"Hollywood's big summer movies were all filmed elsewhere"

Via Drudge: This summer's biggest-budget films have everything moviegoers have come to expect from Hollywood blockbusters: superheroes, pirates, space aliens. But in the truest sense of the term, none of them is a Hollywood movie.

Despite a major effort by Los Angeles over the last two years to lure film production back to where it started, producers continue to make big-budget movies elsewhere, saying they get better tax breaks and subsidies outside of Hollywood.

As a result, the summer's movies come from all over the globe. Warner Bros. filmed "Wonder Woman" and "King Arthur" in Britain, where the Time Warner Inc studio owns a large production space. Twenty-First Century Fox Inc's movie studio chose Australia for "Alien: Covenant." Walt Disney Co's Marvel Studios rolled its cameras in Georgia for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," one of six superhero movies it has filmed near Atlanta.

"The support we get in Georgia is tremendous," Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said in an interview. "We're certainly doing many of our biggest films there well through this year and into next year."

Twenty-five years ago, most big-budget films were filmed primarily in Los Angeles. Since then, to lure production, locations across the United States and around the globe have begun offering tax credits or rebates of up to 40 percent of local production spending, a sizable savings on action films that cost up to $250 million to make.

Thirty-two U.S. states and dozens of foreign countries now offer tax credits or rebates, plus other benefits such as waivers of permit fees.

Along with subsidies, the small, former Soviet country of Georgia offers another perk to filmmakers.

"We have many derelict, abandoned small villages or factories. They are mostly state-owned still, and you can easily just blow (them) up," said Sophio Bendiashvili, head of the country's film rebate program, at a conference last month hosted by the Association of Film Commissioners International.

(Link to more)

"A Slow-Motion Coup d’état?"

Via Instapundit:

Let me see if I have this straight.

After a conversation in the Oval office with President Trump, James Comey, then the Director of the FBI, remembered a memo to himself in which he recorded Trump saying regarding the investigation of his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, “I hope you can let this go.” Or at least, as someone who supposedly had read the memo and then supposedly read an accurate quote from it over the phone to a reporter at the New York Times.

First, of course, Trump should have—as usual—shut up. I’d recommend that he move the White House portrait of Calvin Coolidge to the Oval Office and study it daily. (President Reagan hung it in the Cabinet Room not because he needed advice on not talking—Reagan rarely made a verbal slip—but because he admired Coolidge’s exercise of the office). Trump has much to learn from Silent Cal that would benefit himself and his presidency, not to mention the Republic.

But assuming that that’s what Trump actually said, and that that’s what Comey wrote in his memo to himself, and that that’s what was read over the phone to the Times reporter (unlikely since this is third-hand hearsay, inadmissible in any court, analogous to the child’s game of telephone) is
that so bad? Does it really differ substantially from “I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow”? To be sure, it would have been better had he said “I hope you find you’re able to let this go,” or “I hope it turns out that Flynn did nothing wrong.” But no one has ever accused President Trump of excess verbal precision.

(Link to more)

"Colorado governor pardons felon to stave off deportation"

Via Drudge: Colorado's governor on Friday pardoned a Cuban immigrant for an armed robbery he committed 19 years ago in an effort stave off the man's deportation after immigration authorities detained him following a judge's ruling that he should no longer be imprisoned.

The pardon from Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, was the latest twist in the saga of Rene Lima-Marin, 38. He came to the U.S. as a toddler as part of the 1980 Mariel boat lift from Cuba and had legal residency until it was revoked following his 2000 criminal conviction. Lima-Marin was sentenced to 98 years in prison for the robbery. But he was mistakenly paroled from Colorado state prison in 2008.

Lima-Marin married, had a child and got a steady job installing glass before state authorities realized their mistake in 2014 and sent him back for the remainder of his 98-year prison sentence.

A Colorado judge earlier this week ordered Lima-Marin released from state prison, saying it would be "draconian" to keep him incarcerated. But before he could return to his family, immigration authorities picked him up, citing a still-active deportation order from 2000. His lawyers said a pardon was his only chance to stave off deportation.

Lima-Marin's case has become a bipartisan cause celebre in Colorado, as 98 members of the state Assembly, Democrats and Republicans, called on Hickenlooper to grant him clemency. Though the legal roots of Lima-Marin's deportation order stretch back to actions of the Obama administrations, his detention comes as the Trump administration has moved aggressively to speed up deportations, sometimes sparking clashes with local officials.

"This was a question of justice," Hickenlooper told an afternoon news conference. "This was a pretty clear example of someone who's done all the work necessary to earn a second chance."

It's unclear whether the governor's action will be enough to stop Lima-Marin's deportation.

