There are more things in heaven and earth...

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections going back to 1992? The only time the GOP has won the popular vote in the last 36 years in a presidential election was in 2004, and it was a pretty narrow margin. This was a wartime election and the first election post-9/11. The Democratic candidate was the unfortunately uninspiring John Kerry, who had been lied about. You know how in politics we say someone has been "swiftboated" when a successful lie is told about them? That term originates with the 2004 election because a bunch of people concocted an elaborate lie about John Kerry's military service. He wasn't super inspiring as a candidate, but that was the worst thing he did. He wasn't a bad guy. He was just running in a very gross, jingoistic time after the worst terror attack in American history, and had a bunch of successful lies told about him to the point where a whole word about a specific kind of lie was invented about it. THIS is the only time since 1988 that the Republican party has won the popular vote. George W. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000. The Supreme Court ordered that votes stop being counted in Florida and handed the victory to Bush.

Donald Trump has never ever won the popular vote. The electoral college handed him the victory in 2016, less than 15,000 votes across three states decided the election. Hillary Clinton in total won about 3.7 million more votes than Donald Trump. Trump HATES hearing this number. He hates even more that Joe Biden got about 7 million more votes. He hates even more that you bring up the fact that he lost his midterm elections for his party in 2018, badly. And that the "Red Wave" in 2022 did not happen because of backlash at his Supreme Court. Or that in 2023 voters continued to reject his Supreme Court at the polls.

He knows, the Republicans know, that if more people vote, they lose. They don't want small d democracy. They want authoritarianism. They want to suppress it.

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Individual calls matter little, but if they get tons of calls on one topic then they take it seriously. The example above was probably during a time where the office was flooded with so many calls at once that they took the phones off the hook, which actually means that calls are working especially well. When the phones are blowing up, everyone in the office notices.

1. Austin experimented with giving people $1,000 a month.

People who received guaranteed basic income in one of Texas' largest cities reported reduced rates of housing insecurity. Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a taxpayer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly.

2. Germany: Tens of thousands in Berlin protest far right

Around 150,000 people have attended a protest rally in the German capital, Berlin, against the far right and its ideology, the latest in a series of such demonstrations across Germany in recent weeks.

3. Sweden: Where it's taboo for dads to skip parental leave

It's been 50 years since Sweden introduced state-funded parental leave, designed for couples to share. The pioneering policy offers some surprising lessons for other countries.

4. Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

While Germany, struggles to find enough workers, dozens of companies are starting an experiment that will see employees work a day less. In February, 45 companies and organizations in Germany will introduce a 4-day workweek for half a year.

5. K9 finds missing endangered 11-yr-old, gives her kisses

An 11-year-old girl, reported to be missing and endangered, is now safe after she was found by a sheriff’s K9 deputy in Wimauma, Florida. Her handler asked if the K9 could give the girl kisses as a reward to the K9 for locating the girl, and the heartwarming moment was captured on the deputy’s body camera.

6. Oregon Zoo releases seven critically endangered condors back to nature in California

Seven California condors were released into the wild in the U.S. state after the endangered animals were hatched and raised at Oregon Zoo.

7. EU will force cosmetic companies to pay to reduce microplastic pollution

Beauty companies will have to pay more to clean up micropollutants after EU negotiators struck a new deal to treat sewage.

Under draft rules that follow the “polluter pays principle”, companies that sell medicines and cosmetics will have to cover at least 80% of the extra costs needed to get rid of tiny pollutants that are dirtying urban wastewater.

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That's it for this week :)

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I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

At some point in the recent past - the early 2000s or so - it became popular to become deeply cynical about everything. Call it Internet humor or South Park humor or whatever you care to call it, but its main thesis was that everything is stupid, nothing matters, and things like innocence, joy, wonder, and hope were qualities to be scorned. It's a jaded outlook that made people feel smart and edgy, but it also gave rise to many of the bad qualities we see within society today.

I'm a firm believer in the theory that the stories we tell shape our ways of thinking, which in turn shapes our attitudes and personalities. Writ large, this means that stories we tell ourselves are the stories that shape our society.

So - the Steamboat Willie horror movie. Set aside the fact that it is a shameless and deeply cynical cash grab that is content to use shock tactics to earn press and stir controversy. Focus instead on the premise itself. Steamboat Willie is one of the first incarnations of Mickey Mouse. Mickey symbolizes a ruthless entertainment conglomerate to many adults. But to children, Mickey is a fun character, a friend. You can argue that kids today wouldn't recognize the Steamboat Willie character, but they will absolutely know that it is Mickey Mouse. Twist your reasoning as you like, but at its heart Mickey symbolizes innocence, joy, and wonder. He represents qualities pop culture and broader society seem hellbent on destroying.

So my objection is not that this new film is bad art. My objection is that once again, we are delighting in a story that says that the qualities that make childhood beautiful are qualities that should be killed. Once again, we are telling a story that says that fictional childhood friends cannot be trusted, that ostensibly gentle heroes must be hiding monstrous traits, that taking solace in kindness is a fool's errand at best and a deadly mistake at worst. We are once again cheering an obvious cash grab and a mean-spirited creation, and when people complain, we crow that the cruelty is the point and we should like it.

