Category: Guest Contributors

Tom’s World – 29AUG2025 – Chaotic Input

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TomD

The thing about highly ordered systems like the social system of a large country is that they can only take so much disordered and chaotic input. And if the insanity forced down the nation’s throat over the past 12+ years doesn’t count as chaotic input, I’m not sure what would short of a total collapse.

I think that in a future in which social science has evolved from a pretend science for average or less intelligent people to waste money getting degrees in to a real evidence and calculation based science, one of the social real scientists would point to these happenings and say in consternation, “Well, what did you expect?”

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 24AUG2025 – Hollywood

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Sadly it seems that Mr. Whedon wants to get a little more, shall we say physical, with the talent if the Rumors out of the Buffy Series are true. This has always been an issue in Hollywood, sometimes they chase the ingenues and sometimes they chase the beefcake.
That aside what Whedon did is loved the material. He loved Captain America, he loved the Avengers and he wouldn’t change the material (more than a smidge or two). This strategy doesn’t always work. Brad Bird Loved/Loves the Barsoom mythos (and clearly knew it well based on how he plotted it). He gave Dejah Thoris more of a part (and far more of a costume) than in the original books, but he didn’t eviscerate/geld John Carter as a hero to do it. Here the issue was the Disney Princess based marketers couldn’t bring themselves to market A Princess of Mars . They couldn’t even bring themselves to call it John Carter of Mars they had no clue how to sell it and so its existence and nature was known only to the more rabid part of the Barsoom fans (e.g. myself). I took my wife and daughters (college/high school age for the girls) and they loved it. They wondered why the heck there was practically no one in the giant IMAX theater on a Saturday PM showing.

Loving the material is a start but is NOT enough. Peter Jackson LOVED Lord of the Rings but was constrained to make 3 movies (albeit nearly 9 hrs in standard form). He loved the Hobbit too but was given FAR to free a rein. In the interests of adding female characters and filling out 3 long films, he padded the heck out of The Hobbit and made a sloppy mess. George Lucas made the original 3 Star Wars films and loved his material and did fairly well until the damnable Ewoks. This is likely because he had his wife (later divorced) riding herd on him as editor. When he made the Prequel Trilogy no one could tell him no and loved himself a little TOO much and he made crap. Many years later Disney said “Hold my beer” and made the sequel trilogy that makes the prequels look like Casablanca or Citizen Kane.

So it looks like the recipe is get a director and/or screen writer that loves the material. Then make sure there is a check to their choices so they don’t go straight up fan boi/fan grrl.

And for heavens sake Disney, please try something NEW. There’s like 20+ marvel movies/tv shows, at least 11 Star wars movies plus hours of TV, Princess movies by the dozens and 4 Toy Stories with a 5th on the way. Try something new and exotic (for you) it can’t hurt more than the last dozen or so flops. And for the love of all that is Holy Send Kathleen Kennedy on an all expense paid 1 year trip to an isolated portion of Borneo with no phone or internet connections. And let Star Wars lie fallow for a couple years that horse (or wookie) is well and truly dead.

 

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 18AUG2025 – A Miracle?

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What we have is a miracle. To be honest after 2020’s lopsided “defeat” I figured the Democrats had a lock on things at least through 2028. The reality was that Biden was a REAL mess and the infighting within the White House made it look like there were three or four different factions fighting for control of the Presidential puppet. That and the choice of the clearly DEI VP candidate (Biden SAID he was going to choose a black female outright) who was not even competent in her previous tasks lead to a result that baffled the Democrat pundits come November 2024.

Trump and his team have been going gangbusters. Not that there haven’t been issues. Someone that understands engineer types needed to soothe Mr. Musk’s feathers in particular praising his team for what they did get done against incredible odds. Getting USAID under control has done much to starve the Democrat punditry and nomenaclatura. The Trump people also had less control of the Senate, the President Pro-tem is slow walking things. In addition, there seem to be lots of district and appellate court nominations going wanting and many deputy positions also unfilled. This is where the current troubles are. That said for 7-8 months into a 4 year term they’re not doing too badly given the headwinds they’re sailing against.

2026 is going to be a battle Royal. This is do or die for the Dems. If they can’t take back either the House or the Senate this just keeps rolling on for 2 more years and likely there would be strong restrictions on the remote voting the Democrats are so fond of. If the Democrats can get one arm they can tie things up and maybe even negotiate some minor wins as many Republicans try to play nice. This is like playing nice with a nest of Black Widow spiders but somehow some Republicans fail to perceive this.

Honestly, where the heck the Democrats go in 2028 baffles me. in the last decade or so there have been 3 wings to the Democrats, The Clinton wing, The Obama Wing, and the AOC/Bernie/Squad wing. The Clinton “middle of the road” (it ain’t middle by at least three rows of tall trees) wing seems to be heading to dormancy/decline. Newsome is sort of their kind of candidate charismatic, and he’s positioning towards the “middle” although like the Clintons before him his real positions are far to the left of what he’s staking out. The Obama wing really has no one. Mrs. Obama may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but she is smart enough to know she doesn’t want the job. Most of the Biden appointees are absolute messes (e.g. Pete Buttigieg, who couldn’t even manage to not run DOT into the ground). The Squad has some known names like Ocasio-Cortez, but none play well outside deep blue enclaves. I suspect if Mamdani wins the NYC Mayoral post, he’ll be so awful he’ll make Mayor Dinkins look like Mayors Koch or Giuliani. That will sour red and purple US districts to ANY of the Squad/Bernie type candidates. So I think we get at least 1 term of Vance. This crosses the 2030 barrier and may mean a more precise census.

No it’s not a golden era. To fix things we REALLY need huge advantages, 2/3 in both houses and 3/4 (38) of the state legislatures, so amendments could be moved through to pin down some things (e.g. Citizenship, Census taking, Supreme court judge numbers, etc.). But it is surely that worldline is far superior to what would have happened if Dems had remained in control. Down that path lay some variant of Mr. Schlicter’s Peoples Republic at best.