caribou v.

We paired it with a board/war game simulation for every battle. Read a chapter, do the war game simulation, on and on. It was an incredibly fun and insightful little project.

Recently discovered this book: Pictures At a Revolution. It covers the making of each of the movies on the 1967 Best Pictures: Dr. Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, Bonnie & Clyde, and The Graduate.

The thesis is a bit clunky and not clearly stated, but the book is about the making of the movies, and how when they finally released in 1967 the world was different than when they were written/imagined in the early 60s. It also goes over how non-Hollywood films changed Hollywood forever.

We started off by going through and watching all of the movies.

In the Heat of the Night is fucking so solid. This movie is so good. I can't get over how good this movie is.

Dr. Doolittle sucks ass and it's clear they bought their nomination.

There's A LOT to say about Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, but it's very white bread white coded white washed shit. Yah dude I'm sure a black maid runs around talking shit about The Black Panther Party I'm sure dude. Like.. fuck off you white liberal fucks take off the black face writing lines like that for a black actor. Shitheads.

Bonnie & Clyde is radical as all hell, but the dialogue is... awkward. PEOPLE DO NOT TALK TO EACH OTHER OR ACT LIKE THIS. EVER. ANYWHERE.

The Graduate is VERY GOOD, but I find the disdain on a proper education pretty disgusting. I guess the writer is one of those "home school" advocates (lunatics), which makes a lot of sense.

After we were done we started reading the book, and both of us quickly stopped...

The book is incredibly in-depth and the sources are impressive. The author clearly did a ton of work and it shows just reading through the footnotes.

The main issue for both of us is that the book assumes you know all the players, knows various film terms from the 60s like French New Wave, various European films, etc.

Without exaggerating, one page references roughly 10 obscure films that I've never heard of, but the books assume you have familiarity with them because it doesn't tell you fuck all about any of them. It's the same with writers, directors, producers, etc. It'll start talking about a random person and going in-depth about them and the networking/work they were doing without actually telling you WHAT FILM AND WHO THEY ARE IN REGARDS TO THAT FILM. Apparently you're supposed to ALREADY know they're the writer, director, whatever of this/that film.

Both of us were like "ya, I'm not sitting at a computer or with my phone to constantly go to wikipedia to figure out who this person being written about is and why I'm supposed to care."

It's prima facie evidence both the power of Israel over foreign governments and how invested Western finance is in the Israeli apartheid project.

All the tired boring bullshit about antisemitism even though last time they were there they stated that antisemitism is a "canary in the coal mine" for elites who scapegoat their greed onto Jewish people and it should be fought and pushed back against regularly.

One of the things truly wild to me is how YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL. You can criticize ANY COUNTRY ON EARTH, but don't you fucking dare question Israel.

Legitimately: Cenk and his nephew regular talk shit about Keir Starmer+labor telling them to suck their dicks. This is perfectly acceptable. But if you call out Israeli foreign policy + genocide? NO NO NO INSTANT BAN!!!!!!

Side-note but related: I've been bored and going through older Zohran interviews. He has the perfect answer to "does Israel have a right to exist?" And he generally responds "I support an Israel that has equal rights for all of its citizens."

this entire video is... fucking crazy. the only people who still self-identify as Republicans are literal psychotic moronic cult members. and of those psychotic moronic cult members, Trump is -73 fucking points on inflation/economy amongst them. HOLY SHIT.

but the truly horrifying portion is the Brent futures coverage regarding the Strait being closed @ https://youtu.be/BCSXiFk35WI?t=282 . In order to restart production, repair facilities, and get the oil flowing again because THE OIL MUST FLOW it's not going to normalize until 2032???????????????

and ya ya ya i have an electric car but fertilizer, helium, aluminum all flow from the Strait. and all the distribution networks to get me food all still use oil. so i, like everyone else, am fucked.

so we've got this massive enrgy crisis that's the worst the world has ever seen - all alongside as AI data centers are sucking up all the electricity and water in sight. "perfect storm" analogy and all that.

