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Monthly Archives: January 2020
WATCH: Megyn Kelly Talks Intense ‘Media Bias’ And ‘Cancel Culture’ On Bill Maher – The Daily Wire
Posted: January 27, 2020 at 12:05 am
On Friday evening, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was the featured guest on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher.
During the segment, Kelly and host Bill Maher covered multiple topics, including sexual harassment at Fox, how the media is broken, honesty in reporting, and cancel culture.
Regarding the movie Bombshell, which depicted the alleged sexual harassment faced by female Fox News employees under late CEO Roger Ailes, Kelly said the she sees the film as a force for good because it helps shine a light on how its done, and how women who may not be that well connected like herself and Gretchen Carlson, faced the same issue.
Maher interjected: You had that in common. You both had to twirl for Roger Ailes.
Kelly explained that the twirl, as well as worse things that happened to her, arent necessarily about the acts themselves, but about being demeaned and controlled.
Maher moved on to media, asking Kelly what she means when she says that the media is broken.
Kelly replied:
You know its true, right? The media is so messed up. Its disheartening to me, and Ive felt this way for a long time not just since Trump. And I know Trumps rhetoric is too strong enemy of the people and all that, and I know why he says it. There [are] still amazing journalists out there doing great work, but the media is completely biased.
At this point, Maher tried to claim that the media isnt really politically biased because Fox News exists, to which Kelly noted that the reason Fox grew in popularity was because it was the singular outlet that represented the other side of the coin.
Maher then claimed that the media is truly biased toward money and conflict because thats what sells. He then cited the alleged disappointment he saw in the media when the recent Second Amendment rally in Virginia turned out to be peaceful.
Thats what I think the media bias is, more than politics, Maher said.
Kelly shot back, saying that even though she believes that there was a liberal slant in the media prior to President Trump, it has developed into something much greater since he took office:
Take CNN he came in there and said, CNN is completely biased to the left, theyre lefties, theyre completely against me, and my take on it was in the beginning, he was wrong. CNN wasnt that way. I used to watch CNN all the time when I was at Fox. When I was getting ready for the Kelly File, Id have on CNN, and Id watch a lot of their shows, and I liked a lot of the anchors over there.
However, suggested Kelly, CNN has now become the thing Trump said they were, and are indistinguishable from MSNBC.
Maher pushed back, saying its very hard to cover a guy like Trump who does awful things. Kelly agreed, but then Maher added that such coverage would make anchors or networks look left-wing.
Kelly disagreed, telling Maher that one can remain journalistically non-biased even in the face of a difficult president:
I totally disagree with you. When I was doing The Kelly File at primetime 9 p.m. on Fox News, he was attacking me for nine months straight, right? Saying outrageous things. It took everything in me to go out on the set night after night and not make it personal, and not have a vendetta against him, and not be overly harsh on him because of what he was doing to me and my family but I did it. Its doable. You just have to remember, its not about you! Its about the audience and the truth.
Later in the segment, the two spoke about political correctness and cancel culture.
I was angry for you, honestly, Maher said of NBC firing Kelly after her comments about blackface. Because this cancel culture its so funny, when they do polls, they find like 80% to 90% of the people in this county hate this s***.
Maher asked: Who are these perfect people who have never made any mistake?
Kelly replied:
I mean, my own take on it is, the countrys going through something right now, you know? Marginalized groups are rising up and trying to find positions at the table, equal positions, and thats a good thing. The difference is in approach. How do we do it? And I understand this fight because as a woman and somebody whos, you know, been in the position I was in that we talked about, I have also felt marginalized at times, and like I dont have an equal footing, but the question is, do we do it with grace and humanity and understanding that people make mistakes and that were all imperfect and were gonna screw up and kindness and an understanding that were all only here for a limited time and we cant expect a perfect score?
Whats galling is that the people who hate bullying are always bullying, Maher said. If you even talk about this, itll only make it worse. Thats bullying. The people who love diversity, except of opinion. Theres only one true opinion.
Kelly noted that the Right has been saying the same thing about ideological diversity, to which Maher said that the Right engages in the snowflakery as well.
Speaking of the woke group, Maher stated: Theyre gross because all they care about is getting a scalp on the wall. They dont care if youre really a racist, which youre not. They dont care about a million things and they always want to find the worst version of what any person is.
Kelly agreed, adding that the way it used to be was younger generations taught older generations to see the world in a new way instead of having the older generations cancelled because they didnt immediately agree or start talking about the issues in the way they wanted.
We have to get back to talking to each other so theres buy-in, so people feel heard, and we allow for disagreement, respectful, kindness, Kelly concluded.
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WATCH: Megyn Kelly Talks Intense 'Media Bias' And 'Cancel Culture' On Bill Maher - The Daily Wire
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What do you call it when – Lewiston Sun Journal
Posted: at 12:05 am
An acquaintance recently emailed me, in a sense of bewilderment after following the national news for the past few weeks, and his questions prompted me to write these down. With his permission I present some of them, edited for clarity and PG-13 audiences.
He hopes that when Trump is re-elected to a second term that the liars in the national mainstream media will be fully exposed, and how things work (i.e. the coordination between the national mainstream media and the Democrat Party) will be revealed to the American public.
I raise the point that a faction of the Democrat Party has wrested control of much of the national mainstream media and academia over a long period of time, and has no willingness to allow exposure of their dishonesty.
He posits, How is it that they are so coordinated with each other that they often utter the same exact talking point phrase du jour.
They do this because they are lazy, and invested in propagating the lies that keep them in power. Another more worldly friend suggested to me that for those who espouse such virtue-signaling tripe as collective salvation the secular humanist placebo to supplant Christian teachings for them to admit that they know what they say is bunk would collapse their entire worldview, as happened finally in the old Soviet Union.
How protected do they think they (the national mainstream media liars) are that they seemingly feel nothing is wrong with such brazen coordination in pushing biased narratives? Who is protecting and directing them? Likely the answer to the second answers the first, and it probably is some of both it is the party and the media CEOs. Examine the record of CNN and MSNBC as quick samples.
How can they always line up on the same wrong side of stories? And yes, they double down when called out for their inaccuracy or bias. Even when fighting among themselves to wit, CNNs reporter asks Sen. Bernie Sanders if he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (some years ago, in a private conversation) that a woman cannot win the presidency? He answers, No I never said that.
The CNN reporter then turns to Sen. Warren and in a perfect example of bias and dishonesty, asks her, Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
The CNN journalist was perfectly comfortable using the loaded question format of So when did you stop beating your wife? on old Bernie Sanders, by ignoring his answer and changing it to pose the opposite as fact to Sen. Warren. Brazen doesnt even come close to describing this.
It must be understood that there are very wealthy people and organizations, both here and abroad, who revel in creating this sort of societal chaos. Some for supposedly idealistic rationales, though the overarching attitude is we know better, you will agree to let us run everything or well shame you, publicly defame you, antagonize your businesses or organizations , all with the treacle glaze of some save-the-country/savethe-planet as justification.
No, it isnt a conspiracy theory, just look at the things we have endured in this country in the past few years all because one faction has come to believe they are somehow morally superior or socially justified in refusing to accept that they lost an election, and continue to lose the support of many Americans. They openly use the term by any means necessary to reverse the results of 2016.
What do you call it when in a representative republic one political faction determines that they will refuse to acknowledge they have lost an election, and acts to undermine the duly elected candidate and party? Is it a civil society or not?
What do you call it when the same faction begins to push for the destruction of the entire voting system in order to win all elections in the future? For reference see the Democrats push to eliminate the Electoral College, force ranked choice voting into the states, eliminate voter ID laws which prevent voter fraud, allow illegal aliens to vote, and yes, even have 16-year-olds to vote.
What do you call it when a Bernie Sanders field worker advocates openly for gulags to re-educate Trump voters? This does not sound like acceptance of a representative republic to me; it reflects a desire for totalitarian control and abusive punishment.
Listening to the ignorance of this fellow in the recently revealed video is truly stunning his stupidity is remarkable, describing how gulags under Stalin really werent that bad . . . they got paid a living wage and had conjugal visits . . .. He probably thinks Solzhenitsyn is vodka. A millennial of course, and frankly I have no tolerance for ignorance of any age group, but in particular these self-righteous snowflakes.
