We watched Glass Onion this weekend. It’s good, entertaining, a little bit off-kilter compared to most whodunnits, and expresses a contemporary point of view that’s clearly becoming more common. Most of the cast are playing the true detritus of society — influencers, fashion models, vapid sportsball types, etc. — and most of them aren’t very likeable. They’re spending a weekend at an extravagantly appointed Greek island that a ridiculously rich posturing fool, Miles Bron, had purchased, when, of course, murder occurs, and the brilliant detective Benoit Blanc has to figure out who the killer is. The key to the case is when he realized that he had assumed, like everyone else, that Miles Bron was a complicated genius. After all, he’s very very very rich. But the break in the case comes when he realizes that…Miles Bron is an idiot.

As were most of the people at this party. That’s not really a spoiler, because early on you should realize yourself that most of the likely killers are stupid and superficial.

You’ll probably also instantly recognize Miles Bron as a proxy for Elon Musk. Tech billionaire who clearly doesn’t understand anything? Elon Musk. Elon has become an archetype! Lots of people have noted that resemblance, but it’s not quite true (warning: there are actual spoilers at that link).

It all makes Miles Bron the perfect villain for 2022: a tycoon far dumber than he realizes.

Thanks to recent headlines, for many viewers, Bron’s mixture of bluster, hubris and half-baked ideas will likely bring to mind Twitter owner and part-time car enthusiast Elon Musk. But, as Norton has noted, he and writer-director Rian Johnson based Bron on multiple (unnamed) real-life billionaires and tech figures, not one specific person. The movie’s root conflict — Bron’s ouster of Helen’s sister Cassandra (Monáe) from the company they co-founded based on Cassandra’s idea — evokes Mark Zuckerberg’s battles in building Facebook. His proselytizing for a not-ready-for-prime-time technology — in this case, an unstable hydrogen fuel — recalls Elizabeth Holmes. His wardrobe of T-shirts and necklaces suggests Sam Bankman-Fried and other casually attired entrepreneurs.

Like all these figures, Bron is utterly convinced of his own genius. He speaks passionately of being a “disrupter.” He portrays himself as an innovator, even though he stole his co-founder’s ideas. His island is only accessible via a glass dock that looks impressive, but is only accessible at low tide, with the local police referring to it as a “piece of s—.” He brushes aside warnings that his hydrogen fuel is too unstable — heedlessness that literally blows up in his face.

This is a promising cultural shift, that many people are coming around to the realization, like Benoit Blanc, that billionaires are just greedy, wicked, dumbasses. It’s the one good thing Musk has accomplished.

Some bad guys are getting betrayal for Christmas. There are hints that Mark Meadows may have been turned. Meadows was Trump’s chief of staff, and there are already piles of incriminating memos and text messages during the insurrection that have turned up, so maybe he’s seeing some advantages of turning into a witness for the prosecution.

“There is a very tantalizing comment in the executive summary,” said Weissmann, a former assistant U.S. attorney who worked on Mueller’s team. “It’s hard to call it that because it’s 160 pages, but in that executive summary there’s a reference to why the Department of Justice may not have sought to charge Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino with contempt.”

“If you recall, they were both referred by the committee to the Department of Justice for contempt failing to comply with a subpoena, and one of the things the report says, is it sort of speculates, but odd that it says it may be that they’re already cooperating,” Weissmann added, “and with Mark Meadows, that would be huge. I mean, he is in the place to know everything so, obviously, if not cooperating already, there is a ton of pressure that is going to be put on him.”

Meadows is a real sleaze, but I’d be happy to trade him for a more robust criminal prosecution against the big orange guy.

Also in the news — Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested, but the question has been…where is his partner-in-crime, Caroline Ellison? While SBF has been babbling to everyone, including minor league youtubers as well as the big money press, Ellison has been lying low, silent. The answer has been revealed: she’s been singing like a canary to the feds.

Two former colleagues of disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that they helped him orchestrate a years-long scheme to defraud investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform that collapsed last month, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said Wednesday.

The executives — Caroline Ellison, who served as chief executive of Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by Bankman-Fried, and Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer — are cooperating with prosecutors, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

You dirty, yellow-bellied rat!

I’m not complaining. None of the rats will ever be trusted again.

Remember Harvey Weinstein? I thought he was done five years ago, but no! He has been getting slowly chewed up in the judicial system — I guess we need to learn to appreciate that the cycle doesn’t actually fit into the one-hour story of a Law & Order episode, where the crime is committed before the first commercial, the culprit is arrested by the second, and then we squeeze in a twist or two and get a quick clean conviction before the final credits roll.

