I’m thinking bigger than that. There are companies right now operating robotic taxis on American roads with no human operators on board. A car that may or may not even have a steering wheel arrives, a human passenger climbs into the back seat, and the car drives off with them. Who is legally responsible for the operation of that car? If it hurts someone, who do they sue? If it commits a crime, who do we punish?

but are they really making this about Culture Wars, or are you?

They’re the ones spending hundreds of millions of dollars to depict The Patriarchy oppressing Belle, not me.

Here’s a video by Lindsay Ellis analyzing the remake of Beauty and the Beast, including a fairly large section criticizing the added feminist talking points and their effect on the overall story.

Then there’s Snow White and the whole scandal with the dwarfs. See, they initially planned to use live action little people to play the dwarfs, but Peter Dinklage of all people went on a podcast talking about how typecasting little people in that role and calling them ‘dwarfs’ was offensive. So Disney erased the word ‘dwarf’ from the movie, canned the actors and replaced them with awful CGI. Because that’s the bleeding heart liberal method to avoid offending marginalized groups: Erase them.

Unhealthily watching = scrolling shorts for too long.

The concept absolutely exists in law but it’s just called… “the driver.”

There’s another aviation term, “The Pilot Flying.” The Pilot In Command bears the authority and responsibility. The Pilot Flying is doing the work of steering. If present, a Pilot Not Flying might help with checklists, system monitoring, navigation, radio communication, handling secondary controls like flaps and landing gear, but the Pilot Flying is in immediate control of the aircraft.

The PIC is very often not the pilot flying. I used to be a flight instructor, when teaching students who aren’t yet qualified to command, I acted as Pilot In Command, but the student was the Pilot Flying as much as possible.

Autopilots have been a thing for most of aviation history. It doesn’t count as a crewman. It’s a piece of equipment like any radio or gauge. It is a tool at the PICs disposal. It is the PIC’s job - sometimes delegated to the Pilot Flying - to monitor the autopilot and take over if it begins doing something wrong.

That’s the concept that is missing with self-driving or driverless cars. Tesla drivers will sit in the driver’s seat and abdicate command of the vehicle to the autopilot, or worse, cars are operating as taxis with passengers in the back seat and no one in the front seat, or with no onboard controls at all. Fully autonomously, or remotely operated by Southeast Asians who…totally have a valid American driver’s license. Definitely.

Corporations love it. “Legally, the driver is responsible for the vehicle. Our car has no driver, so legally no one is responsible for the vehicle. Responsibility averted.”

Up to this point, remaking classic Disney animated classics in live action has been done for the purposes of imposing a 21st century Gender Studies major’s sensibilities on them. Because you see, there’s a problem with 1991’s Beauty and the Beast. Sure, it was the third highest-grossing movie that year, it was the first animated film to gross over $100 million, it was the first animated film to win a Golden Globe for best animated picture and the first animated film nominated for the Academy Award for best picture…but you see, Belle wasn’t enough of a feminist polymath and the Beast wasn’t enough of a hateful incel, so it had to be redone from scratch.

Imposing 21st century Bachelor of Gender Studies sensibilities onto 20th century retellings of 16th century fairy tales has been the point. That’s why Mulan is effortlessly perfect and Snow White is half-hispanic, because women can’t learn to embrace their strengths or…be ethnically European. But Moana already had 21st century cynicism in it. Quoth Maui: “If you wear a dress, and you have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess!” What about Moana - or any movie made since Lilo & Stitch - does the rainbow hair crowd have to fix?

So you end up with a shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake that isn’t as colorful or stylized and thus an objectively inferior visual treat?

Can I have some of the Disney corporate cocaine? I’ve never had cocaine before and their behavior makes theirs sound great. Can I try it? I promise I’ll make a Sleeping Beauty movie where Prince Charming is convicted of rape and Sleeping Beauty is played by Whoopi Goldberg.

How many millions of dollars in profit were made by Jack Black saying the words “Chicken jockey?”

Money can be made with movies. Just…not by Disney.

You know, I bet you could hate yourself and others on Truth Social just as much as you do here, so why don’t you head back there where you can give everything you own to some prosperity gospel scammer or gold smartphone bullshit or whatever else you “too straight to fuck women” assholes do.

So, earlier today I was being unhealthy on youtube, and someone half my age made a HUGE point to tell his audience including me that even if a self-driving Tesla runs a red light, it’s the human driver that gets the ticket.

Now…I’m a pilot. I have been since I came in that guy’s mom. In the aviation community, we have this concept called Pilot In Command. In the US, this is set into law in 14 CFR 91.3. The pilot in command of an aircraft is fully responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft. Not the administrator, not your instructor, not air traffic control, not the President of the United States, not god, the PIC. That concept doesn’t exist in driver’s ed, but it needs to. We need to teach student drivers about the Driver In Command responsibility.

Too long, didn’t process the metaphor: Nobody thinks about anything they do unless the law requires it.

The mysticism of many cultures throughout history has assigned a power to knowing, saying and writing a demon’s true name. The earliest example of this I can think of is from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the obscure god Medjed, “The Smiter” whose physical appearance can’t be known so when he’s depicted in heiroglyphs, he’s drawn as a bedsheet ghost with eyes and feet.. So to safely traverse the land of the dead you have to know him by his true name.

Call evil by its true name.

Sorry there, fellow asshole, but you sound like you could use a good patronizing.

Look. I am the asshole here. My post history will confirm, I am a very bad, very hateful person. And the issue you’ve picked with me is that I said “Let’s feed our kitty cats healthy treats.”

How about we reach between our ass cheeks and unbuch our panties, eh?

So us humans often make the mistake of feeding our cats water right next to their food bowls. Cats don’t like that; because carnivore, they don’t trust water sources near where they eat as rotting animal carcasses can poison water.

They also prefer moving water to a stagnant puddle, so fountains or running faucets are often preferred to bowls.

My cat Izzy wants to drink from the bathtub faucet, I turn it on for her a couple times a day.

Don’t be euphemistic. Shame them by their actual name. It’s Microsoft. Microsoft makes software that is dangerous to its end users. SAY IT.

AIM, MSN, Yahoo…Tom Scott made a point once, specifically about MSN messenger but it applies to that entire era: those were superior to Facebook messenger and any smartphone-first messenger designed since because it was possible to log off. Logging onto MSN (or Yahoo or AIM) meant you were idle enough to chat so saying hi wasn’t an imposition. Since ~2010 it always has been.

No hatred at all.

House cats are surprisingly delicate and surprisingly stupid little critters and it’s our job as their designated thinking monkeys to properly take care of them, and that includes keeping their dietary needs in mind. Plants that are delicious to us humans are poisonous to house cats. Look at that cute little face and think about how much dying of kidney failure hurts as you’re designing treats for your furry little buddy.

A little, little bit. As a very occasional treat. Remember that the salt and spices in salami are dosed for humans that are, on average, 15 times larger than a house cat, and things like garlic and onion aren’t toxic to us but they are to them.

Unsalted, boiled chicken breast is a better every-day treat for kitty.

https://xkcd.com/36/

See? Imagery. And also, buy a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of rye with the excuse of doing A-B comparisons of Old Fashioned cocktails, drink like 6 and come away with the opinion that your favorite between the two is Luxardo cherries.

The key to a good stand-up routine? Imagery. And crowd-work.

Stop being a boomer and teach like a man.