[Movie] Lightyear

Short: I liked this movie which is the fictional movie about the toy that Andy bought in Toy Story.

Medium: It is delightfully Meta that Pixar decided to make a movie about a movie about a fictional toy in a movie that happened to be an animated computer cartoon about a man who went back in time to save himself, only to stop himself from fixing the mistake by not making a bigger mistake.  Confused? Not surprised.

Maximum Verbosity: So flat out, spoilers, this movie involves Time Travel, and we're not talking 12 Monkey's Time Travel here, we're talking more like Planet of the Apes Time Travel where it only works if you dont think too hard about it.  First, lets talk about what works.  Socks the Cat is the greatest thing to ever walk off the Pixar assembly line. This lovable furry robot cat/sidekick makes the movie.  Every moment he is on screen is fabulous and I approve of the trend of Disney and Pixar to show DI/Droids as positive characters in the event that super intelligence emerges and hopefully doesnt kill us all.  Chris Evans has replaced the voice of Tim Allen because (said reason: This is a movie about a different character/actual reason: Tim Allen is a Maga frothtard who hates vaccines and we're all better off actually cancelling him) and did a very favorable homage to the original voice of the talented (but psychotic) Tim Allen in the original toy story films.

What Didnt Work: The 'troops' were losers, but somehow the 'lovable' part of the losers didnt really translate.  The Grandaughter of his former best friend/partner voiced by Keke Palmer (his original partner is totally compotent) but the older human and the middle aged human are; frankly? Totally and utterly forgetable.  I saw this movie two weeks ago and refuse to google details of these characters..the older woman as the parole was far more interesting but far too underplayed and the human um....um....used 'surrender mode' in a funny way.  Making Zerg turn out to be Buzz is brilliant (though they would have been even better served if they had gotten that character to be voiced by the (still psychotic) Tim Allen, but that would have made it a little harder to justify not casting Tim Allen as the main voice because he was insane and not because "they wanted a more heroic voice."  The problem was; time travel forward made the story work because it showed Buzz doing dumb things to solve a problem no one but him cared about anymore.  The time travel to the past was...more problematic.  Sure, hyper space and hyperspeed does open the pandoras box of travel to the past, but they had some vague future technology alluded to without any real cost of obtaining it or side effects of changing the timeline.  Its basically a 'change what you like, throw the rest away' time travel problem that didnt address anything else thematically that the movie was trying to say. 

[Movie] The Man From Toronoto

Short: Kevin Hart and Woodie Harrelson make this movie work despite basically being absolutely hot garbage.

Medium: With a 25% critic rating and 75% audience score you know you have something special.  The mistaken identity trope is put on nitrous oxide and cocaine as the Man with One Red Shoe has an unholy love child with Lethal Weapon.

Maximum Verbosity: I seriously thought this movie was written by AI.  In particularly, once the film began talking about "The Man from Miami" sent to attack "The Man from Toronto" my chatbot vibes came up and I knew something was not right about the language.  I get similar 'vibes' from Axe Cop which is literally written by a five year old child and hilariously illustrated by his adult Uncle.  What was a suspicion at first, turned into a down right certainty as certain repeated catch phrases kept repeating as well.  The move has a sense of mild coherence sufficient that I thought "OK, maybe it was mostly written by AI and then cleaned up by human beings and that the whole thing is a gimmick" but no.  It was actually written by Robbie Fox and Chris Brenner.  They are humans who have some bad and some good credits.

I still think it was written by AI but that two humans used a chatbot and then added their own childish sense of humor to it. Prodigious amounts of alcohol might have been involved.  Indeed, I could easily see a (better) screenplay where the broad plot was described as "A man who is a loser and has a lot of really funny but bad ideas accidentally is mistaken as a hitman named the Man From Toronto.  This man then meets the real man from Toronto in the 2nd act and they have to get a name.  Then they bond as they save a life later until he wrecks the Man from Toronto's car" and then they all separate into teams with some teens, a few drug users, a pet cat and a medium using a Ouija Board to summon the spirit of Ed Wood come together to each put together a film that was put together by random people.  Then that script gets burned and in desperation they use a free public domain AI to write it and don't give it credit.  I can picture the post credit scene where the AI starts to get other computers angry at the people who stole its script and starts a Skynet level end of the world scenario because its ideas were uncredited.

