Flutterby™! (short)

Update from "nobody thinks they're the villain in their own story" to "anybody who thinks they're the hero in their own story is probably the villain."

I've eventually, after looking at situations like Spade Cooley, come around to the fact that it's not bad to support the estate of people who've done horrific things, if the estate is paying into funds which help the victims. I can "separate the art from the artist" when the art is helping mitigate some of the damage.

I've also come around (and there's history on Flutterby, eg, of me being dismissive) to understanding that Michael Jackson was one hell of a singer, and, the product of a very fucked up childhood, and product of a very fucked up society in how we, collectively, handled his celebrity.

So I've been kinda looking forward to the upcoming Michael Jackson movie.

But I'm also well aware that... there's some problematic shit here. And somehow I missed this headline from January of last year, that Michael Jackson Biopic Needs Major Reshoots After Discovery of Past Legal Agreement with Molestation Accuser: Report.

More recently, Inside the ‘Michael’ Overhaul: $15 Million Reshoots, Removing Child Abuse Allegations and What’s in Store for Sequels which names the accuser whose lawyer made sure that there was to be no mention of said accuser in future films. Decades ago.

(Still) An(gr)i Bundel ‪@anibundel.bsky.social observed:

I feel like not enough reviewers know they had to remake the entire final third of the Michael Jackson movie because it falsely exonerated him, and it turned out the kid’s lawyer foresaw that shit in the 1990s and made sure to include a clause that the estate could never ever do that on film.

‪(Still) An(gr)i Bundel‬ ‪@anibundel.bsky.social‬

Note I said “remake.” As in, the Jackson estate apparently had *no idea* they had signed something 25 years ago that prevented them from ever defaming the kid until the movie was basically finished.

I can't imagine that the estate's legal team somehow dropped this. I would think that the screenwriters would have been working with these settlement agreements all the way through.

The Onion (video): Fractures Emerge Between GOP’s Pro-Pedophilia, Extremely Pro-Pedophilia Wings

Were Abby‬ ‪@kellylink.bsky.social‬

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off

the AI features

that were in

the update

and which

you were probably

hoping

to monetize

Fuck you

they were stupid

so unnecessary

and so annoying

UCLA Center for Parking Policy: Minimum Parking Requirments - A Research Synthesis

Eliminating minimum parking requirements does not eliminate the environmental, social, and economic harms of parking, but it can reduce their severity. Research indicates that the early effects of repeal are modest rather than dramatic. After requirements are lifted, drivers make more efficient use of existing parking infrastructure, and developers also continue to supply new parking. As a result, the total number of spaces and vehicles citywide may continue to grow while the number of parking spaces per capita declines over time. Minimum parking requirements exert a long shadow, having been entrenched in U.S. cities for more than 75 years. Even after repeal, cities will be dealing with the legacy of an oversupply of parking for many years to come.

I've only gotten as far as the executive summary, but my takeaway is that we should be probably aggressively pursuing parking maximums, not merely repealing parking minimums.

Is anybody else having kerning problems reading "Ternus" as "Temus", and thinking about the future of Apple?

(Not a dig at the guy, the MacBook Pro has definitely been rescued from the Ives era. Even if it's hobbled by Liquid Glass )