It's not that complicated, my immigration policy is "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Mine comes to the same conclusion via a different route. I don't want my government telling me where I can or cannot travel to or decide to live, and I want all other governments to do the same.
I mean, I think that's a noble position to take; I share it, to a significant degree. The problem is when you start getting into the nuance of the modern world, where everywhere has a record of who you are, what you've done, where you've been, etcetera. The existence of that data means the masses will want to judge immigrants by said data before permitting entry, which means bad actors will leverage said data to persecute those they hate.
In principle, I am 100% with you. Pragmatically however, it's significantly more complex.
That "19th century ethnic activist" was born in the US after her family emigrated here more than a century prior fleeing the Inquisition. Her activism was aiding refugees entering New York as they fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe. My ancestors entered this country in the 19th century though that "golden door" as "poor huddled masses" fleeing those same pogroms. I admire that "ethnic activist" not locking the door behind her just because her ancestors happened to make the journey in a prior generation and therefore I echo that mindset. For me, being anti-immigration would be like spitting on all their graves.
This country was built on the backs of immigrants and slaves which instills in me the belief that even more central than freedom, there is no ideal more core to the United States as a nation than immigration.
It's not helpful to tell citizens to "know their place" and leave their country and claim that people of a given race are boring and call people who love America "anti-American".
You crossed into personal attack here, as well as repeatedly perpetuating the flamewar in this thread. Both of those things are against the site guidelines, regardless of how badly other commenters may be behaving. Please don't.
Please, please don't do this. Don't fall into this horrific hatefulness on HN - telling people they don't love their country, that they don't belong in it. Experiment with it elsewhere, and return when you have reflected on what it does to you.
I'm not, I'm honestly asking you with no political feelings. HN is the only place left on the internet I will interact with. I'm desperate for it not to fall like the rest.
Well, why are you posting on HN instead of manning the border? Or are you "offshoring" immigration enforcement to someone who doesn't sit behind a keyboard on a Saturday afternoon?
my position has been steady since the start of my political consciousness (maybe ~12 years?)
all laws, including immigration laws, should be enforced consistently and universally, and without bias. and the laws should be changed to make it much simpler and easier to immigrate especially if you are able to already secure employment, housing, and health insurance.
A friend entertained the idea of a startup focused on a social dashcam site, where users can upload clips of bad drivers tagged with their license plate number, and smart dashcams can alert to bad drivers in real time. They got as far as asking a lawyer before it fell apart.
Yikes. This smells a bit like Stasi-style surveillance. Unofficially encouraged by authorities. Rewards or social pressure or ideology turned a significant % of East Germans into Inoffizieller Mitarbeiters ("unofficial collaborators" or informants). Bad drivers today. And then ...
The point of the stasi collaborators was to undermine the targets personal relationships and isolate them because of the fear that they might be an informant.
Publicly posting the behavior or unaffiliated parties is nothing like the stasi.
Regardless of the official point of Stasi collaborators, what they did was contribute to millions of government surveillance files on fellow citizens. The similarity to a social network of public surveillance is the unpaid, unvetted, untrained manner, of collection with questionable motivation, be it social or political or simply anger.
Interestingly, the contributors may also be profiling themselves as able to and willing to surveil fellow citizens, should the opportunity arise.
The stasi had millions of files and no technical way to search them efficiently.
Random unpaid members of the public posting the most outrageous behavior they see is not a surveillance state. The chance that any one incident will be recorded is low.
I'm glad they did the research on this lol I thought about this a decade ago when I was doing a lot of driving and always thought it'd be something I'd explore. Good to know it's against the law
Just so we're clear, across all these statutes, the term "private" means "for private use". State and local governments can engage private firms to collect data in all of them.
I wonder how this figures in with states that don't permit any ALPR use by non-law enforcement. Presumably in those localities private entities can't collect ALPR data on behalf of law enforcement.
This page has some more background (and the most amusing map legend I've seen in awhile):
Not at all, even if the data collection is exactly the same. "Where the authority comes from" matters a lot, probably much more than the actual collection itself.
