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The Big [Censored] Theory

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Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#821

Post by wizofaus »

the_af wrote: post #776
thegrimmest wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal, cross-cultural taboos haven't generally adjusted to the last 60 or so years of innovation in birth control. The realities that gave rise to them are ever present in an agrarian, low-tech economy. (not just human) Males need to be sure of paternity. Males who don't mind whose children they are raising aren't well selected for. This should be apparent to anyone who has ever watched a nature documentary. Huma…

I tend to disregard this "common sense" pop culture knowledge, because it's one of those things people say without evidence, and which often tend to be wrong. I would love to see someone explain the link between taboos about sex and male paternity claims, but so far I see not a single (even dubious) reference from subject matter experts, so I will continue being skeptical about this claim. "It's obvious!" doesn't con…

If I were a man in power and i wanted to protect myself from investing effort into raising children that don't carry my genes, I'd definitely try to establish a taboo around women having sex with multiple partners. And maybe it's possible that if you don't also have taboos around even talking about sex, then the former taboos wouldn't be sustainable. But it seems just as likely that a society that talks freely and openly about sex would be one in which paternity would be easier to establish, because it would be common knowledge which sexual partners a woman claiming to carry your child had.

It seems like it should be a topic covered by Diamond's "Why is sex fun" but I can't remember an exact section devoted to taboos (nothing in the index etc.).

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#822

Post by archi42 »

still_grokking wrote: post #807
archi42 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next sentence: Schließlich erwirkte das amerikanische Produktionsstudio jedoch, dass dieser dritte Akt des Films auch in der deutschen Fassung gezeigt wird. Translation: Eventually, however, the American production studio managed to ensure that this third act of the film was also shown in the German version. Wikipedia isn't clear on the process or the timeline (and there is no source given), but I read it like this w…

> but I read it like this was "fixed" during the initial cinematic run. > and I presume it was shown in cinemas uncut after at most a month. You're not form Germany, right? Changing the mind of a public authority is in any case a very long process as a German authority (and especially the board of censors!) will never admit it did something wrong . Usually you need to go through all instances. Things like that can ta…

I'm from hier ;-) and I'm painfully aware how long some institutions take. However Hollywood was/is an important outlet of the allies, and the movie depicted bad stuff done by the Nazis (I think? never saw it). So I believe it's reasonable that they have exerted some influence (stuff like that certainly happened in the french sector, I was told).

It was released uncut on VHS (1978 in the US, so 1979/1980 in Germany; VHS for home use came about 1976). So if it was "eventually/finally shown uncut" that probably refers to running in the cinema; this leaves only the option that (a) during the initial run they moved from the cut to the uncut version or (b) there was a rerun at some point [maybe for the VHS release].

Anyway, I find it difficult to research this and also don't care enough; the movie is just too obscure in Germany, and certainly not my favorite genre.

P.S.: Yes, I know about Wolfenstein; but that's a different medium in a different age.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#824

Post by dahart »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #818
dahart wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or worse, the US legal system and media publishers disagree, and they’ve established the rules that do require cooperation with the copyrights holders to build online streaming services. But as I’m sure you know, it’s at best problematic to call online streaming a “DVD rental”. It doesn’t fall under first sale doctrine if you stream a transcoded copy of the DVD you bought. This is why the laws around digit…

I would say the law around first sale doctrine has not caught up yet more than it actively disagrees. > It doesn’t fall under first sale doctrine if you stream a transcoded copy of the DVD you bought. This is why the laws around digital distribution and copyright aren’t exactly the same as the laws around physical distribution and copyright. I don't think transcoding should matter, at least if it's done on the fly, b…

I’m not arguing your opinion, I’m just pointing out the established precedent and law disagrees with your opinion, so it’s going to take some work if you want the outcome you’re describing. Saying it could work in theory if people just transcode on the fly and self-limit the rental rate isn’t particularly convincing, fwiw. The shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I’m sure you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a copy, because the bits exist in two places. Not that this matters, it’s splitting hairs that may not exist. The point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder control over who gets to distribute and who gets to consume, and it may not make any difference whether there’s technically copying involved according to however you define copying.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#825

Post by Banana699 »

carapace wrote: post #803
Banana699 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter to you that your sexuality is depicted on screen? Sounds like a bizarre thing to worry about. And US studios already has you covered for centuries worth of "representation" heavy film and TV, why is the Chinese allowing them important?

Your question is the answer to itself.

Is this supposed to be a coherent answer?

