Kulturkampf

[Nintex]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Kushner starts selling Gaza real estate, someone leaks dirt on prosecutor Fanni Willis, Scott, Vivek and DeSantis drop out early and endorse Trump, Biden gets a new challenger who says everyone should respect MAGA, the GOP flocks back to Trump, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase praises him and tells everyone to respect MAGA, Bojo writes an oped that a Trump Presidency is what the world needs, someone leaks dirt on Nikki Haley, the campaign has money coming out of their whatever, Trump supporters suddenly appear everywhere in 'moderate' New Hampshire even if he couldn't fill a ballroom at the Mar A Lago a year ago, the race is called early and Trump wins with a big margin and a record high number of votes despite Democrats coming out to support Haley.

I think this election is being rigged fellas

[Tucker's Law]

The Barbie oscar stuff has provided a bounty of entertainment.

[Nintex]

I assume Oppenheimer is going to clean house at the Oscars and it should.

There's some great acting in there, truely amazing work from Murphy, Damon and Downey Jr and as the cherry on top Casey Affleck, Jason Clarke and Gary Oldman managed to steal those couple of scenes they were in.

[benji]

I assume Oppenheimer is going to clean house at the Oscars and it should.

[HaughtyFrank]

Barbie isn’t anti-men – but Oppenheimer is anti-women

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/oscars-snub-barbie-oppenheimer-feminism-sexist-nominations-b2483950.html

I guess the Barbenheimer honeymoon is over. Now people are mad that a biopic is nominated for more Oscars than the fun movie about a doll. And we all know this is just sexism. Historically the Oscars love movies about dolls and hate biopics that take place during WW2

[benji]

The Barbie Snub Outrage Proves That When It Comes To Diversity, We’re Only Thinking Of White Women
...
A quick scroll of my Instagram feed tells a similar story — it's all anger about Barbie, but generally omitting that one of its cast members is nominated; someone who actually made history as the first-ever Oscar nominee of Honduran descent in any category. While there is obvious subjectivity in who gets nominated for an award and who doesn't, what matters is how we react to it — and at the moment, we've completely ignored all the people of colour who have set records this year, in favour of rage on behalf of two (white) women.
...
Let me be clear — I'm angry too. I'm angry that women are still fighting for breadcrumbs in an industry that has historically hated us. I'm angry that the industry is still having firsts, that shouldn't really be firsts at all. But honestly, I'm angry that we've used our anger to show that diversity matters — but only if you're white.

[HaughtyFrank]

That article is hilarious

At this year’s Golden Globes, there was an attempt to rectify this situation, with a new Box Office Achievement award dedicated to films that audiences saw en masse. Though it was criticized by cinephiles for feeling contrived, the creation of these types of categories stand as one of the few spaces where audience opinion (read: women) can be seen and heard, allowing Barbie to finally get its moment in the spotlight. 

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2024-oscar-nominations-barbie-snub

Can't wait when the next Marvel Avengers movie gets honored at the golden globes. Finally the audience (read: women) can be heard

[benji]

This unthinking outrage is great:

[Potato]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/24/science-fiction-awards-held-in-china-under-fire-for-excluding-authors

A prestigious literary award for science fiction, which was hosted in China for the first time, has come under fire for excluding several authors from the 2023 awards, raising concerns about interference or censorship in the awards process.

The New York Times bestseller Babel by RF Kuang, an episode of the Netflix drama The Sandman and the author Xiran Jay Zhao were among the works and authors excluded from the 2023 Hugo awards, which were administered by the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Chengdu in October.

Babel, which won fiction book of the year at the British book awards in 2023, is a speculative fiction novel by Kuang, a Chinese-American author also known for her novel Yellowface.

No reason was given for the exclusions, which were only revealed on 20 January when the Hugo awards published the full nomination statistics for last year’s prize. Certain titles were listed as having been given votes, but were marked with an asterisk and the words “not eligible”, with no further details given.

Recently released documents showed that several works or authors – some with links to China – had been excluded from the ballot despite receiving enough nominations to be included on their respective shortlists. The excluded nominees include Kuang and Xiran, authors who were born in China but are now based in the west.

Concerns have been raised that the authors were targeted for political reasons, connected to the fact that the ruling Chinese Communist party exerts a tight control on all cultural events that take place inside its borders.

Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 Hugo awards jury, wrote on Facebook: “Nobody has ordered me to do anything … There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.”

Fucking Hugo awards man. Can't help themselves.

[benji]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/24/science-fiction-awards-held-in-china-under-fire-for-excluding-authors

Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 Hugo awards jury, wrote on Facebook: “Nobody has ordered me to do anything … There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.”

Ah, I see, so they "asked" unofficially and strongly suggested that the awards would not be welcome in the country if not.

[Potato]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/24/science-fiction-awards-held-in-china-under-fire-for-excluding-authors

Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 Hugo awards jury, wrote on Facebook: “Nobody has ordered me to do anything … There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.”

Ah, I see, so they "asked" unofficially and strongly suggested that the awards would not be welcome in the country if not.

It's pretty fucking pathetic considering the recent history of the Hugos

[benji]

Checking in on people being normal:

Meanwhile:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

[D3RANG3D]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[HaughtyFrank]

This is like a shitty remake for a movie that's been adjusted for "modern audiences"

[HaughtyFrank]

The Independent is having a real run

In what universe is Oppenheimer a macho movie? 

Also isn't it kind of sexist to declare serious biopics about serious events dad movies? Do women not care for the creation of the atomic bomb?

[benji]

And yet, there’s something about the idea of an Oppenheimer win that feels strangely backwards-facing.

Oppenheimer, so the argument goes, is a film for men. Perhaps intensified by its strange and ubiquitous juxtaposition with the women-led Barbie, Nolan’s film has been scrutinised extensively through the lens of gender. No matter how reductive this assertion may be – that Nolan’s film is simply “one for the boys” – it’s hard to deny there’s a degree of truth to it. The few female roles that Oppenheimer does feature are hardly forefronted: Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer never quite feels three-dimensional, and Florence Pugh makes the most of scant screentime as “other woman” Jean Tatlock. The roster of significant male characters, meanwhile, is deep and illustrious. Murphy fronts a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Rami Malek, Matthew Modine, Gary Oldman and Kenneth Branagh. Match this with Oppenheimer’s stereotypically male subject matter – bombs and the evils of war – and it’s easy to see why the film has been pigeonholed as a quintessential “dad movie”.

The 1970s saw a historic run of “dad movie” supremacy, with Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rocky taking the top gongs across seven consecutive years.

 

Best part though is:

The past few years have seen a change in the make-up of Oscar winners, one driven by an expansion and diversification of the Academy’s voting base. A number of significant milestones have rattled by: first foreign-language film to win Best Picture (Parasite), first Asian woman to win Best Director (Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao); first deaf actor to win an award (CODA’s Troy Kotsur).

allium
12 days ago
Troy Kotsur wasn't the first deaf actor to win an award; Marlee Matlin won an Oscar in 1987. Bit of an odd omission given the article's criticims of "men centric" movies.

It was for Best Actress too.

[Nintex]

The Independent is having a real run

In what universe is Oppenheimer a macho movie? 

Also isn't it kind of sexist to declare serious biopics about serious events dad movies? Do women not care for the creation of the atomic bomb?

[Potato]

Checking in on people being normal:

I am certain that CaptainVeld is a 43 year old male anime fan who "identifies" as a 14 year old who is extremely pro-Palestinian.

[Tucker's Law]

And yet, there’s something about the idea of an Oppenheimer win that feels strangely backwards-facing.

Oppenheimer, so the argument goes, is a film for men. Perhaps intensified by its strange and ubiquitous juxtaposition with the women-led Barbie, Nolan’s film has been scrutinised extensively through the lens of gender. No matter how reductive this assertion may be – that Nolan’s film is simply “one for the boys” – it’s hard to deny there’s a degree of truth to it. The few female roles that Oppenheimer does feature are hardly forefronted: Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer never quite feels three-dimensional, and Florence Pugh makes the most of scant screentime as “other woman” Jean Tatlock. The roster of significant male characters, meanwhile, is deep and illustrious. Murphy fronts a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Rami Malek, Matthew Modine, Gary Oldman and Kenneth Branagh. Match this with Oppenheimer’s stereotypically male subject matter – bombs and the evils of war – and it’s easy to see why the film has been pigeonholed as a quintessential “dad movie”.

The 1970s saw a historic run of “dad movie” supremacy, with Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rocky taking the top gongs across seven consecutive years.

