manish vij

The Washington Generals

Over time, Dems have engineered it so they pick their own voters, the rival parties allowed on ballot, their own primary challengers, and in the case of T••••, their Washington Generals.

At every step when the US pol system would’ve flushed a criminal like T••••, Dem elites threw a shield over him to keep him alive as the designated loser against Biden. Pelosi delayed impeachments, Biden / Garland delayed prosecution until Congress revolted.

No competition for Biden is bad for the country, but great for the racket.

Normally T•••• would’ve been removed and criminally convicted, and Biden would’ve lost to a normal-terrible, younger Gooper like Haley.

Crank / born loser T•••• is a massive subsidy to the Dem gerontocracy. If they had to run against Haley, they’d be forced to hand the reins to Harris or Whitmer.

Instead they’ve allowed Nazi derp to spread throughout the country for 4 bonus years, it’s their best Bubba bait. They could’ve impeached T•••• immediately for bribes, gotten the removal + criminally prosecuted after J6. They slow-walked it all.

Dems are like cops quietly striking, letting crime run rampant, to shake voters down for money. Way easier than competing in a free market for candidates.

Garland threw a presser over “3% of in-store payments are Apple Pay” and “23% of automakers will support extended CarPlay” while T•••• runs around inciting domestic terrorism. He’s nothing if not a reliable apparatchik, the gray man isn’t freelancing.

Trust-bust the parties before you prosecute some weak bullshit like “60% of Americans use iPhone.”

When T•••• finally goes down, it will be because his usefulness to the Dem Party has expired. 

Criss-crossover

Test-driving EV crossovers.

Overall niceness

  1. VW ID4
  2. Nissan Ariya
  3. Hyundai Ioniq 5


Toyota BZ4X

Cushy driver seat

All top 3 are comfy.

  1. Ariya
  2. Ioniq5
  3. ID4

BZ4X cramped

Ride on rough road

  1. Ariya: mid-smooth
  2. Ioniq 5 : meh
  3. ID4: meh

Value

  1. Ioniq 5: base trim has all tech you need. Great deals.
  2. Ariya: base trim has power driver seat, leatherette, HUD. “Zero G” driver seat is very comfy. Great deals.
  3. ID4: higher-priced, no deals


BZ4X: expensive, cramped, no deals

Ariya

+

• Comfy
• Spacious
• Great value


• Specs are mid

• Cheesy, flat, fake-wood capacitive buttons have poorly implemented haptic click, delayed like half a sec after you tap

• Acceleration decent, but felt artificially delayed so it’s like gas

Toyota BZ4X

+
• Small steering wheel easy to drive
• Binnacle screen right in front


• Poor specs (charge speed, range, efficiency)
• Weird black quarter panel
• Cockpit design with closed center console is cramped
• Expensive
• Sales so surly and ignorant, seemed designed to steer away from EVs

The Last Firebender

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Aykroyd explains djinns to Kumail Nanjiani 🤦🏽‍♂️ :D

Kumail plays “Nadeem Razmadi,” a slacker who eventually dresses up as a Mughal warrior. “I’m Nadeem. I’m a Firemaster, turns out, like my dadi before me”

Kumail enters secret room behind spice cabinet: “This is my dadi’s place”

Black girl: “Whoah. Nice sex dungeon, ok dadi ma”

Slacker Kumail: Who’s the brave one, the [brother] who goes to engineer school, or the one who forges ahead with no education or future prospects?

Patton Oswalt: “This is pre-Sumerian, this is pre-Sanskrit”

Black girl sees Mughal miniature painting: “Nipple stuff, iconic”

Kumail: “Oh yeah, that was my dadi’s favorite painting”

Frozen Empire, more like Bhangra Empire :)

Bill Murray questions Kumail with a colander:

With Arab-ish veil:

The Last Firebender:

Punjabi ‘Wish’

Paint-by-number rom-com Irish Wish puts Brigid, mother saint of Ireland, in a Punjabi salwar kameez, with trim vaguely like an unwound Celtic knot. Punjabi Ichha (Wish)? :) (via Ravi Swami)

The Bollywood refs are quite explicit. Here she is in a khet / farmer’s field, the headscarf a shorter dupatta…

Ducking behind a tree mischievously, missing only the love interest and rain machine

In multiple salwars.

Desi Brigid, goddess of protection and healing, evokes to me the martyrdom of Savita Halapannavar, whose tragic death enabled abortion rights for all Irish women.

Pagan goddess Brigid of the Tuatha Dé Dannan was imported into Xtianity. Hard reconciling this Brigid with the fiery, armor-forging goddess of war in the Iron Druid series.

It’s an ABCI love story: diasporic Irishwoman goes back to the desh, falls in love. This setup is very Bollywood, sort of like “#DDLJ.”

Ayesha Curry as sidekick

Brown extra

Trailer

Love the spice, hate the spicers

Dune 2 strip-mines Arab culture more than spice while casting no Arab leads. Souheila Yacoub gets a sidekick role and (spoiler) is summarily dispatched.

Full of Arab customs / names / vocab, Muslim clothes, Egyptian architecture. Florence Pugh in a taqiyah, kurta, zari work. Ferguson in Arab jewelry. Witches in burqas. “Fedaykin” = fedayeen. Islamic carved stone screens.

Padishah Walken = badshah (emperor). (pic not from Dune)

Very weird that the top US sci-fi flick is about a skinny, pale French kid cosplaying the Sunni-Shia split and emergence of the Mahdi.

Not once did I buy Chalamet as a leader, let alone a messiah. Waterboy maybe. Chocolatier, sure. Bardem’s Mahdi? Nah.

Fanatic hype man Bardem had the faithful’s hand gestures down, lol. Such a better actor than Timo Thee Callow Fae.

Fun movie, inventive visuals on the Harkonnen’s planet (b&w, triangular arena, triangle-hatted picadors, grease-bubble fireworks).

But when they get around to desi epics they’ll absolutely cast the palest actors available and relegate desis to background villains and sidekicks.

They love the spice, hate the spicers: Hollywood repeats the history of colonizers.