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#826

Post by int_19h »

sacrosancty wrote: post #539
kelnos wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty ridiculous that this isn't legal. Sure, VidAngel could have built some custom software to play back a real Bluray disc, skipping certain scenes based on configuration file per title, and then would mail the disc to customers, who then have to mail it back, but that would be a worse experience for customers, and would be more wasteful (unnecessary physical shipping, as well as wear-and-tear on the discs).…

A lot of the law we take for granted about copyright is really just a complicated compromise that worked out alright given the limitations of older technology. It's not some moral ideal. What about recording a song off the radio for your personal use? Or downloading one off Youtube? Or inviting your friends round to watch a movie? Or doing that but asking them to bring food, or it's OK if they just bring money instea…

It was a compromise back when we had 28-year copyright terms. It has been chipped away almost entirely from one side.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#827

Post by int_19h »

jjeaff wrote: post #819
lliamander wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a specific example come to mind? I've generally been a big fan of the opinions he writes, but I'd be interested to see what some of his weaker opinions are.

Castle Rock v Gonzales is probably one of the worst. After a woman with a protective order against her abusive husband was ignored by the police after he abducted their children sued the police department, Scalia basically ruled that police have no duty to do anything to help anyone. Even in a case where you have a court protective order that says the police "shall arrest" someone who violates the order. The woman re…

This case was decided 7-2, so clearly it wasn't just Scalia. Generally speaking, when decisions are supermajority, it's because that's what the law and precedent really say. And the precedent that law enforcement doesn't have a "duty to protect" long predates this case, so it's not really surprising.

In general, it's worth keeping in mind that the point of courts is not to decide whether the outcome of the case is ethically or socially desirable. They're there to look at the laws and precedent and figure out how it applies to a given case. If the result is undesirable, it's something for the legislature to fix.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#828

Post by mananaysiempre »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #813
mananaysiempre wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Even setting aside non-(nominally-)Communist totalitarian regimes, the USSR experience seems to be that after the Party collectively becomes God-Emperor, any philosophy that was supposed to motivate that status is set aside like so much trash (possibly next to shot corpses of its authors). Ever noticed how the state in 1984 was supposed to be all ideological, yet had little actual ideology aside from the state b…

The ideology is a pretext for seizing power; those drawn to the ideology are those to whom seizing power sounds appealing. Basically, the kind of people who rose to the top of a system like the Soviet Union are control freaks, and they acted accordingly.

Right, no objection there. Scott Alexander outright dubs this observation Marx’s Fallacy[1]:

> What I sometimes call Marx’s Fallacy is that if we burnt down the current system, some group of people who optimized for things other than power would naturally rise to the top. Wrong. People who most brutally and nakedly optimized for power would gain power; that's what “optimize” means.

I was only saying that the surface implications of the “means of production” rhetoric don’t really matter once you have Lenin in power, because that rhetoric is not what drives his actions. I took your previous comment to mean that they did. (That is not to say that the whole Russian anti-autocracy movement since 1815 was a power grab, even if a pie-in-the-sky gentleman anarchist introducing and promoting terrorism in European polite society[2] sounds a bit bizarre to modern sensibilities. Recall the Russian Empire had a serfdom system essentially equivalent to domestic slavery up until 1861.)

Still, though, my original puzzlement in this thread is that sex, specifically, seems to have even more importance to control freak governments than would generically be expected given their control freak nature. Little importance is given to the citizens’ diet, for example, or clothing, and even art is hit and miss, but sex is somehow always at the forefront (even if nobody says the word). Maybe it’s human passions in general?.. I don’t know, I don’t see it.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#829

Post by int_19h »

ginger2016 wrote: post #310
sudhirj wrote: post #58

We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or just straight cuts. This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card works fine with a…

Given the racist protrayal of Indian American Raj Kuthrapalli, I am of the opinion Indians are magnanimous in allowing this show to be aired there.

Supposing that this is true, why should that translate to an outright ban? People who find it offensive don't have to watch it.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#830

Post by int_19h »

munificent wrote: post #459
MichaelCollins wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nunchaku Huh, you weren't kidding. Banned and censored in the UK, banned in Canada, Germany, and several US states... because of Bruce Lee? Bizarre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunchaku#Legality

This sounds so hilariously quaint to someone in the US like me. But, I guess that's because I'm used to being surrounded by people armed to the gills with assault rifles and shit. Maybe if you're in a mostly gun-free country, nunchaku actually seem kind of scary and threatening.

This is what the UK police confiscates in their "weapons sweeps" these days:

https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980096

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