 

Best part though is:

The past few years have seen a change in the make-up of Oscar winners, one driven by an expansion and diversification of the Academy’s voting base. A number of significant milestones have rattled by: first foreign-language film to win Best Picture (Parasite), first Asian woman to win Best Director (Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao); first deaf actor to win an award (CODA’s Troy Kotsur).

allium
12 days ago
Troy Kotsur wasn't the first deaf actor to win an award; Marlee Matlin won an Oscar in 1987. Bit of an odd omission given the article's criticims of "men centric" movies.

It was for Best Actress too.

Was my immediate thought too; shit, she was even in the same damn movie!  These dipshits are so dumb and genuinely uncultured.

[HaughtyFrank]

[benji]

oh man at some of the replies on that original tweet, right side of history holding her accountable:

wat:

[Potato]

In today's episode of "Activism dressed up as videogame journalism" we head over to Kotaku for their absurd take on Activision Blizzard redundancies

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2024/01/xbox-is-not-your-friend/

Xbox, the games industry’s most well-funded publisher and hardware maker, made almost 2,000 people redundant this morning.

I’m not sure if you can visualise what a group of 2000 people looks like. Jump over to Google and have a look for a sec because it’s basically a small army. A mass of human lives, with dogs and kids and parents and hobbies and annoying habits and favourite shows and bills. And now, without a job.

At the time of writing, we are hours out from the latest devastating wave of lay-offs hitting the video game industry. Microsoft announced approximately 1,900 job cuts across its gaming division, including Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox. 8.6% of its colossal 22,000-strong global workforce. It is an unfathomable number of workers impacted by the single stroke of a pen, the news coming by way of a memo by industry darling and head of Xbox, Phil Spencer.

The whole article is fucking stupid, but I think the closing two paragraphs are some of the most idiotic shit I've ever seen written, even by the idiotic standards of video game journalists.

Gamers writ large are an enthusiastic bunch, a trait that I often find endearing and intimidating in equal measure. Hype cycles are so easily spun up for the same reason communities so swiftly galvanise. Media coverage, old and new, commercial and enthusiast, perseveres despite a lack of funding. This ferocity for the art form is just as often soured in service of product, too. The same vine that grows passion is just as likely to bloom entitlement. It’s an audience ripe for the kind of exploitation Xbox has wrought, giving thousands of vocal, deeply committed players a direction to aim their fervour, complete with figureheads to cheer and ideologies to embody. Consumerism becomes identity, and Xbox wants you to identify with it above all else.  

Even as I wrote this piece, Microsoft closed the day with a $3 trillion valuation for the first time in the company’s history. As the maligned former CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, lands softly from his golden parachute, and as Phil Spencer’s exhaustive, years-long effort to become the face of the average gamer, all Xbox’s carefully stored goodwill is deployed to announce a catastrophic number of job losses. The landscape as laid by Xbox more closely resembles scorched earth than the verdant pastures promised to its employees and customers. The only green left emanating from the minifridges gathering dust in the corner.

Imagine acting like this over job losses at little ol' Activision Blizzard!

[chronovore]

All I know is money is being made, but the "redundancies" keep coming. We had maybe 11K layoffs, and now 2K more, for 13,000 layoffs in an industry that has about 70,000 people in it? Is that correct? 

Google says 270,000 but it is unclear if we're counting people posting to r/gamedev who want their anime-aping visual novel or RPGmaker content to do well on Steam so they can quit their actual job.

I am so frustrated with the state of this industry, I am considering jumping ship after nearly 30 years.

[Potato]

https://www.ft.com/content/7572fdf1-944a-4cf9-b1a8-ed74bd0f8ff0

Business is starting to think more about ROI than DEI

Several days ago, over the Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend in the US, the big four accounting firm PwC announced that it would be dropping some of its diversity targets in the US. Race-based criteria would no longer be used for awarding scholarships or places on an internship programme.

It was odd timing for the announcement, perhaps, but it reflected a broader American trend. Since the Supreme Court’s decision last June to reverse affirmative action, many companies are rethinking their DEI — or diversity, equity and inclusion — strategies.

