CriticalDuty
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CriticalDuty
1yr ago
John Edwards was accused of using campaign contributions as hush money, which is not the same thing.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
Banning people who work at nuclear power plants and the military from using TikTok at work would be enough to satisfy national security concerns.
What if one of these people has a spouse or family member who doesn't work at a nuclear power plant, or for the military? You can spy on a person without spying on that particular person.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
HR doesn't really have much input on hiring from T14 law schools. Firms like Skadden and Cravath send senior associates, or sometimes junior partners, to do OCI interviews and their goal is always just to snap up the people with the best grades and journal titles for bragging rights. You're hired by other lawyers, not by HR ladies, and as long as your 2L GPA is great and you successfully impress upon your interviewer that you know how to dress and behave like a Skadden lawyer, the only input HR has is verifying your credentials and running a basic background check.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
Some have speculated that the reason Yale students seem notably more psychotic than other Ivy Leaguers is that there's literally nothing else to do in New Haven but rabble-rouse. Columbia students live in New York, the center of the universe, and Harvard students are a short skip away from Boston, but I don't think anything really happens in New Haven besides Gilmore Girls fan conventions. Stanford is only a short distance away from Palo Alto, though, so unless Palo Alto is particularly boring I don't know if this explanation still holds good.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
I don't think Lindsay was ever meant to be a fanatical progressive or even really a progressive of any kind. Her whole character is just supposed to be the faildaughter who's never worked a day in her life and has no idea how to make a living after her father's finances are frozen. She believes in whatever ideology will further her latest grift - by the end of the show she was a Trump expy Republican.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
It's not really "left-coded media", but Alice in Borderland on Netflix has an example of this. One of the main female characters is played by a woman, presents as a woman throughout the whole show, and then near the end of the last season has a "btw I'm actually trans" moment.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
I didn't think there were that many CW elements, unless you're the sort of person who writes culture columns for Slate or The Atlantic and feels a compulsion to parse for "subtext". Young chef girl's mistake I could understand as a screw-up from an overworked sous chef, but cake maker man was behaving like a fucking moron in the middle of an extremely high-pressure service. He really didn't deserve an apology.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
Every 4 years there's a fascination with some New England/Acela Corridor Republican's campaign for the White House, and every 4 years it falls flat because these people have basically zero appeal to Republicans in places like Texas and Oklahoma. I wouldn't expect Sununu to do any better than Bill Weld or Chris Christie did, and given how much of the party apparatus is lining up behind DeSantis, I'm skeptical about his willingness to anger other parts of the GOP by propping up Trump.
CriticalDuty
1yr ago
AFAIK, the certain kinds of wrongdoing that teachers (and doctors) are required to report is child abuse. This isn't necessarily child abuse that they or their peers are committing - it can be child abuse committed by the parents or by other students. The teachers themselves are not usually the subjects of the complaint; they are simply reporting observations. Policing on the other hand is an inherently confrontational job; you often have to get physical with people, and it falls to the observer to try and parse out acceptable physicality from unacceptable physicality, and if you get it wrong, you're in your colleagues' bad books, etc etc. It's understood that police get into fisticuffs a certain amount of the time, whereas students don't, so a bruised suspect in police custody wouldn't instantly raise alarm bells the way a 6-year-old with purple contusions on their ribs would.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Liberal states will trust in liberal admissions offices to ignore court rulings and find a way to keep admitting underperforming minorities. The only real way to fight affirmative action would be to adopt a Kendiesque policy of assuming discrimination as the default whenever student demographics don't match up to the racial distribution of test scores, and/or to ban interviews and institute blind admissions.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
What's a primary goal and what's a secondary goal? A primary goal of the EU is, charitably, to keep Europeans in the manner to which they have grown accustomed, i.e. to maintain their welfare states in an age of falling fertility rates and dwindling tax bases. They have decided that the optimal way to do this to usher in an endless number of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and have repeatedly made statements to that effect. To the extent that any European country - Hungary, say, or Poland - objects that they do not want to take in large African populations, the EU has indicated that it will cajole, threaten and twist arms until it gets what it wants. After all, such objections are an obstacle to the goal of maintaining a particular economic state, and thus an undermining of the EU project at large. Given these facts, is it fair to say that the EU is at odds with the continued existence of European countries as majority-European states, as they want migrants in numbers large enough to affect demographic pyramids?
