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Culture Tag

Cities and local municipal governments are typically the worst offenders in the realm of individual liberty. They make everything from hair braiding to giving meals to the homeless to a pop-up lemonade stand illegal but for proper permit. Country Time Lemonade has their own legal aide program that promises to help out kiddos who find themselves on the wrong side of the law for their lemonade purveying endeavors (up to $300.00). Currently, non-permitted lemonade stands are only legal in 14 states. "Pathetic" doesn't quite cover it.

I felt nothing going into the newest Pixar film Toy Story 4. Truthfully my reaction to Pixar films has been exceptionally cold since Toy Story 3 was released nearly a decade ago. Other than the exceptionally well done Inside Out and the beautifully well made if somewhat forgettable Coco their output just hasn't been up to snuff. Brave was basically fine for an alternative take on the Disney princess archetype a la Pixar's brand of progressivism. Monster's U, Finding Dory and Cars 3 are irrelevant and regrettably, even The Incredibles 2 is barely memorable after only a year.

I first blogged about Juneteenth in 2015. As I noted then, the day’s significance is almost criminally under appreciated. Over the last few years, the 19th of June and its significance, are slowly gaining national popularity, reverence, and acknowledgment.

This past week has come and gone with the year's largest video gaming show. Every June, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is used as a trade show for the largest video game developers to show off their slate of upcoming games for the next two years. Bethesda Softworks brought back the development team of the newest series of Wolfenstein games to show off footage for their soon to be launched spin-off game Wolfenstein: Young Blood.

As we pointed out recently, Linda Fairstein, the New York City sex crimes prosecutor who handled the famous 'Central Park Five' case, has been subjected to a purge after the premiere of a new Netflix program on the subject. She claims the program has distorted the truth and maligned her unfairly. Now she is speaking out in her own defense. She wrote at the Wall Street Journal:

As the Great American War on Monuments is still raging, I would like to nominate a contender for removal. It’s not that I object to the sculpture on ideological grounds—I deplore the ideology behind socialist realism, for instance, but I admire some of the state-sponsored Soviet art despite it—but because the work in question does not transcend ideology . . .  and is exceptionally ugly.