Matt Stoller had a good piece on the destruction of Silicon Valley, with this horseshit as a prime example. Without antitrust enforcement, this is what you end up with: playtoys for the oligarchs.

I feel like this is the equivalent of people who live in their car in America. People who's work is enough to feed them but not to house them. I live in the heart of Silicon valley when I go out at night I inevitably see car after car with someone sleeping in it, and the back seat filled with what I can only imagine is their only earthly possessions.

There are so many people living like this even in one of the richest places in the US, I can only imagine what it's like in areas with a lower concentration of wealth.

Mr. Plinckett is right as usual. I watched it in IMAX 3D yesterday, but didn't feel immersed into the story all that much. While watching it I couldn't help but think that a panel of Disney marketing geniuses meticulously thought out what we wanted to see, to guess our expectations, more than the brain child of someone with a vision, with a true story to tell. The girl-that-every-girl-wants-to-be with great athletic prowess and wit as the main character to try and get women to go and see it. The two popular Chinese actors were obviously there to appeal to the ever more important Chinese market. Nostalgic re-enactment (or pre-enactment?) of the ROTJ final battle. Darth Vader! Tarkin! The Death Star! There's someone and/or something for everybody in this movie. Maximum appeal to go and see it.

I think all characters did have potential, but there wasn't any time for them to really come alive, as we were introduced to too many locations and too many people. On the topic of coming alive, resurrected Peter Cushing was very clearly stuck deep into uncanny valley, and watching him was a little... morbid I think.

Like with the Force Awakens, I left the cinema not really unsatisfied, but not really happy either. Just kind of... okay. That was something all pre-Disney SW films did way better for me.

I always wonder when we see these Mach Loop videos what it is like living in the valley with all these low flying aircraft, especially near Cad West which seems to be the most popular spot to shoot videos and take photos... so then you also have traffic...

EDIT: Then on top of all that... is there a particular farm that sells parking for all these people to use, or is there a public parking spot and is it public land that everyone uses?

uncanny....valley

To me, they were 100% acceptable, and *almost* entirely out of uncanny valley territory.

Two possible sources for my tolerance are lots of time spent playing video games, and a highly introverted nature. Would be interesting to see survey results to see if there is any positive correlation between those or other factors and being generally easier to impress / satisfy with CG movie effects.

Blame presumes guilt. There's no guilt in voting for your interests, even if others don't understand them.

Reasons for those voting decisions are interesting, but also very hard to get since the media ignores everything between the coasts, and even the diverse internet is so full of filter bubbles that you're basically funneled straight into echo chambers. At least on my end, the Silicon Valley/Hollywood culture is drowning out everything else -- and I'm a commie outsider who doesn't give a shit about celebrities or "save zones".

That said, the election is just the most recent culmination of an ongoing, decades-long development. But that's beyond the point, so...

Populism trumps business as usual if business as usual leads to Detroit, Cleveland and Camden. Or the rural areas on the coast of Louisiana, which were hit much harder than New Orleans and still look worse than Chernobyl, 11 years after the fact.

So the question is: did you a) fail to provide an alternative, b) fail to make a convincing case for that alternative, c) decide against trying to convince those that think differently, or d) not even realize that not everybody shares your perception of reality.

Given the tone of the reactions, the collective damnation of Trump voters as (insert any insult in the book), I'm thinking that d) is a much bigger issue than anyone is willing to admit.

In short, I blame George R. R. Martin. If he had published The Winds of Winter by now, all would be well.

Awesome. To me, only slightly reading between the lines, it sounds like he is suggesting exactly what I feel is the right track here.

Let Trump do whatever it is that he is going to do. If individual elements / components of his policy suggestions are good, help him with them. And if/when he suggests dangerous, counterproductive or bigoted things, call him out, dig in your heels, and do everything you can to raise awareness and stop him.

Let Trump dig his own grave trying to fulfill all of his contradictory promises to a large angry mob.

But in the meantime, don't obstruct good things simply because they came from the "wrong side". That has been the Republican modus operandi -- show the people there is a better way. Trump talked about rebuilding infrastructure in his victory speech. FDR's "New Deal" did a lot of that with the Tennessee Valley Authority and other projects. That created a LOT of jobs and helped pull the US out of the great depression. Any infrastructure / public works stuff that Trump pushes for that would actually have positive results while creating jobs? Sign off on that shit!

Trump's Wall could be a fulcrum point. Pointless and somewhat offensive in premise, but some good could come from trying to build it or even actually succeeding (which I find highly unlikely). I think the appropriate response to Trump's Wall for Democrat legislators would be to vocally point out that tax money would probably be better spent elsewhere, but otherwise playing along to a certain extent. That wall is going to be a big millstone around Trump's neck -- no need to work overly hard to help him try to wriggle out of it.

Have I mentioned how much I like reading pieces by Thomas Frank?

He had a piece in the Guardian two days ago about the Podesta emails and it's just brilliant. Excerpt:

This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.

I drove right under the core of this thing going home. I could actually see a tornado being made and I checked all the weather and News outlets and there was nothing, except that NOAA decided to throw a Severe Thunderstorm Warning 10 minutes up AFTER IT PASSED...

It was so crazy to see a tornadic supercell in West Valley City (Salty Lake City, for most Sifters). It was following 2700 West for a bit and then I-215 (nearing the airport) was moving super fast to the NNE, straight to Washington Terrace and Riverdale. The winds were wild and the cloud formations were awesome, they were moving fast enough that I thought a partial nub might be visible where I was at, but I never did see it.

All that I saw was the main vortex with the amazing sight of all the cold air being sucked into the vortex at the SSW corner of the leading edge. Which was twisting more than fast enough to be a "horizontal twister". It was rotating so fast it was amazing; since you could see that sight you knew all it needed was a bit of air to push against it from underneath and stand up some of those vortices around the central core and then, walla, you'd get the tornado (I actually did believe that Ogden or Bountiful would get one since that was where it was heading).

All it needed was to get a little closer to the mountains and you'd have the right ingredients.

Thus, this is what you see happen right here in this video. North of my house, out in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, sits Antelope Island. It got hit by the raining part of this tornadic system but look at this wonderful storm video from it:

https://twitter.com/AntelopeSP/status/779078436568518656

It even had some golf ball hail in it.

*ban
Valley STD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x00X9F8vw0

Wait, this earthquake wasnt from japan. The video says it was a 7.3 in Mexico. Devils hole is in southern california in death valley.

Thanks man,I replied.... I decided that I am going to move to the Sonoran desert, get away from Cali and focus on health, space and money Ayahuasca/DMT definitely influenced that decision. SF/Bay Area/Santa Cruz/Silicon Valley... it's too unwieldy for me to deal with anymore. Shit, is out of control in terms of risk & cost of living.... 15 years, brah, I'm finally off into the wilderness... will be riding my bike across a seemingly infinite wasteland of beauty every day

The waterways of the Uncanny Valley are always a disturbing place to visit.