What do you call it when another Bernie Sanders campaign worker attempts to assassinate Republican senators and congressmen at a baseball game? Is this tolerance and diversity, or an attempt to start a civil war?
What do you call it when the same party organizes and funds a campaign of smears and framing of opposition campaign officials in order to manipulate the willingly corrupt FBI and Justice Department into illegally eavesdropping on their, and other, communications? Is this a minor mistake by underlings?
What do you call it when the national mainstream media covers for the same partys involvement in numerous fraudulent stories about the president for three plus years?
When there is a blackout, looters loot. In 2019 weve had a national mainstream media controlled blackout on the truth, and the country is being looted our treasury, our sovereignty, our identity, our history all under the threat of being forever erased by propagandists and their protective force field of political correctness.
Freedom of the press is crucial to Americas existence, but it should not be interpreted as freedom from scrutiny. When the scrutinizers become mere stenographers (i.e. the national mainstream media and the Democrat Party) then it is high time to upend this system and examine who is controlling the narratives. Full disclosure. I was a Democrat voter for 30 years.
Another View is a weekly column written collaboratively by Dale Landrith of Camden, Ken Frederic of Bristol, Paul Ackerman of Martinsville, Jan Dolcater of Rockport and Ralph Doc Wallace of Rockport.
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Show your plate and they will tell you who you are – Economic Times
Posted: at 12:05 am
Prime Minister Narendra Modi did a Sherlock Holmes on December 15, saying what kind of CAA protesters are indulging in arson can be told by their clothes ( yeh aag lagaane vaale kaun hain, woh unke kapdon se hi pata chal jaata hai). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never allowed Dr Watson to solve any mystery before Holmes did (though the understudy does a lot of work in The Hound of Baskervilles), but a Dr Watson in the BJP tried to outdo his master. Last week, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya made a breakthrough in identifying illegal migrants: He said he knew some of the workers at his place were from Bangladesh as they were seen eating poha!
But Modis and Vijayvargiyas statements are more problematic not for being politically incorrect (I am not a fan of political correctness), but because they are wrong and expose inherent bigotry. In both, these comments were a glaring anti-Muslim connotation. Professors of Hindutva nursing such a sentiment surprises none, but one expected at least Modi to be adept at masking it. If the clothes statement was crass, the food remark was ridiculous.
Theres no denying that regions and religions have their typical food habits, but to make a judgment based on what one eats can go horribly wrong. Heres what Juhea Kim wrote in Peaceful Dumpling (which promotes veganism):
Any kind of superficial judgment of others is based on our need to feel superior. An ethical eater doesnt equal to an ethical person No one likes to be judgedand some days it will be you.
The second point is particularly interesting. Hitler was a vegetarian in his final years and he wasnt the only vegetarian who presided over massacres. Today, someone rolling a Malabar parotta around beef roast in Kerala could well be from the Hindi heartland (many of them who constitute a major workforce there have made the southern state their second home, the local food their daily diet). Kim says one of her mentors, who she calls the most conscientious person I know, is not an ethical eater. But although he eats a traditional American diet, he is still the first person I think of when I need a moral role model, she writes.
Many great men have been at the receiving end of sartorial judgments. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was denied entry into the Library of Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1874 because he was wearing a dhoti.
V R Krishna Iyer, one of the most respected jurists India has seen, had a similar experience at the Presidency Club in Chennai sometime in the 1980s. If those ignominious incidents were a result of Indians upholding remnants of the British philistine that bred class distinction, the present-day Holmeses, and Watsons embody community-and-caste-based malice that gnaws at the roots of Indias diversity.
If people start judging each other by what they wear, everyone in white shirt-dhoti (or kurta-pajama in the north) today would be considered a corrupt politician. Thankfully, it is not so.
The poha-hating BJP general secretary can, however, take heart that an American neurologist-psychiatrist called Alan Hirsch has done some research linking food habits with personalities (he had to wind up his Sensa crystals which he claimed would make people slimmer even if they eat junk food sprinkled with the crystals). One of his studies on ice-cream flavours, sponsored by who else Baskin Robbins, claimed to have found vanilla eaters to be impulsive idealists, those who preferred mint choc chips frugal, cautious and argumentative, and chocolate flavour lovers dramatic, lively and charming.
Whats your scoop, Dr Watson?
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
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Show your plate and they will tell you who you are - Economic Times
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A Strong Economy Is a Great ThingBut Is That All We Need? – Townhall
Posted: at 12:05 am
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Posted: Jan 26, 2020 12:01 AM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Steve Mnuchin cant seem to move away from a huge economic misconception that I wrote about two years ago called Living in an Economic Twilight Zone. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, Mnuchin said the White House has started work on the second round of tax cuts even as the budget deficit continues to grow. It would appear that he still believes in this misguided premise that we can grow our way out of $23 trillion worth of debt.
Mathematically speaking, that has not been the case since our national debt was more than $9 trillion at the end of2007. Then, a president came in who was too busy apologizing for American exceptionalism and had no idea how to create an environment for growth. He believed in demonizing profits, regulating small and large businesses, taxing corporate America and increasing public assistance to record levels as the poverty rate grew larger every day. That administration believed that these actions, along with spending and expanding the size of government, was a plan for Americas growth and prosperity.
A strong economy is a great thing. I dont believe its ever been better in my lifetime than it is under this administration. But we cannotand will nothave sustainable growth, prosperity and economic stability without a strong, detailed, steadfast and unwavering plan to downsize the federal government and cut spending. We are living today in a perfect economic storm. It almost seems impossible for this storm to do anything but continue to circle around and grow in strength. The likelihood of the storm going out to sea and dissipating seems unlikely.
At the same time, we have one of the strongest presidents weve ever had; hes a businessman, not a politiciana president who knows how to get things done and a president whose decision-making is not based on political correctness. Perhaps the most important thing is that we have a president who is willing to make hard decisions for the future of America, its people and its economy. We have never had a greater opportunity to make changes that can begin to peck away at our national debt. But it would appear as though President Trump is surrounding himself with people that believe that growth is the answer to everything and will solve the debt problem for future generations.
We will never be able to cut national debt without growth in our GDP and growth in our economic environment. It is literally impossible to do without growth. It is also unattainable to reduce national debt without cutting spending and reducing the size of our government.
With the Trump administration, there is a great opportunity to heal Americas debt problem. We have a man in office who is willing to do whats necessary for the good of the American people and who prioritizes growth in our free-market economy. We may never see this perfect storm of growth with the opportunity to cut government again in our lifetime. Cut the size of government, and we will cut the size of our debt as our growth continues. For the storm to be truly perfect, it needs us to do both.
Abraham Lincoln espoused smaller government, individual responsibility and freedom for all. Lincoln established one of the principles upon which the Republican Party was founded when he said, Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
If we dont start in the next five years, it will be impossible to reduce deficits. Lets get back to Abraham Lincolns ideals and keep government small. Lets seize the opportunity to grow and strengthen the financial base like never before, to take advantage of this moment and begin completing the circle of Americas future prosperity.
Dan Celia is president and CEO of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries, Inc., and host of the nationally syndicated radio and television program Financial Issues, heard daily on more than 660 stations across the country and reaching millions of households on several TV networks, includingFISM.TV. Visitwww.financialissues.org.
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A Strong Economy Is a Great ThingBut Is That All We Need? - Townhall
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What We Can Learn From the American Dirt Controversy – Popdust
Posted: at 12:05 am
The novel initially received a great deal of positive press. It sparked a bidding war that ended in a 7-figure deal, garnered a movie deal with Clint Eastwood, was called "extraordinary" by Stephen King, and was picked by Oprah for her book club, guaranteeing its bestseller status.
Then the controversy erupted.
American Dirt tells the story of two Mexican migrants, a mother named Lydia and her child Luca, attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. It was written by a woman named Jeanine Cummins, who identified as white until very recently (she has a Puerto Rican grandmother).
Many reviewers have panned Cummins' book for its lack of empathy, its reliance on stereotypes and trauma, and its apolitical stance that seems intent on "humanizing" migrants but that fails to implicate America or its government.