"I'm not a lawyer," Hickenlooper said when asked whether the pardon would be enough.

(Link to more)

Not the Onion: Volunteers needed to smoke pot for science

Via Reddit:  Researchers at Washington State University need volunteers for a study to develop a breathalyzer for pot.
The breathalyzer would need to accurately detect “acute exposure” to tetrahydrocannabinol, WSU Professor Emeritus Nicholas Lovrich, doctoral candidate Peyton Nosbusch and City Councilor and research assistant Nathan Weller told the Pullman League of Women Voters on Thursday afternoon.

As part of the study, volunteers will be asked to answer questions regarding food, drink and other edibles they have recently consumed before being asked to give preliminary blood, breath and oral fluid samples at Pullman Regional Hospital, Lovrich told the League during a Brown Bag meeting at the Community Congregational United Church of Christ.

Participants will then be asked to purchase marijuana from a state-licensed retail store and smoke it in a private residence until a personal self-assessed high is reached. They will then return to the hospital by taxi to give additional bodily samples.

As an optional step, participants will also be asked to interact with law enforcement volunteers and allow them to conduct the standard field sobriety test.

If successful, the study could aid in the development of a field procedure for the detection of the presence of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, and eventually help prevent vehicle accidents or deaths due to drug-impaired driving.

(Link to more)

The day a hurricane hit during school

Typhoon, actually. This was at one of my most difficult schools. Fifth grade. This was my third and last fifth grade in one year. The first fifth grade was at the same place as the end of the second fourth grade school, a dusty little fenced in afterthought with rough rudimentary military type buildings. Almost like, "Oh yeah, we got kids. We'll probably need a school." But that experience didn't last long.

Get this. I was seated in the classroom already in session at the back. There was a card on the wall with the word "Civilization." I asked a girl sitting next to me what that word was for. She told me it's one of their new spelling words. I told her it seemed kind of tough. This must be a tough school. She said, "Not really. See, its root word is civil, then that ization is added onto it." Now this was a profound insight. I told her, "Wow. You're really smart."

The second structure was brand new. A nice brick regular school building built on base at Tachikawa. Everything brand spanking new. Floors had never been walked on. Books never read before. Flags in classrooms new. Everything new. But that didn't last long.

We moved and our new school was large and established. Except, again, little afterthought adjunct buildings attached as need demanded. This whole rest of the fifth grade was inside a Quonset hut. With a rough hewn wooden porch running the length and sturdy windows jutting outward. Our teacher was a French national and he was a total no-funny business personality.

I told him I didn't like math anymore. He asked why. I told him "Because I was happy to finally get off the whole multiplication thing and onto long division and that turns out to be all more multiplication." I told him I'd rather not continue along these lines. He asked me what I thought I might become. I told him I might become a cake maker. Because I was big on making cakes at the time. He asked me what would happen if I had to double a recipe for a cake, or divide one, suggesting mathematics will be useful then and I admitted defeat. "You got me."

He caught my lisp. He suggested the school can correct it. I was all for anything that got me out of class. So I ended up skipping off once a week while everyone else toiled and I went inside the larger school building into a room with a speech therapist who taught me two ways to acceptably thay my etheth tho that I don't thtick out tho much along with another kid who couldn't pronounce R's.

Then one day a storm worked up while we were in class.  Within an hour or so the storm grew stronger, the sky darker, the wind more insistent, the temperature dropped, the rain heavier, the lightning and thunder louder and more interested than fearful we kept looking out the window to our playground beyond some incidental landscaping and the whole class became somewhat alarmed at the sight of sapling bent sideways, like this.

The gardeners give each tree a lot of attention. Everywhere that you go each tree is tended as if its a person. It's odd seeing all the pine trees in sight wrapped in straw mats and carefully bound up as with an obi. Then all that taken off later and burned as insect control. But the whole time the mats are tied on the trees through the winter look like they're wearing clothes. And now this tree is bent right over by wind. This is a serious storm. 

But not so serious to have kept us from school. They did have weather service.

Then everything suddenly stopped, wham, dead stop. We were all relived. Instantly. The tree returned to its upright state. Everything was calmed. No bird or insect sounds. No wind. No rain. The sun shone.

"So you think the storm has ended?" 

"Yes!" The whole class agreed. Duh. Obviously. It's done! It was perfectly quiet. Of course it was done. Great fun, exciting and everything, but we're all glad it's done. Very done.

The teacher said, "No. The storm is only halfway done. We are smack dab in the center of it. We are in the eye of the typhoon." Then he scribbled a series of large "O's" on the chalkboard showing an advancing typhoon as it moves over a spot. He told us the tree will bend in the opposite direction as the typhoon travels along and showed us that on the chalkboard. And sure enough the sky darkened again, the wind picked up quickly, the temperature dropped again, the tearing rain resumed and tree was bent dramatically in the opposite direction.

