May 23, 2020

HBO Max Will #ReleasetheSnyderCut of the Poorly Reviewed 'Justice League'

Fans have been demanding Zack Snyder's version of the maligned DC superhero blockbuster for years.

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/what-is-the-snyder-cut-justice-league-zack-snyder-hbo-max



Don't you just want more Justice League? Didn't you watch Justice League and think to yourself, "Man, I wish I could watch this movie again, but slightly different, and longer"? We have incredible news for you -- incredible, meaning that none of us actually saw this coming in a million years: the "Snyder Cut" of Justice League, which is the theorized alternate version of the 2017 movie that had been completed by its former director Zack Snyder (we'll get to that) before the movie was handed off to another to finish up, will be released on HBO Max in 2021.

Now, for those who may be wondering, "What the hell is the 'Snyder Cut'?", let me explain. Zack Snyder, who directed the most recent live-action run of DC superhero movies collectively known as the "DC Extended Universe" (though no one officially calls them that) starting with Man of Steel (and not including Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman or James Wan's Aquaman), left the long-awaited team-up film Justice League midway through production after his daughter Autumn died tragically by suicide in March 2017. Snyder initially took some time away from the film to privately mourn and then came back to the project before leaving again in May, explaining that what he most needed during that time was to be with his family. To keep the movie on schedule for its November release, the studio hired Joss Whedon (who proved his skill at ensemble superhero movies with The Avengers) to finish it up.

After Whedon joined, the movie went through massive rounds of reshoots -- $25 million worth of reshoots -- to punch up the humor and to cut the runtime down to a studio-mandated 120 minutes. Now, reshoots are not some strange, worrisome thing -- I guarantee you every superhero movie from the past 10 years has done it, usually for stuff like fight scenes or to perfect certain shots they didn't get right the first time. But reshoots like that don't run up a $25 million tab, which got fans wondering how much Whedon was actually changing.



Zack Snyder has a lot of fans. They are very loud, they are very loyal, and when Justice League finally came out, they parsed through every minute of that film trying to figure out how much of Snyder's material had made it in. The various trailers for the movie didn't help at all: Many of them contained shots and lines that never made it into the final cut of the movie (also not an abnormal thing to happen, but, again, it doesn't usually happen to the extent it did here). Fans started to speculate about an alternate "Snyder Cut" that had been buried by the movie studio in favor of Whedon's safer version. The stars also seemed to be stirring the pot -- Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck, and Ray Fisher (who plays Cyborg) all tweeted about the Snyder Cut on the same day last fall on the movie's second anniversary, and Jason Momoa has given shifty comments in various interviews about having "seen" the cut. They all seemed to be rallying behind Snyder, which makes sense, given the heartbreaking circumstances of his exit, but it also gave fuel to the fire for fans who were casting Joss Whedon as the "villain" who had stolen and bastardized Snyder's work for his own.

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May 22, 2020

Charlamagne tha God defends Biden's support for black community

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/499234-charlamagne-tha-god-defends-bidens-support-for-black-community

Charlamagne tha God defended former Vice President Joe Biden's support for the black community following their Friday morning interview. In an interview on Charlamagne's popular radio show, "The Breakfast Club," Biden said, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or for Trump, then you ain't black."

The quote generated much backlash against the presumptive Democratic nominee, prompting him to issue an apology Friday afternoon, saying, "I shouldn't have been such a wise guy. I shouldn't have been so cavalier." Before Biden's apology, Charlamagne defended the former vice president in response to a request from Mediate:



Charlamagne said during the interview following Biden's comment about black voters, "It don't have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact that I want something for my community." "Take a look at my record, man," Biden said in response. "I extended the Voting Rights Act 25 years. I have a record that is second to none. The NAACP has endorsed me every time I've run. Come on, take a look at my record."

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May 22, 2020

Behold This Terrifying New Face Mask That Allows Wearers to Eat

Avtipus Patents and Inventions revealed its mask earlier this week, demonstrating a built-in mechanical mouth controlled by a lever.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxqp3/behold-this-terrifying-new-face-mask-that-allows-wearers-to-eat



As an increasing number of states reach whichever phase of their reopening plans that allow restaurants to start serving dine-in customers, those restaurant owners and managers have the unenviable task of figuring out how exactly they're supposed to do that. They've been given a list of brand new requirements and restrictions that could include anything from having to construct physical barriers between the tables that can't be pushed six feet apart, to investing in disposable menus and single-use condiments, to ensuring that they have some way to securely keep track of customer data in case someone's subsequent swab test comes back positive.

