Today in bold thinkers boldly thinking:

Goddamnit Adam, DNA doesn't have
currents. You're thinking of bodies of water.

Gee, how imaginative...wait, is that the word? Because Adam Aron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment, seems to think raising ticket prices is. Imaginative. Here, check out this business nonsense:

"A strong current of innovation runs deep throughout AMC's DNA. We have led in the innovating of movie-going to a truly unique and desirable out of home experience."

-Adam Aron, not afraid to mix

the shit out of some metaphors

He then went on to brag to investors about how AMC was the first movie theatre to reward loyal customers with NFT's. Which are something CEO's don't really understand, but think are brilliant because they're a way to make money without actually producing anything, while the rest of us see them as a fad, that's also a scam. A scad, if you will.

Above: a thing that doesn't, in any real sense, exist, yet
is somehow worth sixty-nine million dollars. Of money.

(source: late stage-capitalism)

"We call it, les prix variable,
et c'est magnifiqiue!"

-Some French guy

Anyway, Aron describes the higher ticket prices for The Batman as--wait, didn't I mention? Yeah, tickets for The Batman, which starts today, will cost more than other movies at AMC theaters. Aron describes this as "quite novel in the United States" but it's something they've done for awhile in Europe. It's called variable pricing, but variable sort of suggests variation, but really it just means that when they anticipate a lot of interest in a particular film, they just charge more for tickets. So more accurate terminology would probably be higher pricing, right?

Aron continued his investor pep talk saying:

"What if we charged more money?"

-a bold thinker

"AMC has been a bold thinker in the area of pricing. One that is willing to take risks, and one who is willing to lead, and one who sees considerable upside opportunity for us ahead if we continue to be imaginative."

-Adam Aron, CEO

business genius

To be clear, the bold, imaginative idea AMC came up with to make more money is to charge more for tickets. And I mean, the math does seem to check out. 

"My God...those crazy bastards did it, they really did it..."

-Some business analyst

It's further evidence that the grim
timeline predicted by Wall-E, is
in fact our own dystopian reality. 

But streaming tv is a thing and even before the pandemic it kind of seemed like movie theaters were flailing to come up with ways to get us to get up out of our couches and surrender our ability to pause and take a bathroom break. They serve food and alcohol, and sometimes even deliver these to your seat. They've tried 3D and whatever the hell D-Box is supposed to be. They've even replaced the seats with recliners. Movie theatre seats are basically hospice beds with cup holders. 

Still, Adam Aron has the solution and it's to charge more for tickets. And I get it, capitalism is whatever. If it makes them money, of course they're going to do it and in may ways it's our own damn fault if we fall for it. Still, could you imagine if the newspaper industry tried this?  

"Thank you for not looking at your phone."

-Some newspaper seller

Survey Says:

Look, I'm not questioning the validity of this poll just because I don't like the results--ok, fine I am, but hear me out.

They've barely had enough time to get the cheeseburger and spray-tan
stains out of the carpets much less reverse four years of batshit
mismanagement, and we're already calling Biden's Presidency a failure?

People who made Jackass
Forever #1 at the box office.

A poll conducted by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies says that 62% of Americans believed that if Donald Trump were still president, then Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. And I'm calling bullshit. Not because I think Joe Biden is the best president ever, although compared to Trump an actual cactus would come off looking pretty competent, but because this wasn't a poll of geopolitical experts. There aren't any prerequisites for participating. They aren't even asked to find Ukraine on a map. This was a poll of regular people. People like you, me, and your racist uncle on Facebook. Literally anyone can take a survey, whether we know what we're talking about or not. I'm not saying that we don't have opinions or that those opinions don't have worth, I'm just suggesting that there's a difference between opinions and informed opinions. 

It's like asking me who's going to win the Super Bowl this year. And yes, I realize it's already happened, but I don't follow sports. I don't even know who played in it. Asking me who won is about as useful as asking random respondents about whether Putin would have invaded during a Trump administration. 

"Was it this guy? Did he win the...the super-ball?"

-Me

Holy shit, nobody says "woke" anymore.
God, they're like a dog with a bone...

