I swear I heard like a third of these said by Alex in A Clockwork Orange

I knew it as Ding Dong Ditch and then kids in my neighborhood told me it was called [Hard R] Knocking. This was mid-90s. I also spent ages 10-15 living in a trailer park in Florida, which probably explains this.

His work was pretty important for me–not only for my thesis-work, but also in helping move me from being a homophobe.

Please tell me that this is in response to a wellness check that someone called in when he didn’t show up.

So I’m at the Spirit Halloween yesterday (it’s in an old Toys R Us; I know you all were curious). My 12 y/o wants to be Spider-Man for Halloween. The “boy” costumes have a Spider-Man mask, but no gloves. They also have the foam sculpted muscles. My kid hates this. But we happen to notice that they have a “girl” Spider-Man costume. In a win for equality or progress or whatever, it’s labeled as “Spider-Man” and not “Spider-Girl” or whatever. And, like the “boy” costume, it’s an officially licensed product. Now, the “girl” costume is basically what he wants: it has gloves, no stupid sculpted muscles, no sculpted boot things to cover shoes from what we can tell. It’s just a straight up, lean, form-fitting lycra suit with Spidey’s graphics on it. Awesome.

Doesn’t have an actual mask. Only a “domino mask” (think Black Cat or Robin).

Why do we do this? I could probably write an entire thesis on the gender politics of these two costumes.

(We’re probably just going to look for like a “zentai” type suit online; seems to be the best option)

And aren’t there recent legal rulings in the US that say that LLM-generated content is not able to copyrighted?

I got your reference/joke and I want you to know this and feel affirmed.

It’s funny in two ways because, like Subway, it’s tasteless!

Watching it I thought that this was made for one man only. There is no one who worships Trump as fervently as Trump himself. Truly a cult of one.

So this was posted on the 9th. I’m guessing he was hoping it would be broadcast at that emotional support group session convention he ordered, since it began on that date?

EDIT: I’m just now learning that this wasn’t just posted on his Truth Social account but was in fact shown to folks at the convention. Good Lord deliver us.

Let me start by saying a few things about myself (bear with me): I’m a priest in the Episcopal Church and have been for 15 years. I felt called to ordained ministry starting at a young age and so have been reading and studying the Bible since I was in elementary school (though I began my life as a Southern Baptist). I have been a literal life-long student of the Bible and theology. My undergraduate degree is in Biblical Studies. That educational process resulted in me leaving the Baptist church and leading me to the Episcopal Church and toward the priesthood, where I also began to move toward the left in my politics. I enrolled in seminary, which is a graduate studies program. I have a Master’s in Divinity (like most ordained clergy), and my studies centered on Patristics, postmodern theology, and Queer theology (my thesis was on reconciling traditional Christian understandings of marriage with the idea of same-sex marriage in order to demonstrate that same-sex marriage is not incompatible with Christian teachings on marriage). All of that work was heavily centered on the Bible and close readings of the Bible, in addition to a whole library of other sources stretching back centuries. So I not only know the Bible, I also know the work of many theologians and scholars related to both the Bible and the traditions of the Church. I am, all things considered, an expert in my field–as is befitting of a professional.

Which is all a preface to saying this: this video is the most Antichrist adjacent thing I’ve probably ever seen.

During the summer of 2007 I was volunteering at a children’s daycare at my church. There was this one kid, probably about 8 and kind of a rascal. Me and my assistant watch him grab these cardboard building blocks and stack them up into two parallel towers. He then grabs a toy airplane and yells to the other kids “hey, let’s play 9/11!” We immediately put a stop to this, but then me and my assistant have to take turns going around a corner to laugh our asses off.

Hey, given the state of things climate-wise, this might be a sound investment!

We gave our kids airtags for awhile. Mostly so that we didn’t have to traverse the neighborhood and knock on every one of our kids’ friends’ houses to see if they were there. It was like playing whack-a-mole trying to track them down at one point. “He was just here, but then they went off to [redacted]'s house. But I think maybe they said they were going to play at the monkey bars for a bit…”

I have four kids, eldest is 12 and youngest is a toddler. My three older ones, starting at age five, have free-run of our neighborhood–along with the host of other, similar aged children here. They’re often out until the street light comes on. All the parents are in a group chat and we keep tabs on what’s going on. Additionally, my 12 y/o rides the city bus home from middle school every day (along with a ton of his classmates) and it’s not uncommon for us to allow our 10 y/o to ride the city bus with his friends to the mall like five miles away.

But this is Hawai’i. It’s how things are here. Kids are given a lot more independence and we tend to have closer relationships with our neighbors (it also doesn’t hurt that we live in a kind of tucked-away community). I used to live in Florida and none of this would have ever flown. Even when I lived on a private school campus (as a faculty member), there was a clear understanding that kids were not allowed outside without some form of supervision. We were gated in and had multiple security guards!

Right. This is because the ISPs actively obfuscate or hide the knowledge necessary to do this. In other words, they expect us to offload the intelligence behind this from them. It’s already happening. It’s what they done with cooking and pretty much every other skill we humans have quite amazingly developed. The news doesn’t report about Local Language Models. They promote hyperscale data center Large Language Model stuff, making us associate “AI” with that and thus mystifying other ideas (that are less beholden to large corporations) to the point that “normies” are made to feel as though they are not intelligent enough to run this stuff themselves.

Just look at Linux. It’s still treated as a kind of niche, “computer-smart” thing. I’m a GenX/Millennial “normie.” I do have certain computer skills that both Boomers and GenZ lack, but I’m probably about at pace with most people my age. I switched over to Linux about a year and a half ago (from MacOS, where all the computing knowledge has been offloaded to a corporation) and have not looked back. These things are learnable. The learning just needs to be encouraged and made available. But the Sam Altman’s of the world have such utter contempt for the rest of us they’d rather us be the mouth-breathing, drool-faced sheep they see us rather than actually do anything to better the human condition.

I remember in the days following 9/11 my then-girlfriend going on about how so many people were going to get lung cancer and other diseases because of all the chemicals in the buildings. We were 18 at the time. That government officials knowingly lied in such an obviously provable way is… I want to say astounding, but not really. That we US folks live with the understanding that our government kills us for the lulz is such a messed up thing.

Stewart’s rage over this is fully justified and palpable.

He is the dog that finally caught the car. He never knew why he chased it, just that there was a need within him to chase it. And because he expended so much effort into chasing the car he now needs to demonstrate to all the other dogs that he totally knew what he was doing the whole time and even more totally knows what a car is and what to do with it.

This is why he doesn’t actually do anything truly “presidential.” His idea of being president is the same as when my kid was 8 and said “if I’m ever president, I’m gonna…” and then some cute but completely totalitarian nonsense comes out their mouth. Just as he’s the poor man’s idea of a rich man, he’s a child’s idea of the president.

But to the spirit of OP’s post, Disney did draw from across the various myths of Maui for the character, not just the Hawaiian ones.

Outside my window is a mountain. Everyone knows it as Koko Crater. But it’s actual name is Kohelepelepe which is the Hawaiian name for the labia minor. The story is that a goddess, attempting to rescue another goddess named Pele, throws her vagina all the way from Hawai’i island to O’ahu and it lands in this spot.

I think about this nearly every day (because of the mountain outside my window).

Here’s two links related to the story: Wikipedia and a more local essay.