You might enjoy, if you haven’t already, the Critical Drinker’s take on such films:

–“Batgirl Cancelled – A Sign Of Things To Come?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbUio8oV5u8

I missed that story, in all the excitement this week about current political frauds.
If I read it correctly, the sketch’s substance is authentic, but this is not an original document by the great scientist. (Who might actually have a credible claim to being The Science, at least of his era.)

A scholarly post, with a picture.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/historian-discovers-a-prized-galileo-manuscript-was-forged-180980615/

For nearly a century, the University of Michigan possessed a piece of paper that it considered “one of the jewels” of its library. Believed to have been written in 1609 and 1610 by astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei, it features a letter signed by the scientist describing a new telescope and sketches of moons orbiting Jupiter. The university held that it was the “first observational data that showed objects orbiting a body other than the earth.”

Galileo did use a new telescope in 1610 to discover that moons orbit around Jupiter—a finding that helped substantiate Nicolaus Copernicus’ heliocentric theory—but he did not write the manuscript, the university announced last week following an investigation. Rather, the document was forged in the 20th century, most likely by a man named Tobia Nicotra.
…
In a statement, the university says it is undergoing a “reconsideration of [the manuscript’s] place in the collection,” and that it “may come to serve the research, learning and teaching interests in the arena of fakes, forgeries and hoaxes, a timeless discipline that’s never been more relevant.”

Timeless indeed: Last year, a technical analysis revealed that Yale University’s treasured Vinland Map, formerly believed to be a Viking map of North America from the 1440s, was actually forged in the 20th century. In 2020, Germany’s Museum Ludwig exhibited a collection of fake and misattributed paintings in a bold approach to the taboo subject of forgery.
…
Per the Times, the University of Michigan is considering taking a similar approach to the fake Galileo. Rather than tuck it away, the university may make it the centerpiece of a future exhibition on the art of forgery.

I’ve actually toured an exhibition on forgers, mostly of art and science, and the stories are fascinating, especially the care they put into making their fakes look good enough to fool the experts.

They had one decent hit with wonder woman which the botched in the sequel (too timely) and aquaman which amber heard has waterlogged

https://ace.mu.nu/archives/400644.php

Zaslav Cancels Woke Ellen DeGeneres Cartoon Aimed At Children
David Zaslav, the CEO of the merged Warner Discovery, is swinging his Mighty Ax, and he’s swinging it at a lot of Charity Projects that do not bring in money.

Stuff that was never designed to earn money, but just earn Woke Points.

David Zaslav can give a rat’s ass about Woke Points.

As Ellen DeGeneres, The Nicest Woman in Hollywood, has just been informed.
…
Also cut: the new Batman: Caped Crusader animated show from Bruce Timm, Matt Reeves, and, um, J.J. Abrams.

Now, that may sound like a loss, but maybe not. Ethan Van Sciver pointed out this Bounding Into Comics article from last year, in which Bruce Timm — who, frankly, has not been associated with quality for a while — bragged that the new show would be “diverse,” “inclusive,” and “adult.”
…
J.J. Abrams’ track record in attaching himself to healthy franchises and parasitically sucking the life out of them is well-known by now, so I think Batman dodged another bullet here.

And what’s this with “adult”? Or “dark.” Who wants this? I don’t mind this kind of stuff edging towards “adult” or “dark” — like maybe up to the level of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — but let’s stop kidding ourselves, this is boys’ adventure fiction, and it should keep mainly to that.

Hey, I’m going to remake Treasure Island with some strong sexual content including an implied r@pe of Jim Hawkins. Some real randy stuff. Who’s interested?

C’mon. I’m tired of nerds trying to cadge some validation for their enjoyment of juvenile adventure fare by demanding they be made “dark” or “adult.”
…
Meanwhile, DC Comics is firing on all cylinders. They hint that Superman will be getting married, to a boy.
…
Jon Kent is now Superman. That allows them to say “Superman is gay” while keeping the real Superman not gay (for the moment).

But meanwhile, the real Batman has been revealed to be bisexual, or at least willing to go G4P (gay for pay, or gay for information).

DC Comics had not yet felt the chop of Zaslav’s Mighty Axe because the division was too small to make much a difference.

But that might have just changed.