Strongly disagree. The existence of such a collection is a loaded gun for police abuse. It doesn't even require mission creep; simply sifting through the ream of data under an actual warrant "coincidentally" looking for a different POI is going to happen.
But the costumes look like ass (One of the extras was saying he had fit into the same armor for a low budget sword and sandal film), they are using a viking longboat as a greek ship (have already seen half a dozen experts spitting chips over the difference in boat design). I just cant bring myself to care about the film.
"Oh its a fantasy film" its set in a historical time period, I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either.
Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad? Even though it is thought they are inaccurate for the time period that they think the Iliad is set? Not so easy I would say.
And the extra you describe, where does he appear on screen? Front and centre, or in the fourth rank behind the people in better costumes?
And the longboat, does it appear on screen in its original form, or with additions to make it look more period accurate?
> Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad? Even though it is thought they are inaccurate for the time period that they think the Iliad is set? Not so easy I would say.
Either “best attempt at historical accuracy” (although that would have been difficult given the sparse record), or “true to Homer’s anachronistic story” would have been reasonable ways to go. Sounds like they picked neither, though…
>Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad?
Thats fine but my ultimate preference would be fully period.
Theres an old painting of jesus getting stabbed by Longinus kicking around, and Longinus and the other romans are wearing modern (at the time of painting) Italian plate harness with sallet helms.
The reason we dont depict romans like this painting, or wearing modern army fatigues and carrying rifles, is that we know better.
>And the extra you describe, where does he appear on screen? Front and centre, or in the fourth rank behind the people in better costumes?
The gist here is that most of the costumes are rentals with a few exceptions. The extra himself is barely on screen, but he is one of apparently a large number of people in the same outfit. YMMV.
The costumes they have created for the film are no better in accuracy, the batmanesque helmet for Agamemnon has been thoroughly ridiculed online and I wont bother going over it again here.
>And the longboat, does it appear on screen in its original form, or with additions to make it look more period accurate?
They took the dragon head prow down at least. Not much more than that has been done.
> "Oh its a fantasy film" its set in a historical time period, I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either.
WW2 Zombie movie with Nazis in Viking armors and random tanks sounds so much more _fun_ than a "historically acurate Nazi Zombie" movie!
Different strokes for different folks. I think they are just used to the common trope of people immediately telling them because one aspect of a movie/film/play is unrealistic they shouldn't care if the entire thing is nonsense. Vice versa though, nobody should mind others enjoy or make such content, beyond these kinds of statements that it's not for them.
I also more often enjoy films which sit between "100% realistic/accurate" and "anything goes" than either extreme itself. 100% realistic/accurate and it tends to already be known unless it's relatively bland. 100% anything goes and it can still be good but there is a high risk it ends up feeling like every other "anything goes" movie of the same topic. In between you can often get the best of both worlds - something new, but still unique.
>I also more often enjoy films which sit between "100% realistic/accurate" and "anything goes" than either extreme itself. 100% realistic/accurate and it tends to already be known unless it's relatively bland. 100% anything goes and it can still be good but there is a high risk it ends up feeling like every other "anything goes" movie of the same topic. In between you can often get the best of both worlds - something new, but still unique.
I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
When mostly what he does is potter about and destroy sound design.
I agree no one is going to be 100% accurate and accuracy isnt always desirable. But an attempt? When thats the guys reputation? Doesnt feel like too much to ask for.
>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
I'm not a huge Nolan-discourse-insider, but that seems like a pretty bizarre reputation to have for someone who's famous for directing three Batman movies, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet?
Is this reputation just because of Oppenheimer?
I haven't seen Dunkirk (and I'm not a WWII buff so couldn't tell if they used right planes/boats/guns/uniforms/whatever even if I tried), but even a short blurb on Wikipedia talks about a "balance historical accuracy with aesthetics that would favour the film stock".
The first batman movie was a paint by numbers reimplementation of The Shadow (1997). You can find comparisons online, nearly shot by shot and most of the same plot beats. The second and third went sort of back towards a very mechanical batman representation that reminded me of the planned low budget Iron Man movie where he wouldn't have had the ability to fly. Just stomping around punching badguys like a Power Rangers extra. The new Bat Mobile seems to inspire some of this reputation
>Inception
Inceptions pretty flat for a film about dreams.
