Links - 3rd May 2025 (2 - MCU)

Anthony Mackie Clarifies Controversial Captain America Comment - "“To me Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mackie said while onstage in Rome to promote Disney’s upcoming Captain America: Brave New World. The one-minute clip of the interview was filmed and posted by several attendees online...   In a separate interview this week, Mackie said, “I feel like it’s just as important for Black kids to see a Black Captain America as it is for white kids to see a Black Captain America. Growing up my favorite hero was green. So it wasn’t about race or anything, it was about him being a good guy trying to do the right thing.”"
It looked like it was going to bomb from quite early on
Weird how his favourite hero growing up was green but somehow everyone needs to see a Black Captain America

Disney's Dismal ‘Captain America: 4’ Pre-Ticket Sales on Par With One of Marvel’s Biggest Box Office Bombs - "The pre-ticket sales for Marvel’s upcoming Captain America: Brave New World have been next to dismal with numbers similar to Eternals – one of the first in Marvel’s string of financial failures that marked phase IV."

Weekend Box Office: Captain America Wins Second Weekend with $28 Million - "A 68.3% drop from last week’s holiday weekend down to $28.2 million brings its 10-day total to $141.2 million.  That is the third-worst drop in MCU history, and the worst two were in 2023 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (-69.9%) and The Marvels (-78.1%). There are only eight other films that were unable to hit $150 million in their first 10 days. Three of them (Black Widow, Shang Chi, and Eternals) were all part of the 2021 transition from pandemic to vaccines. The others were the first two Thor films, the first two Ant-Man films, and the first Captain America. Shang Chi and the Thors, at least, had better second weekends than Brave New World. The worse news is that Brave New World is already $25-26 million behind the pace of Quantumania, and even that film had a better sophomore weekend with $31.9 million. That suggests the likelihood that Cap is going to fail to reach $200 million domestic. Currently the film has made another $148.2 million internationally, but that was only after a $35.3 million weekend. This could ultimately struggle to reach $400 million, a number only four MCU films failed to achieve: The Marvels being an all-timer, The Incredible Hulk (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and the pandemic hybrid release of Black Widow in 2021. Even with the optimistically reported budget of $180 million, this is going to be another loser for Marvel and Disney."

Meme - Sam Wilson: "Hey, big guy. The Box Office's getting real low."
*Sad Red Hulk*

Meme - Freshly Baked Marvel Memes From Hell's Kitchen: Sasi Vel: "The low box office of Brave New World actually saved lives Imao"
Culture Crave: "Movie theater ceiling collapses in Washington during #CaptainAmericaBraveNewWorld. Two people were in attendance and there were no injuries"

Captain America: Brave New World’s Real Budget? You’ll Never Know… and This Is Why - "The Brave New World budget that has been reported by trade outlets like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter is $180 million, but that seems low considering the reported (at least) 22 days of reshoots, and indeed, some well-sourced industry observers indicate that the final budget was significantly higher. According to The Hot Mic, the budget was in the range of $300 million, while Joanna Robinson and Dave Gonzalez, who wrote the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, have said their sources peg the movie as costing closer to $380 million. Bear in mind there’s also the matter of P&A (prints and advertising) costs, which would be in the tens of millions at the very least if not higher for an MCU blockbuster (Variety pegs P&A for Brave New World at $100 million). And then there’s the revenue split that the studio has to share with theater owners!"

The Critical Drinker on X - "At one point in Captain America 4, Sam Wilson uses Ant Man's helmet, Steve Rogers' shield and Falcon's wings coated with Black Panther's Vibranium to fight a Hulk. And I think that's a perfect metaphor for how laughably cobbled together this film is."

Meme - Dob @justdobber: "Red hulk smacked him so bad he went bald"
Harry @hdwmovies: "one perfect shot"

Deadpool Creator Shades Kevin Feige for Captain America Brave New World Flop - "“Captain America: Brave New World” fell at the box office with a 68% drop in its second weekend, marking the third biggest drop of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far after flops like “The Marvels” (78% drop) and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (69% drop). “Deadpool” creator Rob Liefeld reacted to the news with a blunt statement on X about the president of Marvel Studios: “Get [Kevin] Feige off the mound. He’s spent.”"

Meme - CosmicBookNews: "Marvel lost billions of dollars since Avengers: Endgame. What happened?" *Yelena Belova, Kate Bishop, G'iah, Sylvie, Monica Rambeau, Ms Marvel, Echo, Death (Rio Vidal), Shuri Black Panther, Ironheart, Casey Lang, She-Hulk, Agatha Harkness, Dar-Benn, America Chavez, Jane Foster*

Marvel Dumps She-Hulk: Replaced By Billion Dollar Deadpool - "Fans have noticed that Disney has replaced She-Hulk with Deadpool on the official Marvel hub banner on Disney+."

Meme - "if Thanos' snap killed 50% of all life, that means that the survivors would have lost 50% of their gut biomes in an instant and spent the next few months power-blasting their bathrooms with diarrhea, in this essay I will-"
"No. If the survivors lost half of their gut biomes that would mean that Thanos would have eliminated 75% of all gut biomes, not 50%."

Meme - "CGI IN THE 2000s *Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, Balrog and Gollum from Lord of the Rings*
CGI IN THE 2020s *Axl from Thor, She-Hulk, Dr Strange's Third Eye from Dr Strange & the Multiverse of Madness*"

Meme - Adrianne Curry @AdrianneCurry: "Mahershala is 50 years old Snipes is 62 Snipes was 36 in Blade If we are going to have an OLDER MAN play blade, might as well be the OG."

Meme - "Captain Marvels Actress Brie Larson Reportedly Wants To Quit The MCU"
Hawkeye: "DON'T DO THAT, DON'T GIVE ME HOPE..."

Tatiana Maslany Mocks Fans: Jokes She Was Fired From Deadpool & Wolverine Because She's Woke

Marvel Removed This Controversial Subplot from Falcon and Winter Soldier (Confirmed) - "New information just confirmed details about a controversial subplot that was removed from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.  While Anthony Mackie's big debut as Captain America was praised at first, by the end of the first season, that goodwill had dissipated. The finale, in particular, left many with a foul taste in their mouth, with some feeling the story was rushed and character development thrown out the door.  Lots of fans got it in their heads that the quality was decreased thanks to last-minute decisions made due to the impact of COVID-19... The book confirmed there was once a storyline that saw “the heroes rushing to stop a fast-spreading disease.”"

Meme Avengers: "6 HEROES TO BEAT 1 VILLAIN"
Avengers: Age of Ulton: "9 HEROES TO BEAT 1 VILLAIN"
Avengers: ENDGAME: "38 HEROES TO BEAT 1 VILLAIN"
Spider-man: "30 ViLLAINs TO BEAT 1 HERO"

Why the MCU Turned Grey (And How They Fixed It) - YouTube - "A while ago, Patrick H. Willems put out a video asking why MCU movies looked so grey and desaturated. He concluded that it was because the newer marvel movies were shot digitally and not being graded properly. It was a good question, but both I and a lot of other people found his conclusion that this multi billion dollar studio just didn’t know how to properly grade LOG footage to be a little bit ludacris.  On top of the unlikelihood that a studio would just forget to color correct their multi million dollar investment, both Captain America the First Avenger and Thor the Dark World were shot on the Alexa and neither of them had the saturation or black value problems Patrick blamed on digital photography.   I don’t think the ugliness of marvel movies is a factor of which ones are shot digitally. It’s actually a factor of how many superheros have to be onscreen together. Let me explain.   The drab aesthetic of the MCU isn’t a color correction issue, it’s a production design issue. No amount of color grading is going to make that airport look pretty. And I don’t think that this grey aesthetic was a mistake. It was a deliberate if ugly attempt to solve a problem. A color theory problem."

Marvel Studios Fired Woke Producers After Phase 4 Failure Claims Rumor - "Gore also claims that Feige and Marvel have fired those creatives who aren’t familiar with the comics. Recall how Marvel producer Nate Moore, who is responsible for butchering the Eternals, said he won’t hire creatives who read comics. Moore is presently only listed on IMDb as a producer on Captain America: Brave New World (which has undergone major rewrites and reshoots) as part of Marvel’s upcoming slate. Also recall how the director of Secret Invasion stated he was specifically told not to read the comics. Marvel also hired those Rick & Morty writers... The two mad movies Gore is likely referring to is Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts (what I find is interesting is that while at Comic-Con the cast of both movies made them out to be jokes). The two bad TV shows are likely Agatha and Ironheart (probably a third with Wonder Man). Marvel insiders also filled me in that Feige was fixing the Daredevil: Born Again series, which has been confirmed by the trades exactly as I said.  Blade is also getting reworked, as insiders filled me in a plan at one time was to kill Blade and replace him with his daughter in the movie. Feige recently said they are taking their time to get it right.  Regarding Fantastic Four, at Comic-Con, I was told by insiders it’s also gotten reworked. I was also told the female Silver Surfer they are using in the film gets killed off right away"

Marvel Slammed For 'Whitewashing' Doctor Doom After Casting Robert Downey Jr. - "Victor Von Doom, first introduced in the 1962 issue of ‘Fantastic Four,’ is originally from Latveria, a fictional Eastern European country.  The supervillain was born into a tribe of Latverian Romani people and this is a crucial aspect of his backstory."
There're tons of high profile gypsy actors around to use, of course

