So many modern lines of belief are based on apocalypticism. People have convinced themselves that the end is coming. They don’t anticipate, however, that this end may come in the form of a new hyperspace bypass.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Which is to say plainly, that promoting the general welfare of everybody is just as important as providing for the common defense.
Banning Tik Tok is missing the forest for the trees. The fact that having an app on your phone is able to hemorrhage so much sensitive data about individuals is indicative of a serious lack of security in our technology. Phone manufacturers and regulators are taking almost zero steps to safeguard our anonymity online. Our location, personal information, and even the contents of our camera roll are within easy reach.
A smart law would attack the root of the problem: enshrining a right to privacy into law and working with phone manufacturers to give users complete control over the information they share with external sources! We are in tech-hell right now. We buy the phones but do not control them. They spy on us.
I have learned so many things from Tik Tok and similar Vine-style content platforms. I would not be baking a loaf of bread every day or experimenting with wood working had I not been exposed to these things through short form video content. Sending Instagram videos to my friends is one of my favorite ways to stay connected with people online, and some of them have made me laugh harder than I have laughed in years.
I believe that banning Tik Tok is a serious breach of my right to free speech and expression as enshrined in the constitution. Banning Tik Tok is also a gross admission by our lawmakers that they have no interest in tackling the lack of privacy that US citizens have while engaging with the technology that has been forced on us since birth. Let the Luddites crawl into their caves–the answer to our modern problems is not to arbitrarily ban things… we must push forward with a critical eye and a desire to live free.
“After meeting with Bibi for three minutes … I stopped Bibi in the middle of a sentence. I said, ‘Bibi, you don’t want to make a deal. Do you?’ And he said, ‘Well, uh, uh uh’— and the fact is, I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal.”
– Donald Trump, 2021
If Israel wanted to achieve a two-state solution, it could do so today. The fact of the matter is that Israel’s government, composed of pro-settler politicians and backed by the most conservative Jews, doesn’t want a Palestinian state. Even Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to do as it pleases, quickly recognized that Benjamin Netanyahu was not interested in the prospect of giving up any land. Statehood is a carrot on a stick that has been dangled for decades, but Israel’s prime minister has never been willing to make the ultimate concession of land necessary to actually bring it to life. Instead, settlement building has continued and apartheid conditions worsened. In 2023, before the Oct. 7 attack, over 200 Palestinians in the West Bank had already been killed and countless more injured. In June, Israel used fighter jets to bomb cities in the West Bank. The list goes on; Israel has not acted in a way that promotes peace. It has not worked to build a future that includes the Palestinian people.
Today, Chuck Schumer got up on a podium and declared, “[Netanyahu] has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.” He criticized the Prime Minister further, noting that Bibi “won’t commit to a military operation in Rafah that prioritizes protecting civilian life. […] He won’t engage responsibly in discussions about a ‘day after’ plan for Gaza, and a longer-term pathway to peace.” To any outside observer, it is clear that Netanyahu’s government has no plan whatsoever beyond war. War with Hamas is more important than protecting civilian life, ending settlements, or finding a solution to the Palestinian problem that Israel has continuously declined to resolve since its founding in 1948. Is the relentless killing of thine enemies a core tenet of the Jewish faith? I don’t think so, but Israelis have adopted it nonetheless. Schumer called for new elections in Israel to bring some fresh blood into this Israeli political dilemma.
Chuck Schumer’s acknowledgement of the reality of Netanyahu’s intentions is a major breakthrough in American politics, but it remains to be seen if the words can be backed by policy. Schumer threatened that if Israel does not change course “then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.” If America began to limit its funding of the Israeli War Machine in response to Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies, then there is a real chance that Israel could change course. Of course, money doesn’t change minds. For Israel to truly change, the people living inside of it need to change. As it stands, it seems like a majority of Israelis are either apathetic or openly hostile to the idea of extending rights to the Palestinian people. They just don’t care.
Senate Republicans of course balked at Schumer’s statements. Mitch McConnell retorted by claiming that “the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem, it has an anti-Israel problem.” McConnel is arguing in very bad faith here, since the human rights of Palestinian children under bombardment have absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s right to exist as a state. Mitch went further to call Americans “who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel” “grotesque and hypocritical”. As if America has not been assassinating the leaders of other countries for decades. Republicans have this flawed image in their mind of Israel as a bastion of Democracy in a dark and theocratic middle east… yet Israel routinely denies a large portion of the people living within its borders the right to vote, justifies the seizure of their land, and bombs them. If the American Military bombed Boston claiming that they were targeting political dissidents or terrorists, there would be a massive uproar. It would be an act of totalitarianism worthy of a civil war. Israel is, according to Republicans, well within its right to do this. I suppose it makes sense that the same party that opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 would be a proponent of Israel’s own segregationist tendencies.