Let’s be clear: nobody doubts the fundamental benefits of a diverse workforce. There’s a large body of long-term research showing that when it’s higher, particularly in executive teams, companies are more profitable. That’s a no brainer. If your staff reflects an increasingly diverse customer and supplier base, your organisation will do better in the marketplace. The problem is that in recent years, DEI has often become too politicised and performative, particularly in America.

Over the past decade, following the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and then accelerating in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, companies “jumped on the DEI bandwagon”, as Diana Scott, head of the Human Capital Center at the Conference Board, puts it.

Business spent hundreds of millions on big diversity initiatives, unconscious bias training and PR campaigns linked to identity politics. “But they didn’t think things through very well,” Scott says. “What does all this really mean? What’s the business case? Can we quantify it?” 

Now, say Scott and other DEI experts, not only are the same conservative activists who pushed back on so-called campus “woke-ness” filing legal suits against companies’ DEI programmes, but “boards are asking for the results of these programmes — and in many cases, companies can’t quantify them”.

This reflects something that has become endemic in many workplaces over the past few years — an uncritical attitude towards inclusion without clear, fact-based communication about the metrics that really matter: engagement, retention, promotional strategies, leadership pipelines and, crucially, clarity on how this all relates to the core business objectives of the company. Another email from HR about happy hour to celebrate a particular identity day is not enough.

Things are about to change. Not only has the legal landscape in the US shifted, but the cultural winds are changing direction too. The ousting at the beginning of January of Claudine Gay, the first black Harvard University president, amid concerns about antisemitism on campus and plagiarism allegations, was a significant moment. Her support of DEI policies had also fuelled much of the criticism from the right.

What’s more, the current economic volatility and uncertainty has business leaders thinking more about ROI (return on investment) than DEI. That’s predictable — when chief executives sense the possibility of slowdown, they tend to focus on their core business propositions.

While this doesn’t mean companies are dumping their diversity programmes altogether (not a single respondent in a recent Conference Board study said they were scaling back DEI in 2024), they are clearly changing their approach. Quotas — always contentious and now legally dubious — are out. Clear board-ready metrics are in.

This could actually be good for inclusion in the long run. One of the things that will be front and centre as companies continue to grapple with inflation is how to get and keep the best talent in a very tight labour market. That will in turn force them to move on from merely performative activity and do some real soul searching about how to deliver diversity.

Scott remembers a company she worked with long ago that was shocked to discover it systemically ranked women employees higher than men on performance, but lower on potential. Why? Because, it turned out, male bosses tended to assume that women of child-bearing age or with families wouldn’t want to be considered for certain types of positions — client-facing jobs with lots of travel, say. As a result they failed to ask if they wanted to apply for them, or think about how to make such jobs work for a broader group of employees. Talk about cognitive bias.

Then there’s the question of what diversity even is, or will be, particularly in a country like the US, which could be “majority minority” by 2045. Or how global companies that have operations in countries with many different definitions of diversity should think about it. Should they use the definition that is politically popular in a given location? It’s easy to see how slippery the conversation can quickly become.

That’s why I think that just as the Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action presented a silver lining for universities to think more deeply and honestly about identity and inclusion, so this will be a good moment for companies to do so as well.

They should focus on the core truth, which is that smart companies make themselves attractive to the broadest number of talented people not by virtue signalling, but by creating real opportunity for the many. Doing so is good not just for inclusion, but for business.

I will preface this by saying that I think workplace diversity is a good thing, in general. More diverse ideas and opinions and approaches can definitely improve any business. However, i don't think forced diversity helps anyone.

That being said, I find this shit fascinating, especially since my work is in a field which has a lot of interaction with mining. 

Watching mining companies bend over backwards to try to meet DEI targets (usually related to women) is fucking hilarious. There simply aren't enough women interested in these sorts of technical roles to make things even remotely likely to approach parity or even move very far above the current rate of about 18% of the workforce.

Nobody is running campaigns to increase the number of men in nursing, childcare or teaching where increased gender diversity would actually make a significant social difference. One of the reasons for this is mining is a lucrative job in Australia with 6-figure salaries the norm, even for unskilled labour. 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Also, any man wanting to work in childcare is immediately viewed as a paedo by a huge number of women.

Will be interesting to see how things develop.

[Polident]

People still care about the oscars?