Meme - "China Five year plans
*High speed train* *Skyscrapers* *Helping the poor graph* *Modern interior*
America Five year plan
MARVEL STUDIOS PHASE 4"

Meme - "Yes, because that's the ONLY thing people hate She-Hulk for."
"Can you believe the only Disney+ TV series to actually be written, shot, and paced liked a television show with a unique twist on what a MCU project was wholly rejected because Megan Thee Stallion threw ass on screen"
Cosmic Marvel: "2 years ago today, 'SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW' premiered on Disney+"

Yes, because that's the ONLY thing people hate She-Hulk for. : r/saltierthankrait - "In the final episode She-hulk takes all the plotpoints they've built up to and intentionally discards them because "Haha wasn't that unsatisfying?" is the joke.  I wish I were kidding."
"I always had this idea that the show should've ended with a court debate, subverting the whole ultra expensive and epic marvel ending instead of just saying "marvel movies and shows always end with a big fight m'right?""
"In a roundabout way, it was the perfect end to a show that started with She-Hulk petulantly screaming at Bruce Banner that she knew far more than he ever did about self-control and anger.  Started shit, ended shit, with the lingering aftertaste of "those were valuable hours of my life that I'll never get back that could have been spent doing literally anything else"."
"The point of the Bruce stuff was that she was wrong. She thought she was stronger than the hulk until he threw a rock into space, and she thought she was perfectly in control until she went berserk"
"Of course she was wrong. It was obvious from the start. Did she actually challenge her assumptions, grow as a person, and humble herself over it? Er, no, not really. In fact the ending was "lol who even cares". She was the exact same unstable narcissist from beginning to end. Does the narrative frame this behaviour as her being wrong? Again, no, not really. Her histrionics aren't signs of immaturity and underdevelopment to be corrected, they're signs she's a strong and empowered woman. Sigh.  It's great that some people in here have gained enough of an understanding of analysis to identity character traits and potential arcs, but the next step is identifying whether those arcs were actually executed (instead of just implied) and how well. She-Hulk fails massively in these aspects."
Yes, because that's the ONLY thing people hate She-Hulk for. : r/saltierthankrait - "The writers weren’t smart enough to write a courtroom drama properly. They straight up admitted it."

Why Marvel FELL after Endgame - YouTube - "Seeing the success of infinity war and endgame Marvel believed they had won the audience over. They thought people would continue watching their projects even if their quality was questionable or if those projects featured fourth tier characters. That's the only explanation for greenlighting an Echo Show, or an Ironheart show, or an Agatha show, or a Wonder Man series, or a White Vision series. No one was interested in watching Echo on Disney Plus... Marvel Executives were convinced that Quantummania would be a success and they were surprised when it flopped at the box office and audiences didn't like it... they thought we would swallow anything after the Infinity Saga...
One of the main differences between the MCU and the DCU was organization. Marvel Studios always had a figure in charge. One producer crafting one story through all the projects and deciding which project was green lit and which wasn't. They took their time introducing several characters separately before bringing them together in big events but after Endgame that changed. By doubling the number of projects it was impossible for one person to oversee all of them and what's worse, the MCU's narrative fell apart... shortly after Doctor Strange 2 premiered Elizabeth Olsen said that she would have liked Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness to connect better but that was impossible because Doctor Strange started filming while Wandavision was still in production... Marvel didn't follow the classic procedure for making series. There were no showrunners, no Bible with key concepts and they didn't even review the scripts before starting to film. Moon Knight's writer left halfway through the series. They had to throw away everything they'd filmed for Daredevil: Born Again because they realized halfway through filming that the series wasn't good enough... this level of disorganization reminds me a lot of what happened with the old DCU... there were schedule changes like releasing No Way Home before Doctor Strange 2 ,something that affected the story of both films... did you find it convenient that Ned learned magic out of nowhere? The original plan was for America Chavez to summon Andrew and Toby's Spider-Man but after swapping release dates that couldn't happen because America would show up first in Doctor Strange 2. I'm sure that if Doctor Strange had come out before No Way Home the reception of Multiverse of Madness would have been much better... all movies filmed during the pandemic had to follow protocols due to the virus, so budgets skyrocketed... the Illuminati and Doctor Strange didn't see eye to eye at any moment because all the actors filmed their scenes at different times, so their appearance were brief... too many scenes were filmed with green screens because they couldn't go out or actors couldn't travel to the set and when restrictions lifted Hollywood Studios had too many projects needing post-production. Everyone wanted their movies and series finished on time to release everything at once, but there aren't enough visual effects artists to handle such a load so several projects were left half finished... Deadpool and Wolverine is going to be the first MCU project since 2021 that wasn't affected by the pandemic, but the movie had to go through the actors' and writers' strike...
Fourth reason... Joanna Robinson revealed an interview with Chadwick Boseman that clarifies everything. Chadwick told me the story about how on the set of Endgame. He and Brie Larsson and Tom Holland sat around and talked about how they were the future of Marvel and how exciting that was for them... before 2018 when Endgame started filming, Marvel already planned to replace Iron Man, Thor and Captain America with Spider-Man, Black Panther and Captain Marvel. That was going to be the new MCU Trinity, the new saga post Endgame was going to have clear protagonists, and it made sense for them... this was years before the Marvels flopped and Kevin Feige and his fellas don't have a time machine... Marvel's plan was clear. Use these three characters as the face of the MCU in Phase 4, form a new group of Avengers and wait until Phase 5 or 6 to introduce the Fantastic 4 and the X-Men...in 2019 Marvel and Sony had problems with their agreement to use Spider-Man... Marvel Studios realized Spider-Man couldn't be the face of their Universe because they would always depend on Sony, the studio that owns the character's rights... after Endgame premiered Marvel also realized fans didn't accept Carol Danvers. They didn't want to see her anywhere... in August 2020 Chadwick Boseman passed away and it was too soon to recast to T'Challa. The plan for the new Trinity went down the drain...Loki. Why didn't they make him one of the new saga's protagonists?... before the series aired on Disney+ a lot of people weren't keen on this... they couldn't risk giving Loki such an important role"

Culture Crave 🍿 on X - "#AgathaAllAlong star Joe Locke when asked about misconceptions regarding Marvel “That it’s just for, like, straight white men ... Because it’s not""

'Agatha All Along' Actor Joe Locke Reiterates His Character Is Gay And Mocks Marvel Fans - "He then mocked Marvel fans saying, “Marvel fans are very open with their opinions. But they’re not in a Marvel show, so—. I’m doing the one thing that they really wish they could be doing. Sorry!”"

After Disney Marketed 'The Acolyte' As The Gayest Star Wars Project, Aubrey Plaza And Others Say 'Agatha All Along' Is The Gayest Marvel Project - "Plaza would later claim that the show will be “a gay explosion by the end of it.” Plaza was not the only to promote the Marvel Studios production as gay. Actress Sasheer Zamata also agreed that the show is the gayest project Marvel has ever done. She said, “I would agree with that.”  When asked to explain why, she said, “You’ll see. You’ll see when you watch it. But I think witches are queer inherently just because we are outcast and set aside for many reasons. And, I think, this show shows a really good representation of different types of people and that we can all use the power that we have within to go forth and be great.” Actor Joe Locke also agreed the show is the gayest Marvel project to date. He explained, “It’s got many layers. Definitely gay is one of them.”...   Marvel Studios Casting Director Sarah Halley Finn confirmed that Marvel wanted a queer person to play the role of Teen in the show... All of this promotion comes just over three months after The Acolyte showrunner confirmed that The Acolyte was the “gayest Star Wars... Actress Amandla Stenberg then chimed in saying, “Because nerds are gay.” When TheWrap’s interviewer stated, “Well, some nerds are very not gay and are very threatened by gay stuff.” Stenberg responded, “Well, that’s true. But in my world nerds are gay.”"

Meme - *Agatha and Rio about to kiss*
"That boy isn't yours."
"Way to ruin the f#cking mood. We could be having gay witchy sex right now."

Reilly Johnson on X - "Just watched Agatha All Along episodes 1-4. Unfortunately, I did NOT have a good time with it. This might be the worst MCU show. The writing and acting are mediocre at best. It had many moments that were frankly just "cringe-worthy" for a lack of better words. Really hate to crap on shows like this, but this one was just extremely tough for me to get through.  The one bright spot is Aubrey Plaza. She was great every time she was on screen. #AgathaAllAlong"

Meme - Cosmic Book News: "Agatha Ratings: Less Views Than The Acolyte, Confirmed By Disney"
"Even in the revelation of our triumph, you see the depth of our despair."

'Agatha All Along' Ratings Crash Below Canceled 'The Acolyte' On Disney Plus: Media Run with Misleading Numbers - "per diem, Agatha All Along only nabbed 59.5% of The Acolyte’s viewership for the days which we have been provided."