As you said it’s a shameless cynical cash grab not a declaration of death to childhood

a kid also probably looks up to Batman and Superman but at the same time there are stories in which Batman and Superman kill people does that mean those two characters are now dead in the eyes of a child?

yes Mickey represents Joy and Happiness and wonder and innocence but just because someone makes a shameless cash grab horror movie doesn’t mean that automatically destroys everything that Mickey stood for

We've had many interpretations of Batman over the years - the 40s incarnation was a noir-style detective; the 60s version was high camp. In 1986, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns introduced audiences to a dark, dystopian Batman that one could argue forever altered the character. We wouldn't have had the darker edges in Batman: The Animated Series without Miller's work. That's not to say that The Dark Knight Returns is bad, necessarily - taste is subjective - but I think it's fair to say that it permanently altered the way that people perceive the character within the broader public consciousness. The 60s Batman is today referred to with a certain degree of condescension at best and outright scorn at worst. It is looked at as "bad art" now, a shameless cash grab. In many ways it was, but it also was a Batman that spoke to the zeitgeist of its time. Now, it's barely worthy of viewing by children. Another Batman has superseded the version that stood for hope and justice. The 60s Batman is, in many ways, dead in the public mind.

A quick search for "kids batman costumes" brings back results that are clearly more focused on the darker interpretations (Nolan, Burton) of the character, rather than the camp 60s one. The grey/blue color scheme is a rarity, not the norm. Society is already leaving it behind. Superman results are a bit different - that color scheme will always be associated with a certain degree of innocence due to its primary nature - but many of these costumes feature simulated musculature that is more keeping with Zach Snyder and the edgier comics from the 80s and 90s than the 40s cartoon or the 50s television show. The smiling, jovial Superman of black and white serials is dead in the public mind as well.

Today's culture cannot take its superheroes seriously unless they are angry, grim, and function on the border between vigilante and willing tool of a police state. Even young children now understand that, broadly speaking, heroes cannot be silly, or even fun. In the world of superheroes, innocence is something to be scorned. Hollywood is rebuilding the entire genre on that premise.

How did all of this start? There are different reasons. Frank Miller was mugged, and it enraged him, and made him long for a society in which the strong would defend the weak by any means necessary. Alan Moore viewed the superhero through the prism of Thatcher's Britain, noting with some cynicism (and no small degree of worry) that superheroes - powerful, untouchable beings whose powers rendered almost all forms of resistance futile - could just as easily be prone to fascism as, "truth, justice, and the American way." They could also just decide that our petty human squabbles were beneath them and leave us to twist in the wind while they took refuge in their fortress of solitude. Or Mars. Each superhero has been interpreted and reinterpreted through the authors that work with them, and each author leaves a mark that trickles down through the public consciousness until it becomes an unconscious knowledge. Few people know why Batman went from a technicolor comedy where heroes and villains dance the "Ba-tu-si" to an ostensible hero who manhandles a prisoner in custody. They just know it happened, and that this is Batman now. Even kids. Especially kids. They wouldn't blink at a Batman or Superman who kills now, because that's what we, as a society, have decided is right.

So there's a trickle down effect. Art, good or bad, is about an artist expressing their opinions, their emotional values, their spiritual truths. You can make the argument that this only applies to "good" art made by The Masters Of Their Craft, but plenty of objectively "bad" art is an attempt to make some sort of statement. Some of my favorite "bad art" is only enjoyable because it's trying to make a statement. Time Chasers is about the inevitable perversion that takes place when beneficial research is co-opted by corporate interests for monetary gain. I Accuse My Parents is a misguided, but sincere, attempt to remind parents that kids need stability at home. Just about every 50s film involving a giant, mutant creature is about fears about nuclear testing, the effects of the Green Revolution, and industrial pollution. Even The Room - yes, everyone's favorite bad film - is about a good man being slowly destroyed by an uncaring world.

So back to the original topic that kicked off this conversation - a horror movie based on Steamboat Willie. After my first post, I spoke with several of my friends to see if maybe I was being ridiculous. But all of them agreed with me to a certain extent. Some agreed with me that a movie in which a worldwide symbol of happiness being perverted into a murderer was mean-spirited and cruel. At least one worried about the inevitability of kids seeing it. The most charitable thing they were able to say about it was that the movie had nothing to say.

I try to give creators the benefit of the doubt when it comes to, "cynical cash grabs." Christmas singles are a guaranteed royalty check, but plenty of them are good. Some are even great. Music fans know why musicians make them, but it's fair to say that a broad majority of musicians don't go out of their way to record a low effort affair.

I had assumed that the creators of this film had a point, in the same way that Frank Miller did. After all, why bother to go through the effort of writing a script, auditioning actors, securing permits, hiring a crew and shooting a film if you have nothing to say?

"Because it's a shameless cynical cash grab, of course!" Well, yes. It's being made to take advantage of a newly available, highly recognizable piece of intellectual property. It is not there to say anything or do anything but make money for the person(s) who are betting that a combination of face recognition and shock value will make them fabulously rich. It's no different from a singing fish plaque.

The Steamboat Willie horror movie is not bad art. It's a stupid product that serves no purpose, aside from parting fools from their money. I was wrong to give the creators the benefit of the doubt by referring to them as filmmakers or artists. The people behind this cynical, shameless cash grab would be insulted.

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—      Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—      Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—      Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

What's more Niemoller was a national conservative. He originally supported the Nazi Party, hoping it would bring about a national revival (as did many Germans), until Hitler proclaimed the supremacy of state over religion and Protestant churches, at which point he allied with other pastors and Lutheran organizations against Nazification. He was also anti-Semitic, making many pejorative remarks about Jews, such as them deserving persecution for crucifying Jesus and believing they should be kept out of any positions in the government. He was imprisoned from 1937-1945, during which time he reconsidered his earlier views.