Disqus - Latest Comments for ansuzmannaz

Re: Stop blaming millennials for 'killing' things that suck

ansuzmannaz — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 18:57:48 -0000

Indeed! World War II and Vietnam were but casual teatime conversation compared to the monstrosity that is the Millennial generation!

Re: Bernie Sanders is the Worst Presidential Candidate in History, And You and All Your Friends are Idiots

ansuzmannaz — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:00:02 -0000

Have you considered that you would actually have more choice under his proposed single-payer plan, given that the doctors you go to would ALL take your insurance, instead of just the ones in your provider's network? Have you also considered that, on issues of women's health and reproductive health, that you would actually have more choice and freedom because your employer will have zero ability to choose an insurance plan that enforces his or her religious values at the expense of your bodily autonomy? Have you considered, furthermore, that the money you would most likely save by being on public health insurance (which is objectively less expensive than private insurance), combined with the additional money you would earn on account of increasing wages thanks to Sanders's other policies, would also substantially increase your economic freedom because you will, simply put, have more money available to spend?

Re: Bernie Sanders is the Worst Presidential Candidate in History, And You and All Your Friends are Idiots

ansuzmannaz — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 18:53:49 -0000

Indeed! How dare a satirist use irony to make a point.

Re: Maybe It IS a Single-Issue Election

ansuzmannaz — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 21:38:34 -0000

I take it that by "progress" you mean cosplaying as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, continuing the deregulation they began, hobbling welfare and thus engineering, along with the Republicans, our present economic malaise which is driving everyone into poverty (but non more than African Americans, Latinos, and anyone who isn't White or Asian) while enriching the wealth and entrenching the power of the military-industrial complex—then, yes, we've progressed immensely.

The Democratic Party sees income inequality every day but does nothing about it. It does nothing because while there are elements within it who are, indeed, concerned with such issues, the party as a whole stifles itself by kowtowing to the corporate wing. The result is a national organization that lacks vision, courage or conviction.

The Democrats might have won power, but at the expense of the American people, and that power is waning. I should note that the types of policies Sanders proposes are generally supported by a majority of Americans, and yet few, not even Democrats, even discuss them. Indeed, they dismiss Sanders himself on account of those policies being "unrealistic." What kind of democratic government—or party that takes its name from the same—won't even consider issues supported by its own people? It is the Democratic establishment, not Sanders, who reneges on its promises.

Re: After Sanders' Big Win in New Hampshire, Establishment Figures Want to Scare You with Superdelegates. Here's Why It's Bullshit

ansuzmannaz — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 18:36:07 -0000

It had no discernible effect. Bush won 271 electoral votes. Gore won 266. Only one was up for grabs, and I have not been able to determine if it was awarded to any third-party candidate, let alone the much-despised Ralph Nader.

Moreover, while I'm hardly a Nader fan myself, he's correct to decry the two-party system, and the fact remains that our political problems run too deep for the outcome of any single election to fully address. When you have only two viable parties exerting a national duopoly, each using fear of the other to keep their base in line, and many of the same monied interests backing candidates in both parties, what you have is not democracy. This is not a circumstance that we ought to accept.

Re: Disappointed, But Not Surprised: Disney Excludes Black Widow From Avengers: Age of Ultron Merch

ansuzmannaz — Fri, 08 May 2015 20:59:22 -0000

As someone who did undergraduate work in Entrepreneurship, owns his own small business and published his own novel, I can say with authority that it is nigh impossible to know for sure what will or will not make you money. You can have a million charts, a hundred-page business plan and rock-solid market research and you *still* might not be able to predict how a product will be received, or if an as-yet untapped niche has gone unnoticed.

Having said that, I would contend that Disney does not, in fact, know better than this site's commenters what would make them more money. The executives making these decisions are likely driven more by their own biases than any proper understanding of the data.

How do we know this? Firstly, you can see a very long comment thread full of women (and some men) willing to give Marvel and Disney money for a product they're not willing to make. I expect they are only a representative sample of a much larger, unserved demographic.

Secondly, there exists documented evidence that the female demographic is very powerful in the film industry, and that for films of similar overall budget, genre, and quality, those featuring female stars tend to perform better than counterparts with leading men. With respect to one of the most popular female-fronted series of the modern era, The Legend of Korra, I have heard that boys and young men find Korra just as awesome as girls and young women do. I can attest to a similar range of sentiments within my own, adult peer group. Substantial evidence exists for a popular demand for more widespread and more equitable female representation in the media, but major media companies seem intent on pigeonholing women and sidelining them from what they seem to label "boy's media." Needless to say, this is losing them buckets of money.

Lastly, there exists a precedent for executives wearing such ideological blinders. One of the articles I read during my core business classes addressed the issue of how many college-educated professionals entering the workforce (including, I would assume, MBAs as well) do not perform to the level their training would imply. In short, they have a hard time admitting to, and learning from, their mistakes. They exhibit a tendency to place blame instead of objectively analyzing and addressing the problems at hand, and to ignore their own part in contributing to those problems.

It seemed, to me at least, that such people believe their degree is some sort of token of infallibility, that making mistakes is therefore a sign of weakness, and so they made the defense of that veneer of invincibility the focus of their professional life. My instructor drew the article from a prominent business periodical, and the author presented this behavior as a serious threat to the efficacy of American enterprises.

So, does Disney know better than posters here what makes them more money? No—at least, not necessarily. Corporate America is driven less by money and more by want of power and status. It will frequently ignore inconvenient facts to uphold ideologies, such as patriarchal sexism, which preserve or enhance its existing power structure. It will often do so even at the expense of its own profits.

UPDATE: Edited slightly for grammar, spelling, and clarity.

Re: The Doctor: Dark Hero No More?

ansuzmannaz — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 03:03:00 -0000

I would add one more wrinkle to this whole issue: the Doctor saving Gallifrey actually has the potential to make him even more dark and dangerous. Given what we've already seen of what the Doctor's capable of when there's no one to stop him, saving his world might actually be worse than having him destroy it. Reversing his greatest regret is the Doctor's greatest triumph, but that opens him to hubris. The only thing more dangerous than a Time Lord Victorious is a Time Lord Victorious who thinks he can fix all of his mistakes. Just think about what YOU would do if you had that power, and then place it in the hands of someone as intelligent and magnanimous as the Doctor. Frightening, no?

I disagree, however, with the assertion that a double genocide makes the Doctor a villainous hero. While it pains me to contemplate the possibility, circumstances can arise in which the best available option is to sacrifice innocents for the sake of other innocent life. In fact, there may be cases in which one might be obligated to do so. Which is worse: having the blood of all the children of Gallifrey on your hands, or having the blood of all of the children on every planet, in every system in every galaxy in the universe on your hands? If it's a choice between those, and no other options existed, I'd hope you'd choose to have only the children of Gallifrey on your hands, as horrible a burden that may be. The Doctor found a loophole, THIS time. That isn't always the case for him, and it certainly isn't for us. Life is full of such moral dilemmas, though rarely on that scale, and struggling with them through sympathy for a fictional character, such as the Doctor, stands to benefit us. When else would we face such an uncomfortable thought? When the situation is sprung upon us while we are unprepared?

Along those lines, I believe that so long as Moffat continues to address such moral ambiguities, the salvation of Gallifrey should pose no problem for the sophistication of the Doctor's character. Besides—faced with a choice like that, who wouldn't want to take a third option?