so thank you again to Biden, Kamala Harris, Obama, Hillary Clinton. Thank you so much for running rightwing corporate campaigns focused on genocide and war instead of winning campaigns focused on social programs+affordability. thank you so much for getting us fucking stuck with this idiotic brain-wormed Trump admin x2 now.

the fucking asshole corporate Democrats are literally lining up behind Becera in California right now. This is the asshole that went to the DNC to cast his delegation for Hillary Clinton EVEN THOUGH BERNIE SANDERS WON HIS DISTRICT. This is the asshole who drafted regulation for the HHS agency to enforce, then got appointed to it, AND WOULDN'T ENFORCE THE REGULATION THAT HE DRAFTED. Complete Chevron crony, and now flush with techbro money after the techbro candidate got cooked.

Year after year of the same process: hear, doubt, verify, lose my fucking mind because it's real.

Knee capping kids and tally marks for it, bombing schools, bombing hospitals, assassinating journalists, massacring negotiators, prison rape, torture, carpet bombing entire towns, bulldozing people in the West Bank, two-tapping ambulances, killing Americans, starvation of Palestinians, killing UN human rights workers, sniping Doctors Without Borders physicians, corralling the people of Gaza into an open air prison with no escape while regularly "mowing the lawn" aka killing them... On and on and on year after year after year.

Still talking with my finance friend daily. Time has proven both of us right so far. He's right in that the line go up. I'm right in that the US has no way to leave the region because Iran (and now Oman) are 100% setting up a tolling system through the strait.

Also how the fuck does Iran not have a nuke yet? I'm sorry Iran but what the fuck is wrong with you fucking idiot morons GET A NUKE YOU FUCKHEADS.

Regardless, it's pretty impressive how bad the Trump admin absolutely fucked up US hegemony in the region.

$300+ billion and untold harm on the global economy to:

Kill off dinosaur Iranian leadership to be replaced with younger, more religious radicals

Give Iran a foothold over the Strait and empower itself with a tolling system

Reveal just how weak the US is as Iran blows up all of the US allies in the region

Wastes almost all of the US's THAAD system that'll take YEARS to replenish

Increase Chinese, Russian, and Iranian relations

Forced into reducing sanctions on Russian oil/natural gas to keep the economy "stable"

Piss off literally EVERY single US ally on the planet and increasingly putting the US-Petro Dollar dominance at risk

(I'm assuming this one) Motivate Iran to fast-track getting a nuke.

For $300 billion + no harm to the global economy... Could you imagine what the US could've accomplished instead? Free college, free childcare, massive infrastructure projects, funding of industry/manufacturing return, vast expansion of Medicaid/Medicare or a similar public option with subsidies...

(sidenote: how are the mega rich/hedge funds not pissed over insider trading btw? they must regularly be getting hosed by Congress/Trump admin.)

Long story short: Trump sued the IRS. He controls the IRS. The lawsuit was bullshit and we all assumed it would be dismissed.

INSTEAD: The IRS, that he controls, agreed to a settlement with him for $1.8 billion dollars. The money can be spent at his discretion. THERE IS NO PUBLIC OVERSIGHT AS TO HOW THIS MONEY WILL BE SPENT WE WILL NEVER KNOW UNLESS A DIFFERENT EXECUTIVE RELEASES IT.

all these Great-American-Narrative assholes talking about how great America is compared to places like North Korea, China, Iran, Russia, etc. this is on par if not worse than the most obscene levels of corruption from those places. Sorry but America is a fucking corrupt shithole and a K-shaped economy and fuck your grand american narrative horseshit.

and I don't think people understand just what 1.8$ billion is. THIS COULD FUND FREE CHILDCARE FOR THREE YEARS FOR EVERY AMERICAN FAMILY. IT IS AN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY.

and all the tired boring bullshit of "this is illegal only Congress can appropriate funds hey you can't do that!" as if Trump admin cares. very much "what the fuck are you going to do about it?" Our Constitution is a joke and always has been. Kudos to the Trump admin, I guess, for clearly demonstrating same.

shockingly everything about Gaza had been redacted. hmmm hmmm hmmmm.

also reading the NYT article Israeli torture and rape of palestinians. evidence of using dogs for same... we've known this forever but it's just reminder of it all....