Although hanging shower curtain liners to keep customers separated comes with its own set of challenges, another yet-to-be-answered question is how face masks are going to work in a situation when people need to have access to their own mouths. Some states are already advocating for dine-in customers to wear masks when they're walking to their table, when they interact with members of the restaurant staff, and when they go to the restroom—but what about the rest of the time?

An Israeli company says that it has invented a mask that will work for anyone who wants to keep the bottom half of their face covered, even while they're eating. Avtipus Patents and Inventions revealed its mask earlier this week, demonstrating a built-in (but visually terrifying) mechanical mouth that opens and closes with the use of a hand-controlled lever.
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1262428030632329216
"The mask will be opened mechanically by hand remote or automatically when the fork is coming to the mask," Asaf Gitelis, a vice president at Avtipus Patents, told Haaretz. "Then you can eat, enjoy, drink and you take out the fork and it will be closed, and you're protected against the virus and other people sitting with you."

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May 22, 2020

Chef Edward Lee Admires Louisville's Warmth and Slow Pace of Life

He also loves the city’s most storied liquor, bourbon.

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/edward-lee-louisville-restaurants-shutdown-love-letter

Edward Lee is the James Beard Award winning author and chef/owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, The Wine Studio, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky, and the culinary director for Succotash in National Harbor, Maryland and Washington, DC. He has authored two books: Smoke & Pickles and Buttermilk Graffiti. He is the co-founder of The LEE Initiative which is helping to feed restaurant workers during the COVID-19 shutdown. As told to Kat Thompson.



Life in Louisville is slightly slower-paced. There’s a real sense of community: a spirit of generosity, curiosity, and good times. We do things a little bit differently here. We drink way more bourbon than the rest of the country, which probably contributes to our unique way of thinking. And the bourbon definitely tastes better here. I came to Louisville after 9/11 to start a new life and didn’t think I’d stay forever. I thought I’d maybe stay here for a year or two and see how I liked it. It’s now been 19 years. There’s something about this place that really captures you and puts its arms around you, so it’s hard to leave. Personally, for me, it was really special that I came here and I found my voice. I found my cooking style, found my wife, and had my child here. I also found a city and a people that accept me. I’m a Korean kid from Brooklyn and to come to Louisville, Kentucky and not only be praised for what I’m doing -- but also to be loved and to be honored by the people here -- is really special.

But it makes sense. From the beginning of Louisville’s existence as one of America’s most important port cities on the Ohio river, there has always been a tradition of outsiders and business people coming in. There’s a very rich history of African American culture and food and contributions here. There is a historic depth of German culture that came in from the East and down from Appalachia many generations ago. There’s a midwestern work ethic coupled with a Southerner’s love for food, drink, and storytelling. It is a commerce city, but it’s a city of people who are open minded and want to start something cool. We’re not a big city, we’re not a small town, we’re somewhere in between and that gives up a lot of freedom to do things. We don’t have a singular identity that defines us. There are some cities where you can open the best restaurant in town but you’re just another restaurant. Here, I feel like people really have a vested interest in seeing me do well. People come to my restaurant and say thank you to me, and that doesn’t happen. The people here are truly appreciative; they get it and they support independent restaurants. They’re some of the kindest people I’ve ever met.

This also results in the amazing restaurant scene here. Mayan Cafe and Vietnam Kitchen have been here forever. The owners are like family to me and people you’ve grown old with. You see them and witness their struggles and their successes. And then you have newer restaurants -- places like Decca that are doing amazing things. The chef there, Annie, is a trailblazer and creating a new generation of food that’s fantastic to see. There’s a place called Bar Vetti that is young and vibrant and delicious, but with an attitude. It’s definitely a generation younger than mine that’s taking whatever Louisville is and doing it even better.

There are soul food restaurants that are definitely a mainstay of my diet; places like Indi’s Fried Chicken, which is an institution here, and Big Momma’s soul food. One of my favorite Indian restaurants is called Dakshin and they are located in the most inconvenient neighborhood you could ever imagine, but they serve some of the best food. They’re feeding hundreds of people during the crisis right now. They’re community-driven people with some of the best Indian food I’ve had. There’s a beer and gastropub bar called Holy Grale, which is in my neighborhood, and I probably walk over there once a week and grab a beer, sausage, and a pretzel. These places are treasures and they really sort of create this multilayered city where you can get everything -- they’re worth supporting and they’re worth saving.