Actually, the tail end is a little bit stronger. 

And I must say his explanation fascinated all of us. It made perfect sense. And just as we and tree survived the first onslaught so too survived the second. We knew exactly what to expect. This is exciting, actually. The teacher did an excellent job managing us. I'm certain that incident became a story he tells. A Quonset hut full of rowdy kids when a typhoon hits dead on? It must. 

Things returned to normal and so did class. 

Much later Mum told me that the teacher discussed with them holding me back on account of my physical development, my distaste for long division and my many stupid questions. I'm glad my parents disagreed with his assessment. 

Because I would have really hated that. I earned that graduation. A fourth fifth grade school would be intolerable. Man, I'm glad my parents are cool. I dodged the bullet on that one.

"New ‘Social Justice’ Math Class Teaches Kids That Math Is Evil, Dehumanizing"

Via Twitter:  Millions of K-12 students across the country believe that mathematics is a sadistic discipline—(I should know, I was one of them)—but a new "social justice" training module aims to persuade teachers that maybe the kids are on to something.

The course was designed by Teach for America and is offered through EdX, according to Campus Reform. It presupposes that math could be made more interesting for students if it was infused with socially relevant themes. That's not a terrible assumption—maybe young people would like math better if it was being taught in a language they understood. (If Olivia eats 10 pieces of avocado toast every day, how long will it be until she can afford to move out of her parent's house? That sort of thing.)

But Teach for America thinks that language is "social justice," and has designed a course that makes some startling claims about math.

"In western mathematics, our ways of knowing include formalized reasoning or proof, decontextualization, and algorithmic thinking, leaving little room for those having non-western mathematical skills and thinking processes," the training course claims.

It continues:

"Mathematical ethics recognizes that, for centuries, mathematics has been used as a dehumanizing tool… mathematics formulae also differentiate between the classifications of a war or a genocide and have been used to trick indigenous peoples out of land and property."

Math is such a basic building block that one can cherry-pick hundreds of examples of it being misapplied for nefarious ends—but that's not really math's fault. Math lacks—to borrow a social justice term—agency.

I'm open to the idea that math—particularly advanced math—is over-valued as a K-12 subject. There's a good argument to be made that high schoolers should be taking less Algebra II and reading more Shakespeare. But if we're going to teach math, I'm not sure we should be teaching that it's mostly just this bad thing Western countries used to subjugate indigenous peoples, as if that's the main thing you need to know about math.

Netanyahu

Source pic from Drudge.

"Why the Future Is Always on Your Mind"

Via Instapundit:  The founder of positive psychology, Penn’s Martin Seligman, has joined with colleagues to start another field, prospective psychology. He and I argue in the NYT that Homo sapiens is a misnomer, because calling ourselves the “wise man” is more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart? Other animals live in the moment, but we can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered — rather belatedly, because for the past century most researchers have assumed that we’re prisoners of the past and the present.

Read the whole thing. Or check out the book-length version, Homo Prospectus.

Not the Onion: Climate change is causing trees in the eastern U.S. to move north, west

Via Twitter: It's getting so hot that even the trees are heading north.

Man-made climate change — including warmer temperatures and deviations in rainfall patterns — appears to be one of the reasons tree populations in the eastern U.S. are shifting north and, more surprisingly, west, according to new research.

The shift could even lead to the extinction of certain trees in select forests, the study said.

Overall, the changing climate has pushed trees an average of 20 miles north and 25 miles west over the past 30 years. While the northern shift was expected due to warming temperatures, researchers think the more surprising westward movement could be the result of a change in rainfall patterns.

When researchers analyzed the impact of climate change, they found precipitation had a stronger impact on forests in the short term than temperatures, said lead author Songlin Fei of Purdue University.

(Link to more)

KLEM FM

link

Grunge owed bands like Husker Du an awful lot. The Minneapolis bands, the SST bands, and the L.A. punk bands who thrived in the '80's simply never got on the public's radar like Grunge bands did. The bands knew this. Kurt Cobain called the Meat Puppets a favorite band and covered their songs; the  Chili Peppers -- who dedicated "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" to Mike Watt -- knew this. Hell, Sonic Youth featured a voice recording of Watt in their 1988 "Day Dream Nation."

I met Mike Watt more than once. The first time was in the summer of 1991 in Zurich. My girlfriend asked him what was new in music and he said "Everybody's listening to Nirvana." We were like "Nirvana who?" A few months later everything changed. So I've always carried this little bit of snobery regarding Grunge. Why weren't people excited about Grunge excited about The Replacements? About Husker Du?

