Watched "The Creator" on Hulu last night

If you like sci-fi and haven't seen this film I highly recommend you don't miss it! The storytelling is a little uneven but incredibly compelling. The acting is quite good. It stars JD Washington (Denzel's son), Gemma Chan, and Ken Watanabe (wonderful in this film). The little girl who plays the main AI is phenomenal. She was only 7 when she filmed this.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11858890

Czech police responding to reported shooting in Prague - Europe live

Source: The Guardian

The Czech News Agency reports that the shooting incident concerns a university building, and that students are sharing on the internet that people are locked in classrooms and some classrooms are being evacuated, according to Hospodářské noviny.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/dec/21/poland-donald-tusk-government-state-media-sacks-tv-radio-news-bosses-europe-latest-updates

Finding moral clarity on campus about the Hamas-Israeli War (Robert Reich)

(Subtitle: Seven basic principles)

I'm struggling with the forum groupings

I can see how they make loose sense sometimes but a lot of the times I’m sort of scratching my head. Seems it would almost make more sense to group them alphabetically. Just sayin’…

Been thinking about the Overton Window

On the Political Compass, I test on the far, far left. Yet the policies I'm passionate about are well in line with social democratic policies, like in Roosevelt's New Deal or the political systems in the Scandinavian countries. So I got to wondering exactly what is far left? And this leads me to the Overton Window. Repukes are MASTERS at re-orienting the Overton Window ever rightward. I think I haven't moved so much as has what we used to call the center. I don't even know what "moderate" means anymore.

We can see this happening almost daily as they push ever more radically authoritarian policies. Why do we lose this battle. What would we have to do differently to push the Overton Window in a liberal direction?

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I watched about 5 seasons until...

I just couldn't stomach the whole god thing anymore. It gets much, much worse as the show goes along, to the point that I started feeling as if I'd been suckered by bait-and-switch religious programming. I'm *still* dying to know what happened to that plane, though. That story line is great.

Good Omens 2?

I watched the first two episodes yesterday. It's laugh-out-loud funny and continues the wonderful relationship of the ineffable husbands Aziraphale and Crowley.

All this bullshit! It could have benefited everyone

Hear me out: Let me start by acknowledging the pettiness and venality of this brinksmanship. It turns my stomach. However, I think helping migrants to the interior of the country could have been a good partnership had it been handled with dignity and empathy. What if these asshole governors had instead partnered with other states to help take the load off border states? Everyone wins, including the migrants themselves. As it is though, with this well-scripted media circus, all the governors are doing is creating future Democratic voters. Hey, wait. Good plan!

These 1,572 US politicians have helped ban abortion since Roe fell. 225 are women

(The Guardian) It’s been one year since the US supreme court ended the constitutional right to abortion. The procedure is now prohibited in 14 states and restricted in six more, leaving large swaths of the midwest and south without access to basic reproductive care.

To mark the first anniversary of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the case that overturned Roe v Wade, the Guardian has created a visual directory of state legislators who embraced the opportunity to restrict abortion access. These are the faces of lawmakers and governors whose votes helped pass bans on abortion at conception or after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.

Because of the sheer volume of anti-abortion laws that have taken effect over the past year, bans that predate Roe – like the 19th century statute that Republicans are trying to resurrect in Wisconsin – are not included here. Additional bans in Wyoming, Ohio, Utah and North Dakota are also excluded, because state courts have indefinitely blocked those laws from taking effect. The remaining 1,600 legislators in this graphic are responsible for the chaotic patchwork of abortion restrictions that has emerged in the year without Roe.

[No more text. Just photos of the bastards, which is the value of this article. EDIT: And 64 of them are DEMOCRATS. ]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/jun/22/abortion-ban-politicians-who-voted-for-restrictions-who-are-they-men-women

South Carolina state senator says the quiet part out loud about abortion bans