>Interstellar
Neuro-Diverse level of detail until the bits with space magic at the end.
>Tenet
I couldnt sit through 10 minutes of it. Its like the antifilm. It didnt want me to observe it otherwise it wouldnt have emitted such a piercing screeching noise.
>Dunkirk
He has an old period watch, and he recorded the ticking. He overlays the ticking constantly. Also he tells the story out of sequence for some reason. But theres lots of practical effects if you include the stupid watch.
>Oppenheimer
Between tenet hating me on a physical level, and the perfectly servicable fat man and little boy film from the 70s I just havent seen it to comment.
Well, interstellar has also some nerd stuff in it. If I remember correctly Kip Thorne did physics consulting on the movie and they even use a simulation running on a cluster to visualize the black hole physically correct.
They could have used some arbitrary CGI…but no, they wanted it accurate according to science.
>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
I just wanted to give an example of such accurate physics props, that this is not only due to Oppenheimer.
And yet the rest of the movie runs on movie logic, enough so that every physicist I know rolls their eyes at it. It gives me the vibe of the "IFLS" crowd, not anyone who actually understands science.
Yeah its a bugbear of mine "oh its so accurate" theres like 2 accurate scenes, and most of it (from economics/agriculture to space physics) is completely bonkers.
Sadly its a lot of "Filmbros first serious scifi movie" and thats something you cant disentangle, its love its not rational.
Your sound design comment reminds me of seeing Inception in the cinema sitting next to a friend who works in sound (Frozen, John Wick films, etc). Early in the film, I offered him some of my popcorn, and he politely declined. I spent a good portion of the film partially distracted by the idea that maybe he didn't want to be crunching away on popcorn because he was keenly focused on thinking about the sound experience, and the cinema speakers and the like. I ate my popcorn even more quietly than usual.
After the film, I asked if he'd turned down the popcorn for professional reasons. He said, "No, I just didn't feel like popcorn."
The example was really to me because one of the better Nazi zombie movies is Norwegian (Dead Snow) and given the Nazi obsession with old Germanic and Norse myths, it wouldn't seem wrong at all to come across Nazi Vikings in a movie like that.
This is fairly typical level of detail for Hollywood, most of stuff they do around Europe is insulting as hell if one cares about the topic, historical stuff being the most visible source of offense.
Dumbed down far more than required for short movie transition of any topic. But I guess they know their US audience, their level of knowledge and care for authenticity better than me.
For someone who purports not to care about the film, you seem very familiar with the discourse about it. (I have seen zero experts, or anyone really, discussing boat design.)
We've already accepted a lot of non-Greek casting, and always have. Movies like Troy are filled with people of German, English, Scandinavian whatever heritage, same here with The Odyssey.
I think they get a pass because we see Greek history as a shared western history, even though it's about as accurate as a black person in those roles.
So I think for a lot of people, when they see complaints about black actors playing historically "white" roles, what they're really seeing is a claim that black people don't have any right to our shared western heritage despite the fact that it's almost always a black person that has grown up in and only ever really been a part of western culture.
I don't know about what Americans think, but, as a Greek, the whole "whiteness" thing is an American social construct. There aren't whites and blacks in Greece, mostly because we don't have enough black people here to have a divide.
As far as I'm concerned, all your casting is wrong, it's not like Brad Pitt in Troy looks anything like a Greek person. Casting black people goes even farther, but it's just a matter of degree.
It does make sense, these are American movies, they're going to cast Americans, and the whole race issue is about who gets to star in them. There aren't enough Greek people in Hollywood to make a fuss about representation, so they don't get representation. It is what it is, but let's not pretend it's about accuracy or faithfulness to the original material, it's just about less racially biased casting.
Yes, people that get upset about racially “incorrect” casting hand wave away casting someone of Irish decent as Greek because it falls into some sort of western bucket.