So, just yesterday, on 19 December 2022, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape. Again, not a simple result, though — some of his accusers dropped out early, he got a hung jury on multiple instances, but in one case he was convicted of “rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count”, verdicts that are piled on top of prior convictions in New York. I won’t go into the details, but there was one satisfying moment.

Weinstein looked down at the table and appeared to put his face in his hands when the initial guilty counts were read. He looked forward as the rest of the verdict was read.

He faces up to 24 years in prison when he is sentenced. Prosecutors and defence attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict.

“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”

I sometimes despair at the sluggishness of justice in this country. I just have to hope that maybe, in five years or so, there will be a moment where Donald Trump puts his face in his hands and gets to look forward to spending the remainder of his life in prison.

Although, knowing what we do of Trump, he probably wouldn’t be going with even that much dignity. There’d probably be squalling and cursing and lying on the floor kicking. Which will be even more satisfying.

Also, I’d like to be at the point where I’m wondering, “Who? Trump? They’re still trying him?” when I’m told he’s been convicted.

…Trump ought to be prosecuted.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted Monday to send to Justice Department prosecutors a recommendation that former president Donald Trump be charged with four crimes: inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement. The move has no legal weight, but marks the first time Congress has made such a referral for a former president.

Will the Justice Dept. do anything about it? Will Trump be allowed to continue to run for president? Will there be any consequences at all?

I have no confidence in justice in this country anymore.

And it’s not me! They’re upset because a St Paul science teacher is a socialist, and not shy about it.

A Minnesota science teacher in the Saint Paul Public Schools district lambasted cell biology lessons, particularly on mitochondrion, for containing “capitalist” propaganda, Fox News Digital found.

Mandi Jung, a teacher at Highland Park Middle School, said, “Lately, there’s been a lot of conversation about teachers indoctrinating students to their beliefs. And I always find this funny because our children are seeped in capitalist indoctrination from like the second they’re born, basically.”

She’s right, you know.

Jung proceeded to provide the “perfect example” of how “capitalist indoctrination” is expressed in her seventh grade science classes.

“Seventh grade science… [is] the year that you learn that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and all this cell biology. So at the end of the unit, I have [students] take a test. And one of the questions is ‘A person says the nucleus is the most important organelle in the cell. Do you agree or disagree, and why?”

“And almost every child says, ‘Yes, I agree. Because without a boss, the cell would be in total chaos.’”

Jung added the students’ responses “cracks me up,” and went on to claim microscopic bacteria were the “original anarchists.”

“Bacteria don’t have a nucleus, and they are arguably one of the most successful classes of organisms on the planet. Bacteria out here being the original anarchists, right? No nucleus, no master. Seize the means of metabolism. I don’t know. It’s funny to me,” she said.

She’s right again! I’d also mention our erythrocytes, which lack a nucleus and seem to function just fine. It’s a good point she’s making, that all the organelles in a cell are functioning cooperatively, without any one running the show.

Fox News makes her point for her, and finds it outrageous that anyone would have an anti-capitalist opinion, and went running to the administration to tattle on her.

Fox News Digital asked the Saint Paul Public Schools district whether Jung’s commentary is part of its curriculum, and they sent over a science unit used in the district. The district did not directly answer the question.

Jung frequently posts anti-capitalist views on her social media platforms.

For example, she shared on Twitter, “You are not a capitalist, you are an exploited worker with Stockholm syndrome.”

The sentence in the middle is revealing: she says these things on “her social media platforms.” She is allowed to hold her own opinions, you know, and she was making a valid point with her test question, even if the anti-science twits at Fox don’t understand it.

She’s been in trouble with Fox before. She dared to hand out a survey in class asking their preferred pronouns.

The questions asked students about their preferred pronouns and names, and whether those can be used when speaking directly with a student’s parents.

Some of the questions included:

“What name should I use when speaking to your parents?”
“What pronouns should we use when we talk about you? (CHOOSE AS MANY AS YOU WANT)”
“Is it okay to use the pronouns you selected above when we talk to your parents?”
“Is it okay to use the pronouns you selected above when we talk to other students or the class?

Are you horrified yet? Of course, Fox News went screeching to the authorities. They got rebuffed.

Fox News Digital reached out to the district for comment, and a spokesperson referred to existing policy which said, “Respect all students’ gender identity and gender expression by honoring the right of students to be identified and addressed by their preferred name and pronoun.”

