"Lycan" -- Derived from the word "lycanthrope", meaning someone who suffers from lycanthropy.

Good pun though.

Looks like a highly derivative, exploitative, purely profit driven piece of absolute dreck.



... then again, Kate Beckinsale in Leather and 3D.

I'm in.

Derivative of himself. It wouldn't be a "Tarantino flick" otherwise.

That's like when Fantasy Records sued John Fogerty for sounding too much like CCR.

I was floored when I first saw the movie back then, along with Pulp Fiction. But anything new and unique about it has since been beaten to death. The deliberately innocuous background music in a violent scene, the overly glib cursing, the “serious” discussions about some pop culture horseshit, references to childhood cereal brands, tv shows, cartoons, etc. I rolled my eyes when someone was smoking “Manzanas Rojas” in “The Hateful Eight”. Stagey derivative bullshit.

Hey Mr. Jonze?

-Yes Kenzo Management?

We liked what you did with Christopher Walken in the Weapon of Choice video. We have a new scent and we want to make an ad using exactly that idea... only use a hot chick this time.

-Nah man, that'd be derivative.

We'll pay you a shit ton of money?

-Oh, OK then.

The National Farmers Federation says that “mulesing remains the most effective practical way to eliminate the risk of ‘flystrike’ in sheep” and that “without mulesing up to 3,000,000 sheep a year could die a slow and agonising death from flystrike”.

A fiber farmer is heavily invested in the health and well being of their animals for the simple reason that an animal that isn’t happy and healthy can’t produce a sell-able product. An animal going through a period of stress of any kind produces a fiber that breaks.

Wool fiber has properties that make it unequaled by many other natural fibers/ Lanolin is also a critical oil that cannot be replaced with other oils. Lanolin and its many derivatives are used extensively in both the personal care (e.g., high value cosmetics, facial cosmetics, lip products) and health care sectors. Lanolin is also found in “lubricants, rust-preventative coatings, shoe polish, and other commercial products”

In some cases, the products derived from sheep make up a very large portion of a country's GDP. Banning sheep farming could cripple a country like New Zealand economically.

That said, obviously there are some horrible scenes in the video. Obviously there needs to be more oversight to control abuse to the animals. However, I would like to point out that the video did cherry pick a couple of companies that had egregious policies. Also, if the mulesing that was shown was part of the PETA video, it was staged with a fake lamb. PETA even admitted they staged that video for 'educational' purposes. I don't know if it was the same clip, but just putting that out there.

i am just going to add to the opinions and perspectives that @MilkmanDan ,@ChaosEngine ,@dannym3141 and especially @newtboy who i agree with so clearly that i swear we are related.

since many dynamics have already been covered, i.e:police culture,racism,incompetence etc etc.

i shall offer a historical perspective in the ways of the power dynamic.

while this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic dealing with agents of the state,it helps to understand just how we got to this point,and it is NOT the first time we have been here.

see:labor movement of the 30's and the labor strikes,and the response from not only the business community but our own government.

see: the civil rights movement and segregation,and how demagouges used political power to divide by way of racism,and then used police to intimidate,beat and imprison.

there are many MANY examples here in america where the police have been used to suppress and oppress a people or community for less than altruistic reasons,and most certainly not aligning with the ideology we were taught in school the function of police.nevermind the syrupy sweet,idealized picture shoved down our throats since an early age.

so we see on our facebooks,our twitters and/or whatever social media you prefer,that black lives matter...and the counter point,that NO..ALL lives matter.

now this would make sense in a world that never took history into account,or a growing cultural norm of violence and oppression that had been slowly seeping into poor communities (mainly black and latino).

oh wait..
that's right.
social media pundits NEVER fucking consider any of those factors,because just like bill o'reilly,those are pesky nuances and context conflict with their own narrow narrative.

but let us consider them and how they may possibly be a major driving factor in americas current climate.

let us take ferguson as an example,that is a good place to start.
and let us go back to 2008,where we can see the boiling begin to take place in this extremely impoverished community which was already struggling.

the population is a black majority,poor to working poor.home ownership is low,food stamp recipients are high and the future is pretty bleak.

