No. I think the whole community has only had three deleted posts, two of which were spam. But I could have tried to encourage what members we have more by taking some initiative and sharing memes, starting discussions, things like that. I’ve seen other mods who helped grow their community in that way, but it’s not what I’m built for at the best of times.

I do thank you for the words of encouragement, though.

I guess they’re trying to insinuate that there’s a conflict of interest because he worked for a government agency and Wikileaks leaked documents pertaining to that government agency.

But, like… That would be like saying no judge could oversee the case of someone who attacked a courthouse because they work for the same legal system. That would be a real loophole in the law if by breaking the right ones, you just couldn’t be tried anymore.

Would you be more comforted to know you weren’t alone?

I can almost understand the Personal Liberties Libertarian, which I think is what the philosophy was originally supposed to be about. But we often see Corpo-National Libertarians or Totally-Not-An-Anarchist-I-Swear Libertarians, and both of those are baffling to me.

The alternate history where Caeser spent the end of his life in horny jail.

Yeah. If this hadn’t been banned already in Canada, it makes me wonder what other laws I just assumed were common in Western republics and democracies actually aren’t.

Well, time to fill my life with meaningless debauchery, because it’s not like there’s a future to plan for.

Wait, wait, wait… The average middle-class voter who is struggling to get by is starting to turn away from the Tories and their leader’s suggestion is to reduce taxes on the wealthiest people? Not to improve services or perhaps address the issues that drove former conservative party voters to Labour. No. Cutting the taxes of the elite, further reducing funding for services that the majority of voters use or rely on is the obvious answer.

I wonder how they’ll choose who gets crushed to death at every screening.

I also noticed that both here on Lemmy and over on Reddit that there’s been a push of pro-Russian talking points and a huge push towards Islamaphobia for the past few days, starting just before the attacks this weekend.

I understand there’s going to be some natural anger over the attack, but the amount of accounts I’ve seen, especially noticeable here on Lemmy because we just don’t have as many users, who are saying things like, “This is just what Muslims are like,” and, “Western countries accept these kinds of people, so expect them to do the same there,” and other racist bullshit talking points. They’ve also been painting the ongoing conflict as unquestionably one-sided in Israel’s favor.

It’s depressing but kind of to be expected that there’s a psyops campaign going on trying to get people outraged at not just Hamas, not just Palestine, but all of Islam right now while simultaneously trying to paint Ukrainian surrender and pro-Russian propaganda. This horrible act of terror was either in part planned by Russia or at the very least is seen as an easy opportunity to try and weaken Western support of repelling their invasion of Ukraine. Just spending a little time in the wrong circles on social media should make that obvious.

$400m for the rights alone. It doesn’t talk about cost of production.

Meaning they’re looking to make that rights cost back across the trilogy rather than from one film, but they’re constantly adding costs along the way.

I thought Lemmy was supposed to be the best free speech alternative

I don’t think there’s any useful definition of a “good” free speech website. Because everyone’s going to disagree on the criteria of what makes one good. Myself, I like more moderation, but I like that moderation to be held accountable in an attempt to keep the moderation higher quality and honest. Some people see free speech as no moderation, total anarchy, and I hate that, I’ve seen some websites that tried that, it turned into hate speech and revenge porn and other terrible things very quickly.

It’s weird to me that he’s lumping all comic book movies together and acting like they’re the problem. We keep having trash movies churned out by studios because they make money. That’s been true since at least the nineteen-forties if not earlier. Hell, I’m really just talking about the ones where enough of them still survive that you can go find them. Earlier, in the silent era, yeah, you had trash get made quickly and churned out so that people would pay a dime to watch it. I don’t get how a single genre is supposed to be the culmination that’s ruining cinema.