If the democrats are able to continuously challenge their own beliefs and eventually apply real pressure to Israel, then they may have a chance of winning in 2024. If they cannot differentiate themselves from Republicans on Israeli policy, then the democrats will hemorrhage votes and likely lose. If the worst happens and the Republicans do manage to win in November, I wonder if Biden and Schumer will be able to connect the dots? Regardless, the developments seen today are promising. More must be done.
I began writing a Dune review when Dune Part 1 first came out in 2021. Two, three? years later, and here I am poised to see Dune Part 2 in this year of our lord 2024! Below is a snippet of that older piece of writing, amended for readability:
Frank Herbert’s novel is a pillar of SciFi, a work that exudes greatness. What makes a book great? The answer is simple–it sticks with you. A great book haunts you. Though it took me dozens of months to wade through the dense thicket of “Gom Jabbars” and “Bene Gesserits” to finally complete the novel, the images accrued in my mind and would not let me go.. A chosen prince dreaming prophecies and a magic box that induces unimaginable pain… Ancient societies of theologicians and brooding Harkonnen plots… Space guilds with navigators so estranged from their humanity that they have mutated into new species. There are so many ideas brewing within even the first few chapters of this massive work that one cannot help but fall in love with Dune even if the reading comes glacially slow. When you do finally get into the groove of the story and really dig in, the revelations strike like lightning and eventually you won’t be able to put the novel down. No detail was wasted! It all comes to an insane climax with a satisfying finish and a wonderful epilogue to close out the lore.
Dune the book is extremely cool, but it knows how to take its time. So much of the action, especially at first, occurs in the realm of thoughts and monologues. Even before I finished reading the novel, I had declared it unadaptable. Dune is so jam packed with history and interesting moments that any big budget Hollywood Director is sure to throw away the best subtle bits in favor of overdrawn action sequences and dumbed down politics. Surely, Hollywood would gut the tastiest literary bits in favor of creating a sci-fi war movie with a hot prince lead.
Previous attempts at filmifying Dune seemed to prove my concern. David Lynch’s Dune (1984), cult classic it may be, is possibly one of the worst movies I have ever watched. All of the mystique of the story is lost in a gutted hero plotline adorned in cheesy gadgetry. The acting is awful. The special effects are at times neat, but the visuals haven’t exactly held up to the test of time. There is a reason Lynch himself pretends the film doesn’t exist. Lynch’s Dune put me in a sour mood during the leadup to seeing Villeneuve’s version. I was nervous to sit down and watch an awesome novel get flayed before a massive audience once again. That is why I am pleased to say that Villaneueve’s Dune is pretty awesome.
Here is what I have to say about Dune Part 1 today, after rewatching it for maybe the 3rd or 4th time in preparation for Part 2:
Villaneueve’s film isn’t a god-tier adaptation, but it is pragmatic and beautiful. It is probably the best we could ever ask for in a mass-appeal Hollywood take on the source material. The acting is sometimes awkward, the pacing is sometimes weird, but it scratches the same itches. From the very first moment of the movie, when the alien voice booms “DREAMS ARE MESSAGES FROM THE DEEP”, I knew I was in great hands. I shivered! I must admit that I was salty to see “Dune: Part 1” as the official on-screen title. The poster certainly didn’t say “Dune: Part 1.” None of the advertising I saw indicated that I was in for a two-part series, and I was looking forward to seeing the whole story in its entirety. Even now, I am not totally certain that the series will ONLY BE TWO PARTS! I may be in for a Hobbit situation where the final arc of the novel is transformed into a massive third war film… I pray not!
What we have already in Part 1 oozes ambient sci-fi coolness. The alien voice we later discover to be a Saurdakar war language is this thrumming, aboriginal throat noise that is chanted throughout. The ships thrum too, making deep, satisfying noises as they hover or move. Monoliths of impossible size move weightlessly through the air in Dune, The space ships aren’t mock-planes or shuttles like in Star Wars. Instead, the ships are globular spheres or great prisms that heave against gravity before floating like balloons. By contrast, the machinery on Arrakis shows its dilapidation. Rusting treads lumber through dunes and tow cables malfunction as sand eats away at them. The thopters, dragonflies given mechanical form, grate against the dusty air and literally tear themselves apart as they tumble through sandstorms. Villeneuve presents us with visual and auditory landscapes that absolutely vibrate, especially when the story setting transitions from Caladan to Dune. The climax of the film, the bombing of Arakeen and Duncan Idaho’s escape, is breathtaking. We see a lazgun for the first time here, and it jars your soul! The beam cuts through solid rock as if it were air.
