CSotD: What size crisis were you looking for?
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There have been several cartoons on the subject of Paul McCartney resurrecting John’s voice through AI to complete a recording they never released. The other cartoons featured robots saying funny things, but less is more and Matt Davies turns in the winner.
I like the watercolor background, but I particularly like that he has the robot alone: Adding Beatles would clutter both the picture and the message, and the message is largely left up to the reader, which doesn’t always work, but, in this case, is an excellent choice. Those of us who grew up with the Beatles will likely take it differently than the digital natives.
For my part, I enjoy hearing alternate takes to find out how a musician and producer got to the final product, but I generally respect their final decision and moreso when I’ve wrapped a bunch of memories around the released version. My general distaste for adding dead people’s images and voices to things is significantly magnified in the case of John Lennon and I don’t really care how well you do it. Fake is fake.
It also smells more of a desire to make money than a desire to create art. Good performers know better than to try to resurrect the past. “Always leave’em wanting more” goes back a long way and for good reason.
Your mileage may certainly vary, and maybe you’ll see this cartoon as the March of Progress. Davies has left it open.
Though, on another level, I like Jeremy Banx’s take, since it combines the AI issue with my general opinion of tribute bands.
Like Davies, David Horsey also lets the image speak for itself, but he’s certainly not leaving the message open to interpretation. The self-styled “Freedom Caucus” has picked up a number of alternative names and “The Crybaby Caucus” is no worse than “The Clown Caucus.”
And it fits well at the moment, because the crybabies are upset over the deal that averted a shutdown and so are insisting on torpedoing it with appropriations legislation that will shut things down October 1 if a way cannot be found around their grandstanding.
Horsey does well not to depict individual members of the caucus, because, while some are better at grabbing microphones and TV time than others, it’s very much a group effort.
Kevin McCarthy must really, really want that gavel. I don’t envy him trying to manage that small contingent of disruptive nincompoops, but I also don’t admire him for trying.
It’s the same the ‘ole world over
The good news is that we’re not imagining it. The bad news is that it appears to be universal, which makes it much harder to deal with.
Nobody wants to have to deal with the homeless, but they sure seem determined to create more of them.
To be fair, I have very good landlords who have been generous in letting me rent the apartment at the back of their house for a price well below average in this town, but even they have had to raise it in light of what’s happening with both utilities and taxes.
As Kearney says, landlords who are in it for the money have been far less reluctant to raise rents, while Matt and Katauskas both note that the sales price of homes has skyrocketed simply because if you demand more with a limited inventory, nobody’s got a choice.
There are things governments can do, assuming they aren’t so dedicated to laissez-faire that they won’t act. One move that holds a tiny bit of promise is to ease zoning so that multi-family buildings can be built in what were single-family areas.
But given the cost of construction, and the goals of most builders, that translates to more unaffordable apartments and over-the-top condos, unless local government mandates affordable set-asides in permitting.
Meanwhile, Katauskas seems to have a grasp of why the price of existing homes has shot to the stars: The only substantive reason for such insane prices is that, if you want to go live somewhere after you sell your home, you’d better walk away with enough in your pocket to deal with things as they are, not as they ought to be.
And if either the UK or Australia finds a solution, you can bet our legislative revulsion against “socialism” and “wokeness” will keep it from happening here on a major scale.
Much as Eric Allie (Counterpoint) opposes the move, there are signs that normal people are pushing back against the phony, fascist “Parents’ Rights” movement, in which a small group of loud people — Moms For Liberty has been declared an extremist group — get to make harsh ideological decisions for the entire community.
The rise of these extremist groups is the result of a smart move on their part to become active in local government, filling a vacancy caused by lack of participation. Schools have been particularly vulnerable to takeovers because their elections were already often dominated by people who don’t want their taxes to go up.
Outside of places that still have Town Meetings to approve local budgets, school taxes are the only measures that come up for direct votes, so it didn’t take much for Tea Party groups to add their votes to the usual “No” contingent and take control of schools, both in budgeting and in who serves on the school board.
However, more people are becoming aware that the system already acknowledges “parents rights” by allowing the public to elect wise, sensible school board members to make intelligent, responsible decisions about how their local schools are run.
As the saying goes, 80% of success is showing up.
And still on the topic of intelligent governance, Ann Telnaes was so infuriated by reports that Republican bloviators were not bothering to read the indictment before commenting on what they guessed were its contents that she has combined the text of the initial pages of the document interspersed with their foolish, irrelevant, ignorant statements.
It’s a long, wonderful contribution to taking back our government from the Crybaby Caucus and those who vote without thinking, and I’m sending you to see the entire thing in lieu of a musical ending today.
If you’ve already read the indictment, you’ll enjoy her marginalia. And if you haven’t, here’s your chance.
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