Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

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  • Coming Attractions and Everyone’s Favorite: Saturday Night Open Post

    Well, here we are about to enter the last week of August. Holy cow, how did that happen?

    At our house, we’re in the midst of summer-peak-produce delight. Tonight’s dinner includes caprese, Jacques Pepin’s Corn Soufflé, and our favorite Fresh Peach Pie from America’s Test Kitchen.

    before baking

     
     

    But, back on topic (can one even be off topic on an open post of one’s own creation?). We have a terrific line-up of articles to ease you into September.

    This week’s articles include great content from Spudalicious, Florida Man, A Leap at the Wheel, Suthenboy, SugarFree (one lives in hope!), The Bearded Hobbit, Web Dom, Not Adahn, and The Hyperbole. Sincere thanks to all the community members who create content. I love learning so much about the diverse topics you all share. Don’t forget, you can be included among that number.

    Oh, we’ll also have the always-highly-anticipated What Are We Reading post this week.

    And fair warning: get ready because GlibFit 3.0 hits the second week in September. Thank you, trshmnstr!

    Now, non-existent ladies, and shitlords, your last Saturday Night Open Post of August.

  • ZARDOZ’S SATURDAY EVENING LINKS OF FEAR

    ZARDOZ’S SATURDAY EVENING LINKS OF FEAR

    HANDSOME, YES?

    ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ GIVES THE GIFT OF THE LINK A BIT EARLIER ON SATURDAY….OUT OF FEAR. THE MIGHTY ENTITY KNOW AS “SP” HATH ORDAINED THE COMING ATTRACTIONS FOR THE CHOSEN ONES SHALL BE LATER THIS EVENING/TONIGHT. ZARDOZ MOST STRONGLY WISHES TO NOT STEP ON THOSE TOES. DELETION IS ZARDOZ’S GREATEST FEAR….

    THEREFOR, RECEIVE THE GIFT OF THE LINK….GO FORTH AND SNARK!

    1. THE ORANGE BRUTAL “HINTS” AT FIRING A SUBORDINATE. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CLEANSING THEM? WEAK, HAT AND HAIRED ONE….WEAK.
    2. ZARDOZ IS PLEASED. THE BRUTALS HAVE EXCUSES WEAKER THAN “A NIGERIAN PRINCE SAID I HAD MONEY COMING!”. ZARDOZ MUST ADMIT “PRISON” IS A BIT OF A LETDOWN. WHY NOT CLEANSING? JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW, FOR HIS BIBLE IS PACKED WITH BLOW?
    3. THE BRUTALS ARE VERY SLOW TO LOOK AT THE LIGHTWORKER. BUT ZARDOZ WISHES THAT “The resulting fine, one of the largest ever handed down by the FEC, is the result of a failure to disclose or improperly disclosing thousands of contributions to Obama for America during the then-senator’s 2008 presidential run, documents show.” WAS REPLACED WITH “EVERYONE INVOLVED WAS CLEANSED.”
    4. ZARDOZ MUST ADMIT INADEQUATE COGITATION ON THIS MATTER. SHOULD NOT EVERYONE INVOLVED HAVE BEEN CLEANSED? ZARDOZ SMH….AND AT HIS SIZE, THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING.

    ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.

  • Bottoms Up

    It was Friday and nothing seemed to be of interest.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I did the sensible thing and found the one with the label with the most colorful, eye catching label possible.

    This is my review of Hop Valley Brewing Co Reveal Pale Ale:

    Seriously look at that rainbow, isn’t it fabulous?  I like what they were trying to tap into here.  The rainbow is a symbol known to brings positive feelings for centuries.  One of the oldest is the flood story.

    Here God tells Noah his rein of terror has ended, and the flood waters will recede, and the Earth shall flourish once more.  God promised that he will never again flood the world to destroy it and left a rainbow as the symbol of this promise.  Next time he will just use fire and throw everybody into a flaming pit.  Crazy stuff, really.  We are reminded of this promise every time it rains, after all we need the rain but not enough to flood the Earth and kill us all.  God remembers, that’s why there is a rainbow.

    The rainbow is also a symbol of fulfillment.  Think of what lies the end of the rainbow, the prize that awaits the person willing to seek out the source.  The pot of gold of course!