‘Agatha All Along’ Is The MCU’s Third Worst-Reviewed Series Ever - "I did not imagine that Agatha All Along, a spin-off about the 208th most memorable character in Marvel canon, was going to get a lot of viewership, even if it was good. But it also seems to be the case that reviews are not terribly amazing as well, as so far, critics are scoring it below audiences... I have said for a while now that I think there is some level of critical exhaustion with the MCU, as looking at the long arc of things, the longer it’s run, the worse scores get. But unlike some of the movies, I do think most of the lower-scored series here are…justified. Secret Invasion is the worst thing the MCU has ever produced and that score should be lower. Echo was not good. I like She-Hulk but it loses a lot of points for its sub-par VFX."

Marvel's Agatha Nielsen Ratings - "The Nielsen ratings have now been released for the premiere of Marvel’s Agatha series, and they fall short of the ratings for The Acolyte, which has been canceled after one season. Agatha also looks to have the lowest ratings of the weekly released MCU shows...   At least another plus for Agatha is that the head of Marvel TV said Agatha has the best watchable return rate of any Marvel show, meaning the least amount of drop off per episode, so those bottom of the barrel MCU fans watching the show apparently like it or are simply watching anything because it’s “Marvel.”"

'Agatha All Along' Took the Right Risks for Disney and Marvel - "In his review of the series, IndieWire’s Ben Travers pointed out that the the first four episodes stretched the welcome of a slow burn, that the stakes weren’t high enough and the energy lacking in what should have been a full-bodied villain adventure.  But unlike so many franchise series on Disney+ and from Marvel in particular, things got better in this second series from Jac Schaeffer. Things got good... The back hours of this series manage to do what the early ones didn’t, creating a fairly propulsive sci-fi/fantasy series mostly unencumbered by its tentpole roots. Instead of existing solely to move the MCU forward, “Agatha” zeroes in on its own cast of characters and bringing them to a logical emotional evolution. It got weird, and it got sad, and it got fun."

Meme - "Someone: "Agatha bad"
Random MCU simp: Shut up; incel! I'm a comic book nerd who has spent his entire life in a basement. I know better than you. Agatha is a masterpiece!"

Meme - Bee Minus: "The trans flag next to a ghost-what did Disney mean by this?"
"Disney, Tell me the truth for once!"

Report: MCU's Woes Due To Bad Writers, Directors, Focus On Unpopular Characters - "This new report comes from The Economist and details, “Disney insiders suggest several causes for the slump. One is to do with personnel. Several trusted writers and directors have moved on. Many of the actors playing the most popular superheroes left the MCU after Avengers: Endgame in 2019, and Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther, died in 2020.” Anyone who has been paying attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe has likely made these same observations, but it is interesting that people within Disney are finally starting to recognize it. As an example, the company hired Jac Schaeffer to write the Black Widow film and then doubled down on her with WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Schaeffer made her disdain for staying accurate to comic book canon while promoting Black Widow in an interview with Inverse in 2019. She said, “I’m not interested in adhering to comic canon that is discriminatory in any way or that violates my values system.” In the same interview she admitted she wanted to use the Marvel Cinematic Universe to “make, big positive statements.”... Schaeffer also indicated she hired the writers room for WandaVision based on gender quotas informing Inverse that the makeup of the room was “incredibly intentional, and it was very much supported by Marvel.” The writers room featured eight staff writers with four of them being women. To this point she also stated, “I choose to be a part of projects that are about positive representation. We need to see women, we need to see people of color, we need to see nuanced experiences, and we need to see different perspectives on screen.” Schaeffer continued, “I choose to work with people who are interested in changing perspectives for the better, and putting a world on screen that is something we can aspire to and have conversations about, and moving in a direction that will create a world I hope will be better for my children.” Not only did they bring in writers like Jac Schaeffer, but they company has attempted to replace all of its main heroes such as Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther. It introduced Ironheart in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America with the Falcon, Sam Wilson. After Boseman’s death, Shuri replaced T’Challa as Black Panther. Their upcoming projects are also doubling down on this. Sam Wilson will be cosplaying as Captain America in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World film. The upcoming Thunderbolts film will not even feature the Thunderbolts. Instead it will feature Yelena Belova, Sentry, Bucky Barnes, U.S. Agent, female Taskmaster, female Ghost, and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. The original Thunderbolts team from the comics was in reality the Masters of Evil and consisted of Baron Zemo, Fixer, Beetle, Screaming Mimi, Goliath, and Moonstone. Along with these Marvel insiders noting that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s downward trend is due to poor writing, bad directing, and a focus on unpopular heroes, The Economist also claims that China not allowing Marvel films into the country has also hampered the studio’s grosses at the box office... However, recent films have been released in China. The Marvels, which did not even gross $200 million worldwide, only brought in $15.4 million in China. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 also grossed $86.9 million in China according to The-Numbers. Finally, The Economist claims that Marvel Studios was simply releasing too much content... This portion of this inside information feels like something straight from a Marvel press release. In fact, it’s something Bob Iger recently claimed... The Walt Disney Company attempted something similar in the past when its Star Wars films began suffering massive declines at the box office. It made no sense then given Marvel films were doing very well and were being released at about 3 per year. As far as the multiverse idea, this is also something that anyone who has been paying attention has realized and it goes back to the poor writing. Marvel has relied on the Multiverse idea in order to get out its poor writing."

Meme - "Black Panther III *Blackface RDJ from Tropic Thunder*
Black Widow Returns *RDJ in drag in Sherlock Holmes 2*
Shang-Chi 2 *RDJ with straggly beard in Sherlock Holmes*
X-Men *Bald Robert Downey Junior the Symphathizer*"

Brie Larson Fired from 'Deadpool 3' as Ryan Reynolds & Hugh Jackman Battle Disney - "A significant bone of contention arises from Disney’s insistence on integrating Captain Marvel into the film’s narrative, much to Reynolds’ dismay. Despite vehement objections, Disney initially pushed for a Brie Larson’s cameo, prompting Reynolds to dig in his heels. According to scooper Mike Zeroh, following intense negotiations, Disney finally relented, permitting Reynolds to fire Larson and her character’s presence entirely, jettisoning all pivotal scenes featuring her character. But the upheaval extended beyond Reynolds, even including co-star Hugh Jackman, and created problems with him reprising his iconic role as Wolverine. Zeroh reports that Jackman has been locked in a battle of wills with Disney, vehemently opposing the inclusion of DEI elements, the deletion of his early scenes from Wolverine fighting in WW2, and even Disney’s overall marketing strategies, rebuffing Disney’s ideas regarding the studio’s promotional approach to Deadpool 3, going so far as to dismiss interviews with late night talk shows, Variety, and other outlets. It’s clear that Reynolds and Jackman don’t want Disney to ruin these comic book characters that have been so important to their careers, as well as to fans. With the Super Bowl trailer deadline looming, Disney scrambles to salvage the marketing campaign, leaning heavily on Reynolds’ creative vision and salvaged footage. Jackman’s unwavering resolve underscores both actors’ commitment to preserving their characters’ integrity, even at the risk of hurting the studio and their reputations with Disney."

Meme - Bruce Banner: "I can't have kids."
Black Widow: "Neither can I."
Black Widow: "I need you to turn this bird around, ok?"
Hulk: "Nah."
Hulk: "This is my son, Skaar"
Black Widow in heaven: *stare*

Meme - "I didn't realize "incel" meant someone who's married and has kids. Also how's season 2 of She-Hulk coming along Imao?"
"Sorry INCELS not all content is made for you" *She-Hulk Poster*
@Nerdrotics: "Agatha All Along is NOT a show made for Marvel Comics fans or men in general. It is a show made by and for wine moms whose accessory kids are raised by nannies, and it reflects the Los Angeles they live in today ...."

American Culture

From Building Bridges: A Peace Corps Classroom Guide to Cross-Cultural Understanding by Coverdell World Wise Schools:

Worksheet #4: Explanatory Notes for “Americans”

Directions: Below are reasons some cultural anthropologists have offered to explain why Americans may come across the way they do to people from other cultures. As you are reading each explanation, think about whether or not you agree with it. Is the explanation true of all Americans, some Americans, or no Americans?

1. Americans are always in such a hurry to get things done!
Americans often seem this way because of their tendency to use achievements and accomplishments as a measure of a person’s worth. They’re in a hurry to get things done because it’s only then that they feel they have proven their worth to other people. The more Americans accomplish, the more they feel they are respected.

2. Americans insist on treating everyone the same.
Americans do this because of our cultural roots as a free nation (e.g., “All men are created equal”). Americans have a deep cultural instinct toward social equality and not having a class system. This is a reaction to the European class system as well as the feudal system that existed in Europe. In cultures where inequality between social classes is more accepted, American insistence on egalitarianism, or social equality, may be annoying.

3. Americans always have to say what they’re thinking!
Americans believe that being direct is the most efficient way to communicate. It’s important to “tell it like it is” and “speak your mind”—to say what you mean and mean what you say. Being direct is often valued over “beating around the bush.” Americans value assertiveness and being open and direct about one’s thoughts and feelings. Not all cultures have this same value. In some cultures, the normal way to disagree or to say no is to say nothing or be very indirect.

4. Americans always want to change things.
Americans think things can always be better, and that progress is inevitable. The United States is a little more than 200 years old, and American culture tends to be an optimistic one. Older cultures are more skeptical because they have been around longer, have experienced more, and have been in situations in which progress was not always made. In American businesses, being open to change is a strong value, because things really do change quickly, and it is necessary to adapt. Many Americans believe it is “good” to initiate change and “bad” to resist it.