But, here’s the thing. Have movies changed over the years? Absolutely. Scorcesie’s movies have changed over the years! His style has changed, his vision has changed. What sells tickets has changed. How studios are producing films based on what they think will make them money has changed. It’s been discussed before that the fall of video rentals and the rise of streaming has changed what kinds of movies studios are willing to put their money behind and how they’re less likely to take a risk on something than they used to be. That’s a problem. That’s a big problem because it’s reduced the number of small-budget and medium-budget studio films. None of that can be blamed on comic book adaptations.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with a comic book adaptation. Marvel movies are overly formulaic and especially since Disney bought them overly safe. Even in the ones I like, I can just feel that Disney touch that makes me go, “Ew,” sometimes. DC’s movies have been mismanaged with an unfit vision helming its original run from the start. So the big series, yes, I’ll admit, they’re kind of shit cinema. I still enjoy some of them, but they’re kind of shit cinema. There are plenty of shit crime movies and thrillers and other things like that, but I’m not going to start yelling about how they’re killing cinema and we have to fight against them. Why do comic book adaptations get singled out as artless trash when there’s a constant stream of hollow feel-good romance films that get churned out every year? Do those formulaic vacuous sap-fests (some of which I love and will watch whenever I need a good cry, I’m really not knocking them) really merit a pass yet for some reason comic books require this war be waged by filmmakers against them? I really don’t see how they’re the problem.

And you can come in and say things like, “He’s just stirring the pot to promote his film,” but I don’t think so. Scorsese has had a lot to say about modern filmmaking even when he doesn’t have a project on the table. He’s talked about his feelings on modern film culture, comic book adaptations, using the word content to describe any form of media, and more. I really don’t think he’s doing it to bring attention to any project so much as he just really feels very strongly that movies have changed and change is bad? Is that really what it is? Because some of the stuff he sees as a problem, yeah, I agree, it’s an issue. But other stuff like this, even if there is a problem, your aim at what the problem really is is just completely off.

I don’t really know how you can threaten someone when you need them more than they need you.

If you leave town, where are you going to go? The city doesn’t need you. If you’re not making what you want/need here, go ahead, leave, the city won’t be hurt by it. You will, though. Because you’ll have to pack up your business, set it up somewhere else, and hope that they do the things you want them to. It’ll be expensive for you, won’t mean a thing to the city.

So how is it a threat?

You joke, but I’ve seen those kinds of arguments, especially online.

Some time back, someone argued that global warming was a self-solving problem because the oceans reflect light and heat energy back out into space, so as the earth warms and the oceans rise, the ability to reflect that heat will increase and we could even go back into an ice age because of it.

That is, of course, not really how it’s going to go. Massive ecological collapse and possible human extinction would occur due to the initial warming, first off, even before you get to the arguments about… Everything else at the crux of that.

For a long time, one of the talking points of climate change denial wasn’t that it wasn’t happening but that it was normal for us to go through heating and cooling cycles, so just deal with it and wait it out, we survived the last ice age so we can survive this heat wave, right? But again, that’s mostly bullshit.

So did I. Loved the movie as a kid. I haven’t actually had the nerve to revisit it because I have no idea what I’ll think of it going back to it today.

I always enjoyed the US Godzilla films

Always?

Like… Always?

She’s missing an eye which is covered by an electronic eye patch. So, technically, she is.

Federal appeals are more difficult and more rare. The state charges he’ll have an easier time appealing against, though. Lots of questions still up in the air about how all that will go, though. Unless he’s barred from office, there’s a chance he does become president again, which would make things incredibly complicated. There’s also the question of him appealing to the Supreme Court and them simply overturning anything they can that’s been brought against him. I find these unlikely, but they’re possible. For the USA, this is the first time someone in that high of an office has gone to trial like this, and we’re going to be having to make some answers on the spot.

Even if he goes to prison, which if he’s convicted there’s a good chance he gets something more similar to house arrest due to his position as a former president, he is 100% not going to be in general population. I believe he’s guilty and hope that if the trial proves that that he’s convicted. But people imagining him in the chow line in an orange jumpsuit are fooling themselves.