Flamebait means you're trying to stir controversy and draw fire by annoying the other side. If he wrote something like On this day long ago, one of the greatest non-mythical people in history was born. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642 it would be definite flamebait. His second tweet QUESTION: This year, what do all the world's Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday probably is a bit of flamebait, but the first tweet isn't. If anything it's a fake flamebait, "I'm going to step in this contentious issue... no I'm not!".

The bigger problem is people who are responsible for representing a scientific message not being culturally sensitive to have enough tact, even if they disagree with that culture. For example the importance of teaching people the science of climate change should lead to a degree of restraint in other not very related public arenas such as holidays.

I agree that's an issue but it's not the issue here.

There's a common pattern in US media that plays out multiple times per year. Someone says something that sounds kind of objectionable, one side lines up to act as offended as they can and the other side lines up to justify the statement or defend the speaker. Eventually the speaker either doubles down or apologizes and everyone gets bored and moved on.

That's exactly what happened here, just another iteration of the Kabuki Dance of inadvertently offensive statements.

That's not to say there are legitimately offensive things said on both sides of any issue, but I don't see it here.

Except he never intended it to be flamebait.

There's two general camps among science communicators, there's one camp that goes straight for the hard truths and controversial subjects with the idea that you fix the root cause and the rest is easy, this tends to be the Richard Dawkins camp.

The other side basically says communicate as much as you can but try to avoid offending people by being non-controversial as possible, I've always thought of that as the Neil DeGrasse Tyson camp.

The tweet here essentially a corny joke ie "huh, Tyson is writing about the birth of Jesus, I didn't think that was his thing... ohh Newton, now I get it, haha Mr. Tyson". There is nothing flamebaity or controversial about it as he intended it.

The problem is the religious right is embracing a culture of victimhood to compete with the left, attempts to reduce the degree of Jesus talk around Christmas become an attack to their right to talk Jesus, hence the "war on Christmas".

Viewed through that light the joke now becomes "Hey Jesus-folk, I'm on your side putting Jesus back in Christmas... ha ha! Just kidding, it was just Newton!"

And since they're actively looking for reasons to become offended, they become offended.

Close, but no banana.

The Dec 25th date was co-opted from the Roman holiday/feast of Natalis Invictus (= birth of the sun-god Sol Invictus), the date being chosen as it was then (re: procession of the equinoxes) the winter solstice when the days start to get longer again (i.e the sun is reborn). This holiday was created by the Roman emporor Aurelian in the 3rd century AD, and was co-opted by the Christians maybe a 100 years later.

Saturnalia was a separate - very popular - Roman holiday in (if memory serves) November/December, which FWIW had a present giving component.

However, the gross external form of modern Christmas - Tree, Holly, Mistletoe (i.e. general greenery) and Yule log all come from a different, northern European, winter solstice celebration called "Yule".

So, the Xmas feast/date comes from Natalis Invictus, the Tree/Holly/ etc from Yule, the presents *perhaps* from Saturnalia, and we'll have to concede the nativity (there's that "natalis" again) to the Christians, who prior to 300AD would never have celebrated Jesus' birth!

He didn't fold (where's the back down?). He blatently and successfully trolled the Christian fundamentalists**, and his follow-up was little more than a gloat.

** and/or anyone ignorant enough of history to think that Jesus was born on 25th Dec and/or was the basis of the Dec 25th holiday we now call "Christmas"

Alright, I can buy that. I would have assumed the music got finalized earlier, but I guess you have a lot of options when it comes to the soundtrack. I suppose if nothing else works you can run it at double speed and throw in Yakety Sax.

I don't think they're related, the film was almost ready to release when the hack occurred meaning they had a final or very nearly final cut. I don't see Sony putting themselves in the position of having not-yet licensed music in the final cut, that gives the publisher far too much leverage when negotiating terms.

They should get decently hammered though I don't think it should be crazy. The summary suggests Sony wilfully used the song despite knowing they didn't have a license, but that's a stretch based on the quote from the label

“There were initial discussions for using ‘Pay Day‘ in the movie, but at some point, the discussions ceased and we assumed that it would not follow through,” Feel Ghood Music says.

Almost certainly this was just some production screwup. Someone at Sony thought the the license was taken care, because of that they stopped calling back and the music never got licensed.

We still seem to be missing any independent confirmation of the Lizard Squad twitter claims. Until we do the most likely explanation is peak demand, they were slash-dotted by Christmas.

I agree. The photo on mine was completely innocuous but I'd still rather it never showed up.

Facebook seems to have forgotten the fact that they're a social network, people tend to care about the social signals they send out, and the year in review sends out a message on their behalf that they may not like.

I have my own standard for things I like to post, some random photo from my feed surrounded by tacky dancing figures isn't the kind of message I'd send out or want associated with myself. It's not a big deal, but then again not using Facebook isn't much of a big deal either. Between things like this and the feed ads I don't use Facebook as much more than an instant messaging service.

:P

If a bad movie can incite rebellion in your country then your country is in a terrible, terrible place.

Why do you think making a movie was an attempt to overthrow their regime?

If there ever was an argument for pushing democracy on a foreign country North Korea would be it. North Koreans aren't citizens, they're prisoners, they'd actually be better off living in Orwell's 1984.

Considering the TV coverage those are probably some of the sports that are actually profitable (assuming you don't build a custom venue).

The events costing money are the ones you don't hear about.

As autocracies go they're surprisingly stable, but the average citizen doesn't have much of a voice.

Even Democracies where public opinion is critical politicians have trouble gauging what the public really wants, in an autocracy they're just guessing. China, just like every country, has a lot of widespread discontent. The difference in China is that's it's hidden because people are afraid to speak out. If something ever happens that people feel empowered to speak out then things could turn very chaotic very quickly. In healthy democracies people aren't afraid to speak out so the discontent never gets bad enough to seriously jeopardize the system.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say but I disagree regardless.

Fascist has an actual definition, it doesn't apply to capitalism and I don't think it applies to China.

Ron Paul was shut out because his support is deep, but very narrow. The party never took him seriously because they knew his policies were too extreme to survive a general election, and the media didn't take him seriously for the same reason.

Every country has is fucked up in its own way.

But the US is part of a group of countries that have regular peaceful and voluntary power transfers.

Countries that have established that pattern tend to keep it.

Really? In under a year the ruble recently dropped in value by over half, do you really want to tie your economy to that?

As for China I think it's been fairly stable, but China is still an autocratic regime and those aren't typically stable. The US on the other hand is a large healthy democracy and I'm not aware of a single case of a country starting out as a healthy democracy and ending up as something else. Maybe the euro can eventually rival it for stability but for now you'd be a fool to bet on something else.