5. Americans don’t show very much respect for their elders.
Americans believe people must earn by their actions whatever regard or respect they are given. Merely attaining a certain age or holding a certain position does not in itself signify achievement.

6. Americans always think things are going to get better. They are so optimistic!
America, because of its resources and successes, has always had a culture of optimism. Americans believe that they are in control of their own destinies, rather than being victims of fate. Many Americans tend to believe that “the American dream” can be achieved by anyone who is willing to work hard enough. Many Americans believe that the only obstacle to things getting better is “not trying hard enough.” Americans also believe that a personal lack of determination or effort can be fixed. Other cultures may believe more in fate (“what will be will be”). When something bad happens, some members of these cultures believe it was fated to happen, must be accepted, and cannot be changed.

7. Americans are so impatient!
Americans believe that if things take a long time to do, they won’t be able to do enough of them. Many Americans believe that more and faster is better. They do not like to stand in line and wait, and they originated fast food. Americans believe that getting things done (and doing them quickly) may be more important than other things. Many other cultures believe that slower is better and that building and maintaining relationships takes priority over getting things done at the expense of relationships.

Links - 3rd May 2025 (1 [including Parenting])

Meme - Coleman Bee: "The most satisfying part of this is that its always liberals doing it"
"As more Americans go 'no contact' with their parents, they live out a dilemma at the heart of Shakespeare's 'King Lear'"
Ashley De Silva: "I cut off both of my parents and it's the best decision I have ever made!"

Parenting books aren’t the solution, they’re actually the problem - "My parenting style flapped around like a windsock in a hurricane, as one childcare guru superseded another. Every change of direction eroded what little confidence I had in my own instincts; and this, in turn, kept me scurrying back to the bookshelf in search of guidance. I ended up – as I remain – confused, irresolute and inconsistent. Not just from reading the wrong books, but from reading any at all."

Katharine Birbalsingh: Gentle middle-class parenting can be harmful - "Parenting guidance written by the middle class is destroying child-rearing among the working class, according to a prominent head teacher. Katharine Birbalsingh said parents should stop giving their children choices in food and clothes and should embrace being authority figures. She decried the impossibility of finding traditional parenting books, such as those from the 1960s, that gave parents permission to tell their children what to do and teach them right from wrong. Birbalsingh, who runs Michaela Community School in Wembley and is often described as Britain’s strictest head teacher, also criticised parents who did not teach their children to read and count. “The culture and the language that’s being used means parents feel that they’re not in a position of authority over their child,” Birbalsingh, 52, said. “If you’re looking for books to give you advice on what to do as a parent, it’s almost impossible to access the kind of advice you would have gotten 50, 60 years ago. The stuff you’ll get nowadays will be much more along the lines of gentle parenting, being friends with your children, not holding them to account. It will be written from the point of view allowing them to choose to lead their own feeding. “That same idea goes through everything. So when they’re older in school, is it child-centred learning where the child is leading the learning — or is it the adult who’s the authority in the room leading the learning?” She added: “When it comes to tantrums and teaching them right from wrong — even just that language of teaching them right from wrong — you’re not going to come across that, it will be very much about understanding the child, communicating with the child’s needs.” Books from decades ago would have given parents more agency and more of an understanding of “having dominion” over their child, she said. Modern parents, Birbalsingh claimed, had “been infantilised”. This phenomenon has been partly shaped by parenting literature and general advice... “Middle-class parents might then say, ‘well, that doesn’t happen to us’. If you are able to afford a nanny, or if you have two parents in the home, you might get away with some gentle parenting. But for families that are under financial pressure, social pressure, don’t have two parents in the home, they simply aren’t able to do what you might be able to get away with,” she said. “And the culture that is created by this literature, written by middle-class people — they don’t realise the absolute destruction that it causes for the working-class family.”... Fathers have a big influence by being stricter than mothers but are also more fun and adventurous, she said, although she suggested that either parent could take that role. “There needs to be a different dynamic when you’re bringing up children. There cannot just be one dynamic. It’s the same in school. You’ll always have a good cop and a bad cop with the teachers — it’s a role that we play all the time.” Parents who wanted their child to succeed had to teach them at home, she said. On social media Birbalsingh said she was regularly told by parents: “That’s not my job, that’s the teacher’s job.”
Clearly, she is abusive, favours inflicting trauma on children and deserves to have any kids she might have go no contact and put her in a nursing home

The cruelty of gentle parenting - "Gentle parenting, or conscious parenting, professes to foster compassion and emotional self-understanding in a child. It’s about respecting the emotions of a child and the motivations behind those emotions. If a child has a tantrum, hits, or generally misbehaves, it is because she is frustrated — and a parent’s job is to address the root cause of the child’s frustrations. A child should be understood, never punished. This is because for a gentle parent, children aren’t bad. They aren’t even neutral. They are inherently good. As a mother myself to two teenagers, this is news. Punishment, in the gentle mindset, focuses the attention on an unnatural consequence rather than on the motivations for behaviour. No motivation is bad, because no feeling originates in one’s selfishness, one’s greed, or one’s desire to dominate. Anger and inappropriate behaviour are caused by frustration: the frustration of not being understood, of not being able to accomplish what one wishes, of not being able to freely do what one wants. When a child experiences a curb to their will, the parent needs to offer comfort. Instead of punishment, a child should face the “natural consequences” of her choices. For instance, if a child refuses to go to sleep, this means that she suffers the natural consequence of getting tired and cranky. A natural consequence of my own kids acting cranky is that I might lose my shit on them, but I don’t get the impression that gentle parents are encouraged to act naturally. This brings us back to the insufferable tone of voice that gentle parents all seem to use with children, particularly those millennial mom influencers on social media. My aversion to it is that there is a fake niceness to their wheedling that anyone can see through, including most four-year-olds. It is patronising, and reveals a deep annoyance with children but prohibits any kind of genuine expression of it. One can’t get angry with a child because he is not doing anything bad because he is inherently good. What is needed is to redirect his natural self-expression to a more socially accepted choice, one that will result in Mommy speaking to you with more authentic niceness. Gentle parenting flattens the human experience into a series of choice options, none of which reflect any natural goodness or badness in the child, but which instead represent optimal or less optimal outcomes. This is crude behaviourist psychology, treating the human as a kind of input-output machine. Under this model, gentle parenting ignores the depth and complexity of a child’s soul — including the baseness therein — and, because it ignores it, the technique also fails to nurture the depth of a child’s soul, resulting in, unsurprisingly, children who have shallow souls. A child is denied her full humanity as a moral agent, and treated not as an equal, but as somehow less than fully, richly, terribly human. In short, as the little shits they are, yet having a spark of the divine. Just like Mom... Since gentle parenting has no capacity for talking to a child about wickedness, guilt, and punishment, it also has no ability to speak about redemption... the real problem with gentle parenting is that it removes moral freedom from a child because it refuses to accept the moral depth of a child. Punishment is unnecessary because the child is never bad, merely misunderstood. While gentle parenting concedes that a child’s behaviour might be less or more appropriate, well-socialised, and safe, it doesn’t concede that a child’s motivations might originate in wickedness just as easily as goodness. Nor does it accept that a child’s will should be curbed because it is often corrupted in its desires, not simply frustrated. In neglecting the dark corners of a child’s soul, gentle parenting does children a disservice. For the fact is that most children know that they’re sometimes bad, and that they sometimes do things out of malice, spite, and greed... the job of the parent is not to prevent any potential “trauma”, it is to love the child even when they are bad, and to punish them, and most importantly to forgive them. A child can’t understand the lightness of forgiveness without understanding first that one needs it... Since the age of Shakespeare, most of our great literary villains have had depth, reasons for their villainy, motivations that we can sympathise with, even be attracted to. Yet we can also see that they’re villainous because they choose to be. Shakespeare gives his villains and his tragic heroes dignity by granting them their awful humanity. And he shows that it is only because his villains do wicked things willingly that they can be redeemed... Ironically, it is the avoidance of punishment that may very well cause anxiousness in the child, for the work of making oneself more socially appropriate is never done, but punishment has a fixed term"

Gentle parenting is creating little monsters... and I should know - "From what I’ve seen, the approach seems to produce children who disregard adults and have a loose understanding of consequences - which feels like a concerning crop of bandits to have eventually entering society."

Fishermen unravel family mystery after month at sea - "Two men from the Pacific nation of Kiribati who were lost at sea for a month have managed not only to survive, but to unravel a 50-year-old family mystery.  Uein Buranibwe, 53, and Temaei Tontaake, 26, made headlines late last month when they washed ashore in the Marshall Islands after 33 days lost at sea.  They were more than 600 kilometres from home. Their global satellite positioning system had run out of batteries after they left their island on what should have been an 80km trip to get gas.  Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson says the men found much-needed food and water on Namdrik Island.  But he also says that one of the men discovered that his uncle, feared drowned at sea 50 years earlier, had also wound up on the same atoll and married into the community."

