Sorry, some of you might hate me for this.  But you’ll hate me more if I didn’t pass this along.
 
L.A. Times TV critic Robert Lloyd wrote an article on 30 international streaming series – and unfortunately, about 80% of them sound great.  (Being flexible, maybe closer to 100% -- really.)  And at least worth checking it.  The only reason I might be off the hook with you is that it’s almost Summer, school’s out, and you’ll have more time to binge.  But you still might disappear from society, and go into Ultimate Binge Mode on overload

He notes that the series he includes "offer an inside, not a tourist, view, and so take you places tourists don’t go. This isn’t a 'best' list — Borgen is not on it — just a collection of things I like, shows I found fun, funny, surprising, enlightening, exciting or beautiful, or that opened a window onto a new world."
 
I won’t list ones that sound most interesting, but a few are noteworthy.  There’s one from Spain on Amazon Prime, A Private Affair that’s a fun-sounding mystery about the sister of the police commissioner that actually has the great Jean Reno in a supporting role as a sort of "reluctant Watson".  And another from Spain, I Don’t Like to Drive, on Max that he says might be his favorite.  And as for favorites, he includes one of my own absolutely-favorite series, Extraordinary Attorney Woo from South Korea (which if you haven't seen it is a total, charming joy, a big hit on Netflix, though for some it might take two or three episodes to get sucked in. It's about a young woman on the functioning autism spectrum who is hired at a high-end law firm, and the stories eventually go in several unexpected directions) -- and another good-sounding legal one also from South Korea, One Dollar Lawyer on Hulu.  

And there are 26 more series on the list…
 
Sorry.
 
I'm not a binger, so this list scares me it's so good.  It might get even me to start at least mini-bingeing, because otherwise I’ll never get through a third of this plus all the other series and movies already on my list.

You can find the article here.

[UPDATE:  I've been told that the article is behind a pay wall.  Sorry about that.  I don't want to copy/paste the whole article here, but I'll try to post some of the most intriguing titles Ack, Sorry about that.  I don't want to copy/paste the whole article here, but I'll try to post some of the most intriguing titles and what streaming services have them in an upcoming piece.  But -- I believe you can get five free articles a month if you download the free Los Angeles Times mobile app.  So, if you want to read the full article, and don't have the app, just download it for your mobile phone and perhaps you can browse to the article that way.  Though this article was for a special section and might not be available without a subscription.] 
​
And just for the heck of it, this is the trailer for Extraordinary Attorney Woo.  It's enjoyable and shows the series' charm, though perhaps over-emphasizes the whimsy a bit and doesn't even begin to come close to doing the program justice -- not touching on some of the fascinating law cases, its serious conflicts, or any of the show's twists.  But it gives a somewhat reasonable sense of things and you do get to see the tremendous lead actress, Park Eun Bin.

Earlier in the year, I recommended the series to a friend I was sure would love it.  He watched the first episode, but said it wasn't for him and stopped.  I tried to explain that, much as I liked it from the start, I didn't love it at first either, but kept watching, and I was sure he would be bowled over, as well.  But no, he'd seen enough.  I decided not to push, even though I knew he'd love it.  So be it, that's life.  Three months passed.  Last week, I got an email from him.  For some reason, he thought he'd give it another try.  And became hooked.  He said he adored it, couldn't imagine why he'd stopped, and was bingeing and already up to episode five.  And then two days later, he wrote back to say he was up to #10.  He was going to hold off, though, because he loved it so much he wanted to have more to look forward to later.
​

On May 12, Elon Musk said that Linda Yaccarino would take his place as CEO of Twitter.  From her background, it didn’t seem to many that this change would be all that substantial, to which the reality remained that Musk still owned the company and would remain chief technology officer.
 
It turned out that only a few hours after making that announcement – and in fairness, he was likely still the CEO – Twitter announced that it is “taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey,” though the blocked content would still be available in the rest of the world.

It’s worth noting that this announcement came in the midst of a very tight election in Turkey that required a run-off only two weeks later on May 28 between the country’s fascist dictator Recep Tyyip Erdogan and opposition leader Kemal Killicdaroglu.
 
Given that the Turkish government controls much of the country’s media, it seems likely that Turkey made this request, most likely in the form of a threat.  And it seems probable that they did this, not only because Erdogan is a fascist dictator, but because Turkey saw that India had made a similar threat to Twitter before its election, and Twitter gave in to them.
 
