Well, I think it is only possible to make this movie now, after a decade and a half of bullshit that has been pushed onto everyone by various pro trans, pro socialist or even pro Marxist movements.
Now that Trump is running (and likely ruining) the place, it is possible to come out with anything I think and who is going after Brooks, what are they going to do, cancel him?
CPB and the government have been collected data directly from the airlines ever since the aftermath of 9/11 through a number of programs, for example to check passengers against watch lists and to verify the identity of travelers on international flights.
What has changed is that by buying data from a commerical broker instead of a a congressionally instituted program, it bypasses judicial review and limits set by Congress on data collected through those programs -- for example it can track passengers on domestic flights even if they're not on a watch list.
Fascism isn't an ideology; it's more like a disease of ideology. The main characteristic of fascist leaders is that they're unprincipled; they use ideology to control others, they're not bound by it themselves. It's not just that some fascists are left-wing and others are right-wing. Any given fascist leader is left-wing when it suits his purposes and right-wing when that works better for him. The Nazis were socialists until they got their hands on power and into bed with industry leaders, but it wasn't a turn to the right. The wealthy industrialists thought they were using Hitler, but it was the other way around. The same with Mussolini. He was socialist when he was a nobody but turned away from that when he lost his job at a socialist newspaper for advocating militarism and nationalism.
In any case, you should read Umberto Eco's essay on "Ur-Fascism", which tackles the extreme difficulties in characterizing fascism as an ideology (which as I stated I don't think it is). He actually lived under Mussolini.
I think people expect commercial social media networks to be something they can't be -- a kind of commons where you are exposed to the range of views that exist in your community. But that's not what makes social networks money, what makes them money is engagement, and consuming a variety of opinions is tiresome for users and bad for profits. When did you ever see social media trying to engage you with opinions you don't agree with or inform you about the breadth of opinion out there? It has never done that.
The old management of Twitter had a strategy of making it a big tent, comfortable for centrist views and centrist-adjacent views. This enabled it to function as a kind of limited town common for people who either weren't interested in politics, like authors or celebrities promoting their work, or who wanted to reach a large number of mainly apolitical people. This meant drawing lines on both sides of the political spectrum, and naturally people near the line on either side were continually furious with them.
It was an unnatural and unstable situation. As soon as Musk tried to broaden one side of the tent, polarization was inevitable. This means neither X nor Bluesky can be what Twitter was for advertisers and public figures looking for a broad audience.
At present I'm using Mastodon. For users of old Twitter, it must seem like an empty wasteland, but it's a non-commercial network, it has no business imperative to suck up every last free moment of my attention. I follow major news organizations who dutifully post major stories. I follow some interest groups which are active to a modest degree, some local groups who post on local issues, and a few celebrities like George Takei. *Everybody's* not on it, but that's OK; I don't want to spend more than a few minutes a day on the thing so I don't have time to follow everyone I might be interested in. Oh, and moderation is on a per-server basis, so you can choose a server where the admins have a policy you're OK with.
No, there are all kinds of information the government has that are legitimately not available. Sensitive data on private citizens, for example, which is why people are worried about unvetted DOGE employees getting unfettered access to federal systems. Information that would put witnesses in ongoing criminal investigations at risk. Military operations in progress and intelligence assets in use.
The problem is ever since there has been a legal means to keep that information secret, it's also been used to cover up government mistake and misconduct. It's perfectly reasonable for a government to keep things from its citizens *if there is a specific and articulable justification* that can withstand critical examination.
And sometimes those justifications are overridden by public interest concerns -- specifically when officials really want to bury something like the Pentagon Papers because they are embarrassing to the government. "Embarrassing to the government" should be an argument against secrecy, because of the public interest in knowing the government is doing embarrassing things. In the end, the embarrassment caused by the Pentagon Papers was *good* for the country.
All you need to know about RFK's fitness for office is out in public for everyone to see.
525 cpm, 105 wpm.
I learned to type back in the day playing Sierra On-Line games, and through the Almeida method. Quiet Aunt Zelda. Willy Sits Exams. Every Dad Cares. Run From Vicky To Get Betty. Young Harry Never Uses Joe's Money. Oh Lloyd Stop. Please.
Thirty some odd years later and I still remember the little mnemonics from a single viewing of the Almeida video.
I don't care, lets kill all mosquitos, all of them, each one. I would personally execute each one of them with a tiny guillotine. Set them up, let me press the button.
If you learn to touch type you can play games like this one https://www.typing.com/student...
WTF are you yapping about, who is endangering you? Fuck off you little bitch, motherfucking government loving piece of shit who should be treated as any other treasonous cunt. Government is the enemy of any person, if you are on the side of any government you are as well.
Nonsense, the very act of driving does not mean anything, you bought into this nonsense hook, line and sinker. Government shouldn't have any say over how we live our lives, how we drive on our streets, what apps we use, who we trade with.
The only one single, the only one maybe half reasonable thing for government to do is is protection against foreign attacks, that's it.
You are absolutely correct. It is disgusting to see so many people supporting any government intervention in our lives and this is just more of the same. People are supposed to be these automatons the government wants them to be so that they can be fined more and more often, controlled harder and harsher for normal human behavior, which is under a continuous attack by the goons, who have power and occupy government positions.
Well, under some conditions an unique movie car *would* be copyrightable. The case where the car is effectively a character is just one of the ways you can argue a car to be copyrightable.
Copyright is supposed to protect original creative expression, not ideas or functional items, which may be protected by *other* forms of intellectual property like trademark or patents. This is because copyright protects *creative expression*. It doesn't protect ideas, or functional items. A car is a functional item, so *normally* it isn't protected. But to the degree a car in your movie has unique expressive elements that are distinct from its function, those elements can be copyrighted.
But the plaintiff still wanted to claim that he owned the design of the car, so his lawyer looked for a precedent that established that cars can sometimes be copyrighted even though they are functional items, and he found the Batmobile case, where the Batmobile was ruled to be a prop that was *also* a character. Because he cited this case, the judge had to rule whether the Batmobile ruling's reasoning applied to this car, and he decided it didn't. The car may be unique and iconic, but that's not enough to make it a character.
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
