Gorillaz 20 year anniversary mini series

I guess most people have some kind of weird hobby, and I am no exception – I collect vinyl mini figures. Not funko pops, but a lot of different others.

Recently, I received a package from the US that I was quite happy to get. It contained this:

Boxes of Gorillaz figures

Two boxes of Gorillaz vinyl figures

Those two boxes are display boxes with 12 blind boxes of figures from the Superplastic X Gorillaz Mini Series. As a Gorillaz fan, and as a collector of vinyl figures, this was something I could not pass on getting.

Mystery boxes of Gorillaz figures

Mystery boxes of Gorillaz figures

Close-up of figure

The collection of figures were pretty cool. Very few duplicates, and some chase versions (different color variations) of different figures.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is a farce

Orrin Hatch has died This is hardly something I feel sad about, and I pretty much concur with PZ Myers. Reading his obituary, I noticed that he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Trump.

Wikipedia explains the purpose and history of the medal:

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal are the highest civilian awards of the United States. The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform. It was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, superseding the Medal of Freedom that was established by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 to honor civilian service during World War II.

Until Biden there has been handed out 656 Presidential Medals of Freedom, spread out across 11 presidents.

John F. Kennedy 31
Lyndon B. Johnson 58
Richard Nixon 28
Gerald Ford 26
Jimmy Carter 34
Ronald Reagan 86
George H. W. Bush 42
Bill Clinton 110
George W. Bush 85
Barack Obama 132
Donald Trump 24

Until Trump, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was given to sport and cultural personalities, as well as noteworthy public servants and politicians across the political spectrum. Under Obama, a lot of the recipients were people involved in Civil Rights, less so under other presidents. Unsurprisingly, Trump used the Medal of Freedom as a political tool.

I took a look at the list of recipients under Trump, and tried to categorize them:

As you can see from the figure, more than half of the recipients are sports people, a couple of which were foreign. Most of the rest were Republicans, all of which supported Trump.

This pretty much demonstrates why the Medal of Freedom is a farce. It is completely up to the president to decide who gets it, and it is frequently used to award political allies. Also, I find it curios, how someone like the Swedish golfer, Annika Sörenstam, is qualified to get the medal – she was the last recipients of Trump’s Medals, which I used her as an example, but I could use any number of the Trump recipients.

Anyway, the Presidential Medal of Freedom might have meant something in the past, but like everything else he touched as a President, Trump has shown how it can be used for political purposes, and that it is a farce, like everything else that the US Presidential position has the full control over.

Lazy linking

A few interesting links.

There is no “Putin wing” of the GOP: Why almost no Republican backs Ukraine over Russia by Amanda Marcotte

Republicans may say they oppose Putin, but they keep siding with the Russian dictator over Democrats and democracy

Amanda Marcotte explains very well why the Putin Wing of the Republican Party is almost the whole party, and that the only time that most Republicans will speak out against Russia and Putin is when they are forced to by public opinion, or, more likely, when they can use it against President Biden in one way or another.

Preparing for Defeat by Francis Fukuyama

I’m writing this from Skopje, North Macedonia, where I’ve been for the last week teaching one of our Leadership Academy for Development courses. Following the Ukraine war is no different here in terms of available information, except that I’m in an adjacent time zone, and the fact that there is more support for Putin in the Balkans than in other parts of Europe. A lot of the latter is due to Serbia, and Serbia’s hosting of Sputnik.

As a general rule, don’t expect me to link to stuff by Fukuyama, but this was an interesting list of predictions by him – even if some of predictions would be better characterized as wishful thinking.

Spectacularly Colorful Fish Is First New Species Ever Described By A Scientist From The Maldives by GrrlScientist

An international team of scientists discovered a new species of mesophotic coral reef-dwelling fish in the Indian Ocean

It’s always interesting when new species are discovered, and it is great that science is getting decolonized.

Atheists for Liberty are anti-vax

There are a number of Atheist organizations out there, working to promote atheism and try to protect the rights of atheists. Some of them are good, such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation, others are more problematic, and some are outright horrible.

In the latter group, falls Atheists for Liberty, a right-winged organization which participates in CPAC, and have David P. Silverman as the advisory board chair.

Atheists for Liberty at CPAC tweet

As their pinned tweet shows, they are proud of both of these things.

If there is any doubt about how horrible, the organization is, on the whole, just take a look at the books they promote, and the words they use to sell them.

This is nearly a literal who’s who of horrible people connected to atheism (some more of these can be found in the organization’s board of advisors)

Looking at the Atheists for Liberty’s website, I was not surprised to see that their major cause right now, is to allow atheist to get exemptions from the vaccine mandate. They couch it in the argument that allowing religious exemptions only, is discriminatory towards atheists, but instead of trying to get the religious exemptions removed, they are instead trying to get them expanded, showing that they are supporting the anti-vaxers.