    Rainbow symbolism has such a powerful meaning to each of us and graciously bestows the energy of blessings. The symbolism of a Rainbow intuitively tells us to hold onto hope, to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that sacred blessings open to us when we are following our hearts desire.  And the symbol of the Rainbow tells us that we are guided to our hearts desire when we open to spirit to let us guide us.

    The rainbow itself it composed of seven colors–all the same colors representing the seven Chakras.  To learn more about the colors and their spiritual meaning, click here.

    Do you cry out for magic? Do you feel it dancing in the light?  Is it cold?  And have you lost your hold to the shadows of the night?  I have good news for you.

    While you turn that last link up, let me tell you something, this beer is good.  It has a pleasant hop balance with, dare I say, a fruity finish.  If you like the Pale Ale, but not the India variety, you might fancy this one.  Hop Valley Brewing Co Reveal Pale Ale  3.8/5.

     

     

     

     

    PS:  Yes, I do know what else the rainbow means.

  • Saturday Morning Rainy Day Links

    SP and I are in a state of bliss- football is back! Even if we’re just stuck with seeing dogs like Philly-Cleveland or Detroit-Tampa Bay. When the regular season starts, we’ll have the full NFL package and our Sundays will be totally wasted in a most delightful manner.

    The main disadvantage: we basically don’t watch actual television. We see old movies and binge-watch selected shows on Amazon and Netflix, but the idea of seeing something on NBC-CBS-CNN-whatever is repulsive to us.  And seeing games on networks reminds us of why. The commercials promoting network shows really brought home to us the mathematical reality that half the population has a sub-100 IQ. And none more so than the endless promos last night for a show called God Friended Me. We just stared at each other in disbelief. There is not enough alcohol in this world that could make something like that tolerable. Maybe with enough head trauma… This explains who wins elections.

    In any case, this will be a quieter season. SP yells at referees, especially when she’s been drinking (and how can you watch NFL games and not be drinking?). Her usual targets have been Ed Hochuli and Jeff Triplette, both of whom could get her into a rage-storm and both of whom are now retired. And that just leaves Jerome Boger, and nobody could yell at him. Damn, he ought to be the ref for every game and be the only one allowed to use the microphone to announce the penalties.

    Ahem, this is supposed to be a links post, I just get distracted. Today in history, John Birch was killed by the commies, which gave rise to the eponymous Red-Scare organization. It’s delightful irony that this banner now is in the hands of Team Blue. It is also the birthday of Michael Rennie (the One True Klaatu), Sean Connery (the One and Only True James Bond), noted Jew musician Gene Simmons, and antisemitic piece of shit musician Elvis Costello (who also has the distinction of calling James Brown and Ray Charles “niggers”). Oh, and the Grand Mustache, Rollie Fingers, who I don’t think is an antisemite and never called Reggie Jackson a nigger.

    On to actual links.

    Not news, but an interesting link, 10 Libertarian Thoughts on the Civil War. The author makes the vital point that, without an explicit constitutional provision outlining the means of states exiting the union, a civil war was almost inevitable. But then we get into the knotty issues of, “What are the moral obligations of a society toward other societies where there is injustice?” “What are the economic drivers which might cause a subset of states to want to exit and form a different union?” “What is the moral balance between the liberty to exit a voluntary association and the motivation of continuing oppression of people within the exiting states?”

    I hope you read this article and that it stimulates some discussion here. It’s a very nicely done piece.

    We in Illinois have an interesting gubernatorial choice this year between a totally ineffective billionaire who will oversee massive tax increases and a totally corrupt billionaire who will oversee massive tax increases. Surely the Libertarian Party has a better alternative, right? Meet Team L’s candidate, “Kash” Jackson.

    Jackson, who was previously named Benjamin Winderweedle before a legal name change in 2017… has said he is unemployed and living exclusively on disability and pension payments from serving in the Navy 20 years. He’s said in court he takes home about $4,500 a month from those benefits.

    Great.

    At that, I guess we’re still better off than Florida.

    U.S. House candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera has a long list of accomplishments to bolster her campaign in Florida. But she is perhaps best known for claiming that she was abducted by space aliens as a child… [L]ast weekend, the Miami Herald endorsed her for the GOP nomination in the Tuesday primary out of a field of nine candidates.