I think it was the dissonance.
_______________________

From the YouTube comments:

Bob Mould predicting the creation of Internet... killer lyrics.

Lyrics after the jump

Trump travels

Why would Trump want to go Riyadh and to Jerusalem and Europe? Why now? Commenters said that he's running away from Washington.

Others snipe about an apology tour.

While another commenter wrote that he thinks Trump is allowing Washington to go more deeply nuts while he's away, that bureaucrats will behave badly, that leakers will expose themselves. The commenter thinks Trump is giving them space and rope to hang themselves.

And boy oh boy, when he gets back.

I've read articles all week about the swamp closing in on Trump. And that swamp being so full of snakes, biting insects, dangerous fish and crocodiles, and bloodsuckers. The commenter believes that Trump absence from Washington will have a concentrating effect on all those swamp creatures while giving liberty and room to make damaging mistakes.

It sounded good to me.

Schedule lifted from Yahoo News.  Yahoo News fills this out more. They cannot resist little bits like this:

"It doesn’t seem as though he’ll have time to do much else at the museum, a 45-acre complex with multiple buildings and memorials, since his advance team reportedly allotted only 15 minutes for the visit." 

* Day 1 Saturday, May 20 Riyadh. Coffee with the king, banquet, meeting with king and crown prince and signing ceremony for a number of agreements.

* Day 2 Sunday, May 21 Riyadh. Meeting with Gulf Corporation Council. Lunch with leaders of over 50 Arab countries where he will deliver a speech attended by 37 heads of state and 6 prime ministers. The speech is about confronting radical Islam.

* Day 3 Monday, May 22 Jerusalem. Meeting with President Reuven Rivlin and visit Yad Vashem. Speech at Israel museum. Meeting with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* Day 4 Tuesday, May 23 Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem. Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

* Day 5 Wednesday, May 24 Rome. Meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Then cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and tour St. Peter's Basilica. Meeting with President Sergio Mattarella.

* Day 6 Thursday, May 25 Brussels. Meeting with Belgian king Philippe and Prime Minister Charles Michel. European Union headquarters, meeting with European Council presidents. Working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron. Speech at NATO memorial. NATO leaders meeting and dinner.

* Day 7 Friday, May 26 Sicily. G7 Summit. Meeting with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentilioni. Concert at La Scala Philharmonic, attend leaders dinner hosted by president of Italy.

* Day 8 Saturday, May 27 Sicily. Speech to American and Allied servicemen and families. Return to Washington.

"At Fox News, Roger Ailes' real gift shined"

Via Instapundit:  Roger Ailes is likely to go down in history as a political genius whose mastery of the news media reshaped the partisan landscape of America. But for all the superlatives about the power and influence of Ailes’ creation, Fox News, the encomiums will do him a fundamental disservice.

What made the 77-year-old New Yorker unique were not the dark arts of a Karl Rove or a Dick Morris. His genius didn’t hinge on the intricacies of cable news or a deep understanding of American culture as the sun set on the 20th century.

Ailes, who died Thursday, was a bard, a master storyteller. His power to unite an audience came from the same primal place as a fireside teller of tales in mankind’s cave-dwelling days. He built a network where the regular American working man was the good guy and all the smarty-pants and do-gooders of the world were the bad guys. Fox News commentators and reporters alike targeted their tribe and told it the stories it wanted to hear. The audience cheered and came back for more.

The New York Times’ obituary of Ailes says he shaped “the images that helped elect three Republican presidents and then became a dominant, often-intimidating force in American conservative politics at the helm of Fox News.”

(Link to more)

If the BBC does it... I can hear the arguments for censorship start

BBC announces if you post content on its sites it doesn't like, it will report you to your boss. Yes, seriously. https://t.co/m0HE5JrIIn pic.twitter.com/EsaweMxLCO

— Frank Fisher (@frank_fisher) May 17, 2017

terrace garden

Did I just now say garden? The title should be "snow." Travel warnings on t.v. These poor plants replaced the ones that were frozen then these were beat up badly by hail and chilled from that too. And now this snow storm. Good thing I didn't get around to replacing these yet.

I was hoping they would live.

There are still two more online orders coming in a few days. I derided them for being so late. Shows what I know.

Meanwhile a tray of seedlings has begun germinating. Morning glories, Hatch chiles, and tomato seeds were all planted at the same time. The little green heads of morning glories popped up. Had I kept the tray indoors they'd all be germinating by now. But they were outdoors and needed more and steady warmth than they received out there. I gambled poorly. The pots are loaded with bulbs waiting for it to be sufficiently warm.