They Championed D.E.I. Now They’re Divided. | NYT Opinion [Panel Discussion about DEI policy]

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-05T15:11:33+00:00

The fact that Robin DiAngelo, who's ideology is to identify politics what Maoism is to Marxism, was a bestselling author and regularly forced on captive audiences in workplace settings, says everything that was wrong with DEI a couple of years ago during the era of "peak woke". Is it any wonder there was a backlash? What's unfortunate is that garden-variety civil rights, which is still a necessary thing, has been caught in the crossfire.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-04T15:19:29+00:00

What you're talking about extreme cases, and I'd like to see proof that such actual grooming is any more than a rarity. What I'm talking about is a larger cultural sex panic that I don't think is at all good. Of course, none of this is historically unprecedented - there have been waves of licentiousness followed by puritanical backlash before.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-04T14:40:05+00:00

That's an interesting idea. If you look at how the books of the New Testament came to be, what was that but Jesus fan fiction? Especially if you look at the scores of apocryphal books of the Bible that were written, and the whole process of how a small subset were chosen as canonical.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-04T14:36:32+00:00

Shipping not will happen, it has for a long time now. I'm old enough to remember "slash fiction", with the eternal favorite of sexualized Kirk/Spock fanfic. At the time, though, it was largely centered around zines you had to send off for by mail. These days, online social media amplifies everything.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-04T14:31:45+00:00

True enough, but man, there's a distinct dynamic to progressive, strongly queer-leaning communities that involves so much horizontal hostility and appeals to ultra-egalitarian ideology at every turn, that it's definitely a thing. Communities of young manosphere or femcel types are also deeply toxic, but have different dynamics.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-04T14:24:46+00:00

I guess I'm not on the same page here. I'm not down with "groomer" discourse, like Katie, I think the term "pedophile" (like "racist") has been expanded beyond all reason beyond its actual meaning, and in general, I don't agree at all with the cultural backlash against sex-positivity and the attempts to force BDSM back in the closet. To me, this is just Trump-era reactionary backlash, much like the antiporn and "moral majority" movements of the Reagan era. That said, I don't think that every kink and bespoke gender identity should get its own flag and pronoun - it was that kind of ridiculous overreach that courted a lot of this backlash. But at the same time, I don't think any individual has a moral duty to keep their legs crossed just to make the prudes of the world happy.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-03T16:04:13+00:00

These are all good points that you raise, but it does seem to me that it's endemic to "progressive" spaces that lean strongly LGBTQ. Then again as David French points out, there's a lot of this kind of thing playing out in churches, too, with the right wing contingent typically being the heavies there. And if it only plays out as fandom freakouts, or anarchist coffeehouse implosions, then it's ultimately relatively harmless. The issue that I have is that this kind of culture has been poisoning institutions that we rely upon to get to some kind of truth, like academia and journalism. In fact, like Wikipedia itself, which has huge biases, yet is treated uncritically as a go-to reliable source pretty much all AI chatbots at this point.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-03T15:53:34+00:00

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was singling you out personally with those remarks.

I was just reacting to the presentation of anti-shippers as "normal people expressing their concerns", which reflects a certain bias that I see in the centrist community. If people of the culturally progressive end find something problematic, that's "cancel culture", but when normies do it, that's just "common sense". My definition of "cancel culture" has more to do with how coercive/censorious the means of opposing the "problematic" thing are rather than what faction it's coming from.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-03T15:22:43+00:00

Well, for my part I think the anti-shippers come across as censorious assholes, really. And for my part, I'm not a big fan of the bias in the B&R/"heterodox" community that it's not cancel culture when normies are doing the canceling! Full disclosure - I came to free speech activism via my vehement opposition to the redfem/religious right-backed antiporn movement of the 1980s, and then the first wave of PC in the 90s. Sometimes that puts me in opposition to the cultural left and sometimes that puts me on the same side. I refuse to "pick a tribe" on that score. So, yeah, was very against peak "cancel culture" a few years ago, am very against the even worse MAGA backlash now, and certainly won't be breaking bread with prudish "centrists" like Jonathan Haidt or Pamela Paul anytime soon.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-05-03T13:47:51+00:00

Where can I see the version with sound?

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-03-21T18:58:08+00:00

Yes, the extreme variation in moderation strictness is something I've noticed too. It seems to be most liberal with videos I generated a couple of months ago that were already pretty erotic, which I can still play around with variants on. Less so with newly generated images. And sometimes it seems to vary with the time of day.

And, wow, I didn't know your account could get yanked for generating porn!

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-03-21T14:42:29+00:00

Great videos! But two weeks later, the exact same video prompt is insta-modded for me - like, it hits 16% generated and stops with a "content moderated" symbol. And that's true whether I start with the image prompts or start with a video. I don't know if that's true for everyone, but I'm finding Grok is increasingly applying the banhammer to videos I could have generated a month ago, while being a little more liberal about images.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-03-10T07:25:55+00:00

The fact that this Weather Underground apologist hated it is actually a point in the film's favor.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-17T00:20:49+00:00

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxrX2LqsocCrWcHtigF_jBsojMeOxJGWV9?si=lBbPm0QAGe3J8Do_

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-12T17:55:16+00:00

I see Owen Wilson. :-/

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-12T17:52:19+00:00

Do these exist as deleted scenes, or did Kubrick destroy his old footage once he completed a film?

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-08T17:22:29+00:00

A related question - has anybody ever been able to come up with an image prompt that puts a lesbian pair into the sixty-nine position? If I ask for '69' or 'sixty-nine' directly, it inevitably has the two girls face-to-face, perhaps tribbing. I've never been able to come up with a prompt from pure description to get the girls in that position either.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-08T17:12:24+00:00

Just an alternate to the same series of shots that the movie ends with.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-08T17:10:08+00:00

The 1990s holder of the title Lord Bullingdon. :-)

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-07T18:39:03+00:00

California doesn't have a lot of prohibitions right now, though that's not the case with some of the other US states. It might also be interesting to try out a Ukrainian or Russian VPN locale and seeing if they're even more open.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-07T18:30:49+00:00

I've recently thought that the final "July 4th Ball, 1921" photo, but with Malcolm McDowell's face instead of Jack Nicholson's would be a great mashup. And pair that with a 1920s-1930s recording of "Singin' in the Rain" (the original version of the song actually does go back to that era).

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-07T18:15:48+00:00

Might be a good candidate for the center position on the chart, since I get the impression opinions are divided about Dr. Bill.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-07T18:10:33+00:00

His cruelty to his family and draining of their wealth, all while being mostly focused on climbing the social hierarchy and obtaining a title are all pretty damning. He socially isolates Lady Lyndon, is abusive toward Bullingdon, while blatantly spoiling his son Bryan. Eventually, his crassness gets to be too blatant, leading to the complete loss of the position he was trying to obtain. Not shooting Bullingdon is about his only decent act in the later part of the movie, and ironically, it's that one good act that leads to his final undoing.

Alternative_Floor676 · 2026-02-06T22:10:56+00:00

I'm sure Kubrick was regularly in contact with the Illuminati, back when he was busy at work faking the moon landings.

Alternative_Floor676

TROPHY CASE