    Rodriguez Aguilera says she was taken aboard a spaceship as a young girl by blond extraterrestrials who resembled the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. She says they told her that the “center of the world’s energy is Africa” and that thousands of non-human skulls were once discovered in a cave on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

    “We realize that Rodriguez Aguilera is an unusual candidate,” the editorial noted, adding that the paper was impressed with her “boots-on-the-ground ideas and experience.”

    We need more politicians like Bettina.

    Apparently, the Zionazis control FIFA!

    President of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Jibril Rajoub was fined CHF 20,000 ($20,333) and banned from matches for a year by FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee on Friday… In June, Rajoub called on Palestinian fans to burn pictures of Messi as well as replicas of his shirt should the world-famous striker choose to visit Israel. “We are going to target him personally and we call on all to burn his picture and his shirt and to abandon him,” Rajoub said at the time.

    I don’t know why anyone cares. It’s soccer, not actual sports.

    Speaking of football and Florida, they sure do know how to liven up a game down there.

    A shooting at a high school football game in Jacksonville, Fla., on Friday night left one person dead and two injured, officials said. The shooting happened about 10 p.m. ET, 15 minutes after the game ended at Raines High School, where about 4,000 spectators attended, the Florida Times Union reported, citing Jacksonville authorities.
    The stadium for the Raines-versus-Lee High School game was placed on lockdown as security personnel worked to keep the remaining fans and players safe, Jacksonville’s WJXT-TV reported.

    Now maybe it’s just me, but it seems that trapping people inside is not exactly something that’s going to make them safer.

    The superintendent said everyone coming into the game had to undergo a magnetic detector wand search and that security inside the game area was tight.

    Well, that was certainly effective. And cue the predictable:

    “This is evidence that there is a community issue that has to be addressed, and one of those issues includes access to guns,” Paula Wright, a school board member, told the paper.

    Fuck you, Paula.

    As a kid, I hated two things in the public school morning ritual: reciting the Lord’s Prayer (this was before Madalyn Murray’s court win) and the Pledge of Allegiance. So initially, this started out well.

    An Atlanta charter school will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance as part of its morning meeting agenda. Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School on Grant Street announced the change Tuesday in a statement from elementary campus principal Lara Zelski.

    Yay, Lara! Oh, wait, maybe not.

    “Teachers and the K-5 leadership team will be working with students to create a school pledge that we can say together at morning meeting,” Zelski said. That pledge, “…will focus on students’ civic responsibility to their school family, community, country and our global society.”

    Fuck you, Lara.

    Old Guy Music! And keeping with Brett’s theme and my semi-traumatic visit to Detroit this past week, the one hit wonder pride of Motor City, the Amboy Dukes! As usual, The Nuge plays it close to the chest.

  • STEVE SMITH FRIDAY EVENING LINKING OF LINKS

    STEVE SMITH GLAD SEE WEEK END. HIM FINALLY CATCH UP ON RAPE QUOTA FOR MONTH (SO FAR!). ALSO WRITE LEGAL BRIEF FOR CASCADIA INDEPENDENCE. PROBLEM – WROTE ON LEAVES, AND WIND CAME AND BLEW MOST OF ARGUMENT AWAY. GRRRR. STEVE SMITH NEED OFFICE. CAN ANY FUNNY GLIBERTARIAN PEOPLE HELP? STEVE SMITH VERY GOOD OFFICE MATE. HIM NO RAPE COPIER OR COFFEE MACHINE. MAYBE ELEVATOR.

    “MR. SMITH? A CLIENT TO SEE YOU”

     

    • IT RAIN LOT IN HAWAII. MAYBE IT PUT VOLCANO OUT? STEVE SMITH THINK COUSIN SEA SMITH GO VISIT. GOOD PICKINGS IN THINGS WASH OUT SEA…
    • MAYBE MONEY NOT FOR CRAZY PEOPLE IN GAZA GO TO CASCADIA INSTEAD?!?! STEVE SMITH HURRY AND TRY GET EMBASSY SET UP! $200,000,000 BUY A WHOLE CAMPGROUND FOR STEVE SMITH ATTRACT CAMPERS AND HIKERS!
    • AMATEUR! STEVE SMITH SCORN GROPEY GOVERNMENT MAN.
    • GOOD SEE UN ONLY YEARS LATE IN SEE OBVIOUS. STEVE SMITH READ ARTICLE…NO SEE “SOCIALISM” ANYWHERE. JUST SEE UN SAY “On Thursday, the IOM and U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called on Latin American countries to ease entry for Venezuelans, more than 1.6 million of whom have left since 2015.”