Wes from Thinking Critical says he has a source in the Discovery accounting office that tells him that their office asked for a management report from Warner Bros.’s accounts detailing all of DC Comics’ expenses and revenues, and winners and losers, in the DC Comics line.

That is, the parent corporation’s accountants demanded an accounting from the child corporation’s accountants about a subsidiary’s gains and losses.

Which is going to be terrible bad news for DC Comics, because they’ve been deliberately keeping terrible, non-selling #Woke writers on staff for years, killing the brand and costing the company millions, and just trusting that no one from corporate would ever come looking into their books.

They shifted from a strategy of treating sales as the chief metric of success to treating Twitter #OMG’s and #Yass’s and #SlayKween’s as their metric. That’s why they’ve turned almost every single character in their stable gay or bisexual.

Well, apparently, now the parent corporation is looking at the books.

And that will not be good for DC Comics. No poorly performing unit can profit from management ever looking at their books. Nothing good can come of that, at least, nothing good can come to the people currently mismanaging DC or working there.

The ax may finally fall. And it may fall gloriously bloody.

https://ace.mu.nu/archives/400660.php

Washington Post: A Michigan Town Defunds Their Local Library Over the Librarian’s Insistence on Lending the Gay Pornographic Comic Book for Children Gender Queer Out
Oh no! It’s as if citizens have the right to decide what their tax monies will be spent upon, rather than an intransigent civil service reactionary pink-haired leftist paid by those taxes!

A community wanted the local library that their tax dollars funded to stop lending out the gay pornographic graphic novel (comic book) “Gender Queer” …

The librarian refused.

The town defunded the library.

The Washington Post is sad, and demands that underaged children have access to gay pornographic comic books.
…
Librarians have twisted into pretty sick creatures. Communities have repeatedly told them: You can carry pornographic books if you like, but make them age-restricted so that our children cannot access them. You know, the way children are not allowed generally to watch pornographic movies, view pornographic magazines, or peruse the shelves of pornographic book-shops.

Time and time again librarians have haughtily refused, citing some non-existent right that children have to view pornography.

One suspects they just don’t want to be hassled checking IDs, or making a special adults-only aisle.

Actually, I don’t suspect that. They have really made this a defining dogma of their silly profession.**

But librarians across the country have repeatedly insisted that when children come into the library, they may read any pornographic book they like, or watch any X-rated movie the library might have.

Or view any x-rated content on the library’s computers over the internet.

These bitter twisted freaks just keep insisting that “information wants to be free” — in children’s pants.

They live very lonely, boring, useless (and usually childless, go figure) lives and have decided they will make their Drama in providing pornography to children against parents’ wishes, and call themselves Heroes for standing up to the Squares.
…
The group Gays Against Groomers* makes a point about this: the groomers are using the Rainbow Flag as cover for their grooming and actual pedophilia.*** No one, but no one, would ever say that it’s okay to give a kid a comic book showing kids [deleted] if the kids were straight; but now we say “Oh but this is a gay coming of age story!,” and everyone is supposed to say, “Oh well then it’s perfectly okay to distribute pornography of underaged children performing sodomy on each other! Why didn’t you say so straight away?!”

It’s being asserted that if you just stick a Rainbow Flag on what would otherwise be acknowledged to be child porn, the Rainbow Flag washes the sin away and makes it clean and pure.

No it does not. The Rainbow Flag is not some kind of dispensation from God making Minor Attracted Person material, including sexualized drag shows, acceptable for viewing by children.

The gay lobby and their leftwing straight “allies” are doing gays no favors in the court of public opinion by endorsing this bizarre regime of “It’s OK If It’s Gay” dispensation for child sexualization.

I can’t believe anyone even has to explain this.

…
* Banned from Twitter. Obviously. You can groom on Twitter, you just can’t be against grooming on Twitter.

** I was briefly a children’s librarian in the early oughts, and there was no way we would have put something like this out on the kids’ shelves even if we had bought it, which we wouldn’t have, even if it had been available, which it wasn’t, outside of maybe Penthouse and Hustler, and I don’t remember ever hearing them accused of anything other than, ah, adult fare. The library being a conservative small town in Texas, we didn’t buy adult porn either.

*** Notice the Dentons Playbook in action.

https://ace.mu.nu/archives/400301.php
(from earlier this month)

“Batgirl” Film Was Nearly Completed and Cost Between $70 and $100 Million, But Test Audiences Found It “Unspeakable”
It had finished principle photography and was in post-production, where special effects and music and sound effects and editing would be completed.