So my question is what are they basing their response on other than how much they like or don't like Biden, Trump, or Putin? I personally feel that were Trump still president, Putin would have absolutely still invaded Ukraine and Trump probably would have gone on conservative radio shows to tell us what a smart move it was. And again, I'm no expert. I'm really not, but I think the fact that Trump actually did go on to conservative radio shows to tell us what a smart move it was bears this out. 

"Well, I think we can all agree that it's
not the fault of multi-billionaires..."

-some guy

There were, of course, other questions on the survey. Questions randos like you or me are somewhat more qualified to answer. Things like is Joe Biden doing a good job? Is the country going in the right direction? Are you optimistic about the future? And yeah, it looks pretty grim for Biden, but these are still opinion questions and that's great, but it's just what people think. Like, gas costs five dollars per gallon, housing costs are out of control, and the pandemic is still a thing, but is it really all Joe Biden's fault, or are people just miserable?

I don't think it is, but I also admit that I don't know. And I guess my point is neither do you or 99% of the people responding to these things. So why do we--ok, I, why do I--put such stock in the subjective opinions of people whose only qualifications are owning a phone and having the twenty minutes of free time to answer a survey?

Pictured: Family Feud, possibly the only use of
polling data that doesn't do more harm than good.

The cool, relentless, Irish lilt of justice

Well, I mean, of course they vetoed the resolution to "deplore" the invasion of Ukraine. Look, I don't fully understand how the U.N. works, but it seems like if you're mid-invasion--that is, if you're in the midst of invading another U.N. country--it seems like you shouldn't be allowed to have a veto power on the organization saying that it's a dick move. And yes, I appreciate the irony of that coming from an American.

"Nyet! We veto! Instead I propose new resolution: Russian invasion is
smart move and President Putin is handsome, virile man, and everyone knows it."

-The Russian Ambassador to the U.N.

Above: Russian police heroically arresting
an elderly woman who had the gall to
protest their totally justified invasion.

Anyway, in case you some how missed this, or still read newspapers, Russia, spent the last couple of weeks putting its entire army on the Ukrainian border for "military drills." Everyone in the world was like bullshit, they're about to invade, but Russia was all, "Whaaat? No way! You're the ones making the situation worse." And then they invaded. Because of course they invaded. Because Vladimir Putin is a small, small man, still living in some weird, Cold War mindset and putting the rest of us through his boomer-nonsense.

Pictured: Joe Biden predicting every
move Russia was about to make.
Not Pictured: a crystal ball, because he
doesn't goddamn need one. No one does.

Sorry, I'll stop pretending that I know anything about geopolitics and just say that I think there have been two important takeaways here. The first is that the best thing you can do when someone like Vladimir Putin is spouting his borshtshit about how we're crazy for thinking he's totally about to invade the country he's massed his troops along the border of, is to go on TV and expose his plans--which the President did. And like I know he's probably our boringest President ever and his poll numbers are super-low, but that was pretty great. No matter what anyone says about him, you can't deny that he's now on record as having predicted exactly what was going to happen. 

Sure, everything was a scoop with these
people, but they asked hard questions
and didn't take any guff. Or sass.

Except that's what Republicans are going to do which brings us to the other takeaway: calling bullies on their bullshit. Did you see this? It's fine, you don't have to click on it, I'll sum up. Like I always do...sigh. Anyway, it's about an Irish RTÉ reporter called David McCullagh who interviewed Russian Ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov yesterday. And by interviewed, I mean interviewed in the way that I think reporters used to do before the profession, as a whole, was reduced to out-of context tweets brought to us by Febreze Fade Defy Plug Air Fresheners.™

"Yes Mr. ambassador, could you please explain to
me, an Irishman, how invading another sovereign
nation is justifiable. And again, I'm Irish."

-David McCullagh, just warming up

Actually no, do click on the link. Here it is again. McCullagh's first question was when is Filatov's country going to stop it's aggression against Ukraine and then went from there. Filatov tried, he really tried to control the narrative and make this about Russia's hurt feelings, but McCullagh was all "Amnesty International" this and "Why should we believe you?" that. And the Ambassador, flat footed and sounding for all the world like Kellyanne Conway trying to make the phrase "alternative facts" happen, got his жoпa handed to him. Yeah, that's Russian for ass. I looked it up and anything. 