One sound decision in particular is less than satisfying to me. “The Voice,” the magical ability that Bene Geserit wield to control the wills of others using nothing but their voice, is super cheesy in Villeneuve’s Dune. Whenever a character uses The Voice, it comes out as this weirdly edited multi-tone demon voice. It’s like a voice changer a kid would use in a Counter Strike lobby. It breaks the 4th wall and takes me out of the film– is that the voice everyone hears? Or is that the voice we, the viewers hear to indicate to us that the voice is being used? Or is that the voice that only target hears? For such a subtle ability, the presentation of The Voice is so on the nose. You know what it reminds me of? Galadriel’s momentary temptation at the end of Fellowship:
I like the LOTR films, but this particular moment with Galadriel is such a failure in my eyes because it takes a subtly scary (I dare say, ethereal) moment from the book and turns it into an over the top special effects moment. I think The Voice in Dune would have been a lot cooler if it sounded, well, normal. Maybe even whispered? As if the words themselves carry a deeply innate power that others in the room may not necessarily pick up on. Like the force in Star Wars! Regardless, I don’t want to hear cringe demon voice. Pure cheese.
Are Dune 2021’s characters cheesy too? I’d say no, though Timothee Chalamet as Paul is awkward by design. Paul is perfect, in fact. He is like a puppy that hasn’t grown into its own skin. The way characters interact with one another is weirdly anachronistic at times. Jason Mamoa as Duncan Idaho calling Timothee Chalamet “my boy” is so unbelievably forced, but the script makes up for it afterwards by having Mamoa casually making fun of Timothee’s scrawnyness. Sometimes, it feels like the characters are delivering NPC dialogue options. This is probably the fault of the source material– Herbert’s Dune sometimes reads like scifi Shakespeare, and there is simply so much worldbuilding to deliver that the characters in the movie are forced to expound pretty much constantly. At least we don’t have to deal with internal monologues like in Lynch’s film!
Some characters have been changed from the source material for better and worse. Chani in the novel is basically a character designed to be Paul’s child bearer. Book Chani submits to Paul’s tribal claim to her, they do drugs together, and then she basically becomes his girlboss warrior wife in the background, delivering heirs and such. While it has been heavily telegraphed that Chani will have a more active role in Part 2, the Zendaya we have seen so far basically manifests as an ethereal fever dream girl in Paul’s visions. Sort of like a desert wet dream supermodel. The moment the two destined lovers finally meet in the flesh near the end of the movie is perfect– Paul has no idea what to say and just sort of cringes. Timothee’s awkwardness is literally perfect here. He’s an uncomfortable little ego-twerp that, like perhaps you or I, has no clue what the hell is he supposed to say to the woman that has been showing up in his prescient wet dreams for weeks. I am so unbelievably excited to see how, if at all, Zendaya breaks Timothee out of his virginal little shell. Acid trip sequence?!
Jessica is more emotional and shows a lot more outward anxiety in this movie than in the book. In fact, she is rather cold and mean in the book, and Paul is equally distant to her. Hateful, even! The movies add a lot more warmth and care to their relationship (even when Paul yells at her for turning him into a “freak”), and this is probably fine. It’s just different. Definitely more palatable to a casual audience than having to listen to a teenager berate his own mother (it happens enough in real life perhaps).
One final character I will touch on is that of the Baron Vladimir Harokenen. Fat old Vlad! His portrayal by Stellan Skarsgård is quiet and brooding. He delivers few words at first, but when the Baron does speak, they come out as greedy snarls. “My Dune! My Spice!” “Squeeze them Raban!” This Baron slithers into a bath of oil, concocting slimy plots like some kind of reptile. Menacing. It may surprise you to know that the book Baron is totally the opposite. Outwardly machievalian, the literary Baron can’t shut up to save his life. He loves to gloat about his plans and revels in victory. When the traitor doctor is brought before in him the novel, the Baron can’t help but dote over how he managed to break Imperial Conditioning by torturing the doctor’s wife. The same scene in the movie is much quieter– the Baron barks “what do you want?” at the doctor and says little else.
I originally disliked this new Baron, but he is growing on me. The scene where the Baron compliments the Atreides kitchen as he stuffs himself across from a drugged and naked Leto is hilarious. He carries himself sort of like Don Corleone, a space gangster. He isn’t all chill, however. When Leto whispered his lasts words too low to hear, the Baron simply could not help but lean in for a listen. He hesitates, turns on his shield, and then gets real close to Leto. This scene shows, without long dialogues, that film Baron is still insecure in his power and cowardly beneath the gangster facade. I really do hope we get more personal time with Vlad in Part 2 because he really is a funny, cunning character in the source material. He’s much more like a Little Finger than a Stannis, to use a GOT analogy.
