Links - 22nd May 2020 (1)

Why Is Everyone So Scared of Disney? (Column) - "a single film corporation now seems to own everything worth having — at least, in stark capitalistic blockbuster terms. Disney owns Marvel, it owns “Star Wars,” it owns “Avatar,” it owns the fabled animated features that it has been using to mint live-action-remake megahits as if it were printing money. What’s still on the table — “Godzilla”? The shards of “Harry Potter”? The fumbling-out-of-the-vampire-gate Dark Universe? You can make the case that the merger of Disney and Fox, when you boil out of the feathers, really comes down to the merger of Marvel and “Star Wars.” That sounds like the merger of Christmas and the Fourth of July, with Halloween thrown in as a bonus... The movie studios of Hollywood ruthlessly compete, but where they’ve colluded is in the creation of a brash hypnotic fantasy-based theme-park movie culture that’s the enemy of organic cinematic intimacy.And the ultimate colluder, of course, is the audience. We the people. It’s become de rigueur for film critics to grouse on a regular basis, in their reviews, about the state of blockbuster cinema. And while I’m as guilty as anyone, what I don’t share is the left-wing perception that the movie industry has become the aesthetic equivalent of an oppressive political force, jamming all these junk sequels and reboots and fantasy narcotics down our throats. To a degree, I blame them, but I really blame us, the moviegoers, who vote, week in and week out, with our ticket dollars. We exist in a democratic landscape of entertaining ourselves to death. We have chosen the post-“Star Wars” universe we now live in. To blame the studios seems, to me, a fundamentally misplaced sentiment... the reason they’ve “got it all” isn’t that Disney owns the future. It’s that it owns the past. And if you look closely, you’ll realize that the crucial power surge of the past is already looming up behind it.This may sound wildly counterintuitive, but the properties that Disney has made the foundation of its new empire have already, to a large degree, been strip mined"

Facebook Can Be Forced to Delete Content Worldwide, E.U.’s Top Court Rules - The New York Times - "Europe’s top court said on Thursday that individual countries can order Facebook to take down posts, photographs and videos not only in their own countries but elsewhere, in a ruling that extends the reach of the region’s internet-related laws beyond its own borders... Facebook said in a statement that the European court’s decision “undermines the longstanding principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country.” It added that the judgment raised questions about freedom of expression and “the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country.”... Europe has long been more proactive than other regions — including the United States — in passing laws that regulate the internet... French regulators have tested the expansion of privacy laws beyond the European Union. Germany has adopted strict laws to remove hate speech from social media platforms. Britain is considering new restrictions against “harmful” internet content"
Presumably those who think Brexit is a bad idea, and those who say Mark Zuckerberg only cares about money and is an authoritarian because he doesn't want to censor Facebook, love this. And when authoritarian governments use this as a precedent to do the same, presumably they will blame Mark Zuckerberg for only caring about money and cravenly bowing to them

Japan rewrites the rules on using escalators and urges people to stop walking up - "The new rule came after the Japan Elevator Association, 51 railway companies and the operators of Tokyo's Narita and Haneda airports banded together for the sake of safety.A total of 3,865 people were admitted to hospitals after accidents on escalators between 2011 and 2013...  The majority of the injuries were caused by people falling over or being knocked over by someone walking up an escalator, according to a report by the Consumer Affairs Agency.Traditionally, people in Tokyo stand on the left side of an escalator and leave the right side clear for other people to ascend or descend. In Osaka, for a reason that has never been definitively determined, people stand on the right and leave the left side clear...  The Japanese convention of standing to one side on an escalator was copied from wartime London, according to a professor of cultural anthropology.Masakazu Toki told the newspaper that Londoners learned to stand to one side during the war in order to let people who were in a hurry past and that it caught on in Japan after the war."

MUSIC; Orff's Musical And Moral Failings - The New York Times - "why, exactly, has the Nazi taint stuck so doggedly to Orff, who (unlike Herbert von Karajan or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) never belonged to the Nazi Party? Is it because two-thirds of his trilogy was very successfully performed under Nazi auspices? If being loved by the Nazis were enough to damn, we would have to take leave not only of Orff, and not only of Wagner, but also of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Is it because Orff's cantatas are the only musical fruits of the Third Reich (apart, perhaps, from the later, less popular operas of Richard Strauss) to survive in active repertory today? Then why do we tolerate all that Soviet music?Or is it merely because the Nazis offer an ''objective'' pretext for dismissal to those who subjectively disapprove of Orff's music for other reasons: reasons having to do, could it be, with prudery? Unlike Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Orff never wrote music in actual praise of his Leader or explicitly touting a totalitarian party line. Prokofiev's ''Toast to Stalin,'' performed by the American Symphony in December, is fairly well known. Shostakovich's film score for ''The Fall of Berlin'' ends with a resounding paean to the dictator. (It will take a heap of ingenuity to find hidden dissidence in that one.) Both Russians also wrote plenty of Communist mass songs to order. Orff's controversial cantatas, by contrast, set medieval German poetry (in Latin and Bavarian dialect), and classical texts by Catullus, Sappho and Euripides in the original languages, along with additional Latin lyrics by the composer himself, a trained ''humanist.'' The worst Orff can be accused of is opportunism. He accepted a 1938 commission from the mayor of Frankfurt to compose incidental music for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' to replace Mendelssohn's racially banned score. But even here, an extenuating case can be argued. Shakespeare's play had long attracted Orff. He had composed music for it as early as 1917, and he added more in 1927, before there was any Nazi government to curry favor with.Shabbier than anything he did under the Nazis was his behavior immediately after the war. An obvious beneficiary of the regime, one of only 12 composers to receive a full military exemption from Goebbels's propaganda ministry, Orff regaled his denazification interrogators with half-truths and outright lies to get himself classified Gray-Acceptable (that is, professionally employable) by the Allied military government... we can leave the composer's person behind and go back to the music, which is all that matters now. To saddle the music with the composer's personal shortcomings would merely be to practice another kind of guilt by association; and in any case, Orff is dead. His works are what live and continue to affect our lives. Even if we admit that ''Carmina Burana'' was the original ''Springtime for Hitler,'' with its theme of vernal lust and its tunes redolent (according to a German acquaintance of mine) of the songs sung in the 30's by Nazi youth clubs, can't we take Hitler away now and just leave innocent springtime -- or, at least, innocent music?"