Pictured: Filatov seen here with his lying
mustache moments before it' was smacked off.

So then, McCullagh realizing that no matter how many verifiable facts--like there is footage of Russian bombs blowing up neighborhoods. I mean, has he not heard of the internet? Anyway, no matter how many facts Filtov was confronted with, he was still going to blame the Ukrainians for forcing them to fire rockets at civilians, so McCullagh ended the interview with:

"Ambassador Yury Filatov, Ambassador of Russia to Ireland. For the moment at least."

-David McCullagh, smacking the lying 

mustache off the Russian Ambassador

So what I would like, more than anything (except maybe for Russia to turn around), is for David McCullagh to cover our next election and bring his cool, relentless, Irish lilt of justice to bear on the Donalds Trump and the Rons DeSantis of the world. Yeah, I know that the habit, like the momentum right now is about letting liars and aggressors get away with their lying and aggressor...aggressor-ing, but at the least, the very least, they should get called on it to their lying, aggressor faces. It's just so satisfying. 

Above: David McCullagh, doing journalism.

Today in gay porn podcast titles:

I mean, of course Donald Trump immediately fell all over himself praising Vladimir Putin's recognition of breakaway provinces in Ukraine. Of course he did. 

"I, how you say, have heem wrapped around finger. Dah?"

-Vladamir Puti--what? He's a monster,

cartoony accents are totally in bounds.

Above: if you pictured something like this when you
heard about The Car Travis and Buck Sexton
Show, you're not correct, but also, you're not alone.

The former President and, God-willing, future defendant, went on "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show" to--huh? Yeah, know, I thought it had to be a gay pornstar podcast too, but evidently it's a conservative radio show that only airs on weekdays, between noon and three on am radios in Dodge Rams and Ford F-150's. Anyway, after bragging about his high approval ratings (98% percent among people who totally exist!), geopolitical expert Donald "Shithole Countries" Trump gave his opinion of a move the rest of the planet regards as a flimsy and illegal pretext for invading a sovereign nation.

"This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine -- of Ukraine -- Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful."

-The guy that thought Yosemite National

Park was pronounced "yo-semite"

Hey, you know who thinks it's somewhat less wonderful?
The UN Security Council.

They're not so much there to keep peace
as they are to be an occupying force.
Which is different. How was he President?

Wonderful. Oh, don't worry, he went on to draw a racist, nonsensical parallel to immigration:

"That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're going to keep peace, all right."

-A man some, but at no point a majority, 

of Americans actually voted for

I hereby declare Texas independent!
Furthermore, I remove abortion restrictions, ban
assault rifles, and kids can read Maus in school.

Wait-what? Yeah, confused? Understandable because earlier in the podcast he complained about ten million illegal immigrants "bum-rushing" our souther border, which is, of course, nonsense, but whatever. Even if it were true--it's not--but even if it were, wouldn't they be the Russian tanks in this scenario? Like, Ukrainians aren't pouring into Russia, it's the exact opposite. If anything, Ukraine deploying tanks on their border would be a closer analogy. You can't just declare someone else's country independent. That's not how countries work.

So fine, Trump goes on a right-wing talk show to say dumb shit in order to return the favor to Putin for helping him win the electoral college vote in 2016. Whatever, it's literally his job right now because he lost the 2020 election. But people are still listening to him no matter how batshit, and that's what's terrifying. 

Lost an election, but gained a social media app so...there's that.

Pictured: not a cop.

Like, is it me or do Republicans at this point just take the opposite position of whatever reasonable people support? Police officers keep murdering Black people, but the right is all "Blue Lives Matter." There's a pandemic, and doctors say get vaccinated and wear a mask so the right holds rallies against mask mandates and literally applauds COVID death-rates. Some kid drives to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, murders two people and now he's their hero and getting job offers instead of prison.

So of course when an ex-KGB agent turned autocrat invades another country, the leathery, spray-tanned faced of the GOP goes on the radio to tell us all how "wonderful" it is, and of course their base eats it up. These are not reasonable people. These are lunatics still butthurt over the fact that we had a Black president one time, being stoked by a narcissistic goon into acting out because of some white nationalist's victim narrative about how they're being replaced. Look, I'm no Reagan fan, but he must be spinning in his grave.

