I'd have to say that Rowling has turned out to be one of the least disappointing celebrities we've had in a long time. Good politics*, good sense of humor, doesn't take herself too seriously but also doesn't take shit.... She also seems to be doing a good job taking care of the Potter franchise, respecting the fans while maintaining clear ownership.
At least that's how it looks to a very casual observer.
*and not just in a bland, Hollywood liberal sense
Yeah, I'm with JRoth's 1.
If only the books were better.
My wife asked me "Did you hear about the conspiracy theory about how Leonard Nimoy had Antonin Scalia killed?" I told her no, and that I didn't want to know, because no details can possibly live up to the glory of the sentence "Did you hear about the conspiracy theory about how Leonard Nimoy had Antonin Scalia killed?"
3: Walt, don't read this. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/16/466960553/scalia-and-leonard-nimoy-justices-death-spurs-conspiracy-theories
On the OP: the context is, I think, that Rowling was and is a No supporter, and the cybernats are amazingly obnoxious to high-profile No supporters.
Definitely don't read that link, Walt. You were right.
I wouldn't rule it out. This is a case where the needs of the many clearly did outweigh the needs of the few.
Is there more context available on what being a No supporter means?
No, Spock wouldn't have had Scalia killed. He'd have merely rendered him unconscious. Or possibly convinced him of the wrongness of his philosophy through reasoned debate.
8: No in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, hence a supporter of the Union. Cybernat = cyber + Nat, i.e. nationalist, i.e. a supporter of the pro-independence Scottish National Party.
Ah, I thought "nat" was another bit of colorful UK slang for losers, or otherwise unmentionable parts of one's anatomy, or something.
12: those too. They're a pretty unpleasant bunch. They don't really do microaggressions. Just aggressions.
"colourful UK slang", maybe I should have written.
Or possibly convinced
him of the wrongness of his philosophy
through reasoned debate.
Who's a wild-eyed fantasist now?
I thought the Scottish Yes voters were all sheepishly looking at their feet in silence, now that the hypothetical Scottish government has to slash 90% from its budget due to reduced revenue from the North Sea fossil fuels.
The J.J. Abrams Spock wouldn't be such a pussy.
Murdering Scalia at an invitation-only hunting guest ranch primarily for Republican operatives is the functional equivalent of murdering Hitler at the Eagles' Nest. Not theoretically impossible but goddamn difficult to pull off.
hunting guest ranch *in West Texas*.
Which is why you send a goddamn Vulcan.
18: That's why they hired a dead Vulcan.
Poison-tipped umbrella in Washington DC would be far easier to pull off. (To be clear I am still enough of a romantic about the law to think that killing any federal judge is a very very very very bad thing and worse than any possible benefit you could obtain from it, even putting aside the moral absolutes about not killing people generally.)
And that, sir, is why you'll never make it as a screenwriter.
22.last Given that you can effect far great political change in our system by offing a SCJ, I've long wondered why someone hasn't seriously tried it before.
22.first They'll be looking for ricin. And since the Ruskies got sloppy they'll be looking for alpha emitters too. Hard to be an assassin these days. Gotta have a long game and wait for the cigarettes and gabagool to do their work.
It might not be Obama. Republicans more interested in electoral outcomes than governing might also be interested.
25: US politics mostly hasn't been that violent. I think it's only the pre Civil War period that saw frequent assassinations in some states. Given time that might well have reached (or will reach) the scotus.
(I stand very much to be corrected.)
Kevin Williamson is a nat of sorts, yeah, but of the socialist* variety, rather than the SNP variety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Williamson_(writer)
He was behind Rebel Inc, which was influential at one time. Published Irvine Welsh, and loads of others.
* or libertarian, depending.
Dietrich kept on trying to get the us gov't to develop poison hairpins and secret compartment lingerie to hide knives etc so she could defect to the Germans, seduce and then assassinate Hitler. One of many reasons to include her on my all stars short list of girl-/boy-friends. She comes right after vlado perlmutter I think.
In diametrical opposition to the OP, I give you Paltrow:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBtAN9viPb2/
She's no Hedy Lamarr, but a superhero teamup movie with those two would be pretty good.
34 to 31,32. Paltrow's not invited.
What US state had frequent assassinations?
The website the Nimoy/Scalia theory came from is pretty amazing in general.
25. Of officeholders at what level? There have been more assassinations and attempts on Presidents since 1900, much less since the Civil War, than before. I don't know of any on high-ranking judges, though.
