Episode 301 - Cultural Contradictions: War, Academia, and Entertainment
Max and Aaron continue their conversation last week, this time covering the reaction to world events in Universities and cultural institutions; as well as the contradictions around calls for free speech. Max also reviews the movie "Dumb Money" which covers the Game Stop short squeeze and is an early narrative builder on the handling of the Covid pandemic.
Links
Wikipedia - Elections in Palestine
Newsweek - Gaza Strip's Size Compared to US Cities in Series of Maps
Wikipedia - Trinitite
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to the Local Maximum episode 301.
Narration: Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to the Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome everyone, welcome! You have reached another Local Maximum.
All right. Today we're going to listen to part two of my discussion with Aaron following recent events in the Middle East. But surprisingly, this is a much lighter discussion and a much more fun discussion than we had last time. It's literally that same discussion, just occurred the same night. So go figure.
We start with the reaction to world events. I guess that's the reason the first part was the events themselves. Then we get to the reaction to the world's events in the rest of the world and the cultural contradictions stemming from that. Don't get me wrong, it's not totally light. Some of it is a little bit concerning. But it's helpful to have some gallows humor, I guess. It ends with my review of the movie, Dumb Money. And we start talking about movies and entertainment in general. I guess, stream of consciousness. So some thoughts on our changing culture, I suppose. Let's have a list.
Let's talk about another issue that is closer to home that we've been dealing with, which is the reaction here in the United States in the world. We’ve been seeing a ton of Hamas rallies, what I'm calling Hamas rallies. They're really like free Palestine rallies but I look at them, those are not peace rallies. Those are not hippies saying, ‘Hey, man, everyone's just got to stop making war and stuff.’ No, these are kind of scary, to be honest and they're happening in college campuses, probably close to you in Harvard over there. And even in New York City, to some respect, in places like London and Paris.
It's amazing. How… and again, I'm not the only one to point this out but it's important to point it out. Our corporations have been for years being like, ‘Oh nobody deserves to be micro-aggressed against. You can't offend anybody. And if something bad happens, we're gonna get on and say…’ Like my CEO, the CEO of Foursquare, after January 6. The next day, he wrote us an email like, ‘Today, January 6, 2021, is a day that will live in infamy. The army of Trump tried to take over the government and this will not stand.’ He thought he was freaking FDR over there. It was the most ridiculous thing.
Now they have nothing to say. A lot of people pointed that out. And it's really, I think it's a wake-up call to a lot of people. Even to a lot of people who were involved, who supported these corporations early on, are now starting to think ‘What's going on here?’
Ar: I don't know if it's a uniquely American trait, but it certainly runs deep in the American conscious that we love to root for an underdog. The Palestinians certainly seem like an oppressed underdog here in the way that they're being portrayed globally. There's some truth to that, in that they're somewhat ghettoized in Gaza. Life there is tough but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're justified in any actions they take as a result of that. I think people are too fixated on the first part so they take they pick up and run with the second part without thinking too hard about it.
Max: So I hate to bring this up, but maybe I could get your take on it. If I could dispense with this idea entirely, that would be great but I don't think I can. Especially when you see this stuff in Europe. It almost looks like, is this the kind of emergence of like the latent Nazism. Is it sort of the same… you know you read about some of the stuff that was going on.
Aaron: Bari Weiss has been talking for years about an undercurrent of antisemitism, of soft antisemitism in the American left. I don't think she's entirely off base there. I think that it's a little ironic that the people who are all enthused about punching Nazis are also not too upset with the idea of exterminating the Jews or bringing an end to the state of Israel. Maybe they wouldn't put it that way but they've chosen some strange bedfellows.
Max: I do see a lot of… Again, I'd love to have someone talk me out of this but when I look at the history of the 30s and the type of rhetoric that was used, there was a lot of like boycott Palestine, boycott and divest Palestine. Which is kind of interesting to read about because back then that meant boycott the Jews, boycott Israel today. Palestine meant the Jews.
Aaron: Even in the 2000s, there was the… Was it the BDS movement? The boycott, divest. I don’t know what the S was for.
Max: Sanction. Yeah, we still have that.
Is there a straight line between the BDS movement of the 30s to now? I don't know but I'd like to someone who gives me a better perspective on that.
I was actually on an interesting Zoom call. I believe it was on Wednesday, was it on Wednesday? Shoot, I don't remember when it was, let me look it up to the date. It was something like the…
Aaron: Earlier this week.