If they keep this up, Reagan's corpse is going to rise from the dead and start
smacking Republicans in the face. Right in the face. God, I'd love to see that...

Have these people never played chess?

Although if we're being honest, I don't really know much about it either. Chess I mean. But I do know that the Queen is probably the most valuable piece on the board. She can move in any direction and any number of spaces and without her, the game's basically over.

For hundreds of years, high-level chess players
have regarded the Queen as OPAF.

"Please, we both know there's no
cage built that can hold me."

-Queen Elizabeth II

And I know the U.K. has been doing this whole monarchy thing since the dawn of time or whatever, and far be it from me to question them, but how hard is it to keep the hereditary ruler of your country from getting COVID? Did Elizabeth II give them the slip and go out partying? And look, as you may know, I'm a quarter Canadian and am therefore genetically predisposed to be one quarter pro-Queen. I therefore wish the Queen a speedy recovery from this, but she's ninety-five-years-old and the Queen of a hundred and fifty-one million people. Put her in a room and lock the door until this is over, right?

Pictured: Charles, future King of
Great Britain and the Commonwealth of
Nations, and I don't know, some lady?

The British royal family are basically indoor cats yet somehow, the Queen, along with Prince Charles, and her daughter-in-law Camilla whom the Queen recently decided would be--wait, now that's interesting. Charles and Camilla had COVID like, a couple of weeks ago and right around the time the Queen announced that Camilla would get to be Queen Consort when the time comes. Which isn't the same as Queen Regnant, but is still kind of a big deal, because up until now, the plan was that Charles would be the King and Camilla was going to be--officially speaking--just that woman he married. 

There can be only one...

But after decades of rolling her eyes every time Camilla walked in the room, the Queen finally warms up to her and says ok, fine, when I die you can be Queen. Then, suddenly, the Queen comes down with the plague, right after Camilla? I'm not suggesting that Camilla, in some kind of elaborate, Game of Thrones-style long game, deliberately weaponized her respiratory illness, but did she in some kind of elaborate, Game of Thrones-style long game deliberately weaponized her respiratory illness? Ok, no. That's crazy, even as internet theories go, but it's not flat earth or microchips in vaccines crazy, so who knows? 

Got COVID and then hoped in an SUV with
his security detail exposing them all to it
for a photo-op. Yeah, don't miss him at all.

Anyway, my point with all this is that Elizabeth II is just another in a growing list of European monarchs to come down with COVID after Queen Margrethe of Denmark and King Felipe VI and I just can't help but wonder, where are their handlers? When Trump got it, we were all like, of course he did. He was a septuagenarian toddler with the keys to the nuclear arsenal, no accountability and no regard for the safety of others. Of course he got COVID. But these are heads of state we're talking about.

Regular people can get COVID despite being careful because we have to go to work and to the store and live lives, but these peoples' job is to be the living embodiment of political authority for their respective countries. You'd think their staffs would be better at this. Like, there's a reason we keep the Constitution in a case at the National Archives.

Ok, yes, obviously so Nicholas Cage doesn't steal it,* 
but the other reason is so that it doesn't catch COVID.

(source: what passes for civics education in)

*Update! March 27th, 2022: I see now that in National Treasure, Nicholas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, but I'm going to stand by the joke on the grounds that a copy of the Constitution is also housed at the National Archives and that National Treasure is an incredibly dumb movie. And yes, believe it or not, I do sometimes go over old posts looking for typos. Wich happens a lot actually.

What if that, but more of that?

No. Just no. Look, I won't pretend to understand the technology behind phone cameras and I'm not like against innovation or anything, but no to this:

Trypophobia: noun, an irrational or disproportionate feeling of
discomfort or revulsion at the sight of clustered holes or bumps.*

I lived through the console wars of the early
90's. You don't know the things I've seen...