This stands out all the more since Musk is such a supposed vocal “free speech” advocate on all things, including allowing misinformation about COVID and letting hate speech proliferate on the social media platform.  Although he did suspend an individual who posted public information about the location of Musk’s private jet, and suspended several journalists who merely wrote stories about it.  And he’s fired Tesla employees for posting negative material Tesla that Musk didn’t like.  So, his track record on “free speech” all the time seems a bit sketchy at best.
 
When the story about blocking tweets in Turkey broke, liberal journalist Matt Yglesias the next day “the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and @elonmusk complied.”
 
Musk tweeted a reply: “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”

Yes, that was the choice. And Musk chose to enable a fascist dictator so he could silence his opposition and help him retain power. As opposed to choosing free speech. Which Musk proclaim to supposedly support in absolute. It was his choice. And he chose fascism.  So be it – but he should no longer pretend to support free speech in absolute.
 
The additional problem is that when you cave to a fascist dictator, then other such authoritarians see that they can’t make the same demands and help themselves hold onto power.  And if you refuse the threat, the dictator has to make the decision whether to follow through and risk the outrage in his country at losing access to the world’s most popular social media platform and possible uprising against his power – or decide to back down.

None of this really comes as a huge shock if one pays even the slightest attention to Musk’s action, including him recommending that everyone vote a straight Republican ticket in the Mid-terms -- a perfectly acceptable personal opinion, though a deeply weird and troubling one for the owner of a social media platform who had been attacking the company before he bought it for what he claimed were its political biases – in that case, supposedly for liberals.

Coming on the heels of Musk’s anti-Semitic comments about George Soros wanting to “erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity” it’s been a horrible few weeks for Elon Musk.  But then, in fairness, it’s been a horrible year for Musk.  Though in fairness, he’s brought it all on himself.
​
Ever since Musk bought Twitter, users have left the platform in droves -- and worse, so have advertisers.  At the moment, there is value in me staying there, to promote this site. And also to respond to far-right misinformation, especially in an election year coming up.  (Besides which, while I know there are advertisers, I've never seen a paid corporate ad on Twitter the way I use it.  So, they're not getting a bang from their buck from me...) But I'm nearing to the point where the line is crossed.  It's worth my time, but I'm giving less of it.  Ignoring as much of the increase in smarminess and hate as I can, and being far-quicker to block it.

Of course Elon Musk doesn't care.  He said as much just the other day, not caring what other people think about what he says and does.  Which when you come down to it seems an incredibly poor way for the owner of a social media platform to operate.  

And which might explain why people and advertisers have left it in droves.  And does explain why he's brought this on himself.
 

Yesterday was one of those Twitter Days.  I criticized someone on the platform who had left an empty extreme-right tweet and, of course, got bombarded by scathing, venomous replies. And by "bombarded" I mean that for the next several hours there were probably a few hundred, along with many hundreds more retweets of the slams.

I didn't read most of them, of course, nor did I reply to many.  However, I did see a whole lot, and responded to, if not "many," then too many -- after which I'd say a polite "Goodbye" and muted them (so they'd see what I wrote) to be later blocked.

I noticed a few things about the replies as a general rule -- 1) They like calling you funny names because apparently "Rupert" or "Roger" or "Rodent" or "Relishberg" is considered damning in their world, 2) they like sending graphics instead of actually thinking of something to say, and 3) they really like making smarmy replies that don't address any specifics of the actual criticism.

(Occasionally I'd reply to a tweet and say that my name wasn't "Rupert," but actually was Brandon.)

​One person linked to the WGA and said that one of their most prominent members was a total idiot who didn't understand anything.  I wrote back and thanked the person for calling me a "prominent member" of the Writers Guild.

Personal attacks about being bald were also big, though that's par for the course.  I've long had a couple of standard responses, and if there's room, often use them together.  I generally tell people that each of us are given only so many genes, and if you want to use yours for growing hair, that's your choice. Also, Shakespeare, Churchill and Gandhi were bald. Hitler had hair.

A particular odd, repeated "attack" (and putting that in quotes in the only way I can do it justice) was all the people slamming me for apparently having a waterbed.  Not only that, but for buying it on a credit card at an incredibly high APR.  I don't know, don't ask, apparently this is an extreme right "thing."  The only thing I can say is that it was not as damning as they thought it was.  Although they all seemed to get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

What also stood out is that a great many people told me off because they said the guy leaving the original tweet had a satire account -- while as many people told me off because I dared criticize something they took very seriously.

