Crack Attack! is a loving parody of addictive tetrislike games that is also an extremely addictive tetrislike game.

Russia is still the world’s #2 arms exporter. Using supply domestically means that less can be exported, and more importantly, demonstrably under performing compared to western offering reduces demand.

There’s the real strategic concern that escalating too quickly will have nuclear repercussions. But the deeper reasons are visible if you view most governments as military industrial corporations stacked under a trenchcoat. The true motivator is that the longer the war continues, the more money will flow from their respective tax payers into their pockets. They don’t care about Ukrainian lives, they don’t care about Russian lives. The popular support for the war and lack of domestic casualties means they get to ply their trade of death, and they come out smelling like roses. Opposing Russian colonialism is a noble cause, but the nobility belongs to those who are dying in the foxholes, not the warmongers who are squeezing this crisis to get more capital.

Western leaders don’t want Ukraine to win. They want Russia to lose. A quick cauterized wound is less damaging than a slow bleed out. Total bankruptcy of the Russian war machine is the objective, the economic elimination of their primary trade competitor.

This is not an appropriate post for this community.

Blackheart -> Boldheart, Loinheart -> Goldenloin. It dials down the absurd humor in favor of pathos enough that the ending doesn’t feel like tonal whiplash. It also keeps the queerness, maybe dials the transgender elements up a bit. It still works.

I didn’t realize there were so many queer-centered stories in cinema that they had become formulaic.

It’s frustrating that scientists start with the assertion that gun crime and not capitalism is the most pressing public safety concern, but at least they’re trying anti-poverty measures to reduce gun crime instead of more policing. It doesn’t take a PhD to realize poverty is the root cause of not just gun crime, but most social problems.

But this isn’t new. The last time academics tried something similar, the the violence interrupters, the Fraternal Order of Police lobbied against it to have it shut down. It was showing significant results, saving black lives and reducing gun violence. But the police saw it as a threat (and it was - anything that reduces crime is a threat to the institution of police), and they killed it.

I’m disappointed by your condescending tone. I can see we’re talking past each other, and I’m happy to end this conversation here.

Vox did an interview with David Graeber about this back in 2019.

Why do you assume because I listed the most prominent example of GOSH’s censorship, that it was the only one? GOSH also litigated against Canadian author J. E. Somma. In both cases, GOSH settled out of court, and in both cases GOSH enforced a lack of transparency over the settlement as part of the terms. The point of these examples is to demonstrate that GOSH went beyond the bounds of mere royalty collector when they saw the chance, not to demonstrate chilling effect.

Chilling effect is not about the books that survived the gauntlet of publication to make it to the litigation stage; it’s about all the ideas that never had a chance to blossom because the threat of copyright enforcement nipped them in the bud. Part of what makes this kind of corporate theft so insidious is that it is impossible to count the works it prevented from existing, or judge the social good they would have done.

Are you saying that ALL royalties for derivative works/use of IP are an abridgement of free speech in your view?

I do believe copyright, its continued extensions in favor of rights-holders, and associated attacks on the fair use doctrine are abridgements of free speech. I also believe each addition of complexity to copyright law is a gift to copyright law firms and the consolidated publishing corporations who can easily afford to employ them, as well as an attack on small publishers and authors to whom employing solicitors and barristers is an onerous burden. But that’s not what I’m arguing here.

I’m saying that granting eternal royalties from Peter Pan to GOSH creates a monetary disincentive for anyone but GOSH to publish derivative Peter Pan works. This creates a chilling effect on the republication of Barrie works and re-use of Peter Pan characters, and is worthy of outrage. This is similar in effect to the intractable libel laws that financially disincentivize publishing negative news about powerful figures and institutions in Britain, which is even more outrageous. I’m also saying that the special copyright status of Peter Pan and larger problems like the libel law situation are evidence of the same underlying issue: Britain’s relative disinterest in protecting free speech.

Thank you continuing this dialogue; I saw your bio, and though we disagree on this particular issue, I think we have a lot in common, and I appreciate your participation here.

Neither GOSH nor the government control who can create derivative works.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. They used their position to selectively control publication of works they didn’t approve. That’s clearly censorship.

But even if they only collected royalties, it would still be a free speech issue. Selectively assigning monetary costs to certain speech is an abridgement of free speech, for the same reason SLAPP lawsuits are a free speech issue.

Maybe a better framing would be “Rich would rather censor children’s story than pay for children’s hospital” - its understandable to not feel outrage over this based on all the worse things that are going on in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deserving of outrage. I don’t think this is a case of perfect being the enemy of good, but rather the shock doctrine aspect of disaster capitalism; it’s difficult to gather sympathy for the principle of free speech when children are literally dying.

It’s important to look at this from a principled perspective; though isolated the Peter Pan, the case enshrines in law that what can be published can be restricted if there’s a sufficiently sympathetic non-sequitur issue. This isn’t even the “yelling fire in a crowded theatre” justification that was used to imprison anarchists for telling the truth about WWI, where the justification is related to the effect of the speech. Peter Pan stories have no natural connection to children’s health, but allowing sentimental framing to trump principled proceedure perpetuates a lack of care in British society for the principle of free speech. It’s a slippery slope that has been borne out in the ways censorship of journalism harm modern British society much more than ~1.5M yearly funding for a children’s hospital can justify.

It’s more than “Children deserve hospitals and stories too” - British children deserve hospitals and better government, stronger journalism, and protection from BBC and religious pedophiles too.

Good summary!

This makes it very different indeed.

Is it though? I’d frame it as “government robs children of new Peter Pan stories in order to pay for childrens’ hospital” – it’s like those ‘feel-good’ stories in the news about children laboring at lemonade stands to raise funds for their mother’s cancer treatment. It’s easy to forget that these are scenarios with only bleak options because of the unstated premise that the rich will never pay their share.