That lovecraftian horror show is a new Galaxy phone. and to be clear, this isn't some weird brand loyalty thing on my part. I'm not an Apple fan. I've stuck with iPhones because they're familiar and I don't want to have to learn a new thing, not because I think they're great. I'm a prisoner of my own laziness. So just know that I'm not picking on Samsung for not being Apple. That said, what even is all this? We have two eyes. Two. What possible benefit within the range of human vision can five lenses offer? Well, six if you count the forward facing "selfie" lens (but let's not).

"Uh-oh. Better switch to ultra-wide."

-almost certainly no one, ever

According to the website each one serves a different function...kinda. Two of them are wide angle (wide and ultra-wide) which is laudable given that the only correct way to take pictures or video is to hold the phone sideways and use landscape mode. Portrait mode is trash. But why two different wide-nesses? And equally confusing are the two zoom lenses. One is 3x and the other 10x...but doesn't the 10x encompass 3x as well? Why have both? And what's the fifth lease for? They won't say. Maybe it's just a light sensor. Maybe it sees your thoughts. 

Although in fairness, Bing is no
dumber a word than Google, so really
it's just about who got there first.

The site also touts the phone's new "Nightography" which, because I get words, I understand to be night photography. But nightography is not, nor will it ever be a word. Nobody's going to start taking "nightographs." "Nightographer" will never be a profession. It's some nonsense marketing chimera that only exists because Samsung can't trademark the words "night" or "photography." It's like how Microsoft keeps trying to make Bing a verb. It's simply not going to happen. But that doesn't mean they're not going to try and bribe people with Gamepass.

But what do I know? Maybe "nightography" absolutely requires five slightly different cameras app pointing at the same thing to work. Cool. But I also can't help but think that it's just an arms race. Like, someone at Samsung looked at the three camera lenses on the iPhone 13 and said: "That gives me an idea..." That idea, of course, is what if that, but more of that?

"What if that, but more of that?"

-someone at Gillette at some point,

probably got a promotion too...

 

*do no, I repeat: do not do an image search for trypophobia. Trust me.

So long Gary Bowser!

So long a sentence that is...Forty months? Forty months? That's what Gary Bowser got for running a group that sold mod chips for Nintendo Switches. And it's a lot, right?

Yeah, so about the title, I'm not trying to be a jerk, it's just that at the end of
Super Mario 64 Mario swings Bowser around by the tail and says something that, thanks
 to garbled mid-90's technology, sounds like "So long gay Bower" and I couldn't resist.

I mean, just wait a few decades
until it falls into public domain.

To be clear, I think that the theft of someone's intellectual property is 100% a crime. In fact, it doesn't even matter what I think, because it is actually a crime. Even if it is one that usually only hurts massive multi-national corporations. And speaking of, it's a crime Amazon, which sells knock-off game consoles loaded with hundreds of pirated game ROMs, seems to have been getting away with for years. Anyway, it doesn't matter. A good policy is just to not pirate other people's stuff. 

So in all, $14.5 million. Of money. Kind
of makes Nintendo look a little, I don't
know, What's the word? Wario-esque?

Gary Bowser's crime was that he was the public relations person for a group called Team Xecuter--dumb name--which made and sold kits that people could use to modify game consoles so as to allow them to play pirated software. He was also doing some wire fraud and money laundering, but pled down to distributing circumvention devices. Nintendo also sued him in civil court and he agreed to pay them 4.5 million in restitution and then a judge added another ten million on top of that.

Yeah, I'll stop harping on this when the
GOP admits its members bear responsibility
and expels everyone involved. So never.

And yesterday, Nintendo released a statement thanking and praising the efforts of the FBI, Homeland Security (what?), and other agencies involved in protecting their intellectual assets and there's just something a little, I don't know, gross about all this? Like, there's no denying that Bowser and presumably the other members of Team Xecutor (still dumb) committed crimes, but it's not like they defrauded people out of their retirement funds, jacked up prices on life-saving medications, or stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government. 

So yes, crimes, but crimes against business, not against say humanity or democracy. It just seems like Homeland Security and the FBI and the DOJ should have better things to do and maybe Nintendo should, I don't know, seem a little less proud of sending someone to prison for three years.

I think this scene in New Super Mario Bros. where Mario drops Bowser
into lava and then watches with satisfaction as he flails in agony before
sinking beneath the flames, neatly encapsulates Nintendo's behavior here.