Sydney ‘science nerd’ may face jail for importing plutonium in bid to collect all elements of periodic table - "Emmanuel Lidden, 24, will have to wait to learn his sentence after breaching nuclear non-proliferation laws by shipping samples of plutonium to his parents’ suburban Sydney apartment.  Lidden pleaded guilty to offences under Australia’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act that carry a possible 10-year jail sentence, and is due to receive his sentence from the judge Leonie Flannery on 11 April.  The importation sparked a major hazmat alert, with Australian Border Force (ABF) officials, firefighters, police and paramedics all attending the scene in August 2023."

Analysing speed profiles for the estimation of speed on traffic-calmed streets - "This research examines the speed profiles of individual vehicles on traffic-calmed streets in Christchurch, New Zealand, to provide a better understanding of how drivers react to calming devices over an extended street length and to find ways of estimating speeds along such streets. The results indicate that traffic-calmed streets do not necessarily promote low speed environments. It was found that 85th percentile speeds at long distances from calming devices were 45-55 km/h for horizontally deflected streets and 40-45 km/h for vertically deflected streets. The speed hump and the angled slow point produced the biggest speed reductions, while the 2-way mid-block narrowings caused no significant speed changes. The results also show that drivers have different perceptions of the appropriate operating speed at such devices, as evidenced by variations in speeds at the devices. Standard deviations in speed at speed humps and raised angled slow points were smaller than those at speed tables. For multiple devices, larger spacings produced higher speeds between devices. These findings, along with speed-difference relationships and speed-spacing models developed from this research, can aid in the selection of device type and spacing between devices, to improve the effectiveness of traffic calming."
The claim that narrower streets are safer and people drive slower has mixed evidence supporting it

SUMMARY REPORT-Safety Effects of Using Narrow Lanes and Shoulder-Use Lanes to Increase the Capacity of Urban Freeways - "McCasland evaluated two freeway segments in Houston, TX on which narrower lanes and a narrower outside shoulder were used to create an additional travel lane. Reductions in the accident rate per million vehicle-kilometers (veh-km) were found using a Poisson comparison of means test. Urbanik and Bonilla evaluated similar projects on urban freeway segments in California using a two-sample t-test. Statistically significant changes in the accident rate were found for three of the 10 projects evaluated. Two projects experienced statistically significant reductions in the accident rate, but one project experienced a statistically significant increase. In particular, the entire accident rate increase for this project occurred near the downstream end of the segment. There are concerns that both evaluations addressed accident rate rather than accident frequency and did not compensate for regression to the mean, both of which could have distorted the safety benefits... The analysis results indicate that narrow-lane or shoulder-use-lane projects on urban freeways increase accident frequencies for four- to five-lane conversion projects. Such conversions may increase accident frequencies for five- to six-lane conversion projects as well, but the results for those projects were not statistically significant. Because of the different findings for these two types of conversions, the results obtained are difficult to generalize to urban freeways as a whole.  One possible explanation for the increase in accident frequency on conversion projects is that the added lanes in most of the projects were HOV lanes. Speed differentials between the main lanes and HOV lanes on freeways have the potential to increase sideswipe and lane-changing accidents, although this effect has not been satisfactorily quantified in the literature. The crash type results in this study indicated a nonsignificant increase in sideswipe collisions on the four- to five-lane conversions, but a decrease on the five- to six-lane conversions. If this is indeed true, it may help explain why the results differ between the two classes.  The results also suggest that, at least for the five- to six-lane conversions, the effect of the project may have been to dissipate congestion upstream of the treatment site by removing the treatment site as a bottleneck. It is possible that the effects of the four- to five-lane conversions have been partially because of the displacement of a bottleneck as well. The bottleneck may have been transferred to a location downstream of the treatment site, with a corresponding increase in accident frequency at that location and possibly within the treatment site itself.  In summary, the findings are more complex than expected. Differences may exist in the crash-related effects of lane conversion treatments at four-lane versus five-lane sites. The differences between road classes observed may be explained by differences in traffic operations (e.g., speeds, lane-changing behavior) that could not be analyzed in this study. In addition, the observed increases in accident frequency cannot necessarily be attributed to the use of narrower lanes or the conversion of a shoulder to a travel lane. The use of the added lanes as HOV lanes, which may introduce a difference in speed between adjacent lanes, may be another explanation for the increase in accidents. The analysis results also suggest that the conversion projects may decrease accident frequencies upstream of the project and increase accident frequencies within and downstream of the project because the projects may result in the relocation of a traffic operational bottleneck. These various effects on safety are confounded in the data and could not be separated in this study."

Merissa Hansen on X - "🚨BREAKING🚨 Leaked documents reveal how riots are organized and funded through leftist NGO’s"

Romanticising 'sickness' dooms us to a national cycle of dysfunction - "In a little over a decade, illness and suffering have gone from being a negative whose inconvenience the average person tried to manage and overcome as privately as possible, to the centrepiece of a person’s identity.  Sickness has become a power tool, a game piece to play, and a shield: once you declare your badge of honour in the form of a diagnosis of ADHD or PMT, it’s open sesame. Nobody can counter you because of… neurodiversity or hormones or whatever it may be. No wonder the staggering rates of sickness benefits claimed by young people are breaking Britain’s finances. Somehow, as woke ideology has marched across internet users’ consciousness, phrases like “my trauma” have become utterly commonplace, obscuring, as so many of these overused labels do, the serious traumas of people who have experienced genuinely terrible things, from wars and domestic abuse to the terror and despair of being stalked by a mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Because the seriousness of some mental states has been lost amid all this froth, emotional wellbeing is packaged up as information to share before communication is to take place. I was struck by an advert for the “I’m OK” bee enamel brooch by the artist Gary Floyd, which encapsulates “the often unexpressed sentiment that many individuals face when asked about their emotional wellbeing… It’s OK not to be OK sometimes.” Really? Who knew?  Experts now worry that amid all this reaching for the I’m Not OK button, TikTok’s myriad of “neurodiversity” influencers encourages people who might be looking for meaning, identity, a place to hang their anxiety and, of course, a bulletproof get-out-‑of-jail-free card to self-diagnose with a disorder.  This is worrying for many reasons, including that in their pure form, such disorders need to be taken seriously with specialist treatment, not just deployed for sympathy points. The case of ADHD is one of the most prominently pushed online, romanticised and rendered “cute”.  Researchers carried out a study with 2,843 undergraduate psychology students on how they perceived the videos. This showed that “people who watched a large number of ADHD-related TikToks also tended to overestimate ADHD’s prevalence by as much as 10 times and think more negatively about their own symptoms”. Scientists expressed concern that the videos – which have had more than half a billion views combined – portray ADHD (and other disorders, such as mild autism) as “lively, loveable and almost entertaining”...  Because of the way the umbrella ideology of “diversity” has spread and embedded itself, there is a pervasive belief that pathology is power. Diversity, after all, is about making sure marginalised groups are not “under-represented” (a spurious term if ever there was one). What this translates to is giving anyone who isn’t “privileged” – namely straight, white, non-trans people – priority in all things so as to stamp down any “systemic” phobias and “isms”.  Translated into the domain of health, it’s obvious where this is going. Just as prioritising tick-box criteria – skin colour, sexual orientation and so on – has been devastating for the quality of education, politics and cultural life, so the celebration of pathology and the zest for auto-diagnosis that it invites is decimating the ability to even interact with other people.  When members of a society are incentivised to cry sickness – an unanswerable claim to being “marginal” too – it becomes impossible to rely on anything operating properly, from the legal system and businesses to hospitals and family gatherings. Because if everyone and everything can be stopped in their tracks by someone’s pain, trauma, disorder or negative feelings – lest the latter be railroaded and the person further traumatised and “unheard” – then nothing can work, no matter how important. Friends can’t speak freely with each other. Plans can be cancelled at short notice for any excuse because “my pathology made me”.  This is vexing enough on the personal level, but writ large over the country as a whole, it is devastating our economy and our spirit. But as Britain groans, the TikTokers are laughing all the way to the bank."

Chris Selley: Two recent elections violated the Constitution, but don't expect consequences - "the court ruled that the $600,000 limit on third-party spending in the 12 months leading up to an election “create(s) an absolute disproportionality in the broader political discourse” that favours political parties over third-party actors. It “deprives voters of a broad range of views and perspectives on issues during a critical period in the democratic cycle,” Justice Andromache Karakatsanis wrote in the majority decision . “This undermines the voter’s right to an informed vote and to meaningful participation in the electoral process.” The decision was cheered by the Ontario Federation of Labour and the NDP alike . Now, Ontario’s government isn’t what you would call slavishly, or even identifiably, conservative. Still, it has been odd seeing Premier Doug Ford’s opponents to his left cheering a decision that invites more money into Canadian politics. They’re usually the ones arguing for less. It was barely a decade ago, and only in her political death throes, that Ford’s predecessor Kathleen Wynne got around to banning corporate and union donations in Ontario — something the federal Liberals, also circling the drain, had done roughly a decade earlier... The Citizens United case landed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in December 2007. The Supreme Court issued its ruling in January 2010, roughly 15 months later. The Working Families Coalition case took more than three years to meander its way through Canada’s pantomime yawn of a justice system. The Supreme Court heard the appeal May 21 and 22 of last year. It took them 10 months to come up with a ruling! It’s routine that Canadian court decisions, especially respecting to government overreach, come down long after they can provide any remedy for the parties involved — and far too late for future politicians to feel any deterrent effect against overstepping their authority. If we’re to be badly governed, and if bad governments are to be badly overseen by courts, could we at least make it quicker?"

