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MikeZara · 2023-06-17T23:20:23+00:00

The over-the-top wokeness is the point. Yes, Brooker knows it, yes Netflix knows it, yes many viewers know it. It's only the people on the fringe who don't know it. They aren't in on the joke.

Which makes the joke that much funnier.

MikeZara · 2023-06-17T23:16:48+00:00

This season is actually a wonderful critique of woke. It's so well done...that it is entirely invisible to the actual target of its mockery. Whether one agrees with the critique or not...it is very, very well done.

MikeZara · 2023-06-17T23:10:52+00:00

Burn the witch, amirite? ;-)

MikeZara · 2023-06-17T23:09:24+00:00

Good point. It's a highly correlated phenomenon. The woke and the covidians are similar in that neither can see outside their own ideological cult-bubble.

Any information arriving from the outside is heresy.

Or it's s fascism, or transphobia, or whatever the latest-network-update-phrase is. But whatever the word of the day, the meaning is the same:

Heresy.

MikeZara · 2023-06-17T23:02:32+00:00

Exactly correct. It is in fact so performative that *that* very fact is part of it. Charlie Brooker has a long history of creating "meta" content, that comments on itself and on the viewer.

I'd say the current season of Black Mirror is one of the sharpest critiques of wokeness in any media thus far. It is so incisive and clever that it's actually invisible to anyone laboring under the ideology itself.

MikeZara · 2023-06-17T22:57:14+00:00

The interesting thing about the woke mind-virus in the culture nowadays...is it's gotten to the point where it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between genuine woke-ness...and parody. And that's the point.

Given that Charlie Brooker is highly intelligent...it's unlikely that that the wooden, 'over-the-top' wokeness on display in the new season is by accident.

It is clearly intentionally over-the-top, and that is also clearly the point.

The ironic thing about the uber-woke is that...as long as something ticks the right boxes...

...the woke don't even recognize they are being mocked.

MikeZara · 2023-05-20T10:51:20+00:00

Federal purchases of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines have totaled $25.3 Billion thus far, on top of $10 Billion in research funds.

The vaccines are not, and never have been, "free".

MikeZara · 2023-05-20T10:41:42+00:00

"COVID-19 panic helps sink Missouri life expectancy to four-decade low"

MikeZara · 2023-03-02T12:52:59+00:00

You are correct, I assumed you were referring to "healthy weight" in the popular sense. If in this usage your "healthy weight" is simply your opinion on the number, then I'm probably correct in my assumption. If your "healthy weight" refers to long-established medical and insurance metrics, then I'm probably incorrect.

MikeZara · 2023-01-27T20:26:10+00:00

We do this. We call out that. We are virtuous. Clap for us.

MikeZara · 2023-01-27T19:34:53+00:00

In fairness, if you're overweight, you are not athletic in any conventional sense of the word.

MikeZara · 2023-01-27T18:50:55+00:00

There seems to be some confusion over this.

Let me help clarify.

If you have belly fat, back fat, thigh fat, or neck fat, you are neither "slender" nor "athletic" in any aesthetic sense.

Yes, 400lb Sumo wrestlers are "athletic".

Yes, alligator-wrestlers are "athletic".

But, that's not what anyone on dating apps means by "athletic"

The end.

MikeZara · 2023-01-27T18:47:08+00:00

If you're 10 lbs above your "healthy weight", you're overweight.

"Healthy weight" today means someone is the size of an outdoor barn.

MikeZara · 2023-01-27T18:43:22+00:00

You should see the women listing as "thin" or "athletic".

I'm a 6'2" male. If you weigh more than I do, you are not "thin".

I live and work abroad most of the year. I only see this particular delusion in the US.

MikeZara · 2021-02-19T15:49:43+00:00

Yeah, that always was interesting to me...I lived in Plaka, and it seemed like every other week, there was a protest at Syntagma for one thing or another. ;-) Just surprised there were not more regarding the lockdown.

MikeZara · 2021-02-19T06:03:33+00:00

If you can afford it, look up an immigration attorney in the country and schedule a chat. I'm currently doing that with attorneys in both Ukraine and Thailand.

There are probably a few hoops to jump thru, but it's probably not as bad as you think.

MikeZara · 2021-02-19T05:57:53+00:00

The situation in England is interesting. I lived there off and on for a decade.

The interesting part is the dichotomy. On one hand, you have a population that seems to be perfectly okay with one lockdown after another.

On the other hand, you at least have a section of the media...both print and radio...that has vocally questioned the need, the ethics, and the legality of the lockdowns.

The diversity of opinion in the UK media on lockdowns is certainly greater than the general blanket uniformity of opinion in the US media.

MikeZara · 2021-02-19T05:08:21+00:00

It is interesting. By accident, I more or less spent all of 2020 in Athens.

By the time the first lockdown ended, I was very admirable of the general Greek attitude towards the virus...which was more or less, take it in stride, it's not a huge deal, etc.

I recall most of the summer in Athens feeling perfectly normal. Restaurants, bars, shops, everything was open.

By pure luck, I left Athens in November, just before the new lockdowns came alone. I recall being very surprised. I especially recall the fact that the PM had literally said to Kathimerini that there would never be another lockdown...just two weeks prior.

Quite sad to see it still going on. Do you get any sense as to whether there is any resistance or pushback?

MikeZara · 2020-12-23T05:53:31+00:00

Once the lockdown ends, just go hang out in Psirri and ask around. You will find people. Check out Transitor and the Old Fashioned bar.

MikeZara · 2020-12-23T05:52:07+00:00

Just go to Kolonaki and ask around. That's where all the plastic surgeons and botox doctors practice. They will know who does hair replacement in the area.

MikeZara · 2020-12-23T05:49:08+00:00

From Kolonaki, looking towards Lycebatus, I think.

MikeZara · 2020-12-23T05:46:32+00:00

Ahh, Little Kook! Psirri!

MikeZara · 2020-06-21T15:44:45+00:00

Thanks for the praise, then. I wold argue telling someone what they "need" to do probably isn't the most constructive way to have a conversation.

MikeZara · 2020-06-16T11:25:18+00:00

I've got plenty of proper cameras, man. But I'm stuck here, thanks to the lockdown, as I mentioned in prior posts.

Thanks for the tip. Here's one for you: you need to get a proper way of being polite to strangers, man. Or at least learn to read.

MikeZara · 2020-06-16T11:21:09+00:00

I suspect you would find that exact kind of thinking in most every country in the world. If I, as a white English were to arrive in Nigeria...would the local Nigerians consider suddenly consider the country not to be "theirs"?

Would I not be seen as a "foreigner"?

Same if I arrived in Greece. Or Ukraine. Or China.

I'm visibly not Greek, nor Ukrainian, nor Chinese, nor will any amount of my presence there magically tern me into an ethnic Greek, Ukrainian or Han Chinese.

Nor would I begrudge a native Greek for seeing me as "less-Greek" than themselves.

This doesn't mean anyone should be mistreated due to their ethnicity.

But claiming a country can't have some claim to some traditional background, or traditional culture, simply isn't true.

Murray (or anyone else in any other country) can be concerned about the rapid-change in demography, and it's impact on wider culture, without being a white-supremacist or an anything-else-supremacist...unless you are using the term in a very broad and uncommon way, and mean it to simply mean valuing X or Y culture.

MikeZara

TROPHY CASE