As a final note, the very last scene of the movie is goofy as hell. Just rewatch it if you disagree. It’s like they weren’t sure how to wrap it up and also needed b-role for trailers. The scene where the worm hovers over Paul and seems to “squeak” at him fondly is also goofy as hell. Sorry, someone had to say it.
Sometimes awkward, sometimes tringle-inducing, Vilaneueve’s Dune nonetheless gets far without needing to say much. Some might argue the more mystical or hyper-sci-fi aspects of Herbert’s original are totally lost in the film, but I disagree. Sure, the Reverend Mother doesn’t go on about genetic bloodlines, and we don’t get to meet any spice smugglers or deal with chapters worth of political intrigue, but there are enough grains of detail to satisfy hungry Dune fans like myself. If we get even a hint of the God Emperor in Part 2 I will lose my fucking mind.
“You inherit too much power”
“What, because I’m a Duke’s son?”
“No, because you are Jessica’s son.”
“You have more than one birthright, boy.”
My question is, will Part 2 live up to the hype? Only thing left to do is go and see! I cannot wait one second longer to see this movie, I must go tonight!
They remade Avatar: The Last Airbender as a live action TV show on Netflix. Unlike the original animated cartoon (it isn’t an anime apparently), the live action remake is broken into hour-long mega episodes spanning multiple story arcs at a time. I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but I can already tell the pacing will be rough. In order to check that I am not just nostalgia tripping, I went ahead and downloaded the original series as well and started watching that too.
The difference is night and day. The new series begins with the main story plot up front: we meet the fire lord, we see Aang run away from the air temple, and we even get to see the air nomads get genocided all before ever meeting the water tribe. In contrast, the worldly exposition in the original series is only a couple minutes long. Katara explains that 100 years ago the fire nation started a war with the other nations and screwed everything up. Quickly, the original series brings us to Sokka and Katara fishing together. The stakes are much lower at this point in the cartoon and the main trio meet up without having the baggage of war and genocide hanging over the scene. It takes the live action show over 20 minutes to reach the same point–the length of an entire animated ATLA episode!
This emphasis on story framing comes at the cost of character development. It seems like live-action Aang barely gets to have any quality time with his new water tribe friends before Prince Zuko shows up to steal Aang away. The interactions we do get are certainly a lot darker– Aang is informed of the loss of everything he knows, fights Zuko, and goes to see his dead family at the Southern Air Temple all in one episode. I imagine things will get a lot lighter as the adventure picks up, but this first episode is just a slog. Meanwhile in the animation, Aang is sneezing and flying up into the air and sledding on penguins and playing in the snow. Katara is dropping fish on Sokka’s head while trying to water bend, and she accidentally blows up an iceberg after Sokka tells her to go help out with woman chores in the village (that part’s gone in the live action too). While the movie is transparent about Aang being the Avatar and we get his whole backstory in the first 20 minutes, the animated show keeps this ambiguous. Katara even asks Aang if he knows anything about the Avatar, to which he sheepishly declines. He then has a nightmare sequence that alludes to his circumstances (stranded at sea during a storm), but Aang’s full backstory doesn’t completely unfold until the end of episode three.
The live action info-dumps in an unflattering way. Aang is made to seem sort of cruel in the way that he abandons his family just before they get cooked. And when the plot line is laid out like the exposition to a war movie, it seems kind of cheesy. This isn’t to say that ATLA is a deep show–it is literally an adventure story that takes place during a war–but it feels really extra flat when the guts are spilled right there in the first 20 minutes, cheesy big helmet fire lord and all!
The original ATLA is a fantastic piece of media (well planned, amazingly paced, oozing with original ideas and characters), so remakes are destined to fail by comparison. Even the change of medium is jarring! Animation suits Aang so well. He feels weightless in 2D, and all the characters can be extremely emotive thanks to the fact that they are drawings rather than physical humans that have to act like real people and magic cartoon characters at the same time. I won’t comment on the acting in the live action, it is fine I think. Hovering and soaring doesn’t look quite right in the live action series, though. It feels very computer generated. Sometimes the sets feel fake too, but other times the shimmering ice caught me.
If you haven’t ever watched ATLA, watch the original series. It is considered one of the best cartoons of all time for a reason. The live action has yet to wow me. I like live action Sokka.
