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Scarlett Johansson’s Casting as Transgender Man Draws a Backlash

Scarlett Johansson faced a storm of criticism this week after it was reported that she would play a transgender man in a movie, a year after she drew scrutiny for taking on a role that was originally Japanese.

The newly announced film, “Rub & Tug,” is based on the real-life story of Dante “Tex” Gill, who ran a string of massage parlors that were fronts for prostitution dens in the 1970s and ’80s.

The online backlash was led by transgender actors, who argued that such casting decisions take opportunities away from members of marginalized communities.

[...] The actress faced further anger online after the website Bustle published a statement from an unidentified representative for Ms. Johansson that said, “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.”

Scarlett Johansson faces firestorm amid news she will play a transgender man

Trans Actors Slam Scarlett Johansson Rub & Tug Casting

Scarlett Johansson's Defense of Her New Role as a Trans Man Is Only Fueling Critics

Scarlett Johansson

Guy,

Detaining and separating families at the border isn’t just horrific – for some tech companies, it’s profitable.

Microsoft is one of those companies. They sell Azure, a cloud computing service that does everything from file storage to facial recognition, to ICE and make millions – $19.4 million to be exact – off of ICE’s deportation machine.

Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE immediately and to quit profiting off of deportation-industrial complex.

When the news hit that families were being separated at the border, and children were being held alone in cages at secret ICE facilities, Microsoft was quick to walk back their role in equipping ICE with technology. But make no mistake, they touted that their Azure service was “mission critical” to ICE’s operations.1

Now Microsoft wants to distance themselves from ICE’s cruel detention policies, but that’s hard to do when they’re making millions off of Trump's inhumane immigration crisis.

If Microsoft is truly morally outraged2 by ICE’s actions, they’ll walk the walk and cancel their contract with the agency and stop profiting on deportations. Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE immediately.

Thanks for taking action,

Reuben and the team at Watchdog.net

My reply to Reuben:

You guys are deluded. Microsoft and Evil Corp are synonymous. Bill Gates worships the Almighty Dollar, and so does the corporation he founded. Like IBM before them, Microsoft would have collated data for Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich.

Besides which, I approve of detaining unwanted invaders at the border. If you insist, I suppose we can throw the kids into the same prison in which we detain the adults. Your call.

Amy Coney Barrett Is Allegedly a Member of a Religious Group That’s Been Called a “Cult”

The Supreme Temptation of Amy Coney Barrett

Trump should nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to save his presidency

The dogma lives loudly within you.

Previously: Thermophilic vs. Mesophilic Yogurt Making

I boiled a gallon of milk in an Instant Pot. I let it cool to about 98°F, and then added the filmjölk yogurt drink "culture" and stirred it. I poured 1 quart of that mixture into a mason jar, sealed it, and left it out at room temperature (around 75-77°F). The remaining 3 quarts were heated back to ~115°F. Both yogurts fermented for about 16 hours before going in the fridge.

Both yogurts seemed to have about the same thickness, but the mesophilic yogurt seemed smoother with less lumps. The big difference is in the taste. The thermophilic yogurt has a clear sour/tangy taste as usual, but the mesophilic yogurt is very mild by comparison. That seems to conflict with what this page says about filmjölk (that it has a mild tartness, which I didn't really detect), but it seems clear that the thermophilic strains put out a lot more lactic acid. Increasing the fermentation time would probably have had an effect as well. My taste tester preferred the thermophilic yogurt, but enjoyed both. You could see the sour yogurt as having more uses (such as replacing sour cream or buttermilk in recipes).

I think the next step here would be to try using random storebought yogurt to make mesophilic yogurt. The stuff I used had 10 strains in it, while most yogurts have just 2-3. However, the safe bet is to just make it using the thermophilic process, since almost all of them should have Lactobacillus bulgaricus or Streptococcus thermophilus.

How cheap can you find a gallon of milk? I've seen whole milk at $1-2, and that's basically how much the yogurt costs (maybe with half of a $0.25 cup of yogurt if you aren't back-slopping). The time spent is minimal when using the Instant Pot. Maybe 5-10 minutes in total to pour milk in, hit a button, set the pot aside so it can cool faster, check the temperature with an instant thermometer, stir starter in, hit another button, pour into jars/containers for the fridge, and rinse the pot out. It just takes a day for it all to go down.

Everyone makes mistakes. If a cashier makes a mistake, you usually bring it to their attention. If it's a mistake that shorts you, everyone brings it to the cashier's attention. If it's in your favor, many of us tell the cashier anyway, right?

But, what about the big corporation that does everything on a computer? The computer makes no mistakes, right?

I need (well, actually, the wife needs) a pet carrier. I've shopped around a little, and the things go by different names - pet carrier, pet crate, pet cage, etc. We will rarely need the thing, there's not much point in getting a high dollar cage. But, it's got to be big enough, so the little cheapo's are out of the question. That puts us squarely in the $75 to $100 range.

I had almost settled on a cage from Tractor Supply for $80, and planned to get it on the way home from work. But, I had to pick something up FOR work, before I could leave town to go home. Wandered by the pet supplies while I was in Wal-Mart, and there was a pet taxi for $64. Hmmmm - it meets all my requirements - guess I'll get it. Grabbed a couple other things while I was there, went to the counter, and ran into difficulties. The stupid card reader didn't like my card.

