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Pat

Short Circuit, film spoiler 

Also, this film was made a few years after Star Wars, with C3-PO and R2-D2, so audiences were primed for cute robots.

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@QOTO

@freemo

The icons under my toots and menus are displaying improperly. Seems to happen after I send a toot. Refreshing the page fixes it.

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Pat

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Short Circuit (1986)

Robots in fiction have a long history of being portrayed as adorable or affable characters, beginning with Tik-Tok and the Tin Woodman from Baum’s Oz books.* (Ironically, the name Tik-Tok was used by John Sladek as the titular character in his 1983 novel for an evil robot.) The robot in this silly film, Number 5, is a nice robot.

Number 5 has a high-pitch, whiny-sounding voice, which apparently is appealing to people because the same voice has been used over and over again ever since for many robots. In fact, an almost identical clone of Number 5 (same voice and personality) stars opposite Tom Hanks in Finch (2021).

Although the robot has a main role in this film, the movie is really about Ally Sheedy, who plays a woman who operates a vegetarian food truck in Oregon. (I think her character was given most of the silliest lines in this film.)

I almost didn’t pick this film for Retro Scifi Film of the Week because the film has an all-white cast – there are no black characters or characters played by people of color at all in the film. Also, the sidekick character “Ben” uses that phony Hollywood Indian accent which is now universally considered offensive. And one of the main characters, Newton Crosby played by Steve Guttenberg, tells an antisemitic joke at one point in the film, which is kind of weird since both Guttenberg and Sheedy are Jewish. But 1987 was definitely a different time, coming after the 50s-60s civil rights movement, but before the Rodney King beating in 1991. I only included this film because it has a lot of otherwise positive messages.

Sheedy also starred in WarGames (1983) which I including in this series. (See: qoto.org/@Pat/1092820087237854 for more on the history of the time during which these films were make.)

(* - Also, coincidentally Sheedy’s mother’s maiden name is Baum.)

(fair use image from the film)

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Pat

Just a reminder...

More people died this past week in the US from COVID-19 than died in the 9/11 attacks.

Please wear your respirator when you are in public.

(image CC-BY-SA-2.0, Martin Von Creytz; modified with inset of N95)

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TruthBeTold Spoiler 

***TruthBeTold Spoiler***

This statement is true. Burkina Faso is only 38 years old.

However, Burkina Faso is a country in Africa. The woman pictured in this TruthBeTold is actually Agatha Barbara, the first woman president of Malta. (The Republic of Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso in 1984.)

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Pat

Believe it or not, but Burkina Faso is only 38 years old.

- - -
= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

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Capitalism gave us airplanes.


(images PD; and CC-BY-SA-2.0, Bill Larkins)

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Pat

Here are the latest totals from China and the US. (Source: Johns Hopkins Univ.)

China
Cases: 4,887,702
Deaths : 18,558

US
Cases: 102,026,383
Deaths: 1,104,326

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Pat

TruthBeTold Spoiler 

****TruthBeTold Spoiler*****

Did you figure this one out?

The assertion that more people are becoming restive about Putin’s wealth appears to be a true statement based on news reports. (Putin has spent his entire career as a public servant, yet has amassed a large fortune).

The deceptive part of this TruthBeTold is the picture – it shows President Biden’s mansion, not Putin’s. (Biden has been a public servant for his entire career and throughout his time in government he has claimed that he was the poorest guy in Congress).

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Pat

More and more Russian citizens are beginning to protest against Putin’s ill-gotten wealth, including his opulent mansion.

euractiv.com/section/global-eu

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

-
Here's a cat doing the moonwalk on the moon.

He's sad because his wife just got left behind on Earth.

(details: qoto.org/@Pat/1096435140252956 )

from: Dancing on the Moon (1935)

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TruthBeTold Spoiler 

This one isn’t true at all.

That isn’t really Ben Affleck, it’s Kevin Baron the editor of Defense One, but he looks just like Affleck. Also, Baron prefaced his statement with “...then. there's an argement that...”, so I don’t know if this is Baron’s personal opinion or not (although his facial expressions and voice intonations seemed to indicate approval for the argument).

I have no idea how Affleck feels about defense spending or the application of these technologies.