in 2008 ferguson received approximately 18% of it's total fiscal revenue from misdemeanor infractions i.e:traffic,parking,moving violations.small time stuff.basic fines for small infractions.in 2008 that number jumped to 66%.

why?
what happened?
what changed?

well the comptroller of ferguson (and greater st louis),along with HUNDREDS of other smaller municipalities across the country,had bought the rotten fish that wall street was selling in the form of bullshit derivatives.

now wall street and the big banks got their tax payer bailout,but towns like ferguson did not.they lost millions,sometimes billions.this meant pensions were either reduced or outright denied,because there was NO money!

but a town still has to pay police.
fire fighters and school teachers,
clerks and judges,
keep the roads paved and the street lights working.

so what is a local government to do?
can't tax the working class who own homes.you already jacked their property tax to the roof.
can't tax the local business,you already squeeze them as well.
how about those non-property owning people in ferguson?
they need to pay up as well,and let's use the police force to relinquish them of the paltry money they don't have.

to the tune of 66% of all of fergusons revenue.
that is insanity.

so what if you live in ferguson?
chances are you are black,and either poor or working poor.

you make,if you are lucky,20 grand a year and by one man's testimony he paid over 2,000 in traffic tickets in one year.the majority of americans dont see those kind of numbers their entire lifetime.

and what if you began to realize that it was not just you.that almost every person you know or talked to had similar stories.

would you begin to feel a tad bit targeted?

what if the city of ferguson started to become very creative with not only their rules but how they enforced those rules?

what if every year the fines went up?
not remained the same,but actually UP? every year.

what if,as a community people began to actually fear the police? to experience anxiety just by the sight of a patrol car,even though they were not engaging in anything illegal? and who knows...maybe there is some new ordinance on the books that you are unaware of?

would you become paranoid and suspicious of law enforcement?

and then..what if....you started losing friends to cops.people you grew up with being shot in the street,and every time the mayor comes out and calls it a "justifiable killing".

would that make you feel any better?
any less paranoid or anxious?

there was ONE police shooting in ten years and then..as if by magic ..(which is how the media seems to always portray this..shocking news..at 11)..you lose 5 friends in a year.all to cops..all "justifiable".

would you begin to think there was a conspiracy?
targeting you and your neighbors?

i BET you would.
i know i would.

now lets look at the cops.

they are just a tool.
an instrument for the state to uphold the law and write citations for infractions.they dont MAKE the laws,nor the infractions,not even the fines.

they just do what they are told.

and they are told to go into these poor and working poor neighborhoods and write tickets,a LOT of tickets.

do you really think they are unaware of the growing hostility towards them? the looks of disgust,fear and apprehension?

but...this is their job,and they do what they are told.

they see.
they know.
they are aware of the growing hatred towards them,and this makes them anxious..and defensive..and in some horrible,tragic cases...trigger happy.

a natural and normal response to heightened stimuli in the face of great uncertainty.

so they react impulsively and out of fear in a way that ten years ago would have been unheard of.

they think themselves good cops.
they do a good job.
they do what they are told.
and the people hate them for it.
so they respond instinctively and with poor judgement.

we..as citizens,respond with disgust and indignation when a cop abuses his/her authority.we see this as a major moral breach in the citizen/cop relationship,because we feel as agents of the law they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us...and rightly so,but when you put a human being in a tense and dangerous situation,not of their making,they will fail at some point to react correctly and with sound judgement.

they SHOULD be held accountable,but so should the city council members and the mayor and all the local representatives who created this toxic climate in the first place.

the lesson to be learned here is that nothing is a binary situation when people are concerned.

so when black lives matter protestors address people to make them aware of the situation,this is what they are talking about.the police killing are only a last stage manifestation of a situation that began in 2008 on wall street.

and we need to be aware,because right now it is the predominantly black communities,but soon coming to a neighborhood near YOU.

the poor and working poor have become expendable.no longer relevant to the system.which is why police shootings are being handled the way they are.our value is ever increasingly being judged on how well we can feed the system.

until this disparity is addressed there will continue to be police shootings.people will die and there will be no indictments.

because police do what they are told.

it is up to us to make policy makers accountable for their actions,and in doing so address a toxic climate that both the poor,working poor and cops alike have to swim in.

stop forcing cops to write tickets to fund a city that lost it's savings due to fuckhead bankers.

this blood..all of it..is on those bankers hands.