"The book is riddled with gross misrepresentations of its subjects," writes David Schmidt for the Blue Nib. "Mexico is depicted as a one-dimensional nation, irredeemably corrupt and violent, while the United States of American Dirt is a fantasy land: a country free of gun violence, hate groups and organized crime. While the book ostensibly pushes a progressive message, it drives home a very Trumpist myth: 'crime and violence are Mexican problems.' If English-speaking readers assume that this novel accurately depicts the realities of Mexico and migration, it will only further the cause of disinformation and prejudice."
In addition to the criticism, the debate inspired a Twitter thread about "writing my Latino novel" that lampoons stereotypes about Latinx culture. It's also brought up serious points about the predominantly white state of the media and publishing industry and about who gets to tell what stories.
By most accounts, Cummins' narrative fails to responsibly represent its characters. Realistically, though, many people will see the criticism of American Dirt and will be filled with rage about how political correctness is infringing on freedom of speech. This is missing a deeper point (and no one is saying you can't keep working on your novel about a woman's sexual liberation, Mike).
The question isn't necessarily whether writers should be able to write about what they don't know (they should). The question is: Who gets to decide what voices get to speak? Is it really freedom of speech when certain voices are always louder than others?
American Dirt is, ultimately, the project of people whose voices have always been the loudest. It's the product of a whole lot of white literary establishment power, and ultimately it's a finely crystallized symbol of the colonialist mindset that is alive and well in the literary world.
"I'm of the persuasion that fiction necessarily, even rather beautifully, requires imagining an 'other' of some kind," writes Parul Sehgal in The New York Times. "As the novelist Hari Kunzru has argued, imagining ourselves into other lives and other subjectives is an act of ethical urgency. The caveat is to do this work of representation responsibly, and well."
According to Myriam Gurba, whose excellent review was one of the first searing takedowns of the book, Cummins' novel does the following:
"1. Appropriating genius works by people of color
2. Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and
3. Repackaging them for mass racially 'colorblind' consumption.
Rather than look us in the eye, many gabachos prefer to look down their noses at us. Rather than face that we are their moral and intellectual equals, they happily pity us. Pity is what inspires their sweet tooth for Mexican pain, a craving many of them hide."
The problem is not only that Jeanine Cummins felt she had the right to tell this storyit's that she told it insensitively, in a way that misrepresents the uniqueness of every migrant experience and instead crushes it into a stereotype and reshapes it for a white audience's eyes. If writing fiction requires a sort of alchemical synthesis of empathy, nuance, and razor-sharp awareness, then Cummins seems to lack all of these things.
Still, it's likely the book would not have been so heavily panned had it not received such extensive praise and hype. "While I have nothing against Jeanine's (or anyone else's) writing a book about the plight of Mexican women and immigrants (especially if they do their homework and don't exoticize our culture), I am deeply bothered that this non-#OwnVoices novel has been anointed the book about the issue for 2020," writes David Bowles for Medium.
The ache and frustration in Latinx critics' responses lies not only in its content, but in the larger cultural context into which it was released. "At a time when Mexico and the Mexican American community are reviled in this country as they haven't been in decades, to elevate this inauthentic book written by someone outside our community is to slap our collective face," Bowles concludes.
"The heart of the problem is that American Dirt is not really a story of Mexican migrants at all. It is the story of American entitlement, one that never questions the brute injustice of geography of birth determining opportunities in life. American Dirt is an accurate depiction of what Americans demand Mexicans and other brown people suffer to be allowed into the country," writes Rafia Zakaria for CNN.
If you look at the state of the publishing industry, it's easy to see why American Dirt slipped through the cracks. "According to the trade magazine Publishers Weekly, white people made up 84 percent of publishing's workforce in 2019. Publishing is staffed almost entirely by white people and in large part, that fact can be explained by publishing's punishingly low entry-level salaries," writes Constance Grady for Vox. "Such salaries mean that the kind of people who work in publishing tend to be the kind of people who can afford to work in publishing As a result, publishing is predominantly staffed with well-meaning white people who, when looking for a book about the stories of people of color, can find themselves drawn toward one addressed specifically to white people."
Meanwhile, people of color attempting to break into the industry often have difficulty if they don't fit into the white publishing industry's expectations of them. "We fight in newsrooms, boardrooms, studio meetings, book proposals, and other spaces where white editors hungry for all of our pain and none of our nuance serve as gatekeepers," writes Alex Zargoza for Vice. "If we do break through, we then have to battle editors who want us to create trauma p-rn for white readers to clutch their chest to and lament the savagery of the countries we came from are. We lose out on anything near a seven-figure deal, effectively punished for not wanting to do what Cummins did, which was treat ourselves like the pitiful emblems of pain liberal whites see us as, or bloodthirsty barbarians Donald Trump has made us out to be."
For all the doubts she expressed about writing the novel, Jeanine Cummins' statements following the controversy haven't helped her case. She's not exactly a sympathetic figure (she just earned a million dollars from a book, after all, and received a flood of glowing reviews early on). In the epigraph she wrote about her immigrant husband, Cummins writes about her fear that her husband will be deported. She fails to mention that he's an Irish immigrant, and instead essentially equates his struggles with those of the people she's trying to write about. She's even been banning critical tweets on Twitter, apparently, which is ridiculous.
Instead of shutting down this discussion and trying to paint herself as anyone but an outsider looking in, Cummins should be embracing the critiques. She should, for example, take one for the team and shut down the forthcoming movie deal, which would undeniably win an Oscar, if it were made.
She probably won't do that, though, because it's likely Jeanine Cummins still believes she is helping a cause. She also probably cares about what's going on at the U.S.-Mexico border, whichto her creditis more than the half of America that voted for Trump can say. She also apparently spent five years doing research, though it clearly wasn't enough, considering all the errors in her book.
Cummins also probably figured that, as a well-connected writer, she had a better shot at getting her book in the hands of millionswhich was true, and this speaks more to the issues in the publishing and media industries than to the author herself.
Still, the conversation shouldn't get lost in criticizing Cummins or the book. This can, instead, be a valuable teaching moment, one that should be used as an opportunity for the literary world to learn and change. Without confronting the systemic racism embedded in the media and publishing industries, change will never happen. We have to learn to differentiate between a writer's freedom to write about anything they choose and a writer's (and the literary establishment's) decision to put forth damaging content under the guise of social justice or "resistance" literature.
The publishing company (Flatiron) and agencies that made American Dirt into such a success probably felt they were also working in support of a good cause. But the hurt that the book has caused many Latinx (and many non-white) readers and writers should be a lesson for anyone trying to write about things that are unfamiliar to them, or to anyone deciding whether to promote a book, especially a book by a white writer about a sensitive, very nuanced and political issue that's playing out in real time and that's already being written about by people who are actually experiencing it.
In general, the publishing industry needs to ask itself a lot of questions based on this feedback. These questions could include: Has the book been read and vetted by people who actually lived the experience it describes? Has the author of this book done justice to the nuance of the issue? Does the book play into stereotypes? Does it fetishize trauma? Why is this story being told? Is it helping the issue? Why is the author telling this story? And is there anyone who would be even a little bit offended that a symbol of division and painsuch as, say, barbed wire reminiscent of a certain bordermight be used as a centerpiece at a book release party?
American Dirt, Sehgal concludes in her delightfully scathing review, "is determinedly apolitical. The deep roots of these forced migrations are never interrogated; the American reader can read without fear of uncomfortable self-reproach. It asks only for us to accept that 'these people are people,' while giving us the saintly to root for and the barbarous to deploreand then congratulating us for caring."
White sympathy can be dangerous. In truth, a great deal of the migration flows currently stemming from Central America were created by American drug wars and violence that ensued from American-sponsored coups and violence. If American citizens are so desperate to do something for migrants, then it needs to start with uplifting their voices and compensating them for their work on their terms, whatever those terms may benot telling stories that attempt to "humanize" someone but that actually further reinforce preexisting stereotypes and spread misinformation.
American colonialism has long operated in the tradition of invading and entering another country on the basis of a deluded idea that the Others need to be "saved" and that the invasion is for their own good; and charitable nonprofits often fall into the same trap, air-dropping resources instead of working with communities, thus creating cycles of dependence and collapse. Clearly, entering someone else's territory (or invading their story) is not always an optimal strategy.