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Pat

Here’s Ben Affleck on CSPAN saying that we should grow the US military and spend more on AI, network IT, and space assets.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(fair use video clip from CSPAN)

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Pat

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Abre Los Ojos (1997)

When this film was released the plot was still fresh -- there weren’t many other movies like this one. In fact, the specific story told by this film is quite original.

It was very well received by critics and moviegoers. This was Alejandro Amenábar’s second film, the first, Thesis, which was produced the previous year, was also successful proving Amenábar’s talent. In fact, this film was so good that Tom Cruise bought adaptation rights and did a remake a couple of years later. But that Hollywood version was not nearly as good as Abre Los Ojos, even though they stuck closely to the script. They even cast Penélope Cruz (who was in the original) in her same role. But a major problem with that Hollywood remake was a distractingly poor performance by Kurt Russell, whose acting skills were just not up to the task in my opinion. You’re much better off watching Abre Los Ojos.

It helps if you speak Spanish, but if you don’t mind subtitles you should be able to follow this somewhat complex story because there’s plenty of well-written exposition.

Highly recommended.

(fair use movie poster)

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Pat

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Capitalism brought us velcro.

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(pics CC-SA-3.0-Alexander Kink)

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President Harris may nominate Barack Obama for VP.

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Pat

Here's some sunshine...

(see qoto.org/web/statuses/10967807
for the full thread)

- - -

... I'm sure you've read my previous posts on this, how the CDC hoarded respirators in the Strategic National Stockpile while they lied, telling people there was a shortage; how they told everyone to wear cloth masks (which don't stop the virus).

They knew right from the beginning that respirators are the most effective way to stop the infection and spread of the virus. They even said so. They said (paraphrasing) "N95 masks work better, but there's a shortage so everybody needs to wear cloth masks. (see attached pic of N95 inventories, which show that supplies INCREASED during the pandemic -- that's right, they pulled N95s off of the market during the pandemic and put them on the shelf so people could couldn't wear them.)

Here's a quote from a Harvard Med. study (Aug. 2021),

"Using data from the third wave, we showed that the epidemic could be eliminated in the USA if at least 40% of the population consistently wore respirators in public."

Biden finally called out the Army to distribute the N95 respirators in Dec. 2021 (because the CDC refused to release them). Look up the death rates to see what happened when they were distributed.

Did you hear about any of this in the mainstream media? Did hear any PSAs telling people to wear respirators?

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Pat

Here in the US, our country is right on top of things...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PublicHe

(Try to visit PublicHealthEmergency.gov and see what happens)

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Pat boosted
Pat

@peterdrake

>"I think the people at the CDC have been doing their best, but the GQP crowd prevented them from doing any more than they did."

I don't know what "GQP" means.

The CDC did not do their best to stop the pandemic, they did the opposite. I've been following this very closely. I've watched nearly every presser from the WH response team and CDC, and the Senate Health Committee. I read many papers on what is effective and what is not. I've called and spoken to the authors of those papers to make sure I understood. I understand this better than most people.

The CDC, Congress, the White House, and the mainstream media worked together to make the pandemic worse. They wanted more people sick so they could spend more money and so the industry could make more money. That money goes to conspiring mainstream media as advertising; it goes to Congress as campaign donations and high-paying jobs after they leave Congress; it goes to corrupt administrators in research; it goes to CEOs and investors in the industry.

They literally killed more than a million people just so they could make a little more money. That's what happened.

>"Evil is, as you say, in the minority. If it seems particularly vicious right now, it's because it knows it's outnumbered."

This is very true. A lot of this is in response to a huge shift in information and awareness to the people, and democratization of media. They don't want people aware and informed and empowered. They are willing to kill millions and destroy democracy in order to hold on to power.

>"Despair is a tool of those who would have us give up. We're in the world we're in, most of us are pulling in the right direction, and we make the changes we can. The road is very long, but we're making progress every day."

I haven't given up, I've shifted strategy. They are so entrenched that it will take a major reset to take them down. If that's a revolution (non-violent of course), then that's what it takes.

>"'We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin"

Capitalism is the worst economic system there is, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.

No economic system will work if those in control are corrupt and it is unjust, and it doesn't allow people to be free.

I don't believe we have anything resembling free-market capitalism in the US. We have a fascist oligarchy. A plutocracy.

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