Jonathan Kay on X - "The student union at @ubcokanagan (part of @UBC) denied an application for a student Conservative Party Club. And amazingly, the student union’s VP Internal flat out admitted that the decision was made on the basis of partisan political considerations"

Conservative Club ratified after UBC Okanagan Students' Union review - "UPDATE: March 13, 10:20 p.m.
The UBC Okanagan Students' Union Board of Directors met on Thursday evening to review it's decision to deny the Okanagan Conservative Club's application to be an official campus club.   "After careful consideration, the Board has ratified the club, ensuring that the decision was made in alignment with our values of equity, inclusion and respect for all students," said the Students' Union...
UPDATE: March 13, 3:15 p.m.Politicians, campus clubs and members of the public have spoken out to condemn the UBC Okanagan Student Union's (SUO) decision to deny official club status to the UBCO Conservatives Club.   According to an email from the Student Union that was leaked on X, the Conservative Club's application was rejected after "concerns were raised regarding the political stance of the party your club would represent," despite the fact that there is a Young Liberals Club at UBCO.   The directors suggested that the students applying to form the Conservatives Club "take a more neutral stance to ensure inclusivity," saying that the SUO's concerns relate to certain views associated with the political party could make UBCO students feel excluded or unwelcome.  The Young Liberals of Canada Okanagan, are now standing in support of an official campus Conservative Club.  "There is indefensible hypocrisy evident in their supporting our Liberal club to exist. The freedom to express diverse opinions on our campus is crucial. It is important for all of us to be exposed to and challenged by ideas we may not agree with," said the Young Liberals of Canada Okanagan in a statement on Instagram...
Original:
A leaked email posted to X regarding the Student Union at UBC Okanagan has caught the attention of B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad.  On Wednesday night (March 12), Jonathan Kay, an advisor for the free speech union of Canada, posted a screenshot to X of an email from the Students' Union UBC Okanagan (SUO) rejecting a student's application to create their own Conservative Party Club in the union.  The reasons for denying the application for a Conservative Party Club on campus had to do with some directors' concerns with certain views of the party, “particularly regarding the Black and LGBTQ+ communities - could make students from these groups feel excluded or unwelcome.”   It was suggested that the club take a more neutral stance to ensure inclusivity.   The email also stated that there was no appeal process for the board’s decision at this time. However, since the email was leaked it is now being reported that the SUO has been called into an emergency board meeting on the matter.   The email also stated that there was no appeal process for the board’s decision at this time. However, since the email was leaked it is now being reported that the SUO has been called into an emergency board meeting on the matter.   In a SUO release, it stated it remains committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse campus environment where all students feel respected and heard.   The SUO is non-partisan and claims it supports open dialogue and differing perspectives."

_s.a.m.e.m.e.m.e_ on X - "One of the less talked about but craziest parts of the Biden admin was when a clear recession hit in 2022 and there was a full court press from the media asking "what even *is* a recession, anyway?" along with Wikipedia and THE DICTIONARY changing the definition of the word"
Sherman McCoy on X - "The Fallout subreddit removed a post from the _creator of Fallout_ saying that Fallout was not anti-capitalism, but anti-war bc it offended the mods sensibilities Ever since The Last Jedi, Internet content moderation exists for the 5,000 leftmost people in the world. Once they removed the “bots” from The Last Jedi’s RT audience score and replaced it with a fake number they realized they could do anything. Redefine “recession.” Cover up Biden’s senility. Anything."

Guardian Media Group Forced to Apologize, Pay Damages to Douglas Murray over Racism Smear - "The Guardian Media Group was forced to apologize to Douglas Murray on Tuesday for falsely accusing him of “supporting violent racist attacks” during anti-immigration protests in the U.K. last year, after the British author won his libel suit against the media company in a London court."

Douglas Murray on X - "I should have noted that the Guardian group (which had to apologise and retract their falsehoods in court this morning) left X last year because of alleged ‘disinformation’ on this platform…"
Damn Daily Mail and Fox News spreading lies, falsehoods and disinformation!

Basil the Great on X - "In honour of @DouglasKMurray winning against the Guardian Group in court and because they've been sadly missed on X since they left. I thought it time we took a stroll down memory lane and revisit some of the very worst from the Guardian Feel free to add your own 🧵"

Insurrection Barbie on X - "I hate to tell you Democrats, but the economy will be just fine. I guess it’s back to everybody’s Hitler as a campaign strategy for 2026."
Mike Engleman🇺🇲 on X - "It's all they have. Hate, identity politics, and racism."

SYIP extremely overhyped : r/SingaporeEats - "Most cafes here are overhyped.  They're just variations of Melbourne-style coffee served with the same generic Western menu set in Taiwanese or Korean inspired decor with the same Spotify 'cozy cafe' playlist, with the only local touch being an ondeh ondeh cake they probably source from the same place as everyone else."

Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche - "Language is universal, but it has few indisputably universal characteristics, with cross-linguistic variation being the norm. For example, languages differ greatly in the number of syllables they allow, resulting in large variation in the Shannon information per syllable. Nevertheless, all natural languages allow their speakers to efficiently encode and transmit information. We show here, using quantitative methods on a large cross-linguistic corpus of 17 languages, that the coupling between language-level (information per syllable) and speaker-level (speech rate) properties results in languages encoding similar information rates (~39 bits/s) despite wide differences in each property individually: Languages are more similar in information rates than in Shannon information or speech rate. These findings highlight the intimate feedback loops between languages’ structural properties and their speakers’ neurocognition and biology under communicative pressures. Thus, language is the product of a multiscale communicative niche construction process at the intersection of biology, environment, and culture."
i.e. In long winded languages like French, people speak faster

Links - 2nd May 2025 (2 - Luigi Mangione)

What we know about Luigi Mangione, suspect charged in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing

Meme - Dr. Dad, PhD 🔄🔼◀️🔽▶️ @GarrettPetersen: "Wow, get a load of this guy trying to help the cops catch someone who shot and killed a man."
"class traitor"
"the byciclist should kill you next"
"Get a job loser"
"absolutely disgusting"
Meme - "god you're such a fucking loser"
"I hope you get shot next actually"
"Holy shit imagine being this much of a bitch"
Meme - "Get a load of this fucking loser"
"Snitch"
"Oh you're next"
Meme - f @leftygambler: "This ain't gross to y'all? All reports make it seem like the killer is NOT on a spree ora threat to the public -they accomplished the goal and left the scene. This man is ing both the NYPD and the private health insurance industry. Must be real fun at parties"
All the left wingers are justifying murder because in their worldview, the CEO was a murderer too for denying claims. So if government-run healthcare denies me some care and some people die because of this rationing (whether due to delays or denial of some type of treatment, e.g. new, unproven or disproven), presumably we can murder bureaucrats and politicians

Meme - Soyjak: "THE DEATH PENALTY IS WRONG AND INHUMANE!!! WE SHOULDN'T TRUST INSTITUTIONS TO SAY WHO LIVES AND WHO DIES!"
"EXECUTE JUSTICE, NOT PEOPLE."
*Luigi*
Soyjak: "DEPOSE MY BUTTHOLE DADDY!!!"

Meme - Shay 🌈🌸✨ @ShayWoulahan: "So it looks like you’re not actually against death being used to exterminate immoral actors but rather you just don’t think the rape and murder of women warrants death, and that executions should be carried out by vigilantes rather than after a due process. You’re not against the death penalty in principle, but disagree with how it should be carried out and who is worthy of it."
marina @marinadovexo: "i need the healthcare ceo assassin carnally"
marina 🌞 4/7 🎂 @marinadovexo: "a four year old could understand this dissenting opinion like what is yalls excuse for being ignorant of how your own constitution functions? every argument yall make is easily deflected by a literal SCOTUS justice yall are not that smart!"
"Stephen Breyer. Against the Death Penalty"

Meme - Edward Ongweso Jr @bigblackjacobin: "This is how I found out *greeting card cover with happy star, colourful balloons and thumbs up. 'Healthcare Executive DOWN!'*
lunch-pail elite @shrink-e-dink.bsky.social: "the "c" in ACAB includes the C-suite"
Commies want to murder everyone else

Meme - "Know the work rules"
Luigi: "I literally just murdered someone"
Woman: "My Hero! <3"
RFK Jr: "Food companies are poisoning us"
Woman: "Biggot! Wacko Conspiracy theorist!"