      HIT UNHCR ON HEAD WITH BIG ROCK!

    STEVE SMITH HAVE GO BACK WORK NOW, RE-WRITE BRIEF. THEN HIM RELAX WITH HIKERS. BY RELAX WITH, MEAN RAPE.

    FREE CASCADIA!

  • Friday Afternoon Links of Crap

    Today young Ted “Theodore” L had all his diapers thrown away and will henceforth wear underwear. And treat them like cloth diapers. Three times I tossed him on the shitter, and what does he do, he sneaks around behind a table, and as I come around (because I suspect he’s taking a dump) yells, “Go ‘way, Daddy! There no poop hewe!” You know who says that in my experience? Someone who just shit their pants. And, in fact, this was the case. Its like he’s more comfortable walking around with his own shit weighing him down than just doing what I asked. There’s a metaphor there, but it might be crap.

    Former head of the CDC arrested for sexual abuse. Remember when they were just literal dog-fuckers. Maybe someone should take out a multi-billion dollar grant to study the epidemiological patterns of sexual deviancy in federal institutions.

    Horse gone, Papa Johns CEO insists on closing barn door. To strain the metaphor, I’m rooting for a cow and lantern scenario.

    This is pretty much how I see LA in my head.

    When you look at the map of this dangerous “kissing bug”, it seems that the Jayne Cobb school of romance appears near universal in West Virginia and New Jersey. Anyone surprised?

     

    For OMWC, safely back from Detroit, I thought I’d play something from the Motor City Madman’s finest musical days.

  • Unseen Effects of the War on Drugs

    I have argued for a long time that the War on Drugs is the most destructive domestic policy since slavery. When you look at the inordinate rates of incarceration, it is best viewed as a direct continuation of Jim Crow laws and their impact on minority subjugation.

    While we all see the damage of the Drug War and the consequences inflicted on all involved, there are invisible and pernicious side effects that mostly go unnoticed. During my time in my hostel in Vietnam, I experienced something firsthand that often goes under the radar. The foreseeable consequences shoved down your throat.

    The guy at the front desk at my place offered me some weed. After a long day in the heat showing my mother around Hanoi, I was more than happy to purchase. I get into my room, had several drinks and smoked a large joint in the bathroom.

    I proceeded to chill, read and listen to music. And then the disturbance began.

    My private room is at the end of the hall. I hear a man and a woman, both in their early 20s by the sound of it, start to argue. It sounded like the man had gotten her down from the rooftop bar to begin his tirade.

    He is yelling at her. Something about her needing to “open [her] eyes” about something. It seemed very obvious that he was railing into her about how she could be so blind to not see how her boyfriend/significant other was cheating on her. I could be wrong about that, but that’s the gist that I got.

    I heard violent sounds. He wasn’t hitting her, but was banging doors and hollow metal, probably an air-conditioner unit. He was violently punching his own hand as punctuation. I could hear when she spoke but not what she said.

    I could only hear her sniffling and weeping.

    I was very concerned. I got on the floor and listened through the crack below the door. I got a cup to put to my ear to hear, though of no real advancement in my acoustic surveillance. The beratement continued.

    Amidst many slammed doors and stops-and-starts, a lull blanketed the hallway. I paused in introspection. My brain wants me to intervene. I’ve gotten one beating in my life and that was in Germany preventing a girl from being raped. Three men took turns kicking me in the face until I was unconscious. I was broken, but I’m very proud of that moment. I didn’t know if I’d have to do such a thing again.

    It began again. But this time it was another voice doing the shouting. I gathered that it was the boyfriend who had been called out. More door slamming. More punching of metal. More violent fists in palms.

    I decided to do something. I have two titanium hips and there’s a big concrete staircase. I can’t get directly involved, I figured. But maybe my appearance and a wary eye would keep people on their better behavior. I get dressed and put my shoes on.