They go on to complain that she asked these questions of students without telling their parents. They’re keeping the parents “in the dark”! I guess students aren’t allowed to have autonomy, or question capitalist hegemony, or even consider the fact that there are forces that want to keep students in the dark.

I also wish to report Mandi Jung to the St Paul school district…for a commendation. We need more teachers like that.

It was tiny, mind you, but for just a moment I felt a little holiday joy.

You all know who Dave Chappelle is — once a ground-breaking comedian, now a cranky, transphobic, anti-woke whiner. He still gets comedy concert gigs, but you know his audience has shrunk to just the kind of people who don’t mind a bitter, cruel joke about trans people. He put on a show in San Francisco, which is still his kind of place, a venue where he could pack in the tech bros who usually aren’t very socially conscious, and he brought on stage…Elon Musk. I followed this online, expecting in my grinchy, cynical way, that this was the crowd that would applaud a transphobe and a greedy bumbling billionaire.

That I simply MUST hear!
So I paused.
And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.
And I did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low.
Then it started to grow…
But the sound wasn’t cheery!
Why, this sound sounded angry!
It couldn’t be so!

They despised him! They hated him! They booed that motherfucker for ten minutes straight!

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
Maybe Christmas,
I thought
doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!
And what happened then…?
Well…in Who-ville they say that the Grinch’s small heart Grew three sizes that day!

Well, maybe a size and a half. I’m not that easy.

The icing on the cake was seeing Chappelle stoop to defend Musk by insulting his audience. They must be poor! They must be the people he fired!

All these people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats.

That’s Dave for you, the once great comedian, reduced to mocking people for being poor, as he panders to the richest man in the world.

Good night, Elon. You’ve fallen and won’t be getting up again.

Brittney Griner is free! The American basketball player had been sentenced to 9 years in a Russian prison for being caught with one gram of cannabis oil, and has now been swapped for a Russian arms dealer.

Now we just have to release all the prisoners held in American prisons for contrived cannabis-related offenses. It’s not just Russia that has unjust policies!

My grandson turned 5 a few weeks ago. Or did he?

As Koreans traditionally count age, he would have been 1 year old on the day he was born, and would have been 2 in January, so he would have been 6 going on 7. I know! Confusing! Fortunately, to simplify everything, his parents have used the common American dating scheme. It looks like South Korea is going to standardize their age on the model used by the rest of the world.

South Koreans are set to become one or two years younger after the country’s parliament on Thursday passed laws to abolish the traditional method of calculating age.

This traditional method, which will be replaced by the system used elsewhere in the world on June 2023, declares people a year old at birth and adds a year to their age every Jan. 1 — even if they were born just the day before.

That’s nice. I was worried that every time I would visit Korea I’d get a year older.

Twenty five German conspirators have been arrested for plotting to overthrow the government.

The plotters are said to include members of the extremist Reichsbürger [Citizens of the Reich] movement, which has long been in the sights of German police over violent attacks and racist conspiracy theories. They also refuse to recognise the modern German state.

An estimated 50 men and women are alleged to have been part of the group, said to have plotted to overthrow the republic and replace it with a new state modelled on the Germany of 1871 – an empire called the Second Reich.

So they want to return to the glory days of Otto von Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War? That’s weird. Is this a big thing in Deutschland?

One of the ringleaders was an old aristocrat, which I find mildly amusing. At least we don’t have those around here.

Heinrich XIII comes from an old noble family known as the House of Reuss, which ruled over parts of the modern eastern state of Thuringia until 1918. All the male members of the family were given the name Heinrich as well as a number.

Naming your member Heinrich is an odd European custom.

What isn’t funny is their violent plans.

They had already established plans to rule Germany with departments covering health, justice and foreign affairs, the prosecutor said. Members understood they could only realise their goals by “military means and violence against state representatives” which included carrying out killings.
…
As well as a shadow government, the plotters allegedly had plans for a military arm, with active and former members of the military a significant part of the coup plot, according to reports. They included ex-elite soldiers from special units. The aim of military arm was to eliminate democratic bodies at local level, prosecutors said.

I commend the German state in so thoroughly and effectively crushing an insurrection. Hint, hint, US Attorney General.

Although I do worry that every local race all across the country will now start dunning me for donations. There ought to be a rule that you only get to harass your electorate for money.

I’m glad Warnock won, but look at the numbers: 48.6% of Georgians voted for the blithering idiot, it’s no wonder he had to beg for help. Imagine if the Republicans had nominated a marginally competent candidate, or if the Republican governor of the state had actively tried to promote their party’s candidate — we’d be in trouble. I don’t see much cause to celebrate squeaking by in a race that should have been a cakewalk.