Max: Yeah. Maybe it was the 12th or something of October with the Slifka Center at Yale. Now at Harvard, there were a whole bunch of organizations who put out this letter. It's one thing to say, if there was a letter that said ‘We feel really bad for the people in Gaza, let's minimize civilian casualties.’ Yeah, I would agree with all that but it almost seemed to be supportive of what they had done. The number of organizations that signed on to that was… And I don't know, I almost feel like it's a mix between people who actually believe that crap and are just totally out of it and then a bunch of people who just have no moral discrimination and will just sign on to anything that's presented to them.
Aaron: There were certainly people who claimed ‘Oh, I didn't actually read that before I signed it.’
Max: Yeah, which is… I mean, okay.
Aaron: This isn’t the end-user authorization agreement. This is a little bit different.
Max: Yeah, exactly.
Fortunately, at Yale, you've seen a lot less of that. As a Yale alum, I'm very surprised that they are not as bad as Harvard in this respect but pleasantly surprised. Actually, the president of Harvard didn't know, the previous president Larry Summers put on Twitter, something to the effect of ‘This is not the Harvard I know.’ And then a lot of people wrote back, like, ‘What are you talking about? This is exactly Harvard.’
Aaron: Historically, I know the Ivys have a reputation of, back in the pre-war years, they had quotas for Jews and stuff like that. Is Yale, known for being particularly more friendly to Jewish students than Harvard, or not noticeably so?
Max: I don’t know that.
Aaron: I wasn't sure if there was a reputation there.
Max: I mean, I know that there are a lot of Jews that go there. I mean, when I went there, I had no problem finding Jews. The Slifka Center was the Jewish Community Center effectively that I lived next door to. Which just wasn't my choice. It was like where my dorm was. I kind of want to go back there now and have some of the food. That food is pretty good. A lot of people eat there, people who weren't Jewish. It was like a potential cafeteria. Muslims ate there because to eat halal.
Aaron: Kosher, halal are very similar.
Max: A funny story, which I used to find difficult to figure out whether this was a bad thing or not. At the time Yale allowed someone to come to Yale who was a former, high-ranking official in the Taliban and he would eat at the Slifka Center.
Aaron: As a student or like a lecturer?
Max: As a student. I think it turned out that the Taliban have some very young, high-ranking officials. But yeah, I don’t know what to think of that, but I don't want to get into that.
Anyway, I went to their Zoom the other day. They seem to be thinking that the administration is supportive of them. They do talk about this one professor, Zareena Grewal, who said on Twitter, on that day on October 7th, it's been an extraordinary day, Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity, all that stuff.
What's interesting is that, do you remember back in 2014, when this Yale professor, Erika Christakis. There was a letter going around where they were like, oh, no, don't wear a Halloween costume. That's going to be offensive and cultural appropriation.
Aaron: I don't remember the professor's name but I do remember that being an incident that kind of blew up at Yale.
Max: Basically, she said, which is something that was probably the right answer, which is what Yale had done for many years, especially when I went there is ‘We trust students to make their own decisions when it comes to their Halloween costume.’ And people just went nuts.
At the time I looked up what were the bad Halloween costumes. Come on, I want to know what they are. It turns out, it was all theoretical. There weren't any real Halloween costumes. And the fact that people made such a big deal out of this that they essentially hounded her out of her position, to resign from from her position. I think that it was a position in the Yale College system, in the dormitory position.
I think she was married to, I forget Professor Christakis. I forgot his first name, but he wrote a book. Oh, my God, the book’s on my shelf, I should I should be able to look at it right now. This is driving me crazy, I have to look at it. Okay, Nicholas Christakis. He was, what was then called the master of Silliman College. Now, it's called the head because, unfortunately, we can't tell the difference between two different meanings of words. They basically had to resign that position in terms of student life.
I think the story went the Yale administration didn't really force them to do it but the Yale administration wasn't particularly supportive either and was allowing them to be harassed. So what I'm surprised by is first of all, this Professor Grewal, who is supporting this Hamas attack, apparently was one of the harassers back in the day of this professor. So it's not like she believes in free speech.
Secondly, people on the Yale campus still remember that very well, 10 years from now. That one incident is kind of how things are measured against, Look what happens there and look where you are now. I think back then it was kind of like, ‘Oh, this is going to happen, and people are gonna forget, and people are just gonna get used to it.’ There's something about the fact that people still bring it up 10 years from now, and it has not healed. Yale is going to be forced to contend with their policy and way of thinking on matters of free speech sooner rather than later.
Interestingly enough, the Harvard president, when confronted with all of these petitions is like, ‘Well, free speech is what we're all about.’ Yes, I agree with that. I want that to be true but are you just pretending that the last six years never happened? There were a lot of things you can't say and there are a lot of things you can't.