Colonization has long been an accepted practice in literature, too; remember that Memoirs of a Geisha was written by a white man named Arthur, and The Help was written by a white womanwhich received similar criticism for its treatment of Black characters, and which was, ironically, published by the same person who published American Dirt.
The question of whether it's possible to write about "the other" through a postcolonial lens is a labyrinthine, almost unanswerable one, but we don't even have to go down that winding road now. Instead, maybe well-meaning allies can start by practicing solidarity and deepening interpersonal relationships with people impacted by issues at hand, by supporting on-the-ground organizations like Cosecha and RAICES (or any of the names on this list), by understanding that there isto say the absolute leastno one "migrant" or "Latinx" "experience," and by asking questions, and then shutting up and listening for once.
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Breathing new life into colonizing the Moon? ESA to begin producing oxygen from LUNAR DUST – RT
Posted: at 12:03 am
The European Space Agency (ESA) has fired up its prototype oxygen plant to begin producing the element out of simulated moondust, with a view to creating a sustainable breathable air production facility on the Moon.
Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel, says Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow, a researcher working on the prototype at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC).
The current prototype is set up in a lab in Noordwijk in the Netherlands, but the next step is to begin fine-tuning, reducing the operating temperature and streamlining the design to create a portable version of the system that could one day be flown to the Moon.
Based on samples brought back from the Moon over the years, it turns out that lunar regolith (moon rock) is made up of 40 to 45 percent oxygen by weight, making it the satellites single most abundant element, which is incredibly fortunate for future human colonization plans.
However, the oxygen is bound up as oxides which take the form of minerals or glass, not the ideal form for taking a big lungful of air. In the prototype, oxygen extraction is done using molten salt electrolysis, where the lunar rocks are placed in a metal basket with calcium chloride salt which is heated to a whopping 950 degrees Celsius.
The regolith somehow remains solid at this temperature, however, but by passing a current through the heated moon rock it releases the oxygen contained within. Somewhat miraculously, the regolith then becomes usable metal alloys.
Researchers are now also exploring potential future uses for these metal alloys, including in lunar-based 3D printers to construct parts for lunar bases or potentially even spacecraft.
For now though, the main goal is to get a functional lunar prototype ready for testing by the mid 2020s. Such projects form an integral part of NASA and the ESAs joint future in space, as the agencies work towards a sustained human presence on the Moon and maybe one day Mars.
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ON FILM: The last of the best movies for 2019 – Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted: at 12:03 am
We start off every year by checking in with a few heavily invested moviegoers/critics for their thoughts on the past year's best. And then we run them with a minimum of editing. This week's batch should put 2019 to bed. (Unless I missed somebody.)
Tanner Smith
The critics
Tanner Smith, Arkansas-based filmmaker and critic, smithsverdict.com
Dan Lybarger, regular Movie Style contributor, justincaseitmatters.tumblr.com
Piers Marchant, regular Movie Style contributor, sweetsmellosuccess.tumblr.com
Favorite Films of 2019
Parasite -- I went into this crushing commentary of the haves and the have-nots almost completely cold ... I came out of it excited to tell everyone about it. One of the best films of the decade.
Avengers: Endgame -- It's amazing when I think of how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come since its origin over 11 years ago. Once it was going, we knew it was building up to something huge, and thankfully, it didn't disappoint.
Marriage Story -- Were I an Academy member, I would consider Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story for best actor (Adam Driver), best actress (Scarlett Johansson), best original screenplay (Baumbach), and best picture. Some of the best writing and acting of the year is in this film. (P.S. God bless Netflix!)
Toy Story 4 -- Nine years after a satisfying conclusion, I get a Toy Story sequel I didn't know I wanted. And it was as moving as reuniting with old friends (in the best possible way).
Doctor Sleep -- Mike Flanagan, the best director working in the horror film genre today, had a major challenge with this sequel to The Shining: respect and appeal to the legacy of not only filmmaker Stanley Kubrick but also novelist Stephen King. He pulled it off big-time.
Little Women -- I saw this beautiful adaptation of the popular L.M. Alcott novel twice, and I'll definitely be seeing it many more times in the near future.
1917 -- One of the best cinematic experiences I had [last] year comes from one of the best World War I films ever made. (I think both DP Roger Deakins and director Sam Mendes have outdone themselves with this one!)
US -- Another commentary on the haves and the have-nots, with a very intriguing premise and beautiful execution from writer/director Jordan Peele, who proves yet again that he's one of the most talented filmmakers working today. A satisfying horror film.
A tie between Joker and Uncut Gems -- Cheating, you say? Well, it's my list, and I'll do what I want with it. Both character-based dramatic thrillers are as effective as they are brilliantly acted.
The Farewell -- If there's anything more important than a comedy that can make you laugh, it's one that can make you feel. The Farewell is a beautiful film that handles both the comedy and the drama flawlessly.
The Irishman
Love, Antosha
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Booksmart
Knives Out
Luce
Dolemite Is My Name
Shazam!
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
The Lighthouse
Honorable Mentions: Honey Boy, The Lego Movie 2, The Mustang, Velvet Buzzsaw, The Souvenir, Brittany Runs a Marathon, Antiquities, Blinded By the Light, Fast Color, Happy Death Day 2U.
Dan Lybarger
The best movie of last year may be lying on the floor of my apartment because it got lost in the shuffle as I raced to endure Cats. Often, my favorite movies for a given year sometimes screen after I've voted in my critics' polls.
As I narrowed my list of favorite movies down to 10, I noticed that there was an inordinate number of science fiction and space travel movies in the final cut. Apparently, there are still filmmakers who want to test the limits of what constitutes cinema. Some of the stories might be familiar, but others make the definition of what a movie is just a little bit longer.
Parasite -- Bong Joon Ho's latest is actually a break from his movies about giant pigs and slugs and a train hurtling through a frozen apocalypse. With Parasite, a struggling unemployed family slowly takes over the lives of an upwardly mobile tech executive's (Sun-kyun Lee) clan with eerie, often funny and ultimately heartbreaking results. Like Jordan Peele's Us, it explores the underground economies below the surface of the civilized world. Its occupants are quite real, even if they are unseen.
Marriage Story -- Noah Baumbach's depiction of the last vestiges of affection leaving a marriage may be set in a rarified world of theater and television, but the difficulty of breaking up is never easy, no matter where you live. Anchored by a multitude of terrific performances, Marriage Story also carries just enough reminders of who people do fall in love and grow to miss it even when living together is no longer an option.
Little Women -- It's ironic that the one of the most vibrant and expertly created movies of the year is an adaptation of a 19th-century novel that seems to be filmed ever generation or so. Greta Gerwig cleverly tweaks the chronology of the Alcott story, giving it a brisk pace and a sense of foreboding that keeps the oft-told tale from feeling like a relic. Soarise Ronan is an ideal Jo March. Writers of any gender can identify with her struggles to get into print.
The Irishman -- Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) may not be the reason Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) disappeared from the face of the earth nearly four and a half decades ago, but we haven't ruled out alien abduction or rapture yet. Nonetheless, Martin Scorsese's depiction of the confessed mafia enforcer is an emotionally devastating coda to his previous movies like Goodfellas and Mean Streets. It's not a spoiler to say that Sheeran's reward for his service to gangsters like Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) was humiliatingly paltry. Pesci's low-key turn as Bufalino is the movie's highlight. While Pesci is best known for playing volatile criminals, his Bufalino rules by suggestion. His whispers carry the weight of Moses descending from Mt. Sinai.
1917 -- While Sam Mendes' single-shot real time approach is a technical challenge, the unusual storytelling approach helps make the horror and the moments of adrenaline from World War I seem real. Far from glorifying the carnage of World War I, 1917 draws its excitement from following two grunts (George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman) racing to deliver a message that will stop a potential massacre. The film vividly captures the claustrophobia and deprivations that Mendes' grandfather and other soldiers endured.
Ad Astra -- James Gray's latest adventure is as much about parenting issues as it is about how humans might settle at the end of the galaxy. Brad Pitt effortlessly conveys the conflicting emotions he has for his single-minded father (Tommy Lee Jones). If the story borrows a bit from Heart of Darkness, it also has some impressive effects that didn't make the shortlist of the Oscars despite making you believe that Pitt is running from space pirates. Perhaps the voters thought the moon scenes were shot on location.