(Side note: someone wrote to tell me that they'd criticized something from this account, and they'd been immediately swarmed on with vicious, crude attacks.  He then added -- "These are not nice people."  I replied:  "It has come to my attention."

I should note that I checked the account, and there was very little "satire" on it.  I write satire and parody professionally, and have a respectable eye for such things, and man, the cupboard there was bare.  If that was what some considered "satire," they've set their bar very low.  The most "satire" I could find with a microscope was in the guy's bio, where he called himself a "living legend youth football coach" in Georgia.  I got the joke.  It was hard to miss, because it stood alone in a satire desert.

But as I explained in several of my replies to those who chided me ("Chided me" is the polite term, since it was more like calling me a stupid, incompetent, ignorant idiot) for apparently missing the "satire," there was a huge flaw in their chastising me.  I said that for the sake of argument let's accept for the moment that it was indeed a satire account.  That means if someone believes the original tweet in question was satire, one of two things had to be true --

1. That you don't think he actually meant what he wrote at all, but the opposite, which means you agree with my criticism of it, and so the only thing that I was foolish about was, not my criticism, but for not getting the satire.  Fair enough, that's then what you'd say --  rather than also slam me for being wrong.  Or if not that, then --

2.  You think the point the original writer was absolutely, spot-on correct, and the "satire" was only that he exaggerated -- which means my criticism holds.

But of course, that brings us to the "I was just joking" gambit.  This has become the Republican defense of choice since Trump.  Say something horrible, thoughtless and cruel - and then when criticized, run away and hide after insisting "I was just joking."  And try to make the other person at fault for not getting what wasn't a joke in the first place.  (By the way, jokes can be horrible, thoughtless and cruel.  There are bad jokes.)

I never mind being disagreed with.  Further, when I'm wrong I like to be corrected.  In fact, later in the day I received a tweet on a totally different subject that explained I'd replied to a note that had some incorrect information about a battery plant to be built in Georgia.  I deleted my reply and wrote a new one.  But -- when whoever disagrees with me (or with anyone) doesn't say what was "wrong," it means they have nothing.  They just don't like that you criticized something they want to believe is true, but have no argument to correct you.  And further, having no argument, the person is left with making ad hominem attacks, trying to think of a slam that, because of their own insecurities, they believe will be seen as mean. 

Ah, well, that's life on Twitter these days.  To be fair, I had similar exchanges pre-Musk.  Though today's outburst was more pronounced.  

The barrage continued throughout the day, but slowed later in the day.  It's just an occasional drip at this point.  But I'm sure replies will pop up from time to time.

Or to put it in the words a Fox "News" viewer might grasp -

We report, you deride.

I don't know how many people on these pages subscribe to Twitter and post there.  But I'm sure most are at least aware of the situation, if not all the problematic details there since Elon Musk bought the service.  It's not convoluted to go into them all, though annoyingly long.  However, occasionally a tweet comes along to put at least some of it in perspective.

Which brings us to a tweet Musk posted yesterday.

Side Note:  If I was an investor in a company like, say, oh, Tesla, and the owner was tweeting as much as Elon Musk does -- and he tweets A LOT, often about inane arcana, (How arcane and inane?  The other day Elon Musk tweeted a response to me about a criticism I had had made!  It was a cartoon that basically suggested everything Musk did was evil) -- I'd be very bothered.  Especially if the company's stock had plummeted the previous year.  By the way, I don't think everything Elon Dusk does is evil.  I just think a lot of what he does is wrong-headed, some of it disingenuous, infantile and with a deep thin-skinned persecution complex, and only occasionally evil.  Though "occasionally evil" is a pretty poor record.  And I should add that my description of a "deep thin-skinned persecution complex" doesn't come from viewing just a bunch of thin-skinned tweets, but reading many news stories about him taking vindictive action against employees who did something he didn't like.  And kicking journalists off Twitter who reported on things about him he didn't like.  For instance, my own tweet that brought his response concerned him publicly humiliating a disabled employee who Musk thought didn't work hard enough and then fired.  He later sort of "half-apologized" when he was not only widely slammed, but also learned that the employee was actually a major expert in the field and incredibly valuable to the company.  Musk offered the job back, though the former valuable employee hasn't decided yet.  But I digress...

​Anyway, what he posted was --

That's Musk's big, supposed soap box.  Truth and free speech!!!