Imagine protesting against the COVID restrictions. Imagine protesting against the… Imagine saying all lives matter. You would not be allowed on that campus anymore if you just uttered those three words, I promise you. Whereas when I was at Yale, you could say some things that you probably shouldn't say and it was fine back in 2004. But that's where we are and it seems like there is something about the fact that it almost seemed before that, they're just gonna keep contradicting themselves and contradicting themselves. They're gonna get away with it.
But it does seem like they're running up against some barrier where the contradictions are getting too great to not notice or to sweep under the rug. Although, historically, that rabbit hole for me has gone way deeper than I ever imagined. Every time I think it's gonna turn around, it just goes deeper. But it does feel like there's been a change in now.
Aaron: It would be very interesting to see where things go next. I think when we were talking earlier this week, I mentioned that I got an email from my children's, I don't recall if it was from the school board or the superintendent but from from the public schools, about how to talk to your children about what's going on in Israel right now.
I was relieved that it was a very, for lack of a better term, nonpartisan. It was more about how to not freak your kids out, and how to not panic them about things, and how to let them, don't tell them what you think they need to know, let them guide the conversation. And there was nothing in there that was overtly pro-Israel or pro-Palestine or anti-anyone. So that was a relief because I could see in certain communities, not so far from where I live, taking a very strong stance, that would make me uncomfortable.
Max: Yeah, at this point, I have such a low barrier. I'm thinking I'm gonna open up one of these letters, how to talk to your children about Trump's energy policy. You're all gonna be dead by the time you're 25 because of it. But that's the kind of talk we got for many years.
As a bonus, yesterday.
Aaron: Changing gears.
Max: So yesterday, although I think I'm going to divide up this episode into two parts so maybe this is a week and a day ago, I saw the movie Dumb Money. Now, that's a movie about the Gamestop short squeeze in early 2001 when some retail investors, particularly on Reddit, noticed that GameStop is not going under and the amount of short selling by large hedge funds is way larger than the price of the stock. I'm not gonna explain all this.
Aaron: Someone was in over their head and they noticed.
Max: Yeah so they started buying, and people kind of started buying that stock to stick it to the man and it shot up like 100x or something like that. And the movie had some good actors in it, Paul Dino, who I know from, he was actually the Riddler from that last Batman movie a couple of years ago. He was scary as the Riddler, as kind of a criminally insane person. But here, he was just kind of a fun, sort of working-class guy from Boston. He did a really good job with that. And his brother was played by Pete Davidson.
I thought it was pretty good. It was amusing. I did not know that the point of the CEO of Point 72, which is the hedge fund. So the hedge fund that got in over their head was Melvin Capital and the owner of that was played by Seth Rogen. He was bailed out by the CEO of Point 72.
This was in the movie, I didn't know this was real, that he had a, I think the pet pig was a long time ago so it wasn't during the time, but they kind of moved it up. He had a pet pig that was allowed to wander around in his mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut that he would kind of feed. So that was interesting. I don't know if have you ever been to Greenwich, Aaron because it's right next to me here in Stamford.
Aaron: I haven't spent much time there but I've occasionally driven through by accident. We did not grow up in a poor town but compared to Greenwich, it felt like we were we were living out in the boonies on the cheap. That place is fancy.
Max: Western has a lot more... Western has some crazy big houses, don't get me wrong. But it also has some more like regular houses, I guess? And it's sort of, it's a little bit less expensive because it’s a little further in. But Greenwich… It's sort of like when you sort of accidentally get off the highway in the Bronx, and you're like, ‘Oh, man, I am in some neighborhood. I shouldn't be here right now.’ But when I get off the highway accidentally in Greenwich, I feel like I'm in the ghetto for billionaires. It's like houses. It's castles, essentially.
Aaron: I know exactly what you mean. It sounds ridiculous but yeah.
Max: I know. I know. And what's funny is it's only three miles from here. So I have to walk through an area that's a little bit… If I wanted to walk there, I'd have to walk through an area that is a little bit iffy. Which I mean, it's not that bad. I drive through. It's not like, think of the worst cities, it's not like that.
But anyway, I thought that was interesting. I actually thought those guys, the CEO of Point 72, and Seth Rogen's character, who were the big hedge funds who were in over their head, they came off as very detached and not living in the real world but they didn't come off as villains. To me, they came off as people who were just doing their job as the rich guys in the system but they weren't necessarily architects of it. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe they're supposed to be portrayed worse than they are but it didn't really seem that way.