Atheists for Liberty writes on their website:

Vaccine Mandate Equality Project

Atheists for Liberty has a firm stance on vaccine mandates:  Atheists musts be treated equally.  Across this nation, atheists, like our client/member Patrick Wilmers who are opposed to the Covid Vaccine, are being fired, while their religious counterparts are being allowed to stay because of “religious exemptions”.  This policy writ large, as promoted by the US Government, effectively thins atheists from the workforce while allowing religious people to stay.  It’s religious discrimination and it’s illegal.

Left unchallenged, it would set nationwide precedent – we would effectively lose a right – the right to equal treatment – and it would surely be used against us in the future as precedent for even more erosion.

We simply cannot stand and let our rights be reduced under the guise of safety.  Civil rights still count, even and especially in difficult times.  Atheists for Liberty ALONE (so far) is working to defend equal protection under the law for atheists with regards to vaccine mandates. We seek plaintiffs, lawyers, and your financial support for this important effort.

Read the full letter >

On the surface, it might seem like a reasonable stance that it is discriminatory to allow for religious exemptions, but not secular ones, but the right remedy would be to work for the removal of religious exemptions, not for allowing atheists to not be vaccinated when holding jobs as nurses or working together with other people in large companies. This probably explains why Atheists for Liberty are “ALONE” in working for this.

One of the Atheists for Liberty people at CPAC, was transbigot and Trump-fan Arielle Scarcella, who is actively promoting anti-vax propaganda by retweeting it

All in all, it is pretty clear that Atheists for Liberty are anti-vax, but I guess that is hardly surprising for a group that have notorious bigot and anti-vax promoter, James Lindsay on it’s board of advisors.

Movie recommendation: April and the Extraordinary World Official Trailer

Yesterday I watched the steampunk cartoon April and the Extraordinary World Official Trailer, which I didn’t know anything about, except for the briefest description (approximately the same as the trailer shows). It was a great movie, which not only had an interesting plot and universe, but also didn’t spoon-feed you the plot, but instead trusted you to draw the relevant connections.

One interesting fact about the movie, is that the art-style is based on Jacques Tardi, who is a brilliant artist, but whose style tend to turn me off when it comes to graphic novels. This wasn’t the case for this movie, however – perhaps because the lines are more clean that if they had actually been drawn by Tardi.

Are funko pops the new beanie babies?

 

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I am a low key collector of vinyl figures – mostly tokidoki and Kidrobot, but also other figures that I find fun and affordable. One brand of figures I don’t collect, is Funko – I simply don’t find them interesting enough.

However, I am  aware that a lot of people collect Funko items, especially the Funko Pop! figures. There are lots of YouTube channels dedicated to collecting these, and I have watched a fair share of YouTube videos with unboxing of Funkos. One of the things I have noticed is that the YouTube videos always seems focused on the reselling value of the items, which shows that the YouTubers consider the figures to be investments, rather than items to add to their collection. Not all obviously; some talk about whether they have the figure already or not, but even these YouTubers tend to focus on value.

Watching this, I can’t help comparing the Funkos to Beanie Babies, which also were considered an investment by many of the people who purchased them, and which ended up burning a lot of “investors”.

This is something I have a feeling might also happen with Funkos. Some reasons for this:

  1. Some Funkos sell for extremely high prices, due to artificial scarcity
  2. A very large number of Funkos are released every year
  3. Focus on keeping package in mint condition
  4. Even small things, make a huge differences in price for the same figure

Let’s start with the first point. There are quite a few Funkos that are only made in a limited series. This obviously make their prices go up during resale. There is no real reason for Funko to make these limited runs, except for creating hype/higher prices. Be that as it may – it is not an uncommon thing to do after all, Funko also tend to retire (or “vault”) their Funkos, instead of keep making them as long as there is a demand. Both the limited runs and the retiring of figures are tools to make people collect the figures.

Even though Funko tries to appeal to collectors, by making the individual figures scarce, or at least harder to get, they are also optimizing their profit, by releasing a large number of figures every month, making it hard for even the most focused collector to buy them all, even if they can afford it.

Both the scarcity of the individual figures, and the large number of figures released, seems to be aimed at creating an environment where peoples’ natural tendency to collect kicks in. And kick in, it does, which is demonstrated by 3) and 4). There is an extreme focus on the condition of the boxes, which clearly shows that it is not really the figures themselves that matter, something which is also demonstrated by the fact that there can be a huge difference in price of the same figure, depending on what stickers are on the box. The stickers shows if it was sold/connected to a con, is part of a limited run, or if it is sold exclusively at some store (chain) or another. As I said, even if the figure is the same, these stickers make a tremendous differences in price.

So, all in all, it seems clear to me, that Funkos have become a collectible and an investment item, quite like Beanie Babies were. This leads me to believe that we’ll see a similar development – maybe not quite as bad, since the scarce figures will still probably be worth something (as I believe also is the case for Beanie Babies), but the many, many ordinary ones will decrease their value a lot, no matter the stickers on the box.