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May 22, 2020

Cook like a Swede! 12 Svensk Potatissallad (Swedish Potato Salad) recipes

Google can auto translate for you, and my snapshots use this for you, the links to the actual recipes are at the top link

https://www.ica.se/buffe/artikel/godaste-potatissalladerna/



Potato salad must be one of the most delicious accessories for grilled food! Here we talk about 12 great varieties of potato salad and which protein they are best suited to serve as an accessory to.

May 22, 2020

The European Parliament and gender equality--a continuing struggle

There has been progress in the numerical representation of women in the European Parliament. But that’s not enough to achieve gender equality.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-european-parliament-and-gender-equality-a-continuing-struggle

The European Parliament is often presented as firmly supporting gender equality—not least through its Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) as a focus for related policy development in the European Union. At around 40 per cent, female members of the EP currently comprise one of the highest proportions of any parliament worldwide (see figure below). Just before the 2019 Euro-elections, in 21 member states the share of female MEPs was higher than in their national parliament and in three cases comprised the majority: Finland (76.3 per cent), Croatia and Ireland (both 54.5 per cent).

Nevertheless, this descriptive (numerical) representation does not allow conclusions to be drawn about substantive representation—promoting gender equality in EP policies—nor about the gender sensitivity of the parliament and its organs as institutions. While the EP has received ample attention from researchers, the different layers of gender equality and what becoming a gender-sensitive parliament entails are under-researched. Our recently co-edited volume addresses how the EP fares in the important political and societal task of advancing gender equality in the round.

Members of the European Parliament 1952-2019, women and men (%)


Strong promoter

From an overarching historical perspective, the EP indeed qualifies as a strong promoter of gender equality and contradicts the common association of ‘women in, power out’. Indeed, women’s representation has increased in parallel with the increase in power of the EP as an EU institution. The parliament—and, in particular, its FEMM committee—acts as an agenda-setter by adopting (own-initiative) reports and resolutions, (co-)legislating EU directives, and scrutinising prospective members of the European Commission on their positions on gender equality.

Over the years, the EP has extended the scope of gender equality from its limited original focus on the labour market, to development, education, gender-based violence, migration and work-life balance. Most of the proposals supporting gender equality have been supported by large majorities, despite the growing number of conservative, right-wing and anti-feminist MEPs in recent legislatures. Such a stronghold of gender-equality promotion is important—not least because the EP has gained considerable powers over time as co-legislator with the Council of the EU in the majority of policy domains, the EP is the budgetary authority, and it approves the composition of the European Commission and elects its president. Yet, overall, gender equality is becoming more and more politicised and marked by polarisation at the European level.

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May 22, 2020

Eddie Mauro defends 'negative' poll questions about challengers for Iowa U.S. Senate seat

Poll touches on Theresa Greenfield's 2018 campaign manager's conduct, Michael Franken's million-dollar Virginia home

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/senate-race-polll-iowa-eddie-mauro-theresa-greenfield-michael-franken-joni-ernst-20200514


The four Iowa Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate — Michael Franken, Kimberly Graham, Theresa Greenfield and Eddie Mauro — are shown at an April 19 online forum. The candidates will have their first in-person debate May 18 at the Iowa PBS studio in Johnston. (Screengrab)

Candidates in the race for the Iowa Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate are jockeying for poll position. A poll released last week showed Theresa Greenfield in a virtual dead heat with Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, 43 percent to 42 percent. Now Des Moines businessman Eddie Mauro has a poll showing that in a general election contest, he’s tied with Ernst, 42 percent to 42 percent. In addition to the Mauro-Ernst question, RABA Research, whose founders include a strategist for the Ernst campaign and President Barack Obama’s Iowa campaign director, asked likely general election voters about the vulnerabilities of other Democrats running in the June 2 primary election.

Specifically, the pollster asked about Greenfield’s U.S. House bid in 2018. She failed to get on the ballot because her campaign manager was charged with felony election misconduct. Voters also were asked whether general election voters might have a problem supporting Michael Franken, who has voted in Iowa only twice in 30 years and has a million-dollar home in Virginia. In both cases, more than half of those polled said that information gave them doubts. In Greenfield’s case, 44 percent had “serious doubts” and 23 percent had “some doubts.” On the question of Franken’s residency, the results were 68 percent “serious” and 10 percent “some” doubts.