I didn't look into it, but my dad does some of this stuff and he told me that those guys ended up not losing that money in the end anyway because of the rules that they were able to manipulate and change. The Robin Hood founders, on the other hand. So Robin Hood, was the app by which normal people buy and sell stuff. I don't know if you've used it.
Aaron: I have not.
Max: Okay,yeah. Given that my dad is a stockbroker and still working, I can go through. But their founders in the movie came off as so douchey it was like they were almost one of the villains because they, Robin Hood, once that stock got to a certain level and the hedge funds were hurting, Robin Hood paused buys. You weren't allowed to buy it anymore.
Aaron: Which a lot of people thought was a little sketchy.
Max: Yeah and they came off as ‘Oh, we really wanted to make this app because we saw Occupy Wall Street and we want the regular person to be able to buy stocks.’ They just came off as like so… Now I don't know them in real life but I feel like from the video I saw them in real life, they got them spot on and it was it was pretty funny.
But what was more interesting, and probably will be interesting. To a lot of people out there. This is the first movie I've seen that really portrayed the COVID era outside it. And another, a lot of Doomers in COVID era, like, ‘Oh, all the bad things they did to us. It'll be seen as great. And no one will ever question it. It'll be like thank God we all wear masks and that did it. But that is not how this movie portrayed the COVID regime at all. Unless there's some subtle thing I'm missing.
One of the characters was actually, who is buying Gamestop stock, was actually someone who worked at a Gamestop but didn't really like his job particularly. He had the boss kept saying, ‘Mask on! Mask on!’ if he just put it a little bit below his mouth just to say something so that he could be heard. And one of the characters was a… I hope I'm not giving away too much of the movie, am I?
I think there was a little statement about the forced vaccinations in there. I thought that was very interesting that movies that portray the COVID regime, which hadn't been happening during. Like during World War II, there were movies portraying World War II. Here, you didn't have that. But I was kind of surprised at how critical it was.
Aaron: So related to that, I just recently went back and started watching. I haven't seen the last two seasons, most recent two seasons of The Billions. So I just watched the first couple episodes of season six, which came out in January of 2022 but, as a result, was filmed in 2021, kind of at peak COVID. Yeah, there's people wearing masks in it but I think the bigger underlying current was they really grasped onto the zeitgeist of we got to go after the billionaires because they're the real problem. Which I guess was very much in the air at that period.
At first, I was a little disappointed with that. Like, come on, guys, you just gonna play into this populist backlash here.? But then, when I thought more about it, I said, well, the character espousing these views is the Attorney General of the State of New York so that's actually pretty much right on.
Max: Paul Giamatti.
Aaron: Yeah so back to Dumb Money.
Max: Yeah, so just one thing, I was on the campaign trail with my cousin Jordan and there's a scene where the r/roaringkitty, who's the guy who was on Reddit telling people to buy GameStop, he was practicing to testify before Congress and his doofus brother was there, making fun of him all the time. When we did debate prep with my cousin Jordan and his brothers were there, that kind of reminded me exactly of that so it's pretty funny. Well, I don't think this is gonna come up in the campaign in California. Who knows? Maybe it will but Jordan, even though, you've got to see that it's pretty funny.
I give that movie a pretty high rating. Overall, I think it dragged on a little. It was an hour and 45 minutes, which doesn't seem like a long movie but I felt like it dragged.
Aaron: It could’ve been a little bit tighter.
Max: Yeah. There were a lot of internet memes and there was a lot of montages of internet memes.I guess that's the only way you could portray some of this. They probably had so many examples, they wanted to fit it all in. But I don't know, that would kind of put it down to three stars for me. But I'd say if any of this sounds intriguing to you, I'd love to get your thoughts on it. See Dumb Money and let me know what you think.
Aaron: Two thoughts. One is, yeah, that's interesting because I can't think of many movies that have incorporated memes other than kind of a wink and a nod of fan service but this sounds very different than that. Memes have become very much the medium of communication for, I don't know if a generation is the right term, but they've become very prominent in the last five-years-ish, ten-years-ish. But we really haven't seen that being captured in film, to my knowledge. So interesting to see how that might shape up.
The other angle on that… I have completely lost my train of thought.
Max: There was memes, right? Memes? COVID? No?
Aaron: No… Oh, it was, so I thought there was some other movies in production are coming out soon as well that dealt with the GameStop fiasco.
Max: Oh, interesting
Aaron: Is that the case? Or am I mis-remembering?
Max: To be honest, Aaron, I feel like there doesn't need to be a second movie about this one.