Before 1900 are Lincoln, Garfield, and I think a failed attempt on Jackson (too lazy too look it up).
After 1900 are McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Reagan.
37: Definitely true. I just browsed their "Lies of Big Science" category and came across the headlines "The Healing Power of Potatoes Can Ward of Facebook Mind Parasites" and "Are You Not Having Enough Sex Because of Chemtrails?"
I don't think I've ever had chemtrail-related sex.
42: Why do I keep replying to myself today? I blame chemtrails! That and leaded gasoline.
36, 38: IIRC Kentucky and Kansas. I was thinking assassinations tied directly to partisan politics, which excludes nutjobs like Oswald. Way out of my expertise though.
the functional equivalent of murdering Hitler at the Eagles' Nest. Not theoretically impossible but goddamn difficult to pull off.
The Allies had a credible plan to do exactly that, Operation Foxley. Was never carried out, obviously, supposedly because by early 1944, the Allies suspected winning the war would be easier with Hitler remaining in power and continuing to make boneheaded command decisions.
When I asked my mother about a plan for a perfect murder, she suggested a curare-tipped icicle inserted above the hairline. Very hard to detect. With four teenagers and a seven-year-old at the time, I'm surprised she didn't use it herself.
At a hunting ranch with high security, you might have to use an ice dart and a blowgun. Trickier.
Bleefing Kansas was a thing, but more about massacres than assassinations. All the territorial governors lived through office.
I haven't checked on Kentucky.
Bleefing Kansas
A truly novel sex act.
I'm not at all sure I want to know what "bleefing" is, and thankfully, urbandictionary is blocked at work.
Bleefing: Unusual spelling for the purpose of introducing a ligature.
And here I thought the No was about UK exiting EU. So many ways to break up.
Speaking of ligatures gone wild. Check out the new logo for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
that leonard nimoy thing comes from an unfunny "satire" site
54: I was kind of hoping that the Met logo did too.
You know you've bleefed Kansas just right if you don't leave lasting ligature marks.
55. That's a horrible logo, made even worse by their old one being kind of cool.
Are none of you people familiar with In re Neagle, 135 US 1 (1890)?
58: I was not. The Wikipedia entry on that case is small and boring, but fortunately I noticed the decedent, David S. Terry, described therein only as "a disappointed litigant with a grudge against Field", had his own entry, and that entry makes for great reading.
Terry was killed apparently about to attack a US Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Field, but he himself had thirty years before been Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, and Field had been his successor in that same position in 1859 after Terry killed someone in a duel, was acquitted, and went off to fight for the South.
The factual description in Neagle is amazing. Terry was already pummeling Field when deputy marshal Neagle shot him.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/135/1/case.html
And the someone Terry killed in a duel was a US Senator.
Why isn't there a movie about this?
If I recall correctly, the chair of a gathering of UK/EU financial types that I was attending at the time announced, the day after the last election, that it was time "to give Labour and Scotland a good kicking."
My takeaway, as always: "British people: hilarious, awful."
I thought the Scottish Yes voters were all sheepishly looking at their feet in silence, now that the hypothetical Scottish government has to slash 90% from its budget due to reduced revenue from the North Sea fossil fuels.
You hyperbolize, but, for an actual frame of reference, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is cutting everything by 7% due to the fossil fuels crash. This has troubling implications for my Government of T&T swag collection.
On this trip from Fresno to San Francisco, Mrs Terry grossly insulted Judge Sawyer, and had her husband change seats so as to sit directly in front of the judge, while she passed him with insolent remarks, and pulled his hair with a vicious jerk, and then, in an excited manner, taking her seat by her husband's side, said: "I will give him a taste of what he will get by and by. Let him render this decision if he dares,"--the decision being the one already mentioned, then under advisement. Terry then made some remark about too many witnesses being in the car, adding that "The best thing to do with him would be to take him out into the bay and drown him."
59: That "more juice" link (an eyewitness account of the history of the SF Vigilance Committee) is fascinating. I particularly loved this the final line in this quote:
Billy was called upon to surrender. He told them that the first one that put his head above the floor would be a dead man, and knowing the desperate character they were dealing with, they thought best to retire and get instruction from the City Attorney, who told them they had a right to take him dead or alive, whereupon they proceeded to arm themselves with rifles and stationed themselves on the second floor of a building on the opposite side of the street from the St. Francis on Dupont street, and when Mulligan was passing one of the windows the police fired. Mulligan dropped to the floor, dead as a door nail. He was turned over to the Coroner and has not been seen on the streets since.