So when someone complains about a black person being cast as Greek, in a movie filled with people of English, Irish, Scandinavian and who knows else decent, what they’re actually saying is that black people will never have a right to the shared western culture.
If you go to the streets of Athens and show them two pictures one of Diane Kruger and one Lupita Nyong'o, and ask them who they think represents Helena of Troy more I'm certain you are going to get Diane as the definitive answer.
I'm also certain that many will feel the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as cultural appropriation while the same will be less true for Diane Kruger.
I'm not saying the Greeks should decide who to cast in a US film, but the argument that if the actress isn't Greek then any other choice has the same level of accuracy is wrong.
The Odyssey is not a documentary that sets out to be as visually authentic as possible, it's a drama. If we exclude black people from any roles in western canon, then doesn't that mean we're also excluding them from being part of western culture?
I don't get the argument, there are a million other places you can (and have) black people being part of "western culture", just to list a few sports, music, politics, military, literature and the list goes on. In some of them they are the predominant group.
By your logic every movie should have a lot more east Asians, Indians, Native American etc. which I don't see anybody pushing for.
To be fair it is fairly onesided towards european history/folklore/tales and noticably always with black people inserted making it feel like there's some very... american focus on this from the opposing perspective as well.
(And when it's anything east asian they typically insert a white main character)
Which isn't helped by the industry basically farming this situation from both sides with actors and articles claiming queen charlotte, cleopatra and such were back. (to the point of leading to legal complaints in egypt, etc)
You care about the historical detail of the boats and armour, but don't care about the person (sex or colour)? And people who disagree with you need medical help?
Do you realise all the contradictions in your position? And then to suggest that the other person needs medical help for stating the obvious, indicates your malign intent. This is gas lighting, ie abusive behaviour. Your own conditioning is making you unable to see the obvious.
>Do you realise all the contradictions in your position? And then to suggest that the other person needs medical help for stating the obvious, indicates your malign intent. This is gas lighting, ie abusive behaviour. Your own conditioning is making you unable to see the obvious.
Its not gas lighting and you diminish the term by suggesting it is.
If you demand arbitrary whiteness for a film thats about people who were considered black until the 60s or so, when you arent also demanding greekness of the whites, you are just here to grind your culture war axe.
I was accused of being conditioned, all I did was point out that its the culture war practitioners who have been conditioned like pavlovs dog to bark every time they see a person of colour on film. And yeah, that requires medical attention.
> If you demand arbitrary whiteness for a film thats about people who were considered black until the 60s or so, when you arent also demanding greekness of the whites, you are just here to grind your culture war axe.
You think greeks were considered black in the 1960s?
Perhaps you have just received a very poor education. Perhaps the colours of people really have shifted a lot in your understanding.
> Its not gas lighting and you diminish the term by suggesting it is.
If the colours of different people have NOT shifted in your understanding, saying someone needs medical help for stating the obvious, common understanding is pretty close to the text book definition of gas lighting. It's just that you think it is for a good cause.
I’m just offended Helen isn’t depicted as having goose parts. After-all, Zeus was a goose when he seduced Leda, and Helen hatched from an egg. Some part of her must be goosey.
Edit: I meant swan. My recollection of mythology is rusty.
One thing that always rubs me the wrong way in this type of situations, is how patronizing it is towards black people.
It got the "let little timmy play too" vibe all over it. It hints that there are no interesting historical events with black people having a major role in it that you would want to create a movie about.
One thing that might change your mind is the 20th century mythic cowboy. Where I’m from, maybe 1/4 cowboys were black. So we accepted that as whites-only theatre. Do we have to keep accepting whites-only theatre?
I think this makes my argument even more true.
Imagine you have a budget and want to create a western/cowboy movie. You care about representation and want to have more black cowboys in the movies.
Option A: Take a story with a white cowboy, cast a black guy for him and shoot the movie.
Option B: Find a story of a black cowboy (and as you said there were many of them) and shoot a movie about it.
IMHO option A is patronizing while option B is empowering. Because option A assumes there were no black cowboys, there are no good stories too tell about black people.
I don't get your argument. You can look at historical monuments or modern Greeks and Brad Pitt doesn't look to different from them.