Calif. punk rockers call for an 'army of Luigis' at Coachella set - "Shortly after ending a blistering rendition of “Coup D’Etat” during their Coachella set, Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris made a clarification to the moshing crowd. Although that last song ended with the words “kill all,” he made a point to say that the band does not condone what it describes, including kidnapping government leaders for ransom and leading a coup. “That song, that last line, ends with ‘kill all.’ That’s a pretty f—king ugly statement,” Morris said. “In ugly times. Do not think that we encourage that.”  Then, Morris went in a different direction. “What we do encourage — what would be totally f—king happening — would be an army of Luigis,” he said, in reference to Luigi Mangione, who is currently facing both federal and New York state charges for the alleged killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year"

Nick Sortor on X - "🚨 HOLY CRAP! Hannity just WRECKED ex-WaPo reporter Taylor Lorenz for gushing over Luigi Mangione and REFUSING to condemn violence against Trump and Elon Musk  This was FIREY! 🔥  Lorenz says she is JOYFUL about the effects of the healthcare CEO’s assassination, even calling Luigi a “morally good man”  No matter how hard he pushed, Hannity could not get Lorenz to condemn the assassination.
HANNITY: “I’m trying to understand: what is missing in your soul to not understand this was a father and husband?”"
Her refusal to answer the question was as impressive as any politician's

Journalist Taylor Lorenz Posts Pic of Blue Cross CEO After UnitedHealthcare Killing - "Taylor Lorenz -- a controversial journalist formerly of the Washington Post -- shared a photo of the Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO on the same day UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered.  Here's the deal ... Lorenz has posted multiple times to Bluesky and X in the aftermath of a gunman shooting and killing Thompson on a New York City street early Wednesday morning -- starting when Blue Cross Blue Shield announced it wouldn't cover anesthesia for the entirety of some surgeries... She's also reshared other threatening posts ... including one asking "hypothetically" if sending CEOs emails that say "you're next" could be considered an actionable threat. Of course, Taylor's not alone in her sentiment ... with many online applauding the shooter for taking out the rich CEO -- including more than 30K people who posted laugh-emojis at UnitedHealthcare's memorial post for Thompson."
It's only irresponsible and dangerous if it threatens the left wing agenda

Meme - Alan Cole @AlanMCole: "I'm trying as hard as I can, and I just can't figure out why Taylor Lorenz is so into Luigi Mangione but not Cody Balmer. If anything, Cody Balmer's motive is much more related to Taylor's own causes and passions.  Help me out here."

Meme - Luigi: "WORE A MASK AND SHOT A MAN IN THE BACK. BECOMES A LIBERAL HERO."
Daniel Penny: "DEFENDED INNOCENT CITIZENS FROM A RAGING LUNATIC SPEWING VIOLENT THREATS. LIBERALS WANT HIM GO TO JAIL."

Meme - "Family is temporary. Hoes are forever"
FearBuck @FearedBuck: "Luigi Mangione did not have any family present in the courtroom, but about 24 women waited in the cold for public seats in the courtroom to support him, many wearing face masks and some appearing visibly emotional as he entered the courtroom"

Handwritten notes found in Luigi Mangione's argyle socks at court, violating his 'special treatment': Prosecutors - "Luigi Mangione violated the "special treatment" he was afforded for his last court appearance when handwritten notes were concealed inside a pair of argyle socks he was allowed to wear... [He] was given special accommodations for his "fashion needs" when he was allowed to change out of his jail-issued clothing before his Feb. 21 court appearance... The defense team gave a court officer a bag of clothes, which included a new pair of argyle socks wrapped around cardboard, the filing said.  "Secreted in the cardboard were two personal heart-shaped notes, one addressed to an unknown person named 'Joan' and the other to Luigi stating in part 'know there are thousands of people wishing you luck'"... "In spite of this, the defendant was permitted to wear the argyle socks, which he first changed into and later changed out of because he felt that 'they did not look good'"... Prosecutors also said in Wednesday's court filing that Mangione does not need his own "specially formulated laptop" in jail because he "fails to show a necessity" to receive one.  Mangione's attorneys asked that he be provided with a laptop "modified to the detention center’s regulations" so he can view videos, photos and other evidence... Few inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are given laptops.  Prosecutors said Mangione "has ample access to desktop computers" that he can use to review evidence, conduct legal research, send emails and draft motions.  "Ironically, the defense repeats at every opportunity that defendant is being treated differently than other defendants similarly situated. Yet, that's precisely what the defense seeks -- special treatment for defendant, without circumstances that warrant it," Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said... the backpack Mangione was carrying when he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after the murder was full of items that could suggest he intended to remain on the run and, possibly, kill again. The backpack had a gun, a Glock magazine, 9 mm cartridges and a silencer, along with a knife, phone charger, duct tape, passport, zip ties, clothes, a computer and handwritten notes, the automatic discovery form said.  Authorities also found receipts for items purchased at a CVS and for registration at a New York City hostel under the name Mark Rosario, which matches the name on a fake New Jersey driver's license Mangione allegedly carried."

Drew Pavlou on X - "Brian Thompson pulled himself up from nothing - just a normal guy from a working class family in a rural area to CEO of America's largest healthcare provider. Only to be executed by some rich kid whose grandad owned golf courses and a radio station. I stand with Brian Thompson"

Meme - "A TALE OF TWO CRIMES
DANIEL PENNY
26 YO
EX MARINE
COLLEGE DROPOUT
CRIME/MOTIVE
ACCIDENTAL/TO PROTECT OTHERS
VICTIM
BLACK
DRUG ADDICTED, VIOLENT CRIMINAL
PUBLIC OPINION
RACIST VILLAIN
LUIGI MANGIONE
26 YO
HIGH SCHOOL VALEDICTORIAN
IVY LEAGUE GRAD
ANTI-CAPITALIST
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST
CRIME/MOTIVE
PURPOSEFUL/TO MURDER
VICTIM
WHITE
EDUCATED, SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN
PUBLIC OPINION
HANDSOME HERO OF THE PEOPLE"

Albert Lee on X - "In America, you and your doctor can both agree that you need a surgery but you have to get permission from a third-party for-profit insurance company or it can't be paid for. It's called freedom."
Left wingers are going to be very upset when they realise that government-run healthcare doesn't pay for everything a doctor prescribes
If a doctor says a patient needs a medical treatment that costs $1 billion with unproven efficacy and questionable benefits and a health insurance company refuses to approve it, it shows that the health insurance system is broken

What medicines are covered by insurance? | Government.nl - "The standard package covers most medicines prescribed by your general practitioner or consultant. In some cases you may have to pay part of the cost yourself. Or your insurer may only provide full cover for the cheapest version of a drug. The cost of medicines that are covered by your insurance policy is first deducted from your excess.
Health insurers only provide cover for registered drugs that are included in the Medicines Reimbursement System...
Most health insurers only provide cover for the cheapest version of a medicine"
The US sucks and needs to learn from Europe. They'd never deny coverage for a prescription there

Meme - Dr. Maddkap, Werepsychologist: "My doctor prescribed a medication that I need. Why the hell do we allow there to be anything beyond that in the approval process? MY DOCTOR, who I have seen for years, who is a CREDENTIALED and LICENSED PRACTIONER, has developed a treatment plan for ME. How did we ever allow an insurance company to say "Mmmm no, sorry, we don't agree. We won't pay for that." It's your JOB TO PAY FOR IT. It's literally why have insurance. It should just be illegal for an insurance company to refuse to cover something your doctor prescribes."
Ann Ashenfelder Littell: "The problem on the other side is that drug companies pay people to visit doctors, give them samples, and try to convince them to prescribe the new, expensive medication. Some drug companies even give presents or kickbacks to doctors who prescribe certain amounts of the new drug. So, doctors may think about some of these newer drugs before considering older drugs that aren't giving them gifts. So, in SOME cases, it insurance companies are trying to get doctors to prescribe older medications, and preferably ones with a generic, because they are MUCH less expensive."

Meme - "It's okay to kill someone that is denying basic human rights with no trial! Scott!"
"Ye..yes Emma. nice... puppies..."
"To me my X-Men! It's time to kill all the baby momma's denying fathers the basic human right to watch their child grow up!"

Meme - MattHagen @MattHagen: "Funny how many Kyle Rittenhouse fans suddenly have changed their opinions on vigilantism."
"SAINT LUIGI"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Missing context: Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges after testifying that he acted in defense. Luigi Mangione would not be able to claim that he acted in self defense."
Left wing logic: the health insurance CEO murdered a lot of people by denying claims, so killing him was justified

Rikki Schlott on X - "Leftist women fetishizing Luigi Mangione are living out a weird, repressed, politicized fantasy of masculinity.  After years of harping on toxic masculinity, shaming men, and stiff-arming chivalry, women on the left have fixated on Mangione because he represents a sort of masculinity they are finally allowed to celebrate, because it’s politically coded as acceptable — anti-capitalist, anti-corporate.  They’ve fancied themselves damsels in distress, held captive by the insurance industry in the cavernous tower of the healthcare system. Mangione is their knight in shining armor, fighting on their behalf, slaying the enemy, taking up arms to defend their cause.  In our age where masculinity is toxic, vigilantism is fetishized."