Armond White is the only critic you need

British director Sam Wrench — a rock-video pro, having done concert films for Billie Eilish, Luke Bryan, Lizzo, and The Weeknd — transcribes the 20-city Eras tour. But he’s no Leni Riefenstahl able to turn the event into an impressive aesthetic spectacle (even though he collapses favorite angles from three shows at the Los Angeles SoFi Arena). The Eras Tour is not even as impressive as U2 3D, a superior follow-up to the group’s Rattle and Hum, Laurie Anderson’s Home of the Brave, or Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense. Even racist Spike Lee called the latter “the greatest concert movie ever made,” meaning better than Richard Pryor Live in Concert and Prince’s Sign o’ the Times. That’s how easily Millennial hype forces consensus.

It’s tragic that the media perpetuate Swift’s insensitivity and tastelessness. Parents should be concerned about Swift grooming their kids into cynicism and selfishness. The teens in TikTok clips who pitifully bounce and sing along with the film’s pre-recorded concert are the flip side of those nerds and sociopaths who lined up for The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. Boomer parents may want to let them have their fun — same as toying with matches and playing in the traffic. But here’s a frightening fact of the Swifties pheenom: These kids seem ready for a leader, anxious for totalitarianism. It will take a counterrevolution to repair Swift’s moral, aesthetic, and political damage.

Yeah

[Potato]

I'm gonna need that one explained...

[HaughtyFrank]

[Nintex]

People still care about the oscars?

Armond White is the only critic you need

British director Sam Wrench — a rock-video pro, having done concert films for Billie Eilish, Luke Bryan, Lizzo, and The Weeknd — transcribes the 20-city Eras tour. But he’s no Leni Riefenstahl able to turn the event into an impressive aesthetic spectacle (even though he collapses favorite angles from three shows at the Los Angeles SoFi Arena). The Eras Tour is not even as impressive as U2 3D, a superior follow-up to the group’s Rattle and Hum, Laurie Anderson’s Home of the Brave, or Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense. Even racist Spike Lee called the latter “the greatest concert movie ever made,” meaning better than Richard Pryor Live in Concert and Prince’s Sign o’ the Times. That’s how easily Millennial hype forces consensus.

It’s tragic that the media perpetuate Swift’s insensitivity and tastelessness. Parents should be concerned about Swift grooming their kids into cynicism and selfishness. The teens in TikTok clips who pitifully bounce and sing along with the film’s pre-recorded concert are the flip side of those nerds and sociopaths who lined up for The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. Boomer parents may want to let them have their fun — same as toying with matches and playing in the traffic. But here’s a frightening fact of the Swifties pheenom: These kids seem ready for a leader, anxious for totalitarianism. It will take a counterrevolution to repair Swift’s moral, aesthetic, and political damage.

Yeah

It is true that Taylor Swift is worshipped like a goddess but that also comes down to female psychology.
LEGO did extensive research on this. When boys play with Batman figures they play as if they are Batman, basically reenacting the movies or comics but they don't consider themselves to be Batman. When girls play with Batman figures they make him sip tea or dress him up. because they play as if they are Batman. Thus they created the 'LEGO Friends' line, so girls could play as their 'own family'. The same reason why games like The Sims and Animal Crossing are popular with women and RPG's in general.

When they see Taylor Swift casually dating, they don't see Swift dating, they see themselves dating. When they hear Swift singing, they don't see Swift singing they see themselves singing. That's why those cinema nights of the Era Tour turned into sing-a-longs. All of the Swifties consider themselves to be Taylor Swift and they will do anything Taylor Swift does. And thus women are suddenly interested in the NHL. 

There is a theory among culture warriors that Taylor Swift will get married and knocked up in the not so distant future considering her age which will result in both a baby boom and an explosion of depressions and suicides among ran through millenial Swifties who can no longer have kids and be like Swift.

[HaughtyFrank]

Localization is now integral to the design process, with international gamers in mind from the start.

One key example is "how Japanese game developers dress their heroines" as the #MeToo movement changes mindsets, says Franck Genty, senior localization manager at Japanese game giant Bandai Namco.

"We tell them that the cleavage is a bit too exposed, or the skirt is a bit too short," he adds. "Before, they weren't very flexible, but they've become more proactive on such subjects."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/01/25/digital/yakuza-translation-video-game-localization/?utm_term=autofeed&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#Echobox=1706239067

I'd really like to know what the fuck metoo has to do with cleavages and the lengths of skirts of fictional characters