    As I went to open the door, a sickening wave fell over me. I smelled my room. I evaluated myself. I am half-drunk, very stoned, and my room reeks like Paul McCartney’s in 1966. I took my hand off the knob.

    I thought about calling the lobby for help. But even then I realized that I would be a person-of-interest, and I certainly didn’t want to get in drug trouble in Commie Vietnam while on vacation with my mother.

    I was disgusted with myself. I kept listening and monitoring the situation. But I didn’t dare step outside my enclave and approach a confrontation where it sounded like imminent violence was about to ensue.

    I was too terrified to try to help this poor girl who was surrounded by at least two–drunk–large men who were doing everything that they could to intimidate her. Or possibly worse.

    This is just one of the evil, unseen effects of the Drug War. See Something; Say Something, they preach. But how many crimes go unreported because the witness is afraid to talk to the authorities or to testify because of some bullshit drug charge is hanging over them? I wasn’t being threatened by some thug or a criminal syndicate. I felt threatened by what the government could do to me and how they could ruin my life. All because of a plant.

    There isn’t much of a difference between the government and the Mafia. Punishment is punishment, regardless of who your jury is.

    I am sickened by how I responded to these external forces. But I do know why I acted the way that I did. It doesn’t make me feel better. Rather the opposite.

    People are handicapped by these immoral laws. They don’t report things that they know are wrong because they are trained to be fearful of the imminent reprisal. Is my getting beaten and sent to jail for smoking weed worth a girl getting thrashed around a bit?

    It’s a deeply disturbing calculus that goes through your head when you attempt to rationalize your decision to do nothing.

    A law on the books actively prevented me from helping a person in a very violent confrontation. That is the effect of these laws. I can only gather that this is how they want me to feel.

    Helpless. Alone. Dependent.

    And any attempt to do any good is struck down with the violent gavel of the God of Government.

    That’s the problem. Good people afraid to do good things. Because the punishment that might follow isn’t worth the gamble.

  • Friday Morning Links

    One of these women has been a gracious, classy champion and ambassador of the sport. The other has 23 grand slam singles titles.

    Yay!  Its not only the end of the week, its the end of the first school week of the year.  Looks like Reason made it through without dropping any f-bombs or telling someone they shit their pants when they farted. And that, my friends, is a good thing. You know what else is a good thing? The US Open starts this coming week! I’m not making any picks because tennis is a crazy, unpredictable sport right now. But if I had my wish, I’d have Djoker win the mens and Venus win the ladies.  I’ve always liked Venus. She’s been classy her entire career while her sister became an absolute asshole. I’d love to see her win one last major.

    Well we can delve into that extreme unlikelihood next week. Until then, we’ve got baseball! Philly beat Washington, Boston blanked Cleveland, Detroit dumped Chicago (AL), the Rockies beat the Padres, Los Gigantes topped New York (NL), the Braves shut out the Marlins, the Rays stung the Royals, Chicago (NL) beat Cincinnati, and the MINNESOOOOOOODA TWIIIIIIIIINS!!!!! helped the idle Astros by dropping the Athletics.

    The EPL games of note this weekend (to the libs that have cared to announce their allegiance and that I can remember) are Arsenal-West Ham, Man Ure-Tottenham, Liverpool-Brighton, Bournemouth-Everton and Man  Shitty-Wolves. If I missed your team, let me know and I’ll be sure to include them. Until then, YNWA.

    Never. Gets. Old.

    Let’s see who was born on this date, shall we?  Abolitionist William Wilberforce shares it with mobster Carlo Gambino, writer Howard Zinn, terrorist and grifter Yasser Arafat, midget actor and everyone’s favorite droid Kenny Baker, guitarist David Freiberg, keyboardist Ken Hensley, entertainer-extraordinaire Vince McMahon, NFL’s Mike Shanahan, singer Danny Joe Brown, rapidly-expanding fat man Mike Huckabee, actor Stephen Fry, American treasure Steve Guttenberg, Ironman Cal Ripken Jr., bassist Mark Bedford, deaf actress Marlee Matlin, basketball-playing shit-talker Reggie Miller, ginger doofus Rupert Grint and the hilarious Dave Chappelle.