The Greenfield campaign, which has accused Mauro of running a “false, negative smear campaign,” and the Franken campaign criticized Mauro’s negative strategy when Democrats are uniting to defeat Ernst, whom they see as vulnerable this year. Ernst’s favorables have fallen to 47 percent, and Cook Political Report recently downgraded the race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican.” The Mauro campaign defended the questions as valid because Democrats “cannot pretend that the Ernst campaign does not already recognize these negatives,” according to spokesman Keegan Brown. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has produced a video on those topics.

“The point of a primary is to vet candidates and make sure they can go toe to toe with their challenger in the general,” Brown said. “If the negatives are too much of a problem in the primary, they will certainly be the death knell to any campaign in the general. “Just because Greenfield was handpicked by Schumer does not mean she is the anointed candidate,” he said, referring to the Des Moines real estate executive who is being backed by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York. Franken, who grew up in northwest Iowa and retired as a three-star admiral after 37 years in the Navy, is running an issues-based campaign on health care, lowering prescription drug costs and taking on special interests, spokesman Aaron Slutkin said.

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this doesn't pass the smell test.

May 21, 2020

Progressive Wins DA Race in Portland, Sending "Shockwaves" Through Oregon's Punitive System

“Multnomah County has just embraced the most progressive DA platform that this state has ever seen,” said Mike Schmidt, crediting grassroots efforts.

https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/portland-district-attorney-election/

It may be the widest election win yet for progressives in a contested prosecutor’s race. Mike Schmidt, who ran on a criminal justice reform platform, was elected district attorney on Tuesday in Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, some of its suburbs, and more than 800,000 residents. He had more than 75 percent of the vote in results available on Wednesday. “His election is evidence of the grassroots efforts that educated the community about the powers of the DA and the harms inflicted by the criminal legal system,” Madeline Carroll, an organizer with Oregon DA for the People, a local advocacy group, told me in an email. “Hundreds of community members contributed to this milestone.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Schmidt too credited grassroots organizers. “Multnomah County has just embraced the most progressive DA platform that this state has ever seen,” he said. “It’s an incredible feeling of validation for the things I’ve been working on, and I think of validation for so many people in the community who’ve worked on these issues and said those things for longer than I have.” He pointed to his 50 percentage point margin as evidence of the “breadth” of the coalition around reform. When he talked to labor groups during the campaign, he recounted, they pressed him to talk about “the systems, and how race has played into the criminal justice system, the school to prison pipeline. You merge that with the activist groups that have been working on these issues, with groups that have been standing with immigrants in our communities, everybody brought similar goals but different takes on it.”

This margin is all the more remarkable in the context of Oregon’s punitive prosecutorial culture, of a DA association that has fought recent reforms, and of a prison population that has kept rising, bucking national trends. Oregon is one of only six states where incarceration reached a new peak in 2018, according to a new analysis by the Sentencing Project. Schmidt has blamed Oregon’s harsh mandatory minimum schemes, which were codified by a 1994 ballot initiative, for stalling decarceral efforts. “You literally cannot get Oregon’s prison population reduced by 50 percent without getting rid of mandatory sentencing,” he said in April in a Q&A with the Political Report, referring to a goal some decarceration advocates have set.

And in arguing that the legislature should repeal mandatory minimums, he presented the change as a way to chip away at DAs’ tremendous power. “When sentences become mandatory,” he said, “whoever makes the charging decision essentially makes the sentencing decision.” He also expressed support for other statewide reforms, including an end to cash bail, a ballot initiative that would decriminalize the personal possession of most drugs, and voting rights for all. He is among a growing list of candidates who are winning DA races after stating their view that incarcerated people should retain the right to vote, a significant turnaround in the issue’s national politics that matches what law enforcement officials say in Maine and Vermont.

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May 21, 2020

Trump Is Extorting These American States To Win In 2020

Trump Is Recycling His Ukraine Scam to harm Joe Biden and suppress the vote in 2020.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-is-extorting-these-american



WASHINGTON, DC -- Paraphrasing another Republican president: There he goes again. You’d think Donald Trump might’ve learned his lesson about extortion when he was impeached for it. But no. He keeps doing it, in public and in clear view of law enforcement. Specifically, it was only a few months ago when all that went down, with the president being impeached because he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by attempting to force President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden and, by proxy, Joe Biden. See, part of Ukraine was annexed by Russia, while pro-Putin forces continue to make incursions into the former Soviet satellite, requiring military aid from the West.