South Park FTW...
I remember when these kids started their first show with animated anal probes.

Shame they hobbled that beautiful site.

There used to be a time someone could mention an episode and you could derive the episode name by googling and go to the south park site and watch it.

I guess that's where we differ.

I find it funny precisely because such things really happen.

In a world where no such cruelty exists, I think this kind of material would then become empty and pointless. Comedy thrives on the defiance of our misery.

I dare say it would get less of a laugh in Sweden for this very reason.

I'm clearly in the minority here, but then I suspect few people have developed the same sense of cynical detachment I have (working with the severely mentally I'll and dieing will do that to you).

The humour is definitely there, I guess you just need a suitably fucked up perspective to appreciate it.

Out of curiosity, did you find Jim's old bit about the child getting shot when he was in Iraq funny? I might suggest that is an even more cruel and fucked up situation than the subject matter being discussed here.

Would that only become funny when children are no longer victims of wars? Or is it funny precisely because of the incomprehensible cruelty and misfortune underlying it?

Perhaps you have an easier time detaching yourself from something that isn't as likely to happen to you? This seems reasonable, but I don't see how it precludes such material from being funny, only more challenging for one to engage with. (and thus more powerful if one can do so)

To bring in a thread from another reply "And this is the brilliance of Louis -- that he lays bare the humanity of even pedophiles. The truth of pedophiles."

In what sense is Jim not doing the same thing here? He is flippantly exploring Cosby's desire to victimise women, we all have desires and sometimes act on those impulses when we shouldn't.
Rape is an extreme example, but the thought process is ultimately the same thing writ large. "I want a thing I can't have, but I'm doing it anyway".
I might argue he is laying bare the universal human condition in just the same way, albeit with something closer to home for most people than paedophilia.

Presumably it's the other thread that's proving challenging, i.e. the masochistic idea of enjoying ones abuse? And again, there is something deeply fucked up at the heat of the human condition here. Deriving pleasure from victim hood, or having messed up priorities about fame and opportunity.
Stockholm syndrome, abused partners loving their spouses, groupies allowing themselves to be abused just to be near their idols.

We are really that fucked up as a species sometimes, cognitive dissonance is almost a way of life for most of us in our own little ways. It's clearly a deeply risque subject, but there is something dark at the core of the human condition there none the less.

The actual victims don't need to have the kind of mixed up priorities Jim is alluding to, we only have to recognise that we posses the capacity for that dissonance ourselves. (The joke being at the expense of our own inherent hypocrisies, not specific victims)

The only big difference I can really see is that child rape is much rarer than the kind being discussed here. (and thus I suppose easier for most to detach themselves from)

Is it really any less horrific? Surely if anything it is far more terrible for most victims and usually seems to cause more damage to their lives.

How does Louis's material on Child rape remain funny in a world where children are raped, yet Jim's material about women being raped only become funny in a world where they do not get raped?

Paedophiles have a culture too. They form groups, exchange materials, praise each others work etc. etc. Not to mention grooming rings and other such reprehensible things.

I understand that a particular subject can strike too close to home, but for me that was my failing to rise above my own fears and traumas. When I finally got to a place where I could laugh at my own victim hood, it was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. (Don't get me wrong, that shit never completely goes away)

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

Very cool appreciation of derivative work.

The inherently chaotic event that exists in the otherwise predictable / trainable environment of driving a car is the unplanned / unmeasured disturbance. In control systems that are adaptive or self learning, the unplanned disturbance is the killer - a short duration, unpredictable event for which the system is unable to respond to within the control limits that have been defined through training, programming and/or adaptation. The response to an unplanned disturbance is often to default to an instruction that is very much human derived (ie. stop, exit gracefully, terminate instruction, wait until conditions return to controllable boundary conditions or freeze in place) which, depending on the disturbance, can be catastrophic. In our world, with humans behind the wheel, let's call the unplanned disturbance the "mistake". A tire blows, a load comes undone, an object falls out of or off of another vehicle (human, dog, watermelon, gas cylinder) etc.