Luigi Mangione's family operated nursing home empire that was cited for abuse and health violations - "The for-profit Lorien Health Services network, founded by Mangione’s affluent grandparents, touts its nine Maryland homes as idyllic places with the promise of top-class services and amenities that include restaurant-style dining, movie theaters and even beauty spas.    But at least two of the homes have been hit with low ratings by Medicare.gov for health inspections and quality-of-life issues, with one slammed with a warning label over reports of abuse.  The Lorien Nursing and Rehab Center, in Bel Air, was accused of mistreating its patients in several incidents that occurred inside the home, according to an April 2024 inspection by HSS.  The report found that on August 24, 2023, a geriatric nursing assistant (GNA) flung a call bell at a resident who needed help using the bathroom, warning the patient “not to press the button again.” That same day, the GNA was also accused of being too rough when assisting a resident who needed to be turned over in bed, with the staff later medicating the patient with Tylenol for the pain.  While the GNA was fired over the bell-flinging incident, the HHS inspection found that the company failed in its due diligence after reviewing the nurse’s file and finding that they had not completed their annual abuse training since 2020. The report also cited several claims from residents that the nursing staff failed to respond to their calls for assistance in a timely manner, with some waiting nearly an hour to get help...   Overall, the Bel Air facility has been hit with 24 health citations over the last six years, nearly three times more than the national average of 9.6 citations.   Lorien’s Columbia facility, meanwhile, had to pay a $24,680 fine in July following an HHS inspection that found a plethora of health and safety violations in the nursing home.  The July report also recorded a slew of incidents throughout the year in which staff regularly mismanaged patients’ health care needs and failed to communicate with each other, the residents or the families of the residents.  The mismanagement caused moments of distress for the patients, including one incident in which a resident who needed help getting dressed was left alone and naked on a bed when another patient of the opposite gender walked into the room...   The Office of Inspector General for the HSS claimed Lorien “allegedly submitted claims for services provided by an individual impersonating licensed nursing staff, using stolen credentials.”  Officials also said that “after Lorien learned the employee was an imposter and unlicensed, Lorien failed to timely report and return to Medicare and Medicaid payments received for services furnished by the employee.”... The company’s health care violations have received renewed public interest given Mangione’s alleged hatred of the industry flagged in his manifesto, according to police.  “These parasites simply had it coming,” Mangione wrote, according to law enforcement.  In his writings, Mangione railed against the “greed” of private insurers that he accused of putting their profits above the well-being of their clients.  Authorities also found engravings on the bullets used by the assassin, which appear to include the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” — words eerily similar to a 2010 book condemning the insurance business, titled “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.”"

Meme - "Luigi Mangione's family operated nursing home empire that was cited for abuse and health violations"
"United Healthcare won't reimburse us anymore so your inheritance will be smaller than the millions you anticipated. See below: $27,832.81"
Luigi: "WE HAVE NOTHING To Lose BUT our CHAINS"
Crying Soyjak: "YOU'RE A HERO, COMRADE!"

Coddled affluent professional on X - "Luigi is a trust fund schizo who failed at porn and then shot someone to sate his narcissism. I thought it would be hard to outdo George Floyd but the libs have gone and done it."

Meme - Peachy Keenan @KeenanPeachy: "The Democrat's top four heroes in America are now:
1. A murderer named Luigi (gun)
2. A murderer named Karmelo (butcher knife)
3. An MS-13 illegal gang member
4. A Palestinian Hamas supporter"

Luigi Mangione sex tape bombshell as CEO assassin suspect filmed 'at least 20' cinema-style porn videos: 'He wanted to be watched' - "Luigi Mangione allegedly made upwards of 20 highly stylized sex tapes before he was arrested on charges of shooting dead a healthcare CEO in New York City... 'He wanted to be watched. He got off on it. There are at least 20 videos of him having sex.' The person went on to say 'a lot of the girls are too afraid to come forward or tell anyone for fear they might get dragged into his case somehow.'"

Luigi Mangione getting his own musical -- after alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO - "Luigi Mangione will soon be immortalized on a San Francisco stage in a sickening musical comedy glorifying the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO gunman. “Luigi the Musical,” slated to debut at the Taylor Street Theater on June 13, promises a “bold, campy and unafraid” take on the life and times of the man accused of perpetrating an assassination that left two young children without a father. Opening night is already sold out on the official website, which uses the tagline “A story of love, murder and hash browns,” a reference to Mangione scarfing down the McDonald’s menu item before his arrest in Pennsylvania. The official synopsis of the musical calls it, “A wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero.”"

Harvard Is an Islamist Outpost

Harvard Is an Islamist Outpost - WSJ
For decades it nurtured resentful leftists, and antisemitism united them in a common cause.

I taught at Harvard from 1993 through 2014, and I don’t think the federal government’s threats will be effective at changing the university’s culture. Harvard’s leaders don’t yet understand the danger that culture poses to the country or why it required intervention. 

On Sept. 11, 2001, the Islamists of al Qaeda attacked the U.S. in a suicide mission that used American planes as their instruments of destruction. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas Islamists exploited Israel’s openness by invading the country, massacring civilians and kidnapping others. Jihadists use these new forms of warfare against those they can’t conquer by force. What concerns us here is their capture of elite American schools as outposts.

Harvard became directly implicated on Oct. 8, 2023, when the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a statement endorsed by more than 30 student groups that asserted “the Israeli regime” was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Students for Justice in Palestine declared Oct. 12 a “day of resistance” and had a “toolkit” ready for the encampments and demonstrations that spread beyond campus. SJP declared that Palestinian students were “PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” In 2001 there were no such support groups for Islamists at Harvard.  

Harvard was a soft target for foreign penetration, having developed an adversarial relationship to the American government and increasingly to the country itself. Veterans of the antiwar movement banished the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps from Harvard in the 1970s and kept it off campus for 40 years. When memories of Vietnam faded, the military’s exclusion of open homosexuals became the high-minded excuse for shutting out recruiters—but not government funding. This selective antigovernment policy was reflected in the curriculum, which took an increasingly critical approach to America and Western civilization. 

Meanwhile, the 1960s civil-rights laws that outlawed discrimination failed to satisfy those who sought equal outcomes. The university responded with group preferences in hiring for women and minorities. That elevated grievance groups and put Harvard solidly in the activist “progressive” camp. With rare exceptions, there would be no more hiring of conservatives or teaching their “reactionary” ideas. 

By the 1990s, black campus groups were hosting Afrocentric and Nation of Islam speakers who agitated against whites and Jews. In 1992 Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. warned: “This is anti-Semitism from the top down, engineered and promoted by leaders who affect to be speaking for a larger resentment.” To this grievance coalition were added groups of Marxists, anticapitalists, anticolonialists, and anti-imperialists. The 2011 Occupy Wall Street encampments were allowed to close Harvard Yard for several months. 

All these demonstrators lacked a common cause until they united around the handiest target in the history of civilization under the guise of liberating the Palestinians. Students who had been kept from marching for their country and warned against insulting every other minority jumped at the chance to attack a politically approved target.

In a letter to the Harvard community, President Alan Garber acknowledges valid concerns about rising antisemitism and pledges that Harvard will continue to fight “hate” with the urgency it demands and federal law requires. Harvard’s record provides ample evidence against this claim. Campus coalitions for jihad count on liberal administrators to accommodate their assault.  

The most useful of many political functions of anti-Zionism—as with antisemitism before Jews returned to their homeland—is building coalitions of grievance and blame against a small nation with a universally inflated and mostly negative image. This galvanizing enmity has united the pan-Arab and Islamist alliance against Israel since 1948. It powered the red-green coalition at the United Nations and seeds anti-Israel campus coalitions that are anti-American in all but name. Attacking only the Jews—now only Israel—is its key to becoming the world’s most powerful antidemocratic ideology. 

The goal of destroying Israel remains central to Arab and Islamist identity and was admitted to Harvard along with some foreign students and investors. The Education Department reports the university received more than $100 million from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bangladesh between January 2020 and October 2024.

In 2007 I began warning successive presidents and deans that academic standards were being violated by the substitution of anti-Israel propaganda for a comprehensive program in the Center for Middle East Studies. They acknowledged the problem but refused to address it. As long as other institutions took Muslim money and ignored the war against the Jews, why should Harvard be holier than the pope?

Oct. 7, like Kristallnacht in 1938, forced some people to confront what they had tried to ignore. Students and faculty celebrating the atrocities against Israel could have been perpetrating them, given the chance. A committee of the new Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance investigated the campus “hatred” and found it “worse than we had anticipated.” Ideological anti-Zionism governed not only the Center for Middle East Studies but also the School of Public Health and the Divinity School and figured in departments ranging alphabetically from anthropology and African American Studies to the Weatherhead Institute of International Affairs, and academically from music to the medical school. Harvard undertook a similar review only under pressure from Congress.  

The university had taken steps to prevent campus unrest—by curtailing the Jewish and Christian presence. The Semitic Museum, established by Jacob Schiff in 1907 to make the same point as the Abraham Accords about the common sources of the three religions, was renamed the Museum of the Ancient Near East. The only vestige of Schiff’s intention remains in carved stone above the entrance. Archeological projects in Israel were discontinued and museum collections that once centered on the Bible and Jerusalem were refocused on the pyramids. The Harvard Divinity School restructured its curriculum to reflect that it was no longer a Christian or Unitarian seminary but a “pluralistic” religious-studies program. 

Just when Harvard’s proud heritage should have been strengthened, biblical studies were degraded, and its traditions put on the defensive—Christianity even more than Judaism. Islamism was on the rise against America in decline. 

There are still good people and programs at Harvard, and I am grateful for my time there. In an ideal world the government wouldn’t micromanage universities. But if Harvard shirks its responsibility to shore up the foundations of America and allows itself to be hijacked by an Islamist-inspired grievance coalition, why would it expect any support from the government?