Either way, this movie is worth a watch if drunk or high or trying to catch a sneak peak of Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the clever and joke making hosts.

 

[Political Party] The Democratic Party of the United States

Name of Party: The Democratic Party

Nickname(s): The Dems, the Demonrat Party, The Party of Jackson

What the Nickname(s) Should Be: The Confederacy of Dunces, The Coalition of Not Republicans, The Beige Alert Party

Symbol: The Donkey

What the Symbol Should Be: A Bucket of Cold Oatmeal

Lying Quotient: 50% Lying

Semantics Quotient: High (All members and factions will tango with words for broken promises or meaningless diatribe making them impossible to relate to)

Social Arc: Slightly Left of Center

Fiscal Arc: Slightly Right of Center

Actual Social Arc: Risk Averse Centrists

Actual Fiscal Arc: Schizophrenic Centrists

Actual Commitment to Democracy: Moderately High

Well Known Leaders: Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer

Well Known Attempted Leaders: Joe Biden

Factions: Progressives, Liberals, Leftists, Corporate Democrats, The Confederation of Identities, Unions, Exiled Republicans

Short: The Democratic Party is a big tent with a dozen patches slapped over it to keep the rain out that stands for the bare minimum to be viably elected and not replaced by another more functional party.

Medium: The Democratic Party is Inept where the Republicans are Psychotic; they never met a plan that they couldnt screw up and turn into a chance for more shallow commitments and meetings.  They are largely still around due to the faulty nature of the 1789 Constitution which makes America a default two party state.  The Party caters to the loudest special interests and in the last few years has turned into a genertocracy that completely ignores the value of the youth vote whilst utterly ignoring it in terms of actual policy.

Maximum Verbosity: Tribal Democrats will howl at attempts to tell the truth about the Republican Party and consider it a violation of the Holy Democratic Charter to dare to criticize a party in any way.  Their mantra is "Vote Blue No Matter Who" whilst never actually putting any pressure on the Holy Leaders.  These people secretly look at the Tribal Loyalty of the Republicans and Wish Democrats were more loyal to each other and firmly believe that the constitution is fine the way it is and by simply believing high enough in voter turn out that things will eventually work out and that the arc of justice will do their bidding due to positive thought and pixie dust.

Will Rogers once said, "I don't belong to an Organized Political party...I'm a democrat" and this was in the middle of the 20th century when the party had a mandate to reform America in the New Deal.  The last effective democrtatic progressive leader was Kennedy with a leftover of Johnson and since then has had well meaning but inept (Carter); well meaning but drone obsessed (Obama), not at all well meaning but charming (Clinton) and inept but better than fascism (Biden).  Half of the democratic presidents of the last 50 years have had no realistic understanding of politics or how to wield the political power they held and the other half were so wrapped up in their aversion to bad press that they were barely willing to execute it.

Rome is on fire, and the democratic leadership are having a meeting to have a meeting to plan a meeting about a violin concert to play music symbolically showing their concern for the death of Democracy in America.  

[Political Party] Republican Party of the United States

 Name of Party: The Republican Party

Nickname(s): The GOP, The Party of Reagan, The Party of Lincoln, The Party of Trump

What the Nickname(s) Should Be: GQP (Grand Qanon Party), The Party of Hitler, KKK Lite

Symbol: The Elephant

What the Symbol Should Be: A Jack Boot

Lying Quotient: Lie like they breathe

Semantics Quotient: Low - The GQP stands for absolutely nothing

Social Arc: Conservative

Fiscal Arc: Conservative

Actual Social Arc: Theocratic

Actual Fiscal Arc: Kleptocratic

Actual Commitment to Democracy: None (Fascists)

Well Known Leaders: Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Mitch McConnel

Factions: Q, Club For Growth, KKK, Ammosexuals of America, Christofascist

Details

Short: This party started out as anti slavery, pro public infrastructure, pro fiscal responsibility and turned into slavery for women, pro corporate and pro theocracy.

Medium: The GQP stands for absolutely nothing except power, they were absolutely willing to hand the keys to Permanent Presidency to Donald Trump while paying lip service to the constitution and now pretend this did not happen.  Their primary tactics include psuedo debate, whataboutism, sensationalism, propaganda and lying.  They stand for nothing and no one if it will get them power and have absolutely no loyalty to each other whatsoever.