    Its also the day Mt Vesuvius erupted and killed 15,000 people, the Visigoths sacked Rome and ushered in the fall of the western Roman Empire, the pope declared the Magna Carta invalid (suck it, your holiness!), Charlotte Bronte finished “Jane Eyre”, Thomas Edison patented the motion picture camera, Alaska officially became a territory, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the continent, “Rock n Roll High School” hit theaters, Gorbachev left the Communist Party, Windows 95 hit the shelves, Jerry Rice (one of the best receivers of all time) retired from football, and Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO.

    How do I do it? Ambien and delusion!

    I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna grab some popcorn and watch this shitshow unravel like Roy Hobbs’s first major league hit.  How long before the shareholders are demanding his resignation or begging the government for a huge bailout?  I give it through December at the latest.

    I avoid linking Breitbart, but since none of the major media outlets give a shit about this important story, I guess I’ll have to.  Hey, free association is great and all, but at what point do we start dropping the hammer on pricks like Morris Dees and his slush-fund SPLC whose influence certainly outweighs their integrity? And I mean legally through defamation lawsuits, not through government action.

    “Move along. There’s nothing to see here!” – South African government replies to Trump’s tweets asking our government to look into land expropriation and murders of white farmers in South Africa.  I just hope we keep our troops out of the circus. If they want to follow the Zimbabwe model and starve to death, I just hope the innocent get out of there before it happens.

    The King’s Man

    Berkeley councilman thinks he’s honey badger. But at least he had the decency to expose the corruption in police contracts being voted on by elected officials (whose campaigns the police unions fund, by the way). I’m sure he will face no backlash at all though, unless he promotes free speech in that shithole town.

    More money-wasting jackassery by Chicago’s government exposed. I wonder how many of those funeral homes are owned by politically-connected people? My guess is: all of them.

    Curfews are meant to keep kids safe. Its dangerous to be out after them. See what I mean?

    So much for conscience and religious tolerance. If you do not bow to the rules of the state, you will not be able to do good works. What a shame.

    I feel like I’m doing this every time I drop Reason off at kindergarten.

    Go have a good day and a great weekend, friends!

  • Disney and Marvel king and queen pimp of copyright kingdom.

    This article is inspired by the many mentions on this site of Star Wars, Marvel, Disney and how their SJW leanings  may be hurting their business. I have a theory that centers on trademark and copyright law about how in the cases of Marvel many of these crazy SJW stunts are actually evidence of Disney playing the long game and in the case of other properties such as Star Wars and The Muppets show that the company is largely being propelled by a few divisions while the rest coasts or bumbles around aimlessly.

    I will start with a basic and not at all legally sound explanation of trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks are basically legal claims towards branding, brand names and mascots can be trademarked in perpetuity as long as they remain active. This can be confusing because characters can have works that exist in the public domain such as certain books or films but still be trademarked characters. This is possible because the copyright of the work which features that character can expire without the characters trademark expiring allowing that particular book or film to be reproduced for free while other uses of that character would still be protected by trademark or copyright.

    Copyright is the other half of the equation and the concept is pretty clear from the term, it is the right to copy something. Copyright protects specific works rather than brands the way  trademarks do. The original post colonial copyright in the United States was 14 years with the option to renew for another 14 years; by the early 20th century this had expanded to 28 years with an option for a renewal of another 28 years. In 1976, this was expanded to 75 years for corporate owned works or the life of the author plus 50 years, and in 1998–with a major push from Disney–it was expanded to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication for corporate works or the life of the author plus 70 years.

    The impact copyright can have on media franchises can get very complicated. A great example of this is the Wizard of Oz franchise. Wizard of Oz started out as a media franchise in the early 20th century with books, plays and silent films but it is the 1939 film that has become the definitive version in the minds of the general public. The original wave of books, plays and silent films are all in the public domain which means free of copyright but the 1939 film is still under copyright.

    There are distinct elements to the 1939 film such as songs, plot points and design elements such as the ruby slippers that are not public domain. The shoes were originally silver but were changed to red to showcase the then still novel format of technicolor film. The books status as public domain allows anyone to create a sequel or new interpretation of Wizard of Oz but the copyright protecting the distinctive elements of the definitive version along with the lack of a young Judy Garlands has prevented any of these from becoming seen as legitimate entries of the franchise, including two attempts by Disney. The extension of copyrights benefits almost every media company but  I would argue that this is a major element of Disney’s business strategy and is used to add value to their merchandising and theme park divisions. The affect of this is most notable in the Disney Princess franchise which earns Disney millions from trademarked versions of public domain characters. It is also used recently in their live action film division through the remakes of their animated films.