Despite all that, Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless Zelenksy did what he was told by our clown dictator. Beginning last August, there were copious press reports, followed by congressional hearings, scandalous testimony showing the president did exactly what he was being accused of doing, and there was a successful vote to impeach the president on the floor of the House. The impeachment of the president was followed by a trial in the Senate. All because the president illegally extorted Ukraine in order to help Trump politically. Either he refuses to learn from that colossal blunder, or his brain worm situation is more advanced than we thought, because he’s at it again.

Before we dive into his latest attempts at extortion, it appears as though Trump has finally achieved his kangaroo court investigation of the Bidens. Moscow Mitch McConnell along with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted this week to begin issuing subpoenas related to Burisma, a Ukraine energy company that employed Hunter Biden on its board. So, where Trump failed to muscle Ukraine into helping him cheat in the election, Moscow Mitch has arrived to pick up where Trump and Rudy Giuliani left off with Ukraine. Yes, Trump is finally getting his Biden investigation and just in time for the election. As far as we know, there wasn’t any extortion of McConnell, chiefly because there doesn’t need to be any. The majority leader is just as spooked about election day as Trump is, so attacking Biden and Biden’s coattails is a win-win for Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Meanwhile, Trump is attempting to extort several swing states into doing his bidding. In the last day or so, the president has issued threats to three states: Michigan, Nevada and Virginia. Let’s start with the latter. During an event at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said, "We're going after Virginia, with your crazy governor, we're going after Virginia. They want to take your Second Amendment. You know that, right? You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes." He didn’t say specifically how he plans to “go after Virginia,” but I have two guesses. Either he plans to participate in a Second Amendment lawsuit against Virginia’s slate of recently passed gun laws, or he intends to withhold federal aid during a pandemic in order to punish Virginians until they vote to oust the Democrats controlling the legislature and the governor’s mansion in Richmond. Take your pick. I’m leaning in the direction of the second option: withholding aid, chiefly because this seems to be his tactic with states that aren’t sufficiently loyal to Trump.

And then there’s Michigan. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1263170880298942464

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May 21, 2020

White Twin Gable House by Ryan Leidner Architecture is a remodeled Eichler

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/05/14/twin-gable-house-ryan-leidner-architecture-remodeled-eichler/



Californian firm Ryan Leidner Architecture has used bright white paint and lush greenery to refresh a mid-century modern Eichler home in Silicon Valley that was completed in the 1960s. The Twin Gable House in Sunnyvale, California was constructed in 1962 by the design duo A Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons for post-war real estate developer Joseph Eichler. It is one of over 10,000 modernist subdivisions that Eichler developed following the second world war.






Originally called Plan OJ-1605, the property has been remodelled several times since it was first built. For this renovation, Ryan Leidner Architecture updated the 2,200-square-foot (204.3-square-metre) space with white interiors and an open floor plan for a family of four. "A primary goal of the renovation was to peel back the many layers of remodels that had occurred over the previous decades," the studio said. The low-lying house is now named after its two pitched roofs that are painted a bright white. They contrast the red cedar strips that were added to replace the original grooved plywood siding on the facade, which also features a carport accented by glazed walls. Large sliding glass doors and windows face into a lush garden landscaped by Stephens Design Studio, which includes the existing courtyard and a new swimming pool.





The courtyard is one of a series of existing architectural elements the team preserved during the project, along with the post and beam structure that spans the ceilings. Inside, the studio removed several walls to adjust the flow of the layout and create an open-plan living area. Plaster walls were smoothed and repainted a bright white, along with the wood beams and frames that span the ceiling. Square porcelain tiles cover the flooring throughout the house and continue onto the outdoor spaces.Ryan Leidner Architecture removed dated furnishings such as the shag carpets and old cabinetry for the interior decor. In the kitchen, Carrara marble counters and backsplash are now paired with white oak accents used to detail the cabinetry.





Furnishings include a set of wood Eames lounge chairs in the living room and a bedroom side table designed by Eero Saarinen. Ryan Leidner Architecture is a San Francisco studio, it recently completed the renovation of a 19th-century residence house in the city's Mission district. California studio Klopf Architecture has also remodelled a number of Eichler model homes including a house in Palo Alto with yellow accents and architect Michael Hennessey updated one of the mid-century modern homes in San Francisco.



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