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
A lot of what we now regard as the Russian sphere of influence used to be the Polish sphere of influence, including much of Ukraine, until the dwindling of Polish imperial power led to the loss of these territories to the Russian Empire, and the occupation and gradual irrelevance of Poland. Poland exists as the bumpkin cousin of the great European empires, never counted among the likes of Britain, France, Austria, Spain or Russia, and the Tsars in St. Petersburg were a major part of why - even before the Soviet era, Russia played the role of humiliator in the Polish psyche, the rocks against which Poland's great power ambitions ran aground. There's unlikely to be any Polish-Russian rapprochement for a long time.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
European sovereignty and self-determination were discredited as racist concepts when America won World War II. The ability to draft such plans requires a level of independence that no European nation possesses. If America wants half of Germany to freeze to death, half of Germany will freeze to death and the German government will quietly accept it.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Given that Charles isn't claiming to be king of Ireland, what are you even asking for? A public ceremony where he shouts "I'm not king of Ireland! I'm not king of Ireland!"?
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
No idea. I don't think we will find out until more information about why Magnus withdrew comes to light, which will almost certainly not happen until the tournament is over.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Magnus has been voicing his displeasure with the WCC format for more than a decade, even before he became World Champion in 2013, and has repeatedly suggested along the way that he might no longer defend the title. It's really not a surprise that he called it quits after five defenses. He's lost games to weaker players before - Andrey Esipenko was lower rated than Niemann when he beat Magnus at Wijk an Zee. He's won most of the OTB and online tournaments he played in this year and decisively won Tata Steel for a record eighth time in January. Frankly, I think he deserves some benefit of the doubt before everyone decides he's gone Fischer.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Chess is not cheat-proof, and in fact it's very easy to cheat at chess. A computer program running on a smartphone will be better at chess than any human player who has ever existed or ever will exist. Anyone who finds a way to get the computer's recommended moves during a game will have a steep advantage.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Chesscom has put out a statement today where they said they presented Hans with evidence that he downplayed the extent and seriousness of his cheating on their site, and are waiting for him to respond before they make a decision about whether or not to let him play on their site again. My impression is that we are just getting trickle-truthed by all parties and should wait and see what else comes out, probably after the Sinquefield Cup ends. There are probably contractual obligations restricting Chesscom and Magnus from making statements, and Magnus seems quite unbothered by the whole thing. This is not the first time a younger GM has defeated him, but it is the first time he's made an issue about it, which is notable in itself.
Hans is a distinctly unsympathetic figure because he's leaned into this whole vibe of being an enfant terrible, even though it really just comes off as him being a cunt and retreating to "I'm just a widdle boy, please" when someone calls him out on it. Even if he didn't cheat, I don't find it surprising that so many GMs were willing to believe the worst of him. There are probably 10 or 12 young prodigies I would have highlighted as potential WC material before I ever got to Hans Niemann.
Interestingly, it seemed like the chess players who were competitors to Hans were the ones eager to take him down, while the older greats defended him and pleaded for measured opinions.
Alternatively, the players who accused Hans are the ones who actually still play competitive chess, and Kasparov, Karpov et al have not played competitive chess for years.
to Godfather-esque hidden bathroom devices.
While noting that some of these theories were clearly jokes and not meant to be taken seriously, like Eric Hansen's suggestion that Hans implanted anal beads in his rectum that vibrated in Morse code, hidden bathroom devices are hardly an implausible method of cheating. People have actually been caught and banned for doing this.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Far from being "ludicrous," it is trivially easy to imagine a world in which is makes perfect sense.
It's possible to imagine such a world, it would just be a completely different world. The lore explanation for why the Valyrians have their very particular look is that they were an isolated population that interbred heavily and their uncommon features are the result of unusual mutations becoming widespread in the population. They define race the same way we do. If you want to just throw out the lore so that you can cast black people, all you have to do is say that. Instead they want to pretend this is an insignificant deviation from the lore. Why piss in my ears and insist that it's raining?