    The deeper use of the ins and outs of copyright laws hasn’t really expanded to companies they have purchased, such as Pixar and Lucasfilms which is responsible for Star Wars and allegedly more Indiana Jones. The exception to that I would say is Marvel. I think the difference is because of the age of Marvel places much more of the companies value closer to entering public domain. Marvel started in the late ’30s with characters such as Captain America, Sub-Mariner and other members of The All Winners Squad with the majority of Marvels most famous characters from the ’60s or ’70s. Marvel began their version of using the ruby slipper like leverage before they were bought by Disney and it has accelerated since then. I think that a major reason Marvel even still publishes comics is to strengthen their copyrights covering more and more situations making it harder and harder to write a story using their characters without infringing on a copyright. Evidence of this is how their publishing strategy changed after the success of the X-men and Spider-man films.

    Marvel’s top property for decades was X-men to the point where often any book with an X on it would sell better than most of The Avengers solo books. Marvel began to shift the focus of their comics away from the X-men with events such as House of M removing power from many mutants and towards the Avengers adding Spider-man and Wolverine to the line up. This was done without any certainty that the sales of the comics would be maintained. Before this the Avengers were a team of former A-listers who had been surpassed in popularity by Spiderman and the X-men who previously were too valuable to be in The Avengers. This shift took place because the film rights to many of their characters were no longer owned by Marvel, because they were sold off during a bankruptcy. The Avengers film rights were the ones that didn’t sell and adding their star characters to the franchise helped move the focus to the avengers.

    Another example is the comics recent focus on The Inhumans. Marvel intended to replace the mutants with the inhumans because of their loss of the film rights. They did things like making some of the recently depowered mutants inhumans, retconning characters who were assumed-but-not-certain-mutants as mutants, and even in a few cases retconning characters who had previously been retconned to be mutants to cash in on the xmen’s popularity. The Inhumans before this were supporting characters in Fantastic Four who had never sustained an ongoing series more than a couple years. They also had major event series around this time which connected them with all the other ongoing comics. Marvel’s emphasis was no longer on selling comics but using the comics to lay down more copyright, and retrain and test what people think of the characters to prep for future movies and tv shows. They do something similar in the cartoons which feature upcoming characters such as Nova and Amadeus Cho.

    I also believe that much of their SJW recasting of their characters is Marvel woke-proofing their franchises. Peter Parker’s adventures will eventually become public domain even if eventually is a long time from now (especially if it counts as 70 years after Stan Lee’s death) but Marvel can keep the trademark of Spider-Man in perpetuity and they just have to change who the public thinks of as Spider-man. They have tried this with several characters but the only major character they have made significant progress with is Spider-man and the upcoming animated film starring Miles Morales (a half black half Hispanic alternate universe character) Into the Spiderverse will reinforce this.

     

  • Thursday Afternoon Grind-it-Out Links

    Five plus hours of grinding out SQL and JSON — repeating each about 3x for each bleeding step. There’s a part of me that says, “oh just write a text automation script that generates all the documents, it can’t possibly take as long as just grinding.” This is a trap. This is always a trap. Although I was getting pretty good with search-and-replace by the end of the day. Next time is the time to write the automation. You want to be lazy, but optimally lazy. Never automate before it is time. Anyhow, I burned through most of my focus already. But MANY OF THE THINGS!! are working automatically now. That is good. When most of the hard problems are solved, and you can just grind it out, that’s fun for the first day or two.

    Rule 34 is a hell of a rule

    Apparently, the Russians have never watched ROTJ. Deploy Ewoks to Poland!

    Speaking of another disaster of film with too many muppets: The Happytime Murders is being panned.

    Jim Brown doesn’t give a damn about what you think. He’s rooting for Trump.

    Lots of people leave yoga balls filled with carbon monoxide in the trunk of their wife’s car, right?

    When someone kills a police dog, its murder, right? We all know its different when a cop does it.

     

    And this one is for my brother, who is having a birthday today. Someone has to be a 311 fan.