Oh, you know, just casually threatening the end of civilization if anyone intervenes in the conquest and destruction of Ukraine. This is not acceptable behavior. Putin has no love for this planet, and so he should do us all a favor and leave it as soon as possible.
“The United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing.”
* * *
“For many years the USA has provided Israel substantial sums of money. …the blank check approach must end, the USA must make it clear that while we are friends of Israel…we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law and our sense of decency. That includes end to indiscriminate bombing….so that humanitarian assistance can come in to the region,…the displaced Gazans to return to their homes, no long-term Israeli occupation of Gaza, an end to settlers violence in the West Bank and a freeze on settlement expansion; a commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution.” The Senator reposed: “I, and some other members of Congress, have tried to do what we could. Obviously we did not do enough. Now we must recommit to this effort. The stake are just too high to give up.”
While we consider whether Biden’s foreign policy failures disqualify him from a second term, let us remember an area where he did succeed… domestic policy!
As expected, the deficit has come up as an election year issue once again. Last time I remember hearing about our nation’s debt was the lead up to the 2012 election, where Mitt Romney Republicans desperately painted the claim that Obama had spent too much money and that our growing debt was a liability. Once again in 2024, Republicans have turned to “THE DEFICIT!!!!” once again in an attempt to beat an incumbent Democrat.
Here’s the thing though– short of cutting nearly every government program upon which this country relies (let me remind you that our agriculture, oil, and healthcare sectors are propped up by government funding), the spending can’t be curbed. I have yet to meet a single Republican with a serious plan for reducing spending in a meaningful way, and indeed even Donald Trump has promised that he would not cut a single cent of social security. Regardless of Republican party bluster, voters on all sides of the aisle like being able to pay for hospital bills and doctor’s visits. Republican voters are just as dependent upon government assistance as everyone else, and as the years go by the social safety net is only going to become more entrenched in the lives of a majority of Americans. Of course, cutting the military budget or even holding the military industrial complex accountable to fraud is out of the question.
If we cannot cut enough programs to stop borrowing, then it stands that the best solution to the deficit is *GASP* paying down our debt with real money! Who would have thought that the massive tax breaks on America’s wealthiest earners would cause our country to become unable to pay for itself? Yet that is exactly what happened. Ever since the failure of Reagan’s “Trickle Down” theory, America has transformed from an industrial nation that could pay for itself to one that had to leverage debt in order to make ends meet. Biden’s solution is painfully obvious–if we resume proportional taxes on the ultra-rich, then we can pay down our debt and strengthen the programs that bring vitality to this nation.
Let’s cut through the BS and take the stakes at face value: Trump is pro-wealthy. He grew up with an inheritance and clearly has interests lie beyond helping Americans near the bottom of the ladder. His actions as president favored the highest wealth class in America, from massive tax breaks to obfuscating the very mechanisms in place to track where the ultra-rich spend their money. It is no wonder that Elon Musk has turned to the Republicans–they protect his money at the expense of ours. The richest men on the history of the Earth walk today, and they launch rockets into space while we work like dogs for a sliver of a sliver of the profits.
Biden’s stance on the economy drives a stark contrast with Trump’s. While Trump rails on and on about inflation with no clear answer for it, Joe speaks to the root cause– “Same size bag, put fewer chips in it.” When the oil companies raised prices at the pump, Joe Biden was quick to call them out on it. High pump prices did not reflect the robust success of the industry, which happened to be making record profits while producing record high quantities of fuel (this continues as of writing). Biden also actively calls out the rampant “shrinkflation” that has driven up price of goods post-pandemic. Companies with a stranglehold on production are raising prices and shrinking quantities for seemingly no other reason than the fact that they can. This is a more compelling argument than Trump’s. Trump says that “printing money” caused by pandemic stimulus (which he himself participated in) is responsible for inflation… No, it seems like companies just decided to raise prices because they could, and they have no reason to bring them down. Congress has refused to act on this phenomenon, leaving the job of tackling inflation to interest rate hikes that, again, hurt the people at the bottom disproportionately.
Palestinians being exterminated on our watch stinks, but at least Joe has an economic plan! Trump has none.
Despite the great passage of time, less than 15 people are known to have beaten the Dragon in Better Than Wolves. Will this year bring new champions?
Not being on Reddit anymore means I tend to miss big internet dramas as they are happening. This past month, under my very nose, Nintendo sued the creators of the Switch Emulator Yuzu (and the 3DS emulator Citra). Tropic Haze (the creators of Yuzu) have agreed to a settlement in which they pay $2 million to Nintendo and agree to cease all development of their emulators. They will also forfeit their domain, https://yuzu-emu.org/, to Nintendo.