Apollo 11 -- On second thought, maybe they thought they were watching this breathtaking account of how Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the moon. Apollo 11 includes 70mm footage that had been unseen in nearly 50 years. As a result, the mission seems less like a paragraph in a history book than a current achievement.
High Life -- French director Claire Denis turns the way we depict space travel upside down. She movingly depicts how prisoners could be sent away from earth, not for the spirit of adventure but as punishment for what they did here. With his work here and in The Lighthouse, Robert Pattinson leaves his listless performance as a vampire in the Twilight saga behind. His performance follows his character for over a decade, and it's easy to forget that makeup is involved.
The Nightingale -- Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent proves that her terrifying The Babadook was not a fluke. This chilling look at colonization features terrific performances by Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin and Baykali Ganambarr and looks at the complicated history of Australia in a fresh, intriguing light. The images are ruggedly beautiful, and Kent wisely decides viewers can reach their own conclusions about her tale.
Dark Waters -- When adapting a true story for the big screen, it helps to select one that needs little embellishment to be engaging. Director Todd Haynes (Carol) sticks with the facts in this account of how DuPont poisoned the water in West Virginia. Mark Ruffalo tones down the outbursts that made him effective as the Hulk, but neither he nor Haynes downplay the difficulty in confronting a corporate titan. Bill Camp, who was great as a grizzled New York cop, is equally believable as a West Virginia cattle farmer here.
Runners-up: Flannery, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Raise Hell, Us, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Knives Out, Dolemite Is My Name, Booksmart, Be Natural, Blinded by the Light, Midsommar.
Piers Marchant
In many ways, 2019 served as a crucible, and no more so, at least cinematically, than with the venerable superhero flick. After a deluge of big studio films on the subject of capes and spandex (the MCU includes 22 films since the 2008 release of Iron Man; the nascent DCU, running in fits and starts has seven), we saw the explosive close-out of the previous "phases" with Marvel's Avengers: Endgame; as well as the rise of pseudo-art-house comic book film, Joker, in the same bloody year.
The talk on Film Twitter -- the living definition of 'tempest in a teacup' -- was all about those films, and Martin Scorsese's now-legendary takedown of the genre by referring to the superhero films, collectively, as "theme parks." But in truth, there were many, many other films that came out during the year, some of them utterly brilliant, some of them ridiculously awful. Here are my picks for both, with some of what I wrote about them at the time in my review.
10. Avengers: Endgame
"There are so many small but noteworthy details -- opening the film with Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy"; the name drops, and special shout-outs to comics' fans; the small character beats that allow each protagonist more than just a quip or two; the closing credits, which give singular notice to the stars who have been there from the beginning, and wisely do not use the signature Marvel trick of teasing out the next film, which gives the series, at last, a sense of real closure, if only temporary -- the film feels as if it has been created and calibrated with the utmost care. For a film destined to break the bank no matter how shoddy they might have made it, Marvel has poured enough genuine soul into it to earn its inevitable bounty."
9. Her Smell
"In some ways, the film takes on a sort of Raging Bull aspect, Martin Scorsese's classic film about a boxer's rise and fall, only to turn the ending on its head. In Scorsese's picture, we see Jake LaMotta, now fat and retired, attempt to break into showbiz as a comedian, the scenes draped in cutting sardonicism. [Director Alex Ross] Perry gives Becky a much less punishingly ironic turn, but instead a hero's journey, venturing away from the abyss into something a good deal less grandiose and realized."
8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
"It's also a film about the versions of the stories whose ideas lend depth and valor to our otherwise nondescript lives, the things we hope make us the heroes of our own narratives. In this way, Jimmie's story is conflated with that of the city itself, and the palpable sense of loss he feels about his family's house is mirrored in the city's own loss of identity."
7. Under the Silver Lake
"[Director David Robert] Mitchell fairly stuffs the film with portents, symbols, and runes, some real, some imagined. Squirrels mysteriously fall dead at Sam's feet, a parrot in his courtyard keeps calling out something he can't decipher, a dog killer stalks the neighborhood, and graffiti-strewn about the area calls out to him. Films are always encoded with symbolic meaning, utilizing visual language to instill emotion and establish significance for the audience (think of Spielberg's girl with the red coat in Schindler's List or James Dean's red windbreaker in Rebel Without a Cause), Mitchell's film gives us so many options, almost everything can be read symbolically, which perfectly captures the paranoia his character feels and the pointlessness of trying to make sense of it at all."
6. Marriage Story
"Noah Baumbach's latest film, about the dissolution of married couple -- played extraordinarily well by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson -- will no doubt get comparisons made to Bergman's brilliant Scenes From a Marriage. But whereas that 1972 film concerned the relationship itself, its highs and lows and metamorphoses, Baumbach's film is much more about the logistics, legal and otherwise, of ending a very much shared life together."
5. Midsommar
"Viewing [director Ari] Aster's films is a bit like walking into an art installation -- quite literally, as he populates his frame with stunning compositions and art-focused mise en scene, as with the beautifully designed wooden structures of the compound, or the exquisite murals and art displayed on the building's walls (a huge shout-out to his production designer, Henrik Svensson, and the art directing crew) -- but, as with Hereditary, behind all the sumptuous, hand-crafted beauty, there is a cruel, brutal core of humanity's continued savagery. If art represents the best sort of impulses of humankind, in Aster's hands, it becomes yet another facade, hiding -- or in this case, exemplifying -- our instinct for vicious barbarity."
4. Parasite
"By the end, as it swerves inexorably into blood-soaked violence, the film reveals to be a bit of a con itself, drawing us in with its enticing humor, then opening up into a much darker vision, before ending on an emotional note of surprising vulnerability. Through it all, [director Bong Joon Ho] shows a mastery of odd tones, from the opening comedic salvo, to the final emotional beats."
3. Uncut Gems
"It's one of those pressure-cooker films, where the steam builds more and more intense as Howard gets in and out of trouble through his ability to constantly shift the playing board. There's a scene about midway through, with various aggrieved characters coalescing at once in his office, as he's trying to have a speakerphone conversation with his doctor, that's so stressful, you will want to avert your eyes and remind yourself of the exit signs."
2. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
"It's also an unexpected joy to watch the nonchalant swagger of [Brad] Pitt match up with [Leonardo] DiCaprio's more high-strung ministrations. Two of the biggest film stars alive playing mostly washed-up TV actors may stack the irony, but both of them settle in so well into their characters, you can't help but admire the result. Rick is a dude whose ego has gone from tumescent to shriveled -- he parks his car miserably in front of one of his own old movie posters -- but beneath all his hubris and despair, he actually has a lot of talent. As always, it's pure joy to watch Pitt smoke up a screen, a middle-aged Redford speaking every line with a sinfully breezy smile, whose confidence extends around him like the golden hue of his deep suntan."
1. Knives Out
"More than the plot itself, an ingenious and kinetic thing that's as satisfying as a hot bowl of soup on a raw and windy day, there's the sense of joyous chaos from the cast. Those scenes where the family is all together, in the drawing room and continually at each other's throats are so delicious, they should come with a napkin. The interplay between vets like [Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Toni Collette] is filled with fractious energy, the characters revisiting age-old disagreements ("Your kid's a brat!" -- "Your kid is a Nazi!") with sadistic glee. Even when they band together, in moments, against what they believe to be a common enemy, it's clear the harmony between them is more Iggy and the Stooges than Beach Boys. In short, [director Rian] Johnson has devised a perfect ensemble of dreadful characters and set them all against one another in a narrative fishbowl filled with lye."
Other Worthy Mentions:
Amazing Grace, American Factory, Apollo 11, Bacurau, Birds of Passage, Charlie Says, Cold Case Hammarskjld, Dark Suns, Dark Waters, Ford v Ferrari, Greener Grass, In Fabric, John Wick 3, Jojo Rabbit, Luce, Midnight Traveler, Ms. Purple, Pain and Glory, Rewind, Something Else, Terminator: Dark Fate, The Farewell, The Hole in the Ground, The Irishman, The Lighthouse, The Nightingale, The Report, The Souvenir, The Vast of Night, This Is Not Berlin, Us, Varda by Agnes, Vitalina Varella.