That inference is both logically and empirically incorrect. Logically, the statement, "I do not want to portray all the black characters as evil or insane" does not imply, "therefore, all black characters must be paragons of virtue." Empirically, there are tons of shows -- The Wire and Empire leap to mind -- in which black characters in position of power are not paragons of virtue
To clarify, not all the Targaryens were evil or insane, and in fact most of them weren't. But the ones who were evil or insane were rapists, murderers, malicious degenerates and psychopaths, and GRRM didn't feel comfortable letting any of those characters be black.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Robert's ancestral claim to the Iron Throne was based on a much closer relation - his grandmother Rhaelle Targaryen, who was Aegon V's daughter and married Ormund Baratheon.
CriticalDuty
2yr ago
Spoilers follow for House of the Dragon, you've been warned.
HOTD is based on an era of Targaryen history called the Dance of the Dragons, which is a civil war between rival claimants for the Iron Throne - one side led by Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the other by her half-brother Aegon Targaryen. The gist of it is that Rhaenyra, whose mother died when she was young, was King Viserys I Targaryen's only child for a long time, and he made her his heir because otherwise the throne would have gone to his thoroughly unsuitable brother Daemon, a prideful man with a violent and sadistic streak. But then Viserys remarried and had a son, Aegon, with his second wife Alicent Hightower. Now there was another male claimant to the throne - the king's own son, no less. Many began to say that Aegon was the rightful heir, in keeping with the traditional male-preference primogeniture of Westeros, but Viserys refused to change the succession. When Viserys finally died, Aegon had no personal interest in contesting Rhaenyra's succession, but his councilors persuaded him - not without some merit - that his life would be in peril if Rhaenyra ascended the throne, as she was now being advised by her uncle Daemon, and Daemon would likely seek to have Aegon killed since lords discontented with Rhaenyra's rule might try to use him to undermine her. So Aegon declared his claim in King's Landing while Rhaenyra was away on Dragonstone; the two summoned their allies, armies and dragons, and war began.
At the outset I have low expectations for this series because it's based on a sidebook by GRRM called Fire & Blood, which is written as a historical account and rather shallower in perspective than ASOIAF proper, so the source material is somewhat thin. But aside from that, what I do respect in GRRM's writing is his ability to write events, character motivations, and interactions that follow the internal logic of the time and setting. Westeros is a patriarchal feudal culture, so Rhaenyra's claim to the throne would be sketchy without considerable support from the nobility. GRRM writes characters and dialogue that follow that logic, highlight Viserys's weakness in failing to foresee and prevent the looming conflict, without wasting time scoffing about the backwardness of the setting from his 21st century liberal perspective. The quality of the writing near the end of GOT, and interviews given by the writers of HOTD, leave me with no reason to believe that HOTD will be anything other than a simple-minded morality tale about sexism and misogyny, since modern writing rooms seem to be full of people who believe the internal logic of the setting is inherently illegitimate if it doesn't conform to the Democratic Party's policy platform. In the lore, the king has to take the views and biases of his lords into account, as he depends on them for soldiers, taxes and support; on the show, we're bound to get a lot of speeches about how the sexist lords should shut up and do as the crown says, Time's Up.
The other CW aspect of it is the casting of House Velaryon, led by Lord Corlys Velaryon. In the lore, the Velaryons are close allies of the Targaryens, as they are the only other Valyrian house in Westeros. The Velaryons and Targaryens have intermarried extensively over the centuries to keep the Valyrian bloodlines pure. On the show, the Velaryons are played by black people, while the Targaryens are all white. The Velaryons even make it a point to repeatedly stress how pure their Valyrian blood is and how far back they go, all the way to Old Valyria before it was destroyed.
ASOIAF is a story that obsesses over genealogy and phenotypes. How characters look, and how different they look from certain other characters, is an actual casus belli in the lore.
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The most well-known example is Ned Stark going over 300 years of Baratheon genealogy, observing that Baratheon children always have black hair no matter the coloring of the non-Baratheon parent, and realizing that the blonde Joffrey cannot be Robert Baratheon's son. HOTD throws that out of the window in Episode 1 by giving Rhaenys Targaryen, who is Corlys Velaryon's wife and the daughter of Aemon Targaryen and Jocelyn Baratheon, the standard silver hair of Valyrians even though it's actually an important plot point that she had black hair. Not only did GRRM make note of this in the lore, he retconned an earlier short story he wrote where Rhaenys had silver hair because he realized it would contradict Baratheons always having black hair.