There ought to be an edit of Taxi Driver with no voiceover. Why is that not already created?
Of officeholders at what level? There have been more assassinations and attempts on Presidents since 1900, much less since the Civil War, than before.
I wonder if the same is true in the UK? Off the top of my head, in the 19th century there was one successful assassination of a PM (Spencer Perceval) and one attempt on the monarch (someone tried to shoot Victoria RI); in the 20th century no one's tried to kill any of the monarchs, and there have been two attempts on prime ministers (T******r 1984 and Major 1991). There must have been others in the late 19th century, that was Peak Anarchist. They managed to bump off the head of state of pretty much every other European country.
Oh, wait. George V, by his doctor. But that was more of a mercy killing in order to meet press deadlines. Not sure it counts as assassination.
For the US, there are notable peaks in assassination frequency around the turn of the 20th century and in the 1960s. (Lincoln is sort of a special case, and the same might be said of Garfield.) McKinley and Kennedy were definitely associated with general trends of increased frequencies of political assassinations.
53 , 57 What a horrible logo indeed. It's new director/CEO/president logo disease. Got a new director so s/he feels he's got a mandate to drop a million or whatever on "refreshing the brand". And it's always shit.
Got a new director so s/he feels he's got a mandate to drop a million or whatever on "refreshing the brand". And it's always shit.
So true.
http://www.napoleon.org/en/essential_napoleon/symbols/index.asp
I don't like the old logo but the new logo is worse.
73: Symbol of immortality and resurrection, the bee
The symbol of what now?
73. There has been a trend over the last decade (maybe longer) away from "busy" logos like the old Met one and the Napoleon one. If Napoleon were around today he'd probably do a stark, Google-like "NAP."
The reason is technical. In the old days of printing you got a designer to make you a "sig cut" of your logo, but if you wanted it in various sizes, they had to be made separately, because hand-made.
Now they use Illustrator or whatever, and size the logo up or down as needed. However, logos with fine details don't size up or down well and so you have to pay the graphic designer to tweak the new resized one, which of course costs money.
So more and more logos are redone so they can be resized and still look good without being redrawn. (To be fair I first got this explanation a least a decade ago, and maybe Illustrator and other programs in its niche can do the necessary post-resizing tweaks now. IANAGD.)
The new Met one still sucks, though.
Apparently Shepard Fairey has done a logo/poster for Sanders. It is an abomination. If I were Sanders I'd sue.
If Napoleon were around today he'd probably do a stark, Google-like "NAP."
Or just a single upper-case "N", as it has on his tomb.
75: The Merovingian king Childeric (deposed, as you will remember, by Pepin I) was buried in a robe fringed with golden bees, which were disinterred and sewn on to Napoleon's coronation robe. I am a bit baffled by the resurrection thing too. Bees are generally associated in heraldry with hard and diligent work (obviously) and in Greek mythology with Apollo and prophecy.
I think it's less the individual bee than the beehive that was the original symbol for resurrection, for obvious reasons. And then later becomes bee via synecdoche.
I just looked up the Sanders logo because I hadn't paid attention to it before. Why would you try to associate Sanders with Pepsi?
I don't really have strong feelings about Pepsi, but it seems like a weird choice even if you had to choose among soft drinks.
79: ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
Why would you try to associate Sanders with Pepsi?
He's the choice for a new generation?
CLINTON: The original and best
SANDERS: The choice for a new generation
CRUZ: Made in Scotland Canada from girders congealed whale sputum the negative emotions of eight million Americans given physical form formic acid, putrescin and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine
TRUMP: What's the worst that could happen?
Why would you try to associate Sanders with Pepsi?
PepsiCo used to own KFC, so it's a subtle nod to the fact that when Bernie is installed as Lifetime Leader of the Socialist Revolution, he plans to go by the name Colonel Sanders .
I don't mind the new Metropolitan Museum logo, and I usually hate any movement away from 70's grandma style. But the old one was too busy.
82-84 were all surprisingly good. Oddly Trump is his own 80s advertising slogan.
Speaking of funny comments, where's Moby? Did I miss news, or is he just presumably busy?
Oddly, my first thought on the Met logo is it looks a little like a typeface you'd see on a print magazine cover some years ago. The old logo isn't great but I like it's just having an M. In protest, next time I visit I'll pay less than the suggested donation.
90.last Don't pay anything! It's a scam.
I'm still pissed they tried to renegotiate their sweetheart deal with the city (and with Bloomberg's approval) and tried to make entrance fees mandatory even though they pay the city nothing for that magnificent building.