The concern from my perspective (and I work directly with adaptive / learning control systems every day - fundamental models, adaptive neural type predictors, genetic algorithms etc. ) is the response to these short duration / short response time unplanned disturbances. The videos I've seen and the examples that I have reviewed don't deal with these very short timescale events and how to manage the response, which in many cases is an event dependent response. I would guess that the 1st dead person that results from the actions or inaction of self driving vehicles will put a major dent if not halt to the program. Humans may be fallible, but we are remarkably (infinitely?) more adaptive in combined conscious / subconscious responses than any computer is or will be in the near future in both appropriateness of response and the time scale of generating that response.

In the partially controlled environment (ie. there is no such thing as 100%) of a automated warehouse and distribution center, self driving works. In the partially controlled environment where ONLY self driving vehicles are present on the roadways, then again, this technology will likely succeed. The mixed environment with self driving co-mingled with humans (see "fallible" above) is not presently viable, and I don't think will be in the next decade or two, partially due to safety risk and partially due to management of these short timescale unplanned disturbances that can call for vastly different responses depending upon the specific situation at hand. In the flow of traffic we encounter the majority of the time, would agree that this may not be an issue to some (in 44 years of driving, I've been in 2 accidents, so I'll leave the risk assessment to the actuaries). But one death, and we'll see how high the knees jerk. And it will happen.

My 2 cents.
TB

I find it insane that you are totally willing to ignore the adult officer STARTING the interaction by being a liar and a controlling dickhead by abusing his power by issuing illegal commands, but are going to continue to lambast the 15 year old kid who just won an argument with a douchebag liar because of his knowledge for being a bit excited about it.
Would it have been more adult and better if he took the high road the entire time, perhaps. Did he have a duty to be an exponentially better human being than the person who's ostensively trained and paid over $200000 a year to be a decent human being? Absolutely not. Lets start by encouraging those in authority that we pay to be civil to be civil, then we can move on to children who've been assaulted and insulted.

No, the presumption is that an officer that responds to complaints from people with lies and abuse (lying about your rights and the law is abuse when it comes from a law enforcement officer, so are illegal commands telling you to pass on the illegal command) is somehow wrong.
We have laws in place to balance the rights between all of us, and if officers can lie about them, ignore them, and make threats and insults when informed about them with impunity, we no longer have those rights. Period.
No, he's not being a jerk checking things out, he's being a jerk by telling them to leave and not ride when that's not the law and he has no right to tell them to do those things.
Yes, citizens who don't know better had every right to complain. The officer had a DUTY to know the law before trying to enforce it. He failed miserably. He's in the wrong.
He only backed off because the kid(s) obviously knew his rights, had he not known his rights, and appeared to know the exact statute they derived from, he would almost certainly have been removed illegally.
Once again, that's a failure of the officer, a failure to know the law he's trying to enforce. That's on him, not the children, it's his JOB to know the law, a job we pay him OVER $200000 a year to do incredibly poorly.

Adults are expected to be adults, not to act like younger, dumber children than the youngest and dumbest child they speak with. Police have a sworn DUTY to do so, and we pay them ridiculously well for it. 15 year old kids, they act like kids. The cop is the jerk, he started by lying, and illegally commanding, then when corrected becomes insulting and smarmy instantly. He should have simply asked them "what's that number again" and gone to his issued computer and looked it up, then returned and offered speeding tickets if they were still riding fast, and offered the correct number if they weren't, he should NOT have reacted as he did.

Anyone else get the feeling Seth watches the Daily Show, then Last Week Tonight, then shows up the next day at the writer's meeting and says, "Hey everyone! I HAVE AN AWESOME IDEA for a Closer Look segment!!"

Just saying he's a bit derivative.

Yeah I watched it. Did you watch it? Do you even understand why people are upset?

The point is the Fine brothers built their empire reacting to other people's content, but are now preventing other people from using their own derivative content. It shows just how much "good will" they have about people building a "community" with this trademark of theirs.