Easter Eggs in Ready Player One

The Iron Giant, Freddy Krueger, Chun Li, Ryu, and Blanka, Gundam Wing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Halo, Mecha Godzilla, Goro, The Shining, Madballs, Chucky and so many more pop culture references are crammed into Ready Player One!

Though enjoyable on the big screen, this just might be better watched on a home system with a pause button.  The end credits revealed any number of characters (like Sonic The Hedgehog) that I must have missed.  But it's hard not to be a gamer (or just a fan of 80's and 90's pop culture) and not enjoy the sheer amount of cameos and pop culture references scattered throughout this film - Easter eggs in a film about Easter eggs released on Easter weekend!

The Definition of Propaganda

Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media - Anchors at Sinclair-owned local news station parrot a script pushing Trump talking points and “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” (video by Deadspin)

This is literally everything conservatives claim they don't want in journalism:

1. Biased talking points written by management for direct delivery by employees
2. One-sided opinions which are forced upon journalists to recite on air
3. Politically-motivated, scripted statements designed to appear objective
4. Mass production of the same message without independent thought

Polls consistently reveal that Americans trust their local news sources more than national news. This effort by Sinclair Broadcast Group is a deliberate attempt to hijack this trust in order to achieve partisan political objectives.

Make Government Spending Larger Again!

"The U.S. Congress voted early on Friday to approve a $1.3-trillion government funding bill with large increases in military and non-defense spending, sending it to President Donald Trump, who was expected to sign it into law." (source)

The Real Reason for Trump's Wall

Trump is considering what kind of expensive wall to build (paid for by America, not Mexico). Meanwhile, drug runners have perfected mile-long tunnel construction with vented sections in remote areas of the desert along the border. And ladders are always going to be cheaper and taller than walls.

There is nothing in Trump's proposal that will address the real issue of drug abuse that he pretends to care about.

But this isn't about stopping drugs or even preventing people from using them (many of the most addictive and lethal drugs are manufactured by highly profitable pharmaceutical companies in the USA). This is about constructing a physical safety blanket for older white Americans suffering from anxiety about a changing country, placating their innermost views on brown-skinned immigrants, and masked with a thin pretext of political calculus.

Bots for Trump

Today on Facebook, Donald J. Trump proclaimed his innocence after his own party concluded there's no evidence of collusion between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. Right.

I stated that considerable evidence already exists that Trump has more than a decade of unethical and ongoing connections with the Russian government including money laundering, as well as communication between at least 73 associates of his 2016 campaign and Russian sources.

Within 5 minutes, someone replied to my comment with "Please show proof sir." Which I did. But who was it that wrote that? Someone named Chloe Harrison. Who is Chloe Harrison?

"Chloe Harrison" is a fake profile created 18 hours ago using two studio-style model photos of a young woman claiming to have lived in Houston and studied at Texas Tech University and University of Houston. There is no profile information or links, nor any profile activity prior to 18 hours ago. I have flagged this as a fake profile and anticipate it will soon be deleted (I've reported dozens of fake profiles that are no longer online).

So here's another point: the fact that when I write a comment critical of Donald Trump and the first response is a fake profile defending him... should tell you everything you need to know about how pervasive and ongoing the hijacking of social media by bots and foreign agents to disrupt and agitate American political discourse has become.

Dylann Roof and the Death Sentence

Buried beneath all the other breathless headlines, I just now read that "Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death for the June 2015 Charleston church slayings."

Stories like this actually remind me why I oppose capital punishment.

Roof was clearly lost and fell into all the wrong influences as an impressionable, isolated person. He deserves life imprisonment without parole to reflect on his choices and the opportunity to reconcile with his own moral failures.

Unfortunately, the government-sanctioned execution of Roof will stoke the flames of martyrdom in future angry young men just like him.  In their racist ideology, it will only validate their persecution complex.  Notoriety in death is often the outcome that rampage shooters desire.  In our pursuit of justice, we should not be so unwitting as to play into white power delusions about their imagined persecution.

By sentencing Dylann Roof to death, the US government will affirm that our response to killing people is... killing people. We should not want for further blood on our hands after the tragic shooting in Charleston. This is not what those slain church-goers who follow Christ would want nor what we as a society should accept as our moral standard.

Guns and Growing Up After Columbine

I grew up with guns, lots of them, hunting and sport shooting in rural Colorado. I understand the importance of responsible gun ownership - it's a serious responsibility to own a device that can rapidly discharge directed explosions of metal at living creatures.

I've also traveled the world - to countries with many fewer guns, to countries with more stringent gun laws, and to countries where the police look like soldiers outfitted for war. Increasingly that's how police in the USA look - and that's not a good sign given the countries I'm thinking about.

Unfortunately, years of looking at detailed gun fatality statistics - by state and by nation, as well as nearly two decades of thinking about school shootings, has really eroded my libertarian view on guns. There is simply too much evidence to suggest that the USA has a systemic, unique problem that has risen to the level of a health epidemic - one that we are told we must accept on Constitutional grounds. As Max Boot (not exactly a liberal) wrote, the Second Amendment is being turned into a suicide pact - and that's a genuine dilemma.

There are many important stories about how a gun has de-escalated a situation or saved someone's life. There are also many tragic stories about a gun discharging and killing a family member, or a domestic dispute that leaves a spouse dead from a gunshot, or a family member mistaken for an intruder and killed. Sadly, I can think of personal examples of each of those stories, as well.

There should remain a place for a responsible person to own firearms, especially for home protection. But guns in the public sphere has become an incredibly difficult topic. We don't allow guns in a bank or a courtroom but now some want more guns in schools. We don't allow guns on airplanes but some now want more people to conceal them on subways, streets, and public events. We don't want police officers to escalate to lethal force but we arm more of our citizens per capita - increasing the fear officers quite reasonably have for their life at every traffic stop. These are striking contradictions that a society with more guns than people have introduced - problems unique in the developed world.

It would appear that a generation of kids who were born after Columbine are no longer willing to accept as normal the possibility that their friends will be shot dead at school, at the movies, at a concert, at church, or at a nightclub. A generation ago, this wasn't part of growing up. Now it is. These teens should be listened to. We should support them. They are challenging us to build a better world together.