The problem is that if what he says above was even remotely true, he wouldn't officially allow known misinformation on Twitter.  Which he does for postings about COVID, but far more than just that.  And such misinformation isn't just wrong, but dangerous.

Further, as the owner who oversees and controls everything on the Twitter platforms, setting the rules and how they're enacted, if being "impartial" and "favoring no party" was the standard, he wouldn't post a tweet telling everyone that they should only vote for Republicans.  All Republicans.  In every race.

Putting aside that that doesn't seem very impartial, especially without explaining why, Musk is certainly entitled to his opinion.  And if that opinion is "Vote Republican, all Republican, all the time," so be it -- but when you're the judge and umpire and creator of the rules, you do take on added responsibilities.  And if you choose to voice your views while in the position as jump, umpire and creator of the rules, who can determine who is allowed on the platform, that is the hypocritical antithesis of "fair".

The thing is, when Musk says things like this (and he does often), he must take everyone as saps, who'll believe anything.  Unfortunately, he seems to have spent too much time around today's Republicans and thinks that attribute flows everywhere.

By the way, Musk's tweet above came as a reply to one of his own.  That was another disingenuous one where he wrote, "Fight for truth, whole truth & nothin but!​"

And of course, if he actually wanted people to fight for the whole truth and NOTHING BUT...he wouldn't make an official policy allowing known misinformation to be posted.

Further, as for truth, Musk said he would resign if that's what a poll he put up showed.  And that turns out to be what the poll showed.  But it should come as no shock that Musk did not resign.  He found an excuse by claiming that bots were used which manipulated the results unfairly.  (Gee, election fraud, go figure.)  Now, that might have been true, but he provided no evidence.  And bot may have manipulated results for him, a well.  Moreover, if that was now the Musk Standard, it's worth noting that his earlier poll to "Let the people speak!" that ended up allowing Trump back on Twitter was most likely also manipulated by bots -- in Trump's favor, it seems reasonable to think, given the Russian bot farms we know about -- but Musk didn't dismiss those results.  Nor has he offered a new poll about himself with bot security protections built in.

The short version of this is that "free speech, truth and nothing but!!" make for a great bumper sticker but don't enter into the actual world of Elon Musk.

Or put another way, Elon Musk should spare us all his faux sanctimony.

The other day, every Republican on the House "Oversight" Committee -- all 26 members -- would not sign a two-sentence statement proposed by Jamie Raskin that denounced white supremacy.  The main reason behind Raskin offering the statement, he said, was because the “great replacement theory” of white supremacists has grown violent, indeed people have been killed because of it.  And every single Republican on the committee wasn’t bothered enough by the hatred, violence and death to denounce it.

In most circles, this is considered a layup.  One of those easy questions you can't lose by answering in simple, "Well, yes, of course!" support.  Not much more difficult than, "Senator, are you for or against puppies?"  But every Republican whiffed and refused.  The entire Republican contingent on the committee would not denounce white supremacists.
 
You can't dance around that or try to explain it away.  This wasn’t about free speech, cancel culture or “wokeness” – nor was it about anything related to personal choice, or any way you want to twist it.  This was about elected members of the U.S. Congress being asked to denounce the virulent hatred of white supremacists – which includes neo-Nazis – who have become emboldened in the country, building to the point of people dying, in an effort to make clear to such hate groups that their violent malevolence and venal cries of “replacement” is anathema to what the United States stands for and together work to stop it.
 
And not one Republican out of 26 would denounce it.  You can’t whisk that away however convoluted your attempt.
 
But then, this is today's GOP.
 
Making this all the more pointed was a seemingly-unrelated action by the committee which can only be seen for how, in fact, it overlaps.
 
That’s when later in the day, Republicans on this House "Oversight" Committee announced that they will be visiting Jan. 6 criminals who are in jail. These are the very same GOP members who all refused a statement denouncing white supremacists.  The best I can figure is that they want to visit prison just to tell their base the news in person.
 
In a normal world, all that about Republicans on the House “Oversight” Committee would be the full story – because it’s a pretty full banquet all on its own.  But, of course, we live in a world with social media. 
 
When I initially saw the story about all 26 Republicans on the “Oversight” Committee not denouncing white supremacists, I posted the fact on Twitter.  It should not come as a shock how venal some of the response was to give an indication the “Oversight” Committee view reflected the party as a whole.

