cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64024099

Reporting Highlights

• “Maximum Pressure”: The State Department conducted a monthslong campaign to push a small African country to help Musk’s satellite internet company, records and interviews show.
• “Ram This Through”: Working closely with executives at Starlink, the U.S. government has made a global push to help expand Musk’s business empire in the developing world.
• “Crony Capitalism”: Diplomats said the events were an alarming departure from standard practice — because of both the tactics used and the person who would benefit most from them.

On a lonely Texas road, time, space and murder are about to collide

Stumbled across the DDF: Reel Films channel on YouTube, which has a bunch of full movies that are apparently properly licensed.

After seeing Brett Harrelson (brother of Woody) in Inferno, I went with another desert action film with less famous / successful / good relations of someone famous. And it's a twofer! With John Belushi's brother James being intentionally odious as the bad guy and... Roger Clinton! Yes, look out for an early cameo from the half-brother of the then-serving President of the actual United States!

Plus, this is also a sci-fi timey-wimey flick (but don't worry, no technobabble) in the vein of Cause and Effect and Groundhog Day, and c/tenforward has been loopy for time loops lately.

• Retroactive - full movie on YouTube (missing part of opening and closing titles but otherwise intact)
• Retroactive - trailer on YouTube
• Wikipedia - Retroactive
• IMDb - Retroactive
• Letterboxd - Retroactive

Director

• Louis Morneau

Starring

• James Belushi
• Kylie Travis
• Shannon Whirry
• Frank Whaley
• Jesse Borrego
• M. Emmet Walsh
• and introducing Roger Clinton

Geoff Andrew of Time Out wrote:

With its explosive action, black comedy and far-fetched sci-fi imposed on an otherwise vaguely plausible crime thriller, this modest indie film is reminiscent of such low budget '80s exploiters as Tremors and the work of Charles Band. Like the most memorable of these, it's lifted out of the rut by a quirky, imaginative script. True, Belushi's performance is overbearing and M. Emmet Walsh turns in yet another sweaty cameo; true, too, that the frequent visual emphasis on Travis' cleavage flags the movie's compromised ambitions. Nevertheless, there's more than enough energy, bravado and invention to engage the attention throughout.

I enjoyed it but then I'm a sucker for 90s action flicks.

Everyone knows about Bruceploitation, that wave of martial art films starring Bruce Lee lookalikes with names like Bruce Li/Le/Lai etc.

But did you know about Bronsploitation? Action movies starring people who look like Charles Bronson. Director Mike Malloy has made a documentary about three Bronson-lookalikes who went into the movies:

• the Korean Bobby Kim https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0453374/
• the Chilean Fenelón Guajardo (I can't find IMDb for him)
• the Hungarian Robert Bronzi https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8459909/

Article:

• https://cityonfire.com/bronsploitation-documentary-mike-malloy-bronsonsploitation-charles-bronson-sploitation-exploitation-bobby-kim-chilean-korean-hungarian-robert-bronzi-fenelon-guajardo/

Trailer:

• https://peertube.wtf/w/qTQYDvah3ytck5kLyEfK5K
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvH0QEEF1x0

I didn't know about Bronsploitation before, but given that he was the biggest movie star in the world for a while, it seems only logical that there were producers trying to cash in using lookalikes. In fact, full disclosure :D, I had a distant cousin who looked like Bronson and used to make some extra money in the 70s and 80s doing things like opening supermarkets!

I never would have guessed that Bronsploitation would still be a thing in the 2020s, though!

---

A more in-depth article on Bronzi:

• https://crookedmarquee.com/the-strange-sordid-tale-of-charles-bronson-lookalike-robert-bronzi/

Bronzi fares better in Once Upon a Time in Deadwood, the best of the Bronzi/Perez collaborations. The production values are still abysmal, with nearly every actor looking like they’re participating in a hastily organized Wild West re-enactment, but the story is more substantial, and Paré brings charisma to his role as the villain. The movie piggybacks on both Bronson Westerns and the HBO series Deadwood, with most of the action set in the Dakota Territory town of Deadwood, where Paré plays a local kingpin named Swearengen.

Obviously, Paré is no Ian McShane, and Perez is no David Milch. The dialogue and acting are mostly stiff and awkward, and Bronzi comes up against the limits of his range when he’s called upon to express pain and anguish. He’s a remarkably inexpressive actor, and it doesn’t help that Perez insists on having someone else dub his lines, to cover for Bronzi’s thick Hungarian accent. In From Hell to the Wild West, that voice comes closest to sounding like Bronson, and in other Perez movies it just sounds like a bored voiceover artist in a recording booth.

Trailer for Once Upon a Time in Deadwood:

• https://youtu.be/_cSvarla1mE

And this line :D

Bronzi’s latest film, Escape From Death Block 13, is his first without Perez, and it’s easily the most movie-like movie he’s ever starred in.

Trailer for Escape From Death Block 13:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ8XvC2KSx4

---

FULL MOVIES

Exorcist Vengeance (2022)

Horror starring Robert Bronzi and Steven Berkoff

Trailer:

• https://youtu.be/7JeYhEbCrD0

Full movie (uploader claims to be the official channel for Uncork'd Entertainment, so I think it's legit):

• https://youtu.be/3mbINSUwQ5I

---

The Manchurian Avenger (1984)

Martials arts Western starring Bobby Kim and Bill 'Superfoot' Wallace

Trailer:

• https://youtu.be/K60Zwsia-_A

Full movie (uploader claims all their movies are licensed and copyright-compliant; they also have the great Dolph Lundgren actioner Joshua Tree. If you haven't seen it, check it out!):

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTjxrujNCF9JSQzXE3th21A

Warning - your head will bang!