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MovieStyle on 01/24/2020
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ON FILM: The last of the best movies for 2019 - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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Zoe Quinn & Anita Sarkeesian, twin queens of Gamergate, turned feminist victimhood into a career, then cheated their followers – RT
Posted: at 12:02 am
Sophia Narwitz
For the best part of a decade two women have parlayed supposed gamer sexism and death threat allegations into wealth, fame, and a reputation at odds with their actions. Will Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn ever be held to account?
Sarkeesian was an online pioneer of a certain type of feminist game criticism that appeared to dismiss most games as a form of digitalized misogyny and hated playing all of them, while Quinn was a game developer with a thin track record but a flair for drawing attention on the internet, when Gamergate struck.
An avalanche triggered in August 2014 by a single account of Quinns supposedly unscrupulous personal behaviour, Gamergate was the moment that a prevalent but culturally marginalized hobby came of age as something that truly mattered.
A full-scale war of words, denunciations, and firings cleaved gamers, developers and journalists into the ethical or corrupt, the normies and the basement dwellers, the abusers and the targets, those who believed that games were fine and needed to serve only as entertainment, and those who wanted to uproot the industry to better represent their political beliefs.
Sarkeesian and Quinn were appointed the unofficial bannerwomen of the woke side of the divide, its sorriest martyrs and its fiercest warriors. For those who have only ever read about Gamergate from complimentary profiles in mainstream media outlets, where it has been blamed for everything up to and including getting Donald Trump elected and the ascent of fake news, and the spread of white supremacy, Sarkeesian and Quinn remain angels. They are not.
As the most notorious name to emerge from 2014, Zoe Quinn has remained by far the most recognizable among her and her cohorts. It was her promiscuity with industry insiders that launched Gamergate as a whole, but since then shes had a number of public failings that have only helped her remain in the public consciousness.
On October 26, 2016 she launched a Kickstarter for an erotic full motion video game. It would go on to raise a respectable $85,448. At the time of its announcement it was boosted by many gaming blogs and news websites. Conveniently for her, the incestuous nature of the medium took hold, and writers shes hung out with on multiple occasions were among those who helped market her project to the world, all under the guise of journalism; a move on their part which no doubt helped the project go above its original asking price of $69,420.
As per its pitch, the game was almost a year into development and near completion as its estimated delivery date was February, 2017. Fast forward until now, and no game has ever appeared. The last official update occurred over 500 days ago on August 30, 2018, when Zoe informed backers that the project had run out of money.
Incidentally, at the very same moment she told the people whod given her 85 grand that she was broke, she was in Japan, traveling in luxury. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the same media entities that were quick to boost her project to the masses have never once reported on the status of the game. As per my conversations with a source who worked on it, they called it a failure.
But the events of last August took Quinns notoriety to an entirely new plane. Quinn irresponsibly threw supposedly years old sexual assault allegations on Twitter, where it was immediately latched onto by the sharks that prowl the net, and before any more information could come out, let alone a response from the man accused, a guilty verdict was reached, and Alec Holowka was canceled.
Within a day, news articles and industry insiders smeared his name, and even his own game studio tossed him out. Whether innocent or guilty, he never stood a chance to make his case. The internet had sealed his fate, and he took his own life. Perhaps for no greater a reason because someone needed her daily dose of righteous internet adrenaline?
Im not going to be so bold as to adamantly state that this was entirely done to garner attention, but Zoes past does indicate she often pushes herself to the forefront of controversy as to steal the spotlight. In fact, she thrives on the need to be the center of drama.
When former The Escapist owner Russ Pitts took the reins of the website, she attacked him simply because he revived it without contacting her; never mind that shes not in any way associated with it. Acting as a supplicating inferior though, he quickly bent the knee and took his punishment, so much so that he abandoned it entirely and handed it off to someone else.
As it pertains to Alec, it hasnt escaped the eye of detractors that the accusations were published to coincide exactly with the 5th anniversary of Gamergate.
One of the biggest media lies about Gamergate is that everybody who is supportive of it is a bigot who hates marginalized people. An ironic tall tale considering evidence shows the people most touting the importance of such folk are the ones most taking advantage of them.
Following Gamergate, Zoe Quinn launched the Crash Override Network. It was built as a support group for victims of online harassment, and infused with money from Anita Sarkeesians nonprofit, Feminist Frequency, who took on the role of a financial sponsor.
The network as a whole would only last roughly two years, and if former staff allegations are to be believed, not everyone got paid, and her trans members feel as if they were especially taken advantage of. Making matters worse is that allegedly, normal everyday people who came to the network seeking help were often denied service if they werent famous enough. Accusations range far and wide that Crash Override was just a ruse to help boost Quinn and Sarkeesians popularity. Statements which are believable when considering how Sarkeesian lives as opposed to those she is seemingly close with.
Last year, it was announced that Anita could no longer afford to pay her two co-creators, and that she herself had ceased taking a salary. Fem Freq is an organization that in 6 years time had raised close to 2 million dollars, and somehow all the money had been squandered. A big portion of their funds came from corporations, and she was quick to take on an entitled sense of self and call them out on Twitter for not financially supporting her.
The loss of Fem Freq funds hasnt appeared to hit Anita too hard, as outside of her activity with the organization, she tours the world and gives speeches. This coming April she will be embarking on a mini speaking tour in Europe, which is a potential windfall as her average speaking fee is $20,000. Graced with the ability to travel at will, she even takes part in events like JoCo Cruise as a featured guest, and this past December she toured parts of Africa on what appears to be a trip of leisure.
Her trans co-host Carolyn Petit is another story, however. As Anita was spending a beautiful holiday abroad, Carolyn was seeking work, and struggles to afford her self described cheapcup of daily coffee, let alone her rent. From the looks of it shes had to apply for work at a local grocery store and is struggling to get by. This is a woman who has worked with Anita for years, and who still volunteers at Fem Freq and works on their podcast and such, but by all outward appearances it doesnt look as if Anita is doing much to help her with her situation.
From the very beginning the manipulative grift of Anita was pretty obvious. In one of her earliest tropes v women in games episodes, she caused controversy with the misinformation she spewed. In a video titled Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 she twists facts and misrepresents games to a shocking degree, all to push her agenda. An agenda that has been shown to be quite hypocritical.
A core argument of her content is the dishonest depiction of women, so it says a lot that her channels own art thins the hosts and makes them ten times prettier. Outside of that is her repetitive talking points. In a recent Polygon article she repeatedly brings up marginalized people, namely trans folk. Yet, if her funding of Crash Override and staff testimonials mean anything, she didnt quite care enough about whether they were treated well, likewise she makes thousands on speaking tours while her co-host struggles to get by.
She can tout being woke and pretend she cares, but it seems she just builds projects up to boost her own name and then watches them die once she has sapped all she can from it. Funny how Quinn and Sarkeesian have benefited from various projects to a much greater extent than those they work with. As if reflecting the vanity which brought them here in the first place.
Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are enabled, emboldened and in essence bankrolled by a mainstream media that refuses to hold them accountable. Years of lies and manipulation have had no negative effects on their standing with the press.On Tuesday, both were featured in a Vox article about Gamergate, another litany of familiar accusations of spreading hate and violence against women.
Partisan journalists do not care about the Kickstarter backers who are still waiting for what they paid for, and who have been left hanging with zero updates. Nor do they care that the duo hasnt properly taken care of those loyally working under them.
Most sickening of all is the lack of due diligence by those in the industry still providing them a voice. Whatever they say is taken as fact, a horrid display of unethical journalism as both individuals continue to purposefully cause outrage wherever they go, even at the cost of other peoples lives.
Theres Alec Holowka that we know of, but how many people reached out to Crash Override for help, only to be turned away because they werent popular enough? And suppose that was their last desperate bid to find comfort, could they too have cut their lives short?
These are questions we may not have suitable answers for until someone else decides to speak up, but one thing we know for sure is that Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn are the gaming industrys dirty duo. Wherever you stand on Gamergate, listen to someone else.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Joe Rogan fails the Bernie Bro purity test that anti-Semites and sexists pass – Washington Examiner
Posted: at 12:02 am
Bernie Bro-dom has broken out into civil war thanks to a single tweet shared by the presidential hopeful's Twitter account.
In a video later shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders, comedian and commentator Joe Rogan announced that he would likely vote for Sanders on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan didn't even stylize his suggestion as an endorsement, but Sanders reshared the video with his watermark in the corner. Chaos ensued.