8 in 10 Philosophy Majors Favor Socialism - "Students with certain majors are far more likely than their peers to approve of socialism. Philosophy majors, in particular, have a positive view of socialism. Nearly 8 in 10 (78%) say they view the economic system favorably, followed by 64% of anthropology majors, and 58% of both English and international relations majors. Accounting and finance majors are least likely to view socialism positively (20% and 22% respectively)."
Strangely, in this context domain knowledge will be dubbed irrelevant, even though we're supposed to trust experts in other areas

“To our parents, it’s like we’re sleeping on the streets”: How two first-generation Iranian-Canadians are getting used to van life - "He got excited about it and tried to convince me to live in a van with him. At first I was freaked out: the first thing that came to my mind was, How am I going to fit all my clothes in the van? I worked in retail for a long time and I studied fashion, so I had a huge wardrobe. Then we watched YouTube videos about modern van life, and it started to seem more appealing. Our apartment was only 500 square feet, so it’s not like we had much space to begin with... by living in the van, we save around $2,000 to $2,500 on rent and household expenses each month... Soheil’s parents know that he’s unconventional, and they hoped that I would be the person who settles him down. On the night of our wedding, when we told them we were going to move into a van, his mom said, “Oh my gosh, he found someone just as crazy as him.”"

Too hot to think straight? Study says you may be right - "The reports, which examine the effects of air temperature on cognitive performance in the United States and China, rely on different data sets and methods to arrive at the same conclusion: The hotter it gets, the more our brains seem to slow down.The good news? These effects can be mitigated by air conditioning... every temperature increase of 3.29 degrees Celsius (or about 5.9 degrees Fahrenheit) reduced students’ scores on the exam by 1.12 percent, reducing their odds of getting into the most selective colleges by 1.97 percent.Chinese authorities are, in fact, well aware that ambient temperature can affect students’ test scores: Citing Chinese media reports, the study authors note that the use of air conditioning on testing days in some regions is prohibited “in order to ensure fair competition with regions in which AC is not available.”... “Hotter school days in the year prior to the test reduce learning, with extreme heat being particularly damaging and larger effects for low income and minority students,” they found. “. . . Without air conditioning, each 1 degree F increase in school year temperature reduces the amount learned that year by one percent.”... “Hotter school days in the year prior to the test reduce learning, with extreme heat being particularly damaging and larger effects for low income and minority students,” they found. “. . . Without air conditioning, each 1 degree F increase in school year temperature reduces the amount learned that year by one percent”"
Why Singapore (and the tropics in general) are bad for health

Boomieleaks on Twitter - "Woman: "I'd like a sperm donor who's tall, smart, and healthy."
*doctor punches woman*
Doctor: "Only nazis support eugenics, and it's okay to punch nazis.""

Israeli soldiers duped by Hamas 'fake women' phone ruse - "Dozens of Israeli soldiers have had their smartphones hacked by the Hamas militant group posing as women seeking attention, Israel's military says.A spokesman said the soldiers were sent fake photos of young females and lured into downloading an app without knowing it could access their handsets... the hackers had masqueraded as young women with imperfect Hebrew, claiming to be immigrants or to have visual or hearing impairments, in order to appear convincing."

Snake Bites Man, Man Bites Wife So They Can Die Together, Wife Survives - "A man in India who was attacked by a poisonous snake bit his wife's wrist because his final wish was for them to die together.Shankar Rai was asleep in his home in Samastipur district, around 60 miles north of Patna in the state of Bihar, when he was attacked by the serpent.By the morning, his condition had worsened. Fearing he did not have much time left, he held his wife Amiri Devi's hands and said he wanted them to be united in death. He sunk his teeth into her wrist so the venom would kill them both and they fell unconscious, India Today reported.Witnesses described how doctors arrived and rushed them to hospital. Although the venom claimed the life of Rai, his wife was rescued in time. "He told me he loved me too much and want to die together before grabbing my wrist and sinking his teeth into it. I allowed him to do so""
Before opening this, I knew it was India

Shipra Kapoor on Twitter - "Me : Why people in relationships get into other Relationship so easy .....yet single people remain Single ??
My bestie : A body in motion stays in motion while a body at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by external force. Its physics...."