Because, after all, this is today’s GOP.
 
(And lest anyone think I'm being biased in saying this, just know that this morning -- right before posting this -- I received a tweet from "Aletheia" in support that said, in part:  "Wow, the vermin that crawl out of the woodwork to challenge your very respectable and reasoned posts gives me pause to believe that we're anywhere close to removing the MAGA influence from our midst.")
 
To be clear, a group of tweets, regardless how large or small is not evidence of the party as a whole.  But it’s certainly a good starting point to view some of the party, especially given how crass it was and how non-existent there was of Republican criticism about the unanimous GOP House action.  This is not all I got, or necessarily the worst.  Just some of the tweets that I saved before blocking them.
 
For instance, there was the response from “Michael” who, putting aside that there was zero truth to his bizarre effort, lashed out with --
 
“Democrats won't denounce pedophiles, drug cartels, traffickers, smugglers, drag queens, black supremacy, female supremacy, gay supremacy, trans supremacy, non-citizens committing crimes, drug abuse, the two billion in damages from BLM / Antifa, infanticide”.
 
Okay, in fairness, no, Democrats won’t denounce drag queens (which should be a relief to Dame Edna), nor Antifa, which is fighting against fascism.  And it’s a shame, too, that too saying Black Lives Matter is seen as something to be denounced, but then that’s today’s GOP.  That aside, though, what a woeful defense of the House Republican committee’s refusal to denounce white supremacism.
 
Then there was “John Kovalchuck” who at least was willing to go full anti-Semitic when he replied – “They should have signed a statement that denounced Jewish supremacy.”  And while I’m sure he believed his words, they don’t really go very far in refusing to denounce white supremacy.
 
On the other hand, “Christi” thought it was a scathing defense of GOP refusal to denounce white supremacism by saying – “Next he should see if they will denounce unicorns and orcs.”  Which would have been a winning slam if Jamie Raskin’s goal was to go after mythical creatures – and if he thought unicorns were evil and killed people.
 
“Glenn leader” seemed to think that flipping the attack around would fool people when he replied, “That's election denier Jamie Raskin to you!”  But I suspect he forgot that when talking to people outside the Fox “News” bubble, they actually follow the news, which makes his defense of white supremacism sort of stupid.
 
There also was the fellow who just decided to go “all ad hominin” and think that saying, “Since you’re old as f*ck, you won’t have to be around long to worry about this” was a good defense of House “Oversight” Republicans refusing to denounce white supremacy.
 
Finally, I have to admit, the baseball fan in me thought it was great to hear from former Major Leaguer Lenny Dykstra, who began his career on the New York Mets.  He wrote cryptically, “Maybe they see right though [sic] Jamie Raskin’s krassensteining?”  (I had to look that up.  It turns out that the Krassensteins are brothers who were harsh critics of Trump and later banned from Twitter, though they’re back on the service.  Still, I’m not 100% sure what Mr. Dykstra means – though in fairness, I’m not sure that he does either.  And I must clarify:  my pleasure at hearing this from Lenny Dykstra wasn’t because I like being cryptically criticized, but rather it was great to confirm that this member of the hated Satan’s Team lived down to his reputation, as best-described on the respected Bleacher Report website when the rated him the #9 biggest “sleazeball” ballplayer in Major League history.  In fact, they even put him in the title of the article.  “Lenny Dykstra and the 25 Biggest ‘Sleazeballs’ in MLB History.”
 
(And no, I’m not kidding, the article is here.)

Quite a few other replies tried to explain away the GOP refusal to denounce white supremacists as just a political trick.  If so, it's was an incredibly easy trick to participate in, along the lines of playing peek-a-boo with a baby.  Getting someone on the record to denounce white supremacy (whether it's a "trick" or a statement of national wellness) is the kind of thing that has no downside.  None.  Unless, perhaps, it's the base of your party.

Again, the responses I got on social media are not proof of anything.  But then, they’re not intended to be.  It’s just to show one part of today’s GOP that sits in white supremacist support of all 26 Republicans on the House “Oversight” Committee, each of whom refused to denounce the white supremacy, emboldened by such silence and tacit approval.
 
But then, that’s today’s GOP.  Venal, virulent, racist, white supremacist, anti-Semitic and woefully uninformed.  I am sure there are many good, even wonderful people in the party.  And each one of them in their silence are enabling the rest.
 
And no matter how convoluted your attempt, you can’t twist it into knots and make it go away.