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Pat


I think C-SPAN hosts read QOTO:

qoto.org/@Pat/1071907946098384

"Before he left, the president spoke about his initiative, his social spending initiative, the Build Back Butter... Better plan."

timecode: 16:45

c-span.org/video/?515689-2/was

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Pat

Build Back Butter


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Pat

I don't think anybody understood this, so I filled it out...

qoto.org/@Pat/1071903261492503

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Pat

Hamlet Past

Was or was not? 'Twas questioned and quenched.
Suffered, as was noble, arrows slung at outrageous fortune,
futile arms against a Sea of troubles.
But now friend and foe are dead, gone, asleep, no more.
What duality has shuffled off its mortal coil?
Vanquished, remembered, Forgiven?
'Twas not dreamt nor corpus vexed,
nor past or hence.
'Twas merely a player,
'tis only a stage.

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Pat

Meta

I once Meta a girl from Nantucket,
who wished for one huge as a rocket.
But when the fruit came to bare,
she gave it a stare,
and said it was too big to Zuck it.

Yeah, I know it's no longer PC (politically correct) to refer to a woman as a "girl", but that's the form of the verse. What can I say, are a transgressive . (Also, I know, is not from Nantucket.)

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Pat

I once Meta girl from Nantucket...

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Pat

I just muted a couple of qoto accounts that appear to be bots.

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Pat

Do Cracker Jacks still include a decoder ring?

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Pat


In case anyone is wondering, here is the clause in the US Constitution that Biden says gives him the power to mandate vaccines or tests:

"The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Their perceptions of reality are approaching Trumpian levels of delusion.

(Maybe that's why that clause is labeled "Section 8")

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Pat

Here's another scene from "Moneyball" showing the protagonist (right) and a black actor playing a bit part. Notice how the white guy is in the foreground, closer to the camera, while the black guy is back, away from the camera, resulting a smaller image of his face.

Also, the white guy is smiling while the black guy is frowning.

In this scene the black guy repeatedly contradicts the white protagonist.

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Pat

Based on another thread discussion about racial bias in film (qoto.org/@tripu/10712881255342), here's a peudo-random list of ten films to critique regarding how they treat black actors/characters.

Lion (2016)
Logan (2017)
Looper (2012)
Mad Max:Fury Road (2015)
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Moneyball (2011)
Moonlight (2016)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Of those on the list that I hadn't seen yet, only Lion and Moneyball are available for free (that I could find). Lion is about a guy's journey back to his family in India. In a quick scan of the film, I didn't see any black people, mostly Indian actors, Nicole Kidman and another white guy.

**** Spoilers *****
I watched Moneyball and it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's extremely biased against black people. It's a film about baseball. In real life there are a lot of black people in baseball, but in this film the screen is nearly always filled with white faces. There are only a few bit parts by black actors in this dialogue-heavy film and one other black character (small part), a player who got about a dozen lines -- mostly negative and largely in opposition to the protagonist.

The first black actor with lines didn't come until more than a half-hour into the film. In the scene, he was the only black person in a room with about a dozen other white guys. He has a couple of lines and was questioning/opposing the protagonist. The next black bit part had 2-3 lines and again contradicted the protagonist. Later, when the black character/player is being interviewed by a reporter, she interrupts him as he begins to speak. The reporter says, "Excuse me. Could you please get out of my shot.", (speaking to a random extra who was placed into the scene specifically for the reporter to utter that negative line). And there were a couple more bit parts, again same negative tone.

When the team wins its triumphant record-breaking game, it was a white guy who hit the home run, but when the team suffers its crushing loss, it was a black guy who hit the pop fly for the game-losing out.

This is what I talking about -- the racial bias in film. These films are not outliers, they're typical. I'm sure we'd see the same sort of thing in other films in that random list.

Here's a frame from "Moneyball", showing a black man blurred out while the white guy is in focus:

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Pat

"Genuine" doesn't rhyme with "wine".

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Pat

-Vietnam veteran
-Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command
-First black National Security Advisor
-Four-star general
-First black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
-First black Secretary of State
-Chairman of America's Promise Alliance
-Board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations
as well as the boards of private companies

-Served in three presidential administrations:
Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush

-Presidential Medal of Freedom (twice)
-Congressional Gold Medal
-Presidential Citizens Medal
-Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal
among dozens of other government and civil medals and awards

-Author of the "Powell Doctrine"
-Oversaw the successful liberation of Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm
as well as more than two dozen other national crises

-Husband and father

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Pat

I just puked...

c-span.org/video/?515364-2/was

timecode: 39:40

(that didn't take long)

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Pat

@khird @louisrcouture

Hint: There are no typos or misspellings in my toot.

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Pat


If I hear another person ignorantly parrot the phrase, "We're not a democracy, we're a republic!", I think I'll puke.

Democracy has many forms. The form of democracy we have in the US is a representative democracy. Because it is not a monarchy, it is also a republic. (A republic is a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who is accountable to the public.)

**** "Democracy" and "republic" are not mutually exclusive. ****

Here's Merriam-Webster's current definition of democracy:

"a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections"

Here's an image of the definition from Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1785, at the time when our country was formed:

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Pat

_

Without using any reference material (no internet, books, etc.), explain florescence in detail.

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Pat

I just blocked a user for racist comments.

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Pat

What's wrong with this picture?

This is a frame from the movie "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

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Pat

Congratulations to Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens for being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their work in developing methodologies in the analysis of causal relationships.

The methodologies are useful in many fields of study beyond economics and allow precise conclusions to be drawn about cause and effect from natural experiments (observation of naturally occurring conditions and events rather than planned, controlled experiments).

This is has been a huge problem in many fields -- establishing cause and effect rather than just correlation between variables. Their methods have made that easier.

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