Let me try to elaborate on my argument.
Imagine you are in a park and there are three children playing, child A, B and C. Imagine child A has 10 toys, B has 7 and C 1.
Now if you forcefully took toys from A and B and gave them to C, then that's patronizing behavior as it means "you can't have your own toys, you need to steal them from someone else, you are not good enough".
A more respectful way of solving the dilemma for all involved parties is by just getting more toys for child C.
It's literally just manufactured faux-concern about a rumour and a very very minor character role:
Achilles does not actually appear as a living character in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey (as he dies in the Trojan War before Odysseus' journey home).
However, in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film adaptation, the character is rumored to make a brief appearance as a ghost in the Underworld. Viral rumors suggested Elliot Page was cast in this role.
Nolan movies will continue to fail or succeed, it's a stretch for the GP commentor to tie that to a person cast for a bit part.
Yeah he doesn’t appear as a living character in Homer’s poem but he does appear as a ghost in the poem when they visit the underworld (sorry for the spoilers). Not sure what difference it makes if Achilles shows up as alive or as a ghost but he is in the poem and it would be weird to have a non macho dude play Achilles.
Regardless I think it’s a bullshit rumor and people are running with it. The sad thing is how believable the rumor is.
Buenos noches Senores y Senoras Bienvenidos
La primera pregunta es: Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?
Well, let's see
My guess is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife
Si! Correcto! Pineapple es mas macho que knife
La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus?
Uh, lightbulb?
No! Lo siento, Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb
Gracias. And we'll be back in un momento
I hate these gotchas but I can’t resist and it’s on a flagged comment so no one is really going to see this. Are you saying trans people are just cross-dressers?
No, it just suggests that to call Achilles "macho" is extremely weird. And the GP didn't even mention his extreme emotionality at the death of his lover, Patrocles, which is like half his plot in the Illiad.
... frequently interpreted and depicted as lovers in the classical period of Greek literature, particularly in the works of Aeschylus, Aeschines and Plato.
Other writers at the time, such as Xenophon in his Symposium, say that their relationship was not sexual, but instead an intense friendship.
Ancient writers referenced both sides, and additionally debated whether and how the relationship fit into the scheme of pederasty in ancient Greece.
I'm pushing 70, don't much care one way or the other, but can state it's been cast as a very probably just another example of Greek lovers since I was in school .. and, as linked above, thought to be as such since the Classic Era writers.
You're certainly entitled to the opinion that pederasty wasn't a thing in ancient Greece, multitudes of texts and vases from the period wear that down somewhat.
No, just observing that some 2,000+ years of story telling portray Achilles as a short (by modern standards - average by ancient Greek standards) cross dressing bisexual.
That's not really a gotcha.
Given that I'd say there's a lot of latitude for directors to portray the character .. as has been done in a few opera's over the past century or so.
You can't have a 1.55m woman play the greatest Greek hero of all time. It's an insult to Greek culture. If Sydney Sweeney played Martin Luther King it would be equally insulting.
A big part of Achilles' story in the Illiad is that he was hidden among a group of princesses, and that Odysseus had to use a trick to figure out which of the princesses he was. So, even though in other places he is described as quite manly, it also makes sense to portray him as having more feminine features if referencing this part of the canon.
I'd also note that Elliott Page is, of course, not a woman.
> I'd also note that Elliott Page is, of course, not a woman.
Scientists can tell that Lucy the hominid was a female even though only a few of her bones have survived since 3.2 million years ago when she died yet leftists think that Page is no longer a women just because she excised her breasts and changed her government papers.
If her bones get fossilized, 100 million years from now you'd still be able to figure out she's a woman.
> A big part of Achilles' story in the Iliad
Not only is it not a big part, but it's not even in the Iliad. You're clearly just regurgitating talking points.
That's a later invention. And it doesn't make him a transsexual. He marries a woman there.
If Greek machismo were blemished by mere fiction it would always have been eggshell thin. I have a feeling it shall hold up just fine as it has for millennia.
I’ll do my best to avoid the overnight cuddle vigil with an Ebola corpse.
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