Yuzu’s own statement on the matter admits their own guilt:
“We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.”
– Yuzu Statement
On Nintendo’s side, they argue that the emulator is illegal because it can only be used alongside the presence of unauthorized cryptographic keys. In essence, they argue that there is no legal use case for Yuzu:
Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
– Nintendo Lawyer Speak
I won’t argue with the point that the Yuzu team overtly used their platform to promote piracy… I was able to play TOTK on my computer using someone else’s ROM dump within a week of the game’s official release! The Yuzu team probably made the bulk of their money (a mere $30,000 a year…) facilitating piracy, and I suspect the reason Yuzu caved so easily to a settlement was because Nintendo had a lot of evidence on them. The open promotion of digital piracy is not legal ground to win a lawsuit on.
That said, Nintendo’s assertion that the Yuzu Switch emulators is illegal because it can only be used by “circumventing technological measures” is an extremely concerning legal precedent to me. I strongly believe that consumers should have the right to use the products they buy in any way they see fit. If I own a Zelda catridge, I should have every right to tinker with the product and dump the software if I choose. The owner of a automobile is not barred from tinkering, modifying, and repairing their own vehicle– you own your car and can do whatever the hell you want with it. Owning video games should grant the same rights. If Nintendo will not provide an official avenue for dumping a ROM and playing Nintendo games on another piece of hardware, then users should legally have every right to pursue their own means of porting the work. The use of cryptographic keys to prevent users from copying and running software on anything but officially sanctioned hardware stifles innovation and personal freedom.
In Nintendo’s view, a person buying a physical game cartridge only owns a single license of the video game. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows developers to include legally binding means of locking down software through keys and other DRM tactics. These measures helps protect corporate profits while forcing users to engage rigidly with software on the company’s terms. But while I can re-download my rightfully paid for copies of Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop onto new computers (it would be absurd if you could only buy Photoshop for use on one device forever!), Nintendo games are locked to a cartridge that can be lost, stolen, or destroyed. Thanks to Nintendo’s DRM measures and hostile stance on emulation, I am not allowed to dump the cartridge onto my computer for the purposes of backing up and engaging with a product I have paid for. Do I own my Mario Maker cartridge? Or is the cartridge merely the physical marker of a one-time license to play? That is a bad precedent to set. When I spend $60 on a game, I expect to own the game. I am not a renting it indefinitely!
Could Yuzu have worked harder to ensure that users could only use products they are verified to own? Maybe so. Nintendo also could have taken the lead and created an API for exactly that purpose. They didn’t, though. Microsoft allows users to play Minecraft through user-created launchers and interfaces provided that these unofficial launchers verify through an official Microsoft login api. As a result of this open promotion of modification and iteration, Minecraft can be played on pretty much any device with a processor, from Android Phones to Nintendo Switches. Nintendo could offer the very same service to the creators of Nintendo emulators.
This will never happen because Nintendo wants everyone to play Nintendo games on official hardware that will eventually fall out of date and lose official support. Emulators ensure that regardless of the futurity of the creators, users can still preserve software and run it on a computer even after the official hardware it was designed to run on falls out of production. They don’t make GameCubes anymore, but I can still play Super Smash Brothers Melee on an emulator! In that same vein, my disc copy of Smash will eventually wear out, scratch, and break. But thanks to the independent work of fans online, the game has been uploaded to the internet so that it can continue to exist long after the original distribution media is corroded and gone.
Given that Nintendo has used user uploaded ROMs themselves to resell old Mario Bros games, the value of emulation is clear. Preserving software in ways that are accessible to everyone benefits even the original company that created the software! Alternatively, I think the fight for emulation is a broader fight for the rights of consumers to actually own the things we are buying. Why should Nintendo dictate to me how I must use their product after they sell it to me? Ford can’t tell me not to take apart the car I purchased. A vacuum cleaner company can’t jail me for ripping apart their mechanism and learning how it works. Innovation depends upon the right of individuals to tinker. Engineers, creators, and artists learn by dissecting the works that came before them. Video games should be no different. Such a transformative medium should not be locked down by licenses and premium hardware, and Nintendo can certainly do more to promote a modding/emulation environment that flourishes without piracy.
Every year you hear the same thing– “This is the most important election ever! Don’t sit on the fence! Voting third party is just throwing your vote away!”
And I’m here to tell you that this is still as true as ever!
Unless 1) you are gunning for a third party candidate that has an established following and 2) you are willing to put in some work to support this candidate either monetarily or with your own activism, voting third party is a waste of your time. This is just how our election system was set up.