The lack of a concrete explanation for the failure led SpaceX engineers to pursue hundreds of theories. One was the possibility that an outside "sniper" had shot the rocket. This theory appealed to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was asleep at his home in California when the rocket exploded. Within hours of hearing about the failure, Musk gravitated toward the simple answer of a projectile being shot through the rocket.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29457110

The firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter came after Perlmutter and her office earlier this week issued part three of a lengthy report about artificial intelligence and expressed some concerns and questions about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/30097794

Ernest says the children were initially cheering the Cybertruck, but their enthusiasm turned to skepticism when the truck experienced an issue that rendered it undrivable.

The issue began when Ernest drove his 10-year-old son to a baseball match in his Cybertruck.

Ernest placed his son’s baseball gear in the front trunk (frunk); however, when they arrived at the field, the frunk wouldn’t open.

This is quite frustrating; however, the Cybertruck owner and father stated he was prepared to drive 40 minutes back home to fetch a replacement glove for his son.

Regrettably, despite his willingness to make this sacrifice to support his child, Ernest states that the Cybertruck detected an issue with the frunk and went into “Limp Mode.”

This is where the truck limits the top speed to 15 miles per hour, meaning that, besides repositioning the vehicle to be towed, there is nothing the owner can do.

At this point, Ernest says he was so frustrated that he briefly considered tying a rope around the frunk, connecting it to a tree, and yanking the frunk open.

https://peertube.wtf/w/dX8ZBvBrN6mdhzhktGCks6

As China continues to tighten information flows in and out of the country, how reliable are statistics from official Chinese sources? Recent media pieces have highlighted the deepening lack of government transparency and accuracy when it comes to important data, and its implications for research related to China. The latest example is from Rebecca Feng and Jason Douglas at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote this week about how “Beijing has stopped publishing hundreds of statistics, making it harder to know what’s going on in the country”:

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/19886316

I know I'm late, but then that might just be because of the 'Dave Thomas Death Protocols'

• https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/david-thomas-pere-ubu-instructions-in-case-of-his-death.1670596/

Pere Ubu - Golden Surf II (live)

• https://youtu.be/qHfZovOsXlI

Rocket from the Tombs - 30 Seconds over Tokyo (live audio, Cleveland 1974)

• https://youtu.be/m-A6msitkGs

Pere Ubu - Final Solution (live audio, Max's Kansas City 1976)

• https://youtu.be/K9702laxNjI

Pere Ubu - Non-Alignment Pact

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leax63ullPE

And a Pere Ubu-related anecdote found at Metafilter:

this is somebody else's story, told to me by the guy many years after the fact. Call him Keith.

Vancouver, 1979. Keith's maybe twenty years old, working the first proper job of his life and he hates it. He's a security guard at Vancouver's Robson Square Theatre which, for some odd reason is the venue for one of those oddball New Wave concerts, a unit called Pere Ubu being the headliner. Keith's never heard of them. Keith's not really into New Wave or Punk or any of that sorta angry new stuff. If he's into anything, it's more along the lines of Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake & Palmer. But really, he's just a normal young guy stuck in a normal world. He hates his job, he kinda hates his life, but what's the alternative?

Anyway, because he's the youngest guy on the security team, Keith gets the gig, he's the one that has to stay inside the theatre for the whole show to keep a keen eye on things, call for backup should a riot break out. So he puts in some earplugs and finds a place to stand at the back of packed theatre. It's supposed to be "theatre sitting" only, but good luck enforcing that. A concert is a concert. People are dancing, lighting up joints etc. Nothing out of the ordinary for 1979. And more to the point, people are "behaving". They're not destroying anything. They're mostly just having a pile of fun -- so much for the expected punk rock nihilism he'd been fearing.

Things do kick up a notch when Pere Ubu hits the stage. But even then, it's not exactly bad what's going on, it's just wild, mad fun, unlike anything Keith has ever experienced. He starts edging closer to the stage, realizing he actually kind of likes what's he's hearing. This band know their shit. They can play. And then some punk in an army jacket taps him on the shoulder and says, "Hey man, I like your uniform." And he hands Keith a joint. And Keith, in a moment that will change his life forever, has a couple or few tokes. And next thing he knows, fuck it, he pulls out the ear plugs, tosses his security uniform jacket and joins the mob, and proceeds to have more wild fun than he's ever had in his life. And when the show's over, he allows himself backstage (still having his security badge), thanks the band for saving his life and then exits the theatre via the rear, never to return to work, or normal for that matter.

At least, that's how Keith told it to me.

Source with more videos etc:

• https://www.metafilter.com/208649/Long-Live-Pere-Ubu-RIP-David-Thomas

And if you're wondering "WTF was that about?!?"

I asked a chatbot

"What's the opposite of cause and effect?"

Answer

"Randomness or Chance: In some contexts, the opposite of cause and effect can be seen as randomness or chance, where events occur without any discernible pattern or cause."

So then I asked:

give me four randomly chosen scenes from the Star Trek franchise

And then:

give me four randomly chosen quotes from the Star Trek franchise

And there you go. Bet you ain't seen that a dozen, a hundred times before!