Indeed, he seems to always be using his straight man role to explain the joke, which seems to be a characteristic of the era (Kenan Thompson is very guilty of this as well).

I get that, and I’m not Korean, but I took the movie as kind of going, “here are the deep structures of society” that allow the rich to be nice and polite, and not examine their roles in the inequality they benefit from (because there is no pressure on them to, as they get cheap labor easily, get to maintain a polite…

For some meta, they should have the entire show take place in the world of the Cowboy Bebop opening credits. It would mostly be dodging all the flying jazz print-reviews from various NYC publications in the 20th century, but if they gave a good backstory for how the print reviews escaped and became the dominant form…

It’s an article of hope that climate change can be mitigated - I think that’s the point of going hyperbolic with the meteor, although I did see this Ben Affleck-narrated documentary a while ago that explored the world of using technology to defend against collisions from deadly extra-terrestrial objects, so we might…

It takes true bravery to stand up to Big.....Let’s-Not-Go-Extinct

I read that, and it sounds like the author is really straining to make the movie fit his thesis - The movie he saw sounded quite different from the movie I saw. He raises a few interesting points, but I thought the responses in the comments were very interesting, and unpacked what was going on in a much deeper and…

I am BEYOND DISGUSTED at this TONE-DEAF casting! How could they think it was AT ALL appropriate to cast Chris Pratt when Al Pacino was RIGHT THERE!?

I don’t buy the purported causation that you are implying. Hollywood culture is just corporate cover-your-ass culture. Conservatives have plenty of media meant to pander to them, and it just so happens that there are more Kirk Camerons on that side of moviemaking than Clint Eastwoods. Blame neo-liberalism if you must,…

I’m not sure you make your case that this is a phenomenon that is inextricably linked to democracy. It might be largely true, but there seem to be various democracies throughout the world that can tackle the tragedy of the commons problem with differing degrees of success. A well-educated populace should logically be…

Just because an underlying given of neo-liberal thinking has existed before neo-liberalism was a concerted movement, doesn’t mean that it is not a part of neo-liberal thought. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.

*Random anime noises!*

I’ve noticed The Guardian doing an excellent job of sustaining good journalism on climate change and the environment, and some other mainstream media outlets doing ok or catching up. I hope the late night shows keep their part up in consistently hammering home the reality of our ongoing environmental disaster, even…

The “conservative” calculus part is obvious, although they seem to be performing their calculus with Kruger Rands, or Zimbabwe dollars, or something, and perhaps it intertwines in certain ways with the neo-liberal style.

I dig it. It’s not like the virus is the Angel of Death, and you can just throw some goat blood on your door, and the virus will look at it, put a check on its list and move on to greener pastures.

Come on, Denis; it’s Marvel’s cinematic universe, we’re just living in it.

This is a very thoughtful point.

That was due to the corked Kleenex

“Why I think I’ll hit him precisely in the face!” -Soda Popinski

If I were a boxer, I hope my nickname was “The Sissy”, because I don’t like pressure and prefer to under-promise and over-deliver.