to Jeff Bezos’s wedding in Venice and that single trip emitted the same amount of CO2 an average person would if he drove his gasoline car around the world three times.

This meme made the rounds last year at the height of Taylor Swift mania. It’s applicable to everyone who attended the Bezos’ wedding:

Related: Democrats retreat on climate: ‘It’s one of the more disappointing turnabouts.’

Yes, setting Teslas on fire followed by the mass elite’s jet-powered commute to the Bezos wedding signaled the end of the good old days of radical environmentalism.

HOPE IN HEBRON FOR MIDEAST PEACE: Did you know two separate assemblages of Palestinian Sheiks are pushing for “Emirates” status under the Abraham Accords, including official relations with Israel? Richard Pollock reports that these Sheiks represent more than half a million people now under the thumb of the uber-corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA).

Pollock also digs into recent reports that Hamas faces increasingly powerful opposition within the Gaza Strip and that collapse appears imminent for the vicious hate group behind the October 7 Massacre of more than a thousand Jews.

WHOA! RICHARD DAWKINS’ ‘RIGHT-HAND-MAN’ NOW A CHRISTIAN: His name is Josh Timonen. Christian-to-Atheist conversions like that of Josh Harris make the news. This Josh reverses that sequence but odds are you’ve never heard about it in the Mainstream Media. Check out his interview on HillFaith.