Film review: Hell or High Water (2016)

On the surface, this is another clichéd cops and robbers film. Two brothers, the older one having spent ten years in prison for a series of crimes, set out on a spree of robbing banks in rural West Texas, stealing fairly small amounts of cash from each, and pursued by a grizzled old Texas Ranger on the verge of retirement and his partner who is of mixed Mexican/Indian ethnicity.
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What motivated Trump voters?

The analyses of why Donald Trump won and what types of people voted for him keep going on apace. Mehdi Hasan says that some evidence points to racism playing a more important role than economic frustration, the latter view being advocated by people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who think that Democrats should try to regain the votes of those who went for Trump.
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Black Acting School

In 1987, Robert Townsend wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy Hollywood Shuffle that satirized the then-popular blaxploitation films. He played aspiring actor Bobby Taylor and the limited range of roles that that he was able to audition for and the expectations the filmmakers had about how black people behave, as shown in this funny scene from the film.
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Using unpopular targets to undermine press freedoms

Authoritarian governments often use people and groups who are unpopular at any given time to undermine the freedoms that everyone should have but that restrict the government’s freedom to act with impunity. This is why it is necessary to defend the rights of even those whom you disagree with and even despise. Right now, WikiLeaks is hated by both Republicans and Democrats, and the Trump administration is making dangerous noises about curbing speech and press freedom using WikiLeaks as the excuse.
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Religious people never give up

I wrote before that religious groups are now trying to reverse policies that have long been declared to be unconstitutional, such as the use of class time and facilities to teach the Bible, something that was disallowed as far back as 1948. Now four members of the Republican-controlled legislature in North Caroline have introduced a bill that would outlaw same-sex marriage, although such bans were declared to be unconstitutional in 2015.
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Aung San Suu Kyi has become an apologist for Burmese anti-Muslim bigotry

I have mentioned before how Buddhism, seen in the west as a peaceful, contemplative religion, is not immune from its adherents becoming violent towards minority religious groups. This has happened most noticeably in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar and Peter Maass reports on the shameful role that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kyi has played in the treatment of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
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Why was Gödel denied a job in Austria in 1938?

Mathematical logician Kurt Gödel was a prodigy who by 1931 at the age of just 25 had already published his landmark incompleteness theorems. Many people are familiar with Gödel’s name but have only a vague idea of why he is such an important figure. This brief biography gives a summary account of it.

In 1931, Gödel published results in formal logic that are considered landmarks of 20th-century mathematics. Gödel demonstrated, in effect, that hopes of reducing mathematics to an axiomatic system, as envisioned by mathematicians and philosophers at the turn of the 20th century, were in vain. His findings put an end to logicist efforts such as those of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead and demonstrated the severe limitations of David Hilbert’s formalist program for arithmetic.
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So this is what ‘moderate Republican’ means

I have expressed before my distaste when journalists use the phrase ‘moderate’ Republicans because there seems to be no effort to define what that category consists of that distinguishes them from the other Republicans in Congress, all of whom seem to be intent on pushing a hard-right pro-wealthy, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-science agenda.
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