And also, mostly likely, reshoots. Especially with big “blockbuster” movies, and especially with big bad “blockbuster” movies, you probably need a two or more (maybe even six) weeks of reshoots with the cast and crew, which can get expensive.

I heard a guy estimate that post-production costs could run maybe $80 million more.

And then advertising and prints could cost, well, a hundred or two hundred million, if they were going to run it in theaters.

But a source said the film was “unspeakable” and “irredeemable” — and likely to damage the DC Brand, which is already in the toilet.

So Zaslev is putting a completed (or near-completed) film in the vault, forever.
…
By the way, there was yet another race-swap in the casting, and another Gingercide.

Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon, a white redhead in the comics, was made into a black (or half-black) girl.

If you haven’t heard of “Gingercide,” it refers to Hollywood’s weird insistence on race-swapping every single ginger in the comics to a black actor or sometimes a Hispanic one.
…

The gingers — who are a real minority, of course — can’t be happy about this, though.

Where’s their representation?
…
When Zaslav — or whoever the source for this story — says that the Batgirl movie will irreparably damage the DC brand, he’s almost certainly not just talking about the film’s quality, which is, of course, almost certainly down to the low level we’ve come to expect from DC.

He’s also talking about this movie establishing that Batman — the real one, the active one — and Superman are dead in this universe and have been replaced by Younger, More Diverse Female Replacements Who Are Superior In Every Way, Bigot.*

Which he suspects won’t play as well with the mostly-male comic book movie audience as Girlboss feminist CEOs might. Activist Twitter lunatics demand that Hollywood make movies for them… and then never actually see these movies.

They just want the movies taken away from straight men, whom they hate with the intensity of a burning cross.

* I omitted the evidence that supports his assertion.

The thug’s family filed a civil suit against Kyle. Kyle’s mother is asking for help with Kyle’s legal fees, and also asked for words of encouragement for him.
https://www.tmap.org/

Indeed, indeed.

The David Thompson post was good, but his internal links got better.
You do need to see the meme in question to follow the discussion.
And Ace rants about the same thing here — direct link for Boobah ;):
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/400640.php

https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2022/08/impermissible-notions.html

This, apparently, is what’s verboten on Twitter. Note that no inflammatory commentary was added to the image. The image itself was deemed a basis for both indignation and speedy action. And so, the enormous list of things to which Twitter’s moderators take exception now includes the suggestion that strident activists often do harm to the cause they ostensibly champion. A phenomenon seen all but daily, and on many fronts.

The article that the illustration accompanies, by Eliza Mondegreen, can be found here. Readers are welcome to comb through it in search of seething hatred or some great urge to oppress.

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/trans-activism-and-the-road-not-taken?triedSigningIn=true
The current conflict over trans rights was entirely avoidable.
by Eliza Mondegreen 2022-08-19

One thing that strikes me every time I talk to friends, colleagues, and near-perfect strangers about gender is just how far something like Daphne’s plea—“I just need you to believe that I’m having a human experience… Just believe I’m a person and I’m going through it”—would have gone in winning people’s empathy.

All this is to say that the current conflict over trans rights wasn’t inevitable. In fact, it was entirely avoidable. It is not difficult to imagine a trans movement focused on providing accommodations for people who struggle with gender dysphoria, or even those who hold extraordinary beliefs about the nature of “gender identity.” Let’s call this the reasonable accommodations route.

Now we can argue about which accommodations are reasonable and which requests conflict with or undermine the rights of other groups like women who need legal recognition as a sex class and spaces free from males, and children who need special protections from indoctrination and medical experimentation. A conversation about reasonable accommodations is a nuanced conversation. Instead, we got a radical trans movement that wants to erase sex in law and society, put men in women’s prisons and boys in girls’ sports, and run an unregulated medical experiment on gender-nonconforming children.
…
Reasonable claims and demands can withstand scrutiny. Unreasonable claims and demands require a different approach. It’s impossible to make the case for putting male rapists in women’s prisons if you have to use plain language. It’s impossible to justify indoctrinating and then sterilizing confused children. You can only advance such goals if you’re willing to break the language, keep the public in the dark, and punish anyone who tries to drag your antics into the light. (In other words, you have to follow the Denton’s playbook.)