For a quick introduction to the story behind the Beanie Babies, see The Insane History of Beanie Babies at Otis Magazine, which also have a quick introduction to Funko Funko Pop! Mania (note on Otis – I am linking to the articles because they seem like good introductions to the subject. I do, however, not endorse their website in any way, and have never used it – and giving the fact that they promote NFTs, I am not likely to ever use them for anything)

 

 

Science Vs limiting their output

I have listened to the Science Vs podcast for a while, but had somehow missed the fact that they had become exclusive to Spotify. This is not a good situation to be in for a podcast promoting the understanding of science, and the host/producer Wendy Zukerman and the editor Blythe Terrell have taken the consequences and are now limiting their output to shows that debunk stuff released on the Spotify platform

Zukerman, the host and executive producer for “Science Vs,” and Terrell, an editor for the science podcast, plan to limit their production on new episodes because they do not believe Spotify’s rules regarding misinformation go far enough.

“Until Spotify implements stronger methods to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform, we will no longer be making new Science Vs episodes, except those intended to counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify,” they wrote in a letter to Ek, posted on Twitter on Monday.

“Science Vs,” which is exclusive to Spotify, looks at the science behind topics including pandemics.

They have already started doing this, with their latest episode Joe Rogan: The Malone Interview, which you can listen to here.

I applaud the principled stance that they have taken. You can find their twitter feed here.

Engadget have a few more details in Spotify’s ‘Science VS’ podcast will only fact-check misinformation being spread on Spotify

Banning Maus

A schoolboard in Tennessee has decided to ban the usage Art Spiegelman’s award winning graphic novel Maus while teaching about the Holocaust. Maus is of course, a graphic novel based on the true experiences of Art Spiegelman’s family as told by his father.

The McMinn County School Board voted 10-0 to ban the book in a Jan. 10 meeting, citing concerns over “rough” language and a nude drawing of a woman, according to meeting minutes posted to the district website. The book was part of its eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.

Maus was serialized in 1986 – 1991, and won a Pulitzer Prize  in 1992 (the special award in letter), and is so far the only graphic novel to have won any Pulitzer prize. When arguing whether graphic novels can be literature, Maus is held up as the number one exhibit in favor.

When I was a Danish school kid, back in the Eighties, we would be told stories about the holocaust and the German occupation by people who experienced it. This was incredible impactful. As the people who experienced the Holocaust are dying out, works like Maus becomes more and more important. They tell the stories that otherwise would be lost, allowing us to remember the atrocities, and pushes us to ensure that they never happen again. The US Holocaust Museum states it well:

As news spread about the school board’s decision, the U.S. Holocaust Museum said, “Maus has played a vital role in educating students about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors.”

“On the eve of International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, it is more important than ever for students to learn this history,” the museum said Wednesday on Twitter without mentioning the district. “Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”

Of course, the ban on Maus is just part of a larger culture war, as Art Spiegelman himself points out:

While it’s not the first time “Maus” has been the subject of controversy, Spiegelman said he is alarmed by school boards nationwide banning books amid tense debates over the teaching of race, slavery and oppression.

“This is not about left versus right,” Spiegelman told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. “This is about a culture war that’s gotten totally out of control.”

When start to ban books, especially books like Maus, the rest of us should take note, and speak out. This is the first step towards a very dark path.

Welcome to OnlySky Media

A new blogging network opened up this month – OnlySky.media, which bills itself as the “first explicitly secular multimedia platform” (quote from Adam Lee’s blogpost about the new platform). I think the choice of the word “multimedia” is intentional, since both Freethought Blogs and the Orbit are secular blogging networks, and the same could probably be said of ScienceBlogs. So far, I haven’t seen any other media context, so I find it a bit premature to make that claim (also, Freethough Blogs make the occational pod-/vlogcast, so in a sense, this network can be called multimedia as well).

OnlySky is an exodus of atheist blogs from Patheos, due to new restrictions made to secular bloggers at Patheos. It is a long time since I have visited any blog at Patheos, due to the incredible invasive ads and the horrible layout, so I applaud the move, which will allow me to read some of the many great bloggers there. It might also mean that links to blogposts on social media, will make it clearer which blog it links to, making it easier to avoid giving click to bloggers that you don’t want to support.

Anyway, aside from the quibble about the claim about being the first network, I am entirely happy to see a new atheist network. My only worry is the attempt of defining the network as a movement

SUPPORT THE Movement
Help support independent secular storytelling and journalism.

OnlySky covers the human experience from an explicitly secular point of view. Support from our readers safeguards our essential editorial independence, emboldening us to find and publish stories that others won’t. We seek to secure an influential place for secular values in our culture, and change the cultural narrative regarding the nonreligious.

From the Support OnlySky page.

Having had too many bad experiences with atheist movements, which often provide cover for the worst kind of racism and misogynism, I have absolutely no intention of supporting anything claiming to be a movement. Also, isn’t it a bit arrogant to try to cast your own commercial venture into a movement? Hopefully, they will realize that they are heading down the wrong path with this language.

One area of worry, is the fact that OnlySky media has a science section, but as far as I can see, the ranks of contributors don’t really contain any scientists – hopefully this will change over time.