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In the story that HOTD is based on, Rhaenyra Targaryen is engaged to Corlys's son Laenor Velaryon, to fortify her claim to the throne by bringing the two Valyrian houses together in marriage. Laenor turns out to be a cross-dressing homosexual who cannot consummate the marriage, and Rhaenyra cuckolds him by sleeping with one of her bodyguards, Ser Harwin Strong, and passing off Strong's children as Laenor's. Notably Rhaenyra and Laenor are both Valyrians with silver hair and violet eyes, but Rhaenyra's children all come out with the brown hair and eyes of the Strong family, naturally leading to (accurate) rumors that they are bastards. The phenotype of Rhaenyra's bastards actually undermines her claim to the throne because her rival Alicent consistently produces Valyrian-looking children with her husband Viserys, leading several lords to decide that Alicent's bloodline should be the true ruling dynasty. Rhaenyra even makes it a capital offense to question the parentage of her children, going so far as to execute Corlys's brother Vaemond when he objects to the obvious cuckolding of his nephew, and Corlys is forced to watch her place her bastards in a position to inherit his family's title and fortune.
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Decades after the events of HOTD, King Daeron II Targaryen brings Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms by marrying the Dornish princess Myriah Martell. Daeron and Myriah's eldest son, the crown prince Baelor, is noted to have inherited his mother's dark hair and eyes, leading Daeron's critics (among them many of the Dornishmen's traditional rivals and enemies in the Reach and Stormlands) to claim that the future king is more Martell than Targaryen. Daeron's perceived weakness and favoritism towards the Dornish leads these critics to support the rival claim of Daeron's half-brother Daemon Blackfyre, whose phenotype is noted as contributing to his support, as not only does he have the traditional Valyrian traits of silver hair and purple eyes, he is said to be the spitting image of Aegon the Conqueror himself.
A common defense of raceswapping characters like this is that it "doesn't affect the story", but if any story was going to be affected by this, it would be ASOIAF. The lore is very unambiguous on the subject - Valyrians have pale skin, silver-blonde hair, and blue-purple eyes. It's a point of pride for them and an indication that their Valyrian blood is strong - these people are unabashedly racial supremacists. Members of House Velaryon are repeatedly stated to possess these traits, and they use it as a justification for their close ties to the ruling Targaryens and all the power and prestige that accompanies those ties. It's ludicrous for the show to keep those elements of Valyrian racial supremacy and blood purity obsession while making the Velaryons black, with the black Velaryons even proposing marriage to the Targaryen king on the grounds that it would "keep the bloodline pure". It's like an aborted attempt at an Americanization of Valyria - "Valyrian isn't a race, it's a culture/idea/Constitution!" - but it doesn't work because Valyrians are obsessed with their race in the lore, and removing that takes away a major part of their characters. It's plainly just bowing to the diversity obsession, but no one wants to actually say so - instead you get everyone reciting this nonsense about how "actually it works with the lore" and "even if it doesn't work with the lore, it doesn't change anything in the story".
GRRM actually has an old blog post where he discusses an idea he once had about making the Targaryens, who conquered Westeros, a dynasty of black people ruling a white continent. He said he ultimately decided against it because it would be problematic, since many of the Targaryens were corrupt, evil and/or insane - in other words, if you're going to write about black people in positions of power, they can only be paragons of virtue as per the cultural-political imperatives of our time. Hard to fault GRRM for that, since it's an accurate assessment of the culture: ask not what the black mayors of Jackson have been doing for the last 30 years, ask instead what the white governors of Mississippi have done.
This is not correct for several reasons. Edwards was tried in a federal court in North Carolina, not a state court, or in South Carolina. Trump has not been charged with any federal crimes, and in fact the DOJ and FEC conducted their own inquiries into the same alleged offense and decided against charging him with anything. It also makes a significant difference as to whether the money comes from a donor - which places it in the realm of campaign contributions - or from the candidate's own pocket or business organization. The Edwards prosecution also cited fake invoices for nonexistent purchases that the donor listed as the reason they were giving money to Edwards, so that the money wouldn't have to be listed in FEC reports.
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