That trans activism took this form tells us something about what’s driving the movement and what’s not.

And so on. A most excellent rant.

But, What is the Dentons Playbook?
I’m glad you asked that question.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists
by James Kirkup, 1 December 2019

People and organisations that at the start of this decade had no clear policy on or even knowledge of trans issues are now enthusiastically embracing non-binary gender identities and transition, offering gender-neutral toilets and other changes required to accommodate trans people and their interests. These changes have, among other things, surprised many people. They wonder how this happened, and why no one seems to have asked them what they think about it, or considered how those changes might affect them.

Some of the bodies that have embraced these changes with the greatest zeal are surprising: the police are not famous social liberals but many forces are now at the vanguard here, even to the point of checking our pronouns and harassing elderly ladies who say the wrong thing on Twitter.

How did we get here? I think we can discount the idea that this is a simple question of organisations following a changing society. Bluntly, society still doesn’t know very much about transgenderism.
…
So the question again: how did organisations with small budgets and limited resources achieve such stunning success, not just in the UK but elsewhere?

Well, thanks to the legal website Roll On Friday, I have now seen a document that helps answer that question.

The document is the work of Dentons, which says it is the world’s biggest law firm; the Thomson Reuters Foundation, an arm of the old media giant that appears dedicated to identity politics of various sorts; and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation note that the document does not necessarily reflect their views.

The report is called ‘Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth’. Its purpose is to help trans groups in several countries bring about changes in the law to allow children to legally change their gender, without adult approval and without needing the approval of any authorities. ‘We hope this report will be a powerful tool for activists and NGOs working to advance the rights of trans youth across Europe and beyond,’ says the foreword.

As you’d expect of a report co-written by the staff of a major law firm, it’s a comprehensive and solid document, summarising law, policy and ‘advocacy’ across several countries. Based on the contributions of trans groups from around the world (including two in the UK, one of which is not named), it collects and shares ‘best practice’ in ‘lobbying’ to change the law so that parents no longer have a say on their child’s legal gender.

Kirkup quotes extensively to support his assertions* in summarizing the report:

Although it offers extensive advice about the need to keep the trans-rights agenda out of the public’s gaze, the report has rather less to say about the possibility that advocates might just try doing what everyone else in politics does and make a persuasive argument for their cause. Actually convincing people that this stuff is a good idea doesn’t feature much in the report, which runs to 65 pages.

I’m not going to tell you what I think of the report, or the agenda it sets out. I’m not going to pass comment on it or its authors. I’m just going to try to summarise its nature and contents.

A major international law firm has helped write a lobbying manual for people who want to change the law to prevent parents having the final say about significant changes in the status of their own children. That manual advises those lobbying for that change to hide their plans behind a ‘veil’ and to make sure that neither the media nor the wider public know much about the changes affecting children that they are seeking to make. Because if the public find out about those changes, they might well object to them.

I started my first job as a researcher in the Commons in 1994. I’ve been studying and writing about politics and policy ever since. And in my experience of how changes in the law are brought about, the approach described in that report is simply not normal or usual. ** In a democracy, we are all free to argue for whatever policy or position we wish. But normally, anyone who wants to change the law accepts that to do so they need to win the support or, at least, the consent of the people whose authority ultimately gives the law its force. The approach outlined, in detail, in the Dentons report amounts to a very different way of lobbying to get the laws and policies you want. Even more notably, it suggests that in several countries people have been quite successful in lobbying behind a ‘veil’ and in a way that deliberately avoids the attention of the public. That, I think, should interest anyone who cares about how politics and policy are conducted, whether or not they care about the transgender issue.

I’m going to conclude with an observation I’ve made here before, but which I think bears repeating in the context of that report and the things it might tell people about other aspects of the trans issue: no policy made in the shadows can survive in sunlight.

This was information publicly available three years ago, and yet here we are in the swamp fighting the alligators.

However, there are some bright spots that may approximate sunlight.
(next comment)

*As Neo put it in another post, “all investigations have supported that assertion.”
** On the contrary, it is very much the normal and usual method used by communism, socialism, Marxism, Nazism, and all the other -isms that have done their share to destroy civilization. Because they absolutely know that ” if the public find out about those changes, they might well object to them.”

Let me add Obamaism & Bidenism to that list.