All The Tropes thread XVII

Not sure how much people here know about QAnon, but it's basically a domestic terrorist organization here in the United States, centered on various conspiracy theories.  We've only mentioned it a couple times before, but these are the people behind Pizzagate, where someone killed people in a Washington DC pizza shop because of the nonexistent child sex ring ostensibly run out of the kitchens.

Much of their theories revolve around child sex and pornography happening at the highest levels of government and entertainment -- and that there's a vast conspiracy covering everyone's backs over all the sodomy going on.  And, surprisingly, that Trump is the one trying to fight it, but for some reason he can't expose everyone yet, because he's the mastermind trying to take the perverts down.

The latest theory being pushed by QAnon is that Netflix is airing a child sex film called Cuties.  This film aired in French cinemas, picked up a Best Director award at Sundance, and is showing on Netflix.  It is a problematic movie -- it's supposed to be problematic, like Lolita.  Children imitate adults, in the form of dance routines in this case -- at what point does that cross the line? An article discussing the movie says how the movie plays with tropes in intentionally problematic ways.

So now, we have a bureaucrat on All The Tropes pushing the theory that this is child porn and totally illegal, and is unwilling to even consider why we could possibly want to apply literary criticism to it.  He's been radicalized by the domestic terrorist group, QAnon.  Radicalized to the point that morals aren't worth discussing, that it's his way or the highway.

Nominations are being accepted for the 2020 National Film Registry. The 2020 deadline for nominations is September 15, 2020.

You folks who live in the USA can nominate up to 50 titles by using the online nomination form linked on that page.


Black Swan, Despicable Me, Inception, The King's Speech, and Tangled are all eligible for nomination as of this year, as are hundreds of films that didn't make it onto the Registry in previous years. Just saying.

So in LD e5 we see the Vancouver, and as with most Miranda-style designs she is a very pretty ship. I took some screen shots of the MSD and stitched them together to have a complete frame, with only the spot where I had to edit out fake-Burnham using the poorer-contrast and blurrier version:



Unfortunately, this doesn't include some of the traditional major elements like the warp core, main plasma conduits to the nacelles, or Astrometrics hemisphere, though it does show that the bridge appears to be on Deck 2 with a pair of conference rooms on Deck 1. Unfortunately, it also seems to be siting the shuttle bays inside the impulse engines as well - compare the MSD above to this aft image:



the shuttle bay the characters are shown disembarking in doesn't match up very well either, unless perhaps they're way in at the forward end, where the MSD has three little white features at different heights in the floor-level deck.



I didn't take a screen shot of the view looking backward out the bay door, but it didn't look like it stretched quite that far, past rows of a dozen shuttles. Then again, having the shuttle bay size and location line up poorly with the outside of the ship is hardly unique in Trek.

I'd be inclined to move the impulse engines to the center of the rear of the saucer and keep the shuttle bays in the two tail extensions to preserve the bay size shown, but the reverse could also work. What do folks think here?

(Let's just leave the issue of general show quality aside, I'm only interested in the ship for the nonce.)

So as I mentioned the thread I posted last night about the now-closed Sailor Moon dinner theater, I found myself dropping pins in Google Earth for various locations used in DW-S, through to the end of the as-yet incomplete Chapter 4.

If anyone wants to see what came of that, follow this link.

EDIT: New content, new link -- see below.

"A flawed consultation into Section 230 – America's safety blanket that shields online platforms like Google and Facebook – has already devolved into a mess dangerously reminiscent of the net neutrality debate."

No tl;dr - go read the article. Any further quotes from it would almost certainly be out of context.

So tonight I was working on the next scene in DW-S, and by a long convoluted set of steps that started with me on Wolfram Alpha looking up the weather in Tokyo at 6:30 PM on May 27, 1992 and ended with me in Google Earth putting pins in DW-S locations, I found myself back at the building known today as "Joule A", which is on the site of the former "Jewel A", the real-world counterpart to the Osa-P Jewelry Store owned by Naru's mother. Google Maps used to have a walk-through of the building, mostly taking you through the offices of some kind of golf training/simulator outfit.

That's no longer there.

What is there now is a Sailor Moon-themed dinner theater, called "Shining Moon Tokyo".

I kid you not.

Well, "dinner theater" is probably the wrong term.  It's more like those "meal and a show" places in theme parks.  But by god, it's Sailor Moon action at a genuine Sailor Moon location:



And judging by this video, it's a whole hell of a lot better-done than that pathetic Sera Myu that was on Broadway for a few weeks last year.

The only bad part about this is because of the COVID-19 emergency, it went out of business about seven weeks ago, not quite a year after it opened in August 2019.  They're holding out hope that they might reopen after the virus abates, but... <shrug>

A new book in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series is coming:
https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2...y-tab_news

Might as well start this one here...

AP: J.K. Rowling returns human rights award amid criticism from organization

Quote:Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling says she is returning an award from a human rights group linked to the Kennedy family after the president of the organization criticized her comments about transgender issues.

Rowling's decision comes after Kerry Kennedy, the president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights nonprofit and the late American senator's daughter, published a statement expressing her "profound disappointment" with the author's comments.

"The statement incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people," Rowling said on her website.

Some background:

As of this posting, Canada has a minority government. With more than two parties, it's possible that the party that gets the largest number of seats in the House of Commons does not get a majority of seats in the House of Commons, and thus is required to form alliances within the chamber in order to "command a majority of votes in the House" and thus have the legal prerequisite to form a government.

The Liberals prorogued Parliament last week, ending the last session of Parliament. The next session of Parliament will start early next month.

Every session of Parliament begins with a Speech from the Throne, written by the Head of Government and read by the Head of State (in Canada, these are two different people), followed by a vote to accept the speech. This is a vote of confidence in the current government - if it fails, the government is dissolved (the state remains in place) and we go to an election. And in a minority government, if all of the other parties vote against a government motion, it fails.


So, there's a possibility that there might be a general election in Canada this year. Now what?

Normally, there's a 65-day campaign followed by a vote on a Monday. But there's an elephant in the room this year, and its name is COVID-19.

How to protect voters? Sure, there's always mail-in ballots, just like in every general election. But the bureaucrats at Elections Canada have another idea: move the election forward one and two days, having the voting take place over the weekend, and rent more facilities to have a larger number of polling places with a smaller number of voters at each polling place.

Sure, this costs more money than a usual election does... but Canada can afford to protect its citizens this way.