There could be a second movie about the COVID era for sure. I'm sure there'll be a lot more in the days ahead but I don't know if we can do… I mean, I guess they kind of come in pairs, don't they? But yeah, I don’t know.
Aaron: I guess there was a documentary, was it Rise of the Players? When did that come out back in 2022? So that's a little bit different, not a dramatization.
Max: Yeah. Speaking of which, by the way, now that we're in the post-COVID era. When did the post-COVID era start? A lot of people say the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the post-COVID era.
Aaron: Well, that is a cynical view because it certainly changed what people were putting in their Twitter profiles and photos. A hashtag of the current thing, view on current events would very much mark that as the transition point.
Max: Yeah, I think so too so a year and a half. But where was I going with this? I was saying, now that we're out of the COVID era… Ah, I don't even know… I was gonna ask what other films and stuff are coming out. Oh, no, no, I know what I'm talking about.
You know what I like now? The movies are becoming, it's worth going to the movies again. I felt like we didn't go to the movies so much during the COVID era cause who wants to sit there in a mask all day or the whole time?
Secondly, the movies just weren't that good for a few years. There hasn't been a good comedy since… Well, there have been a few good comedies since 2013. The only one I can think of is Death of Stalin. There have been some comedies but we have been in a dearth of comedies. Maybe that's still true, but I feel like there have been some good movies coming out in the last few years. We're going to the theater now and enjoying the movie. Your odds are higher.
Aaron: I’d say the moment that your odds are higher, that cinema was back in the game in terms of actually going to the theater, was the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer this summer. Neither of which I've seen yet but that definitely marked the ‘Oh, people will actually do this again.’
Max: Yeah. And a little bit last year with Everything Everywhere All at Once. Although I didn't get into that movie so much, it was good but it didn't make me hop back into the movies. But now, I saw previews. So there's a Ridley Scott Napoleon coming out, which is, think of Napoleon era, Gladiator, I guess? And there's a new Scorsese movie coming out and I'm like, ‘Oh my god, we got to see all of these so I'm very excited.
I don't know if we're gonna do a movie segment. But yeah, maybe that'll be a little lighter than the probability distribution of the week segment which I think we've taken, we’ve exhausted our probabilities. And we're gonna get a lot more technical in the last few days, so maybe ending it with, uh, in over the next few months. So maybe ending it with a movie segment is probably a good idea. Good excuse to go to the movie. And you too, you could do your own movie review.
All right. I think that's it for tonight. I hope you enjoyed the discussion on the movie, but I hope that you found our discussion on the war in the Middle East, at least... At least you got something out of it that you didn't get out from other podcasts. I'm not here to provide, I wish I could provide more. Well, we provide some moral clarity but there are other people who are better to do that. Or some contexts, maybe I could provide. I'm not really good at the spiritual advice type of thing which I kind of think people need right now.
Aaron: Yeah, the more we're sitting, it's hard to point at actionable actions, that's poorly phrased. But things that we, as individuals, can do. There's not much that I can grasp there. My only hope is that all the doom scrolling and staying up late at night, looking at the Internet, and worrying about this, that I have done in the past week, means that our listeners don't have to do the same. So perhaps we can provide that service to you.
Max: And honestly, I wouldn't recommend it because of all the fog of war-type stuff. We have the same types of things going over and over again. Just check in every once in a while.
Hopefully, I will be in touch with people in that region to get personal stories like I did in the Ukraine. It's gonna be a little different this time because in Ukraine I had my whole list from the data science summer school but I'll see what I can do.
Aaron: And it would be fascinating to know if we have any listeners in either Israel or Palestine.
Max: I’m pretty sure we do. Israel, at least. So definitely let us know. and hopefully, definitely do a call in or send me some text about what your experience is right now so that I can read it on the show.
Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.
By the way, I would have people on either side of the border over there. On the show, I was just speaking from personal experience with my audience. Again, it might actually be tougher to find these voices for me this time around for reasons that I stated.
Next week, I want to talk about our tech retreat which I just got back from. I just got back from Sturbridge Village where I had a tech retreat of, I think it was nine people, and we did our predictions for the future in the lobby of the Hampton Inn in Sturbridge Village. Then yesterday, Sunday, I toured old Sturbridge Village so that was kind of fun.
We're going to talk about that a little bit in those predictions episodes. They're not always the most popular for some reason, but I find future predictions so fascinating and figuring out where we were wrong. We've been doing those predictions for nearly nine years now so see where we're wrong, see where we're right. Tech predictions, cultural predictions, always fun. And then in a future episode, we're going to get to talk about ancient Egypt. So get ready for that. Have a great week, everyone!
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