There is no second place. Ranked choice voting is not the national norm. Voting for anyone but the two front runners is about as politically effective as staying home on election day. If you have a third party candidate that you really love and are willing to advocate for, then go for it! Try to grow your movement! All movements start somewhere, but we are already well into the party primary process so if this is the first time you are thinking about this then it is probably too late. At this point, March 2024, Biden and Trump are our obvious choices and that is not looking like it will change.
With all that in mind, do you accept the consequences? Is Joe Biden’s handling of Israel Palestine worth a Trump presidency to you? Trump’s support of Israel is likely to be just as staunch, if not more, than Biden’s. Is revenge against Biden worth it? That is a question I will be answering myself over the next few months. There is still time until November for Biden to resolve all of this, but it requires decisive action now!
Is this really the most efficient way to save lives in Gaza? Talk about having your cake and eating it too! Joe Biden’s administration wants to be a peacemaker and a war profiteer at the same time!
“Neither the Balfour Declaration nor the mandate ever specifically conceded that Palestinians had political, as opposed to civil and religious, rights in Palestine. The idea of inequality between Jews and Arabs was therefore built into British, and subsequently Israeli and United States, policy from the start.”
– Edward Said 1999
American presidents and politicians have been calling for a “Two State Solution” to the Israeli Palestine conflict for at least thirty years now. In this proposed solution, Israel and a governing body for Palestine would negotiate, give up land, and form the borders of a new Palestinian state free of Israeli occupation. One scholar called this approach “peace without Palestinians.” But is separating the two feuding nationalities of the holy land really a path to peace? Myself and those before me argue No. True peace, the kind that allows democracy and freedom to reign, is not born out of separation along racial lines. Certainly, a healthy democracy cannot long endure in the face of such an unsatisfying peace. The history of the United States shows that well enough.
The United States of America, despite being founded under the declaration “All Men are Created Equal,” was flawed from the start. American settlers from Europe were not able to coexist with Native Americans and ultimately eliminated most of them. The natives that remained were relegated to small reservations sometimes hundreds of miles from originally inhabited lands. The society born out of the colonization of America was also rife with inequality. The institution of slavery allowed white Americans to own and control black Americans, and this rotten power dynamic endured even after the dissolution of slavery thanks to a doctrine of “Separate but Equal” that codified a system of legal segregation. Segregation allowed Americans to exclude one another publicly and privately along racial lines, and segregation persisted in the United States until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took centuries for Black Americans to achieve equal recognition under the law, and there is still work to be done.
To this day, the USA is not a perfect place. Our culture is rife with prejudices old and new, and we find novel ways to hurt and exclude one another every day. Regardless, we the people of the United States find ourselves among one of the most culturally and racially diverse places on this Earth. The idea of the Great American Melting Pot is often decried, but I stand by it. Our identity as a country, a successful democratic country in which the right to speak and act is enshrined by the law of the land, hinges on the American capacity to adapt to newness and accept people for who they are, difficult as it has historically been. The never ending strive for tolerance is paramount to the USA’s success as a nation.
In comparing Israel’s founding to America’s, parallels abound, but the outcomes have not yet been so bright. European colonists, this time Jews, decided to once again settle a land that was already populated. A system of inequality immediately arose in which the native peoples were not offered the same rights under the law as the new arrivals. After a series of violent confrontations, the Palestinians have been routinely pushed, segregated if you will, into shrinking reservations. Obviously one could make academic arguments delineating American segregation, Native and Black history from the modern relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, but on a fundamental Democratic level the civil rights case before us is exactly the same. We have in Israel a place that professes itself a Democratic country that does not treat all of the people living within its borders equally under the law. Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank cannot even be called second class citizens, since Israel does not consider them citizens at all. They are not afforded the right to vote in Israeli elections, they are not free to move freely within Israel, and they are not allowed to express themselves freely without harassment or repercussions from Israeli authority.
Within Israel’s Declaration of Independence we see kernels of Democratic intention that are ultimately overshadowed by a larger desire to create a Jewish national homeland. The 12th paragraph of THE DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL reads:
“THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
This part of the declaration invokes the cause of liberty and justice for all, stating that Israel will ensure “complete” equality of rights regardless of race. The rest of the declaration, however, is concerned chiefly with Jewishness. The history of Jewish exile, the birth of Zionism, and the Holocaust are all explained. Through these the case is made that the Jewish people deserve a state and that that state should be in the holy land. Jewishness preceded Democracy in the founding of Israel. The final paragraph reads:
“WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.”