Rogan rests at a unique intersection of pop culture. He cut his teeth in stand-up and, after a number of other television gigs, became the host of Fear Factor and then a UFC commentator. As a result of his well-known and affable persona, as well as his refusal to take himself too seriously, his podcast earns hundreds of millions of downloads per month and features guests ranging from Mel Gibson and Alex Jones to Edward Snowden and Richard Dawkins. His politics have ranged from libertarian on issues like guns and drugs to outright left-wing on universal healthcare and foreign policy, and he's hosted just three candidates on his podcast this election cycle, all outsiders: Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and Sanders.
Rogan is the exact cultural figure whom a candidate like Sanders needs in order to win the Democratic nomination. He's a bellwether of young people alienated by establishment politics and not terribly in touch with the concentrated cesspool of very online identity politics to which most voters do not subscribe, by the way.
So of course, the most insufferable of the Bernie Bros went positively apoplectic.
Here's Eli Valley, the anti-Zionist "cartoonist" famous for depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping President Barack Obama and deeming Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss of the New York Times "Nazi-friendly Jews."
Here's Carlos Maza, the self-described "Marxist pig" who curiously and quietly left Vox after deciding to wage war against YouTube for refusing to censor conservative comedian Steven Crowder and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Here's Brianna Wu of Gamergate fame.
Other avid Sanders backers, such as Elizabeth Bruenig, Ryan Grim, and Krystal Ball, rightly noted that it would be moronic for Sanders to reject the endorsement of a figure as widely popular as Rogan. Meanwhile, opportunistic non-Sanders supporters on the Left, including an allegedly objective news reporter, clutched their pearls at the Rogan endorsement.
Here's Rolling Stone's Jamil Smith.
Here's gun-grabbing wannabe Shannon Watts.
And here's the Daily Beast's Sam Stein.
The notion that Rogan is some sort of bigot is sheer lunacy. He routinely grills conservatives and liberals alike on his show, but his own views are quite left-wing, especially on social issues. He's supported gay rights for the entirety of his career, and he is broadly supportive of transgender rights as well. As a professional MMA commentator, the only bones he has ever picked with the contemporary transgender movement (or part of it, anyway) have been the push to put biological males who identify as women into women's contact sports (Rogan rightly notes that this poses severe risks) and the transitioning of young children.
But the worst people here are those who fail Rogan on their purity test while passing bigots who are backing or campaigning with Sanders.
Eli Valley has proudly defended both Linda Sarsour, the Louis Farrakhan buddy who found herself ousted from the Women's March for anti-Semitism, and Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman who can't go a month without accusing American Jews of dual loyalties to Israel or running cover for terrorism. Shannon Watts has also defended Sarsour, and Maza and Wu have repeatedly stuck their necks out for Omar. Smith and Stein, both respected journalists covering national politics, weighed in on a tweet about a popular podcast co-host yet did not utter a peep about Sanders bringing credibly accused domestic abuser Keith Ellison on the campaign trail, nor did they call on Sanders to reject the endorsement of flagrant misogynist Cenk Uygur.
Only Rogan failed the left-wing purity test, and it wasn't with all Bernie Bros or just Bernie Bros. The intersectional fissures in the Left's facade are deepening, and Rogan just marked the divide.
Continued here:
Joe Rogan fails the Bernie Bro purity test that anti-Semites and sexists pass - Washington Examiner
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2019 – Simply a very good year for Xbox gamers – TheXboxHub
Posted: at 12:02 am
2019 has not been a 2018 or 2017 in gaming. By that I mean it hasnt been an extraordinary year for the games industry, because both of those years were extraordinary. That being said, 2019 has been a good year for Xbox. I think most of us can agree that the last 12 months have been slightly more specific in their games, but those that have launched have been met with good, if not great, critical and commercial praise. In other words, most of them found an audience.
On a more specific note, 2019 has been a good year for Xbox One owners, though that is mainly due to a few last-minute announcements of next-generation hardware and an exclusive which was considerably better than many thought it would be. But without further delay, let us remind ourselves of some of the games that were released on the Xbox platform in 2019, both exclusive and third-party, in order to take in a retrospective of how the year went for Xbox.
In January we had Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown which seemed to be a solid entry for the franchise. Though its story is rather absurd, this is a great example of a game that is made for a certain audience, i.e. Ace Combat fans. And for those fans, I think it was a good game, if not great. Onimusha: Warlords arrived early in the year as the most shocking remaster that nobody was expecting, but one which appeals to those dedicated to the franchise. Hopefully it indicates to these people that there is more to come.
We also got in January the indie darling Guacamelee! 2 and Resident Evil 2 the latter of which proved to be brilliant. A complete remake from the original, this quickly became everyones favourite Resident Evil game and in many cases their favourite horror experience. The atmosphere, the puzzles, the resource management, the graphics, the lighting and the attention to detail all make this game exceptional. And for many, the best game of the year.
Kingdom Hearts 3 finally arrived and was the first Kingdom Hearts game to hit the Xbox platform its strange that none of the previous games have released on the system. But the game nevertheless became one of the biggest games of the year and received good critical praise despite the awkward dialogue and convoluted storyline.
Respawn surprised us with Apex Legends a first-person Battle Royale arena shooter competing against the likes of PUBG and Fortnite. It did well, managing to hold its own financially and culturally against these other two gaming giants, with Fortnite being the obvious phenomenon out of the two. It had some controversy with its micro-transactions but Ive only heard good things about this game in the months since it launched.
The full version of ASTRONEER arrived on Xbox One an indie game which has overcome difficult challenges throughout its development. And thats a huge understatement to say the least. Moving slightly forward in the year, February 15th was marked as one of the busiest gaming release days ever as three AAA games were released on this day: Crackdown 3, Far Cry: New Dawn and Metro: Exodus.
While Crackdown 3 is the only Xbox exclusive on this list, it was also the worst game to release on February 15th. Far Cry: New Dawn was a glorified DLC made into a retail release but did the job required well, whilst Metro: Exodus was the best in the franchise thus far and proved that 4A Games are a developer worth keeping an eye on for making atmospheric and consequential Russian post-apocalyptic FPSs. Yet Crackdown 3 did nothing but deliver on a very basic Crackdown single-player experience, throw in a multiplayer mode that felt like it was in alpha, and seed doubt for Xbox Game Studios games.
Bioware released Anthem on February 22nd and, to many peoples surprise (though not my own), it failed to deliver on its promise. There are rumours that the game is being rebooted sometime in 2020 to reinvigorate the player-base, but I worry that it is too late, especially as the game is now sold for 5.00 or less in most retail outlets. That fact says it all about the story of Anthem.
Dead or Alive 6 is another Dead or Alive game. Black Desert came to Xbox with good acclaim an MMORPG on a console to watch perhaps in the coming months and years. All the while Capcom was busy cementing their place as the best publisher in 2019 by releasing the highly-anticipated Devil May Cry 5 one of the best action-games this generation and, again, one of the best games of the year.
Ubisoft released The Division 2 in the middle of March which improved on the first games formula to a significant extent, though Im unsure of its ability to retain a solid player-base in early 2020. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice launched at the end of March and became one of the best souls-like games to ever hit the Xbox. Its been credited with faster movement, cinematic story elements and other compliments which Im sure exist but I dont know about because I dont have the patience for these types of games, so Sekiro seems like a brilliant game if you enjoy that genre.
Generation Zero was developed by Avalanche Studios and is probably their worst game to date. Nothing more we need to say about that. Gang Beasts came to consoles and is still one of the most fun couch games to play with others. Assassins Creed III Remastered was released and it is slightly surprising how popular this remaster was considering many players disliked this entry back when it first released in 2012. Speaking of remasters, Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition was a remaster of the first game created to build up hype for Borderlands 3. It proved to be a great remaster with quality of life improvements.
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster was the first of many Final Fantasy games to come to Xbox for the very first time, marking a remarkable milestone in third-party relations for Xbox. World War Z surprised many when it was released in the middle of April as being a surprisingly good multiplayer zombie survival game, in a similar vein to Left 4 Dead. Mortal Kombat 11 continues NetherRealms streak of fantastic fighting games, becoming another great game of 2019.