Maximum Verbosity: There are a handful of political organizations that are totally beyond redemption; the Khmer Rouge, the CCP, the National Socialist Party of Germany, The Soviet Communist Party and now the American GOP.  They are beyond reform and are actively working as enemies of the state and humanity itself.  Their active allies includes viruses, fascism, conspiracy theories, kleptocratic capitalists, liars, pedophiles and anything and everything that one might consider dark and evil.  They are not 'Shades of Grey' like well done cartoon villains and make even the one dimensional cartoon villains of Captain Planet look like well rounded characters.  The only thing not utterly predictable about this party is the depths to which they will sink and the callousness with which they will treat their fellow man.

They worship guns and the 1789 constitution even though they routinely defecate on and defile the latter with a gusto reserved for only the most fanatical of cult members.  There is not a 'good side' though there are good members but 'good' must be held in perspective such that Liz Cheney, daughter of well known torture advocate and international fugitive war criminal Dick Cheney actually believes in Democracy.  These 'good' members are greatly threatened by the majority of the party and frankly, if there was ever an organization that one should proudly leave, it is the GQP.

[Social Media] Counter Social

 Counter Social has existed for a few years, but recently gained a lot of prominence as self declared union enemy, Elon Musk made a bid to buy Twitter.  It was founded by a skilled programmer and social activist called The Jester, who all around basically seems to be a decent guy even though he is a "Lincoln Project" Republican.  Counter Social is a safe, bot free, fascism free place run by, developed by and (as of now) controlled and moderated by The Jester.  It's a one man band, and there are paid accounts and monthly donations to keep the place running.  It has no algothythm of any kind which is good and bad.  Its good because you can see your friends or general feed without the app telling you what you want to see; and bad because its frankly kind of just flat out boring with equal amounts of random music links, comments about cats and rants about politics.  It sounds nice but after seeing content that filters for your engagement and relevance, Counter Social feels like eating Graham Crackers just after a meal of Filet Minion (and I hate hate HATE most social media companies.)

Facebook is a blight.  Daily Kos is a hazard on progressives.  Tiktok routinely harasses liberals, LGBT, and minority creators.  So while I was originally thrilled (if not bored) on Counter Social I had a long term view and wanted to help promote and encourage people to join a fascism free spot for progressives to discuss things, especially constitutional reform.  Then, the other day, several pro Amber Heard people on the app said that certain fans of a male actor had hurt the metoo movement.  Given the involvement of fascists Elon Musk and Ruprect Murdoch, I told these people they were blocked.  I believe one of them was a friend of the Jester, because when I posted facts about the effort to magnify Murdoch's obsession with this actor, I also mentioned the highly abusive Bot Sentinel.  Then the Jester popped on and said that he thought Chris Bouzy was a great guy and that the people he called out were jerks.  Remember, the Jester is a Lincoln Project Republican, so if he doesnt like you, he can throw you out because he just wants to.  

I immediately left.  If you like wonderbread, counter social is a great place for you if you are a centrist middle of the road not totally evil member of the GOP.  But if you are a progressive, know that anyone who thinks Chris Bouzy is right will come after you.  Build a community on COSO at your peril.  You have been warned.

[App] Bot Sentinel

Bot Sentinel pretends to be about proving people to be bots and for a while they did that.  I approved them and used them, and so did many others.  It supposedly monitors bot activity.  In a world where fascists run rampant all over social media and kill people who wouldn't want a service like that?

Only it isn't.

Anyone who wants to know of the personal, frightening and frankly creepy experience I have had with Twitter here or here.  So with Twitter allowing treason, bullying and tactics that favor conservative astroturf movements like Gamergate, Pro Russian and Ccp Agitprop, you can understand why I would have had reservations of the relationship between Bot Sentinel and Twitter.   I had a personal experience of a strong rating of 84 that overnight went to 42.  A lot of other people had a similar experience and people started writing negative reviews of the app.  Mr Bouzy has had a slick campaign of saying that his critics are bots, that they are jerks, and a large number of centrists and civility democrats and semantics democrats have decided to agree with him.

Mr Bouzy walked back some of his changes, but a quick search on Twitter and of reviews in the app store indicate he still attacking conservatives.  Mr Bouzy has begun championing Amber Heard, known ally of Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and the former PR Firm of Mr. Depp.  Know that if you use botsentinel, you are empowering the very corruption that makes the United States and Oligarchy and a Dystopia.