The ideals of racial and sexual equality promised by the Israeli declaration have yet to be codified into law because Israel still lacks a formal constitution. Instead, judges refer to a cobbled series of laws and existing precedents to decide what rights are afforded to Israelis. It goes without saying that there is no bill of rights either. Miraculously, America managed to survive the failure of the Articles of Confederation to create the constitution we have today. Then America went further to immediately ratify 10 more amendments to the constitution that enshrined the most fundamental rights that we as Americans possess today, freedom of speech and the right to protest chief among them. Israel was not so fortunate–its founding did not carry enough momentum to reach a formal constitution and the rights of its citizens and those occupied suffer for this failure every day. Just this year, the ability of the Israeli judiciary to counter the legislative branch of government was challenged and very nearly eroded. Journalists and protesters that push anti-war ideas are silenced in Israel, especially after the events of October 7th.
“We Palestinians ask why a Jew born in Warsaw or New York has the right to settle here (according to Israel’s Law of Return), whereas we, the people who lived here for centuries, cannot.”
The Zionist dream of creating a Jewish national state is inherently flawed from a democratic perspective because any form of citizenship based on ethnicity forments inequality. Citizenship in a real democracy does not consider genetics or lineage. “We hold these truths to be self evident…” When a nation is willing to sacrifice the rights of one ethnicity for the betterment of another, that nation creeps toward hyper nationalism and indeed the very fascism that lead to the Holocaust. To safeguard against the real and repeatedly demonstrated reality of genocide, a country must be willing to recognize the equal right to life and liberty granted to all that inhabit it. Jews should know this better than all others, yet Zionism predated Nazism and was clearly born out of a time and place that did not privilege civil rights to the same extend that we of the 21st century purport to. Zionism is a nationalist movement from a time before the world saw just how disgusting nationalism can get. Edward Said put it much better than I ever could:
“The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle for coexistence. In a modern state, all its members are citizens by virtue of their presence and the sharing of rights and responsibilities. Citizenship therefore entitles an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab to the same privileges and resources. A constitution and a bill of rights thus become necessary for getting beyond Square 1 of the conflict because each group would have the same right to self-determination; that is, the right to practice communal life in its own (Jewish or Palestinian) way, perhaps in federated cantons, with a joint capital in Jerusalem, equal access to land and inalienable secular and juridical rights. Neither side should be held hostage to religious extremists.”
This is to say that expelling the Palestinians to their own country with a wall of barbed wire between them and Israelis will not do a service to anybody. The two state solution would only cement Palestinian resentment onto a map, and the question of Israeli democracy will be once again kicked down the road possibly never to be realized. It is my fear that a majority of Israelis do not actually hold the creation of a democracy as an objective of any importance. It is enough for them, perhaps, that the land of Israel belongs to Jews and no others. Whether a parliament or a congress or a glorious dictator oversees the Zionist dream is then unimportant. It is enough to have won.
“Religious and right-wing Israelis and their supporters have no problem with such a formulation. Yes, they say, we won, but that’s how it should be. This land is the land of Israel, not of anyone else. I heard those words from an Israeli soldier guarding a bulldozer that was destroying a West Bank Palestinian’s field (its owner helplessly watching) to expand a bypass road.”
The law of winning is pure hubris, not to mention not at all future-proof. A time might come when Israelis do not hold the cards anymore. A people with larger weapons and a smarter army might some day decide that they like the law of winning very much and indiscriminately beat, enslave, and cull the Jews once again. They’ll sit on the ashes of once great Israel and say, grinning, “We won. This is the right afforded to winners.” Certainly the Nazis or the Japanese at the height of their conquest felt that means justified ends and that was that. Thankfully, the United States and its allies were stronger and the arrogant fascists were put in their place. We might not be so lucky next time.
Democracy tries to build something better than a never-ending series of conquests. And yet, the history of the world’s greatest modern democracy, the USA, is built on the back of colonization and conquest. The civil rights that America has so far secured and enshrined were hard won. It is high time Israel undertook its own democratic reformation, and it starts with recognizing that the right to live free runs deeper than blood. Zionists will never succeed in building an enduring state of Israel by excluding Palestinians. An Israel that follows the path of exclusion will crumble. A single racially diverse state that grants liberty and justice for all is an Israel that will stand the test of time.
To this end, I would like to frame the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a civil rights issue. The state of Israel and its inhabitants are obligated to tackle this problem. If Israel remains a segregated state, then it cannot call itself the lone democracy in the Middle East. We used to stick black people in the back of the bus. Israelis stick Palestinians in ghettos. It just isn’t right. The fact that it isn’t right is obvious to Americans but seemingly lost on the people of Israel. Someday I hope that a generation of Israelis will be able to look back on its history of apartheid and cringe.
Will nobody help them?