RAGE 2 was released with about as much impact as the first RAGE fun and time-consuming but forgettable and unimpactful. A Plague Tale: Innocence, on the other hand, tried to expand the small AA market with its third-person stealth-adventure journey set in medieval times. It is my game of the year though and without question one of the best titles to release in 2019. Team Sonic Racing released and is a poor mans Crash Team Racing, while Layers of Fear 2 seems to deliver with more Layers of Fear.
Void Bastards was an interesting FPS Rogue-like which has a unique art and gameplay style, with enough differentiation to make the short experience feel fresh. It is worth checking out if you havent already. Outer Wilds released in full after existing in game preview for a year or two. Its a game which slowly spread through word of mouth, eventually making the GoTY discussions by the end of the year. Not a game for me, but again its probably worth at least checking out for a game that is different from a lot of others.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr released early June, building the popular MMORPG to an even greater degree. This game only seems to be getting bigger and better. Forza Horizon 4: LEGO Speed Champions DLC came out as the most surprising expansion of the year; LEGO cars in the reality-based world of Forza Horizon 4. Later in June, we saw the Kickstarter game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night release to fairly favourable reviews from critics and players alike. A beat-for-beat copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, this game delivered on that exact promise of being just like Symphony, with some game-breaking bugs preventing it from being a GoTY contender.
Activision continued their remake streak of Crash and Spyro games with the next high-in-demand kart-racer Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled. Crash once again delivered on gamers dreams by allowing them to play through a complete remake of the best kart racer of all-time (yes, Im including Mario Kart 8 in that judgement). Activision was also clever enough to use this game as an online platform continuously updating the game with free new maps and characters, meaning that you theres more than enough content here for fans old and new.
EAs newest Original was Sea of Solitude: a third-person action-adventure around the topic of depression. I, as well as many others, kept their eye on this game nearing its release but unfortunately it received mixed to favourable reactions instead of widespread buzz. At the end of July, Bethesda surprised us all by releasing all three of the classic DOOM games to all platforms, and they pretty much received critical acclaim because theyre classics. Bethesda also dropped one of the smaller Wolfenstein titles released in-between main entries in the rebooted franchise, Wolfenstein: Youngblood. It was met with terrible reviews from, well, everyone. This was a massive disappointment to say the least following on from Wolfenstein II, one of my FPSs of this generation.
Control launched at the end of August and was a divisive game from launch. While everybody praised its telekinetic gameplay and atmosphere, the story seemed to be met with either love or disdain. All that being said, it was still one of the best games of the year according to most GoTY articles and lists, and at least tried to do new things in an old genre.
Blair Witch is a timed Xbox exclusive that also launched straight to Game Pass at the end of August. What we have here is a slightly better than expected horror game which seems to have grown a bit of a cult following, similar to the original film, the universe of which it exists within. We then get one of the best games of the year, and likely the best Xbox game of the year, Gears 5. Gears 5 manages to keep faithful to the franchise whilst also trying many new bold things. The shooting has never felt better and the story has never been more intimate. On the same day, Capcom released its huge expansion for Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. A great expansion for a great game Iceborne is another example of a developer being able to carve out their longitudinal audience.
Spiders have a history of developing good RPGs which dont quite hit that top tier mark. Over the years theyve developed their skillset with various titles to eventually make Greedfall an accomplished RPG which most fans of the genre should give a go because of its interesting world and lengthy quality. Speaking of quality, The Walking Dead: The Final Season is not something which fans of the series should play considering it re-writes the first seasons possibilities to a frustrating extent, and doesnt particularly deliver on the promise of execution that it should.
One of my favourite games of the year, and one which has been desired since 2013, is Borderlands 3. The compilation of years of character-building, mechanic-perfecting, and hype delivers on a great game which poses a satisfying story and arc for its characters. Theres no denying that there are some glaring issues with the game, but that doesnt stop it being one of the most fun games to play this year with friends especially.
A couple of games influenced heavily by the Dark Souls franchise that released this year (as well as Sekiro) are The Surge 2, a post-apocalyptic robot game, and Code Vein, a dark anime-style Dark Souls. Both are good if you enjoy that genre though it begs the question of how many there can be before some give away their market share. Destiny 2 released its latest large expansion post-Bungie separating from Activision as their publisher: Shadowkeep. A return to form pleasing fans of the game, this expansion tips in the favour of the future potential of the franchise.
Ubisoft released a spiritual sequel to Tom Clancys Ghost Recon Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint. As a game which didnt meet or improve on anything which made Wildlands enjoyable, Breakpoint didnt quite live up to the hype. And yet, it still sold very well, but not as well as Ubisoft had hoped apparently. The Ghostbusters game from 2009 got a remaster which is strange. Baldurs Gate I and II: Enhanced Edition released on consoles with all DLC included and reminded gamers of why Bioware made their name with these games and why the excitement for Baldurs Gate III is palpable.
Ex-rare developers created a sequel to Yooka-Laylee but set it in 2.5D instead of 3D. Funnily enough, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair was met with greater acclaim than the original game. WWE 2K20 was a broken mess when it came out at the end of October and thats all Ill say about that. Call of Duty made a small but impactful renaissance by rebooting one of its most beloved sub-franchises with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and by taking risks with the multiplayer and the campaign. Though it still didnt reach the high expectations that the first few Modern Warfare entries set.
A game that came out on the same day is The Outer Worlds, Obsidians new IP and an attempt to deliver on a Fallout: New Vegas-style RPG which is also their first release under the ownership of Microsoft. This one proved to be a very good game that does exactly what it should. Night School Studio, following their successful game Oxenfree, released Afterparty at the end of October receiving good reviews all around and acting as another great addition to Xbox Game Pass.
A game of the year for many, and a great game for everybody else, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order states Respawns importance in the industry. Its the best Star Wars game weve got since EA took the franchise (and yet its only the third game to release under their banner) and its another reminder of why Respawn is a top-quality studio who will be dominating in the years to come. Sid Meiers Civilization VI came to consoles towards the end of November and unsurprisingly its a great game about managing civilizations.
343 Industries made the leap to PC in the form of releasing Halo: Reach remastered (for The Master Chief Collection) helping gamers have nostalgic multiplayer for any wanting to relive the Halo glory days. The game reached 150K concurrent players the day after it launched which is a good sign that 343 are making the right decision. The same cant be said for Dontnod who finished their episodic title Life is Strange 2 at the beginning of December. Though the gameplay has improved in a way which the Telltale games never did, the story suffers from unlikable characters and heavily political commentary.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was inspiring in terms of seeing such a unique concept being made to an AA, if not AAA, quality. Sadly the game seems a bit tedious for many of us, though I hear there are some great elements to enjoy if it does strike your fancy. And then there are a couple of shout-outs: Untitled Goose Game is the years meme game for providing many laughs for gamers everywhere, and My Friend Pedro must be mentioned for being an awesome 2D action experience with the challenge to boot.
Now weve looked back at 2019, lets look forward to 2020. This is where we have generation-defining games releasing, including but not limited to Cyberpunk 2077, DOOM Eternal, Halo: Infinite, a new Assassins Creed and a new Watch_Dogs. New exclusives such as the Cuphead DLC The Delicious Last Course and remakes of classics like Destroy All Humans also headline the list. Oh, and there is, of course, one other small thing.
Games that we were planning to play in 2019 but got delayed include the reboot of Battletoads which looks good if youre a Battletoads fan. And Psychonauts 2 looks excellent even if you didnt play the first game nor understand anything of whats going on with the sequels trailer I find it hard not to be impressed by whats been shown thus far.
Ubisofts Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag spiritual successor and evolutionary sequel Skull and Bones got delayed to after March 2020, with it looking more impressive each time Ubisoft shows it off. Indie star Spelunky has a sequel which is due to arrive in 2020 to the excitement of many fans of the original. DOOM Eternal is to be the big game release for Bethesda this year, aside from the fact that it got a considerable delay to March 2020 from its original release window of November. Im confident this will only benefit the game and players who are extremely excited to carve their way through some demon fodder.
The launch of the most powerful console and a brand new Xbox generation is ready to commence with Xbox Series X. I speculate it will bring with it the best launch line-up of games (and games which are backwards compatible) weve ever seen.
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