A bell had gone off in my head that the bill didn't look high enough for my purchases, but the card reader puking distracted me. By the time that was straightened out, I had forgotten the bell. Three minutes later, everything loaded into the Trailblazer, I remembered that the bill didn't seem quite right. Read it - and that pet taxi was listed at $19.

Weird. Neither the cashier nor I had any input - the bar code reader read the sticker, identified it properly, and charged me for it. Hmmmm - maybe I read the price wrong? Not hardly - I've been shopping for these things for the past three days. Screw it - I'm not going back inside to argue with the store manager that he shouldn't have given me about 60% off.

Got home, and looked this thing up on Walmart site. There, it is listed at $88, not the $64 that I read on the store shelf. That price shows that I got about a 75% discount, not the ~66% that the shelf price indicated.

So - ethics. This will kinda nag at me for a little while, at least. If this were a case where the cashier were at fault, and I knew that she would have to take the difference out of her pocket, I would definitely go back and make things right. But - on a computer? FFS, we've all talked about "on a computer" in regards to patents.

But, this IS the corporate world. Computers don't make mistakes, right? It would take ten or fifteen minutes to convince the store manager that there was a mistake. Then what? Do they even have accounting practices in place to make this kind of thing right? Chances are high that the manager would consider it too much of a headache to go through the motions, and tell me to get lost.

Then what? Write a letter to corporate offices?

And, is all of that time and effort worth it? It's a forty dollar mistake, and I'm going to spend a hundred dollars worth of my time and effort making it right?

Screw it. There ain't no minimum wage employee at risk of losing that forty bucks. The Waltons can eat the loss.

If anyone else happens to be searching for a 42" pet carrier/cage/whatever, visit Walmart, and check out the Pet Taxi, by Doskocil. Maybe you can get it for a twenty dollar bill!

AMD Threadripper 2990X leak suggests it'll be much cheaper than Intel's i9-7980XE chip

AN OVERLY-KEEN German retailer has potentially revealed how much AMD's upcoming Threadripper 2990X will cost.

Videocardz spotted the since-removed listing at Cyperport, which listed the 32-core CPU with a €1,509 (around £1,300) price-tag, making it roughly €500 more expensive than AMD's 16-core Threadripper 1950X at launch.

However, it also makes the CPU almost €500 cheaper than Intel's Core i9-7980XE flagship, despite the fact that AMD's 32-core chip will likely offer close to double the performance of the lesser-spec, 18-core chip.

$1,500 USD?

Previously: Intel Teases 28 Core Chip, AMD Announces Threadripper 2 With Up to 32 Cores

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Inside Tunisia's Shams Rad - the Arab world's 'only gay radio station'

Normally when I want to make yogurt, I use a thermophilic process:

1. Heat/boil a gallon of milk to kill (reduce) whatever is in it.
2. Let it cool down to about 115-120°F (45-50°C).
3. Stir in a few tablespoons of store-bought yogurt, or "back-slopped" yogurt from the previous batch.
4. Hold it at 115°F/45°C for 8 - 16 hours.
5. Store in fridge.

You can use a yogurt maker, but some Instant Pots come with a yogurt function and if your oven can keep the temperature at 115°F/45°C, then you can just put a covered pot of it in there.

I got a couple of these on clearance with the intention of using one as a starter culture. It supposedly contains these active cultures:

L. lactis subsp. lactis, L. lactis subsp. cremoris, L. lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc subsp. cremoris, S. thermophilus, L. bulgaricus, L. rhamnosus, L. casei, L. acidophilus, Bifidobacterium sp.

My bottle is almost identical (some of the names are reformatted):

L. lactis subsp. lactis, L. lactis subsp. cremoris, L. lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc spp., S. thermophilus, L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, L. rhamnosus, L. paracasei, L. acidophilus, Bifidobacterium spp.

Filmjölk is described as a mesophilic yogurt - with the strains added to cold milk, not boiled, and fermented at room temperature, i.e. 70-78°F (21-26°C). However, some of the strains listed above, such as thermophilus and bulgaricus, are clearly found in thermophilic process yogurts.

So should I just make it the thermophilic way like usual, do it at room temperature, or try to do each version? Is there a middle ground (such as keeping it warm for 4 hours, and then letting it drop to room temperature)?

Blood Moon 2018 prophecy: What is the Blood Moon prophecy and will the world end?

Nibiru is just so passé.

XXXTentacion: Controversy rages after rapper's shooting death

The killing of US rapper XXXTentacion has set social media ablaze: vicious arguments have broken out about how to memorialise such a problematic figure, as fans pore over conspiracy theories about the perpetrator and even question if the rapper was killed at all.

Florida police have confirmed the 20-year-old, born Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, was shot dead on Monday.

Despite this, fans are probing videos purporting to show him after the shooting. Posts online point out potential discrepancies in his facial tattoos and question the lack of visible blood, bullets and shattered glass in the footage. Some suggest his death was faked as part of an elaborate prank for a future video release.

A video from several months ago of XXXTentacion denying his own death (after an apparent suicide prank on his own channel) has also re-circulated widely, leading to further confusion.

[...] He spent much of last two years in and out of jail or on house arrest.

At the time of his death he was awaiting trial for beating and falsely imprisoning his former partner, Geneva Ayala, having already pled no contest to charges of home invasion robbery and aggravated battery with a firearm in a separate case.

I made this unaccepted submission about him a few weeks ago:

Related: Spotify Removes Two Artists From Playlists Due to "Hate Content and Hateful Conduct"