This is from Eightball issue 04. It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek, but some of the things are eerily spot on.
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Author: Robert Mariani
Film accessibility levels chart
This is a one-dimensional chart I made ordering films based on how accessible they are to the viewers. Though the rankings are my opinion, I am not actually a weird elitist, so it’s tongue-in-cheek. Ranking things is just fun!
The criteria for ranking is listed at the top of the image. Note that this ranking has nothing to do with how good a filmmaker is, since that’s very subjective. If you think something is out of place, comment here or tweet a suggestion to @robert_mariani
GamerGate and the incentives of threats
The GamerGate fiasco has brought with it the ugly phenomenon of internet threats. If we are to take our assumptions from the media narrative, then the side that is correct at the end is the one that received the most threats, and has capitalized best on these threats.
The incentives to make threats are literally less than zero. There are only disincentives. Anyone with reasoning abilities can see this, particularly based on the proportion of anti-GG coverage devoted to the threats.
Progressives simultaneously understand and do not understand this. There have been a number of blunders where “threats” turned out to be bogus, with obvious intent to stir up public hatred for GamerGate and initiate a spiral of silence by making #GamerGate feel dirty on the tongue of most.
There are astronomical incentives to appear to be a victim of threats. This truth has been leveraged many times in the form of fake threats.
Two-dimensional spectrum of political media
Update: An updated version of the chart can be found here.
This is an effort to chart where media outfits fall not only in terms of left-right slant, but their how restrained or bombastic they are.
Factors on the “Reasonable/Restrained – Insane/Bombastic” spectrum include:
- What they cover: Covering trivial/overcovered matters makes you negative and covering important things pushes you towards positive.
- Clickbait and listacles = negative.
- Level-headedness of tone = positive.
- Attack-style pieces = negative.
Factors on the “Left – Right” spectrum include studies of trust and bias, as well as self-description and consensus among those who suggest placement on the chart to me. You can pinpoint the “left-rightness” of an outfit by looking at where the first letter is, not the middle or last letter.
If you want something added or think something is out of place, leave a comment or send a tweet to @robert_mariani.
The USA still has the world’s worst corporate tax rate
I published a blog post at FreedomWorks on international corporate tax rates — and how far we’ve fallen behind everyone else.
The Tax Foundation has recently published a report that analyzes the tax policy of the thirty-four Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) member countries, which are more or less all of the advanced economies in the world. The results are jarring. The United States ranks 32 out of 34 in terms of the competitiveness of our taxation – only Portugal and the Socialist-led France rank lower than we do. The main factor in in this embarrassment is our bush league corporate tax rate. The Tax Foundation makes it clear: “The United States provides a good example of an uncompetitive tax code… The largest factors behind the United States’ score are that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and that it is one of the six remaining countries in the OECD with a worldwide system of taxation.”
While the rest of the world has been reforming its tax codes, the United States has been left in the dust. The last major change in the US occurred in 1986, and since then, OECD average corporate tax rate has practically been cut in half. Corporations are leaving our shores, as Logan Albright pointed out, and our uncompetitive policies makes investment a bad idea in the first place.
American Beauty and false liberation
I am pretty sure that behind American Beauty’s is an exercise in the Buddhist understanding of liberation. Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, is a jaded middle-aged suburban man, unhappy with his job and his marriage. At this point, the viewer might be led into thinking that American Beauty is typical Hollywood fare where the protagonist has to discover himself to defy lame old suburbia. This, thankfully, is not the case.
Lester does try to pursue his desire and experience all the novelty the world has to offer. Is he going to find truth and love and all that? He thinks so, and it seems like that. In that iconic scene, Lester fantasizes about Angela (Mina Suvari) with falling red rose petals falling. We see the color red used similarly throughout the film as a symbol for defiant passion. The Real Estate King, Buddy has red advertisements, and he is having an affair with Lester’s wife, who is defying the repression of suburban expectations. The free, directionless spirit of red is highlighted with the scene where the plastic bag is dancing on the wind in front of a red wall. Red is perhaps the color of the energy that defies civilization itself, in all of its beautiful and irrational glory.
When Lester is presented with the opportunity to have sex with Angela, she reveals that she is a virgin, despite her pretenses. Angela represents the insatiability of desire – even when she is totally his, Lester remains unsatisfied. He doesn’t even want her now, thinking of her as an innocent child. His fantasy of satisfaction set the bar far higher than could be reached.
The attempts to engage passion lead to bad results. This is ultimately expressed by the neighbor, Frank, in a homoerotic-turned-violent moment with Lester. Rather than the repression imposed by his environment, Frank’s repression derives from his futile attempt to control that which cannot be controlled, whether it be his son, society, or his neighbors. Lester is shot dead and achieves some sort of analog to Nirvana. He is free from the meaningless context that he existed in and also free from the consequences of destructive passion, yet can appreciate beauty without attachment. Before credits role Lester sees past his delusional fantasy of this young girl, with the music playing with its lyrics “castles burning” alluding to Lester’s false expectations of the “American Beauty” burning away to reveal the unglamorous interior.
The suburban grind is a prison, but so is bohemianism. They are competing systems of trying to sate insatiable material appetites. Breaking out of routine and expressing yourself by dancing on a table, or something, doesn’t save you. Hollywood was wrong. Liberation isn’t a carefree journey of self-fulfillment
Liberation hurts.
