Episode #1016: Krispy McFeet
First Broadcast: 3/24/25
On March 8, 2025, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent recipient of a Masters degree from Columbia University and a permanent resident of the United States who had participated in protests against Columbia's investments in companies that supported the Israeli government while attacks on Palestine were continuing, was forcibly taken from his apartment in Manhattan by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who wore plain clothes, refused to identify themselves, and placed him into an unmarked car which drove him away from his apartment, taking him on a trip that ended with him being detained in an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where he is now being threatened with deportation, even though he has not been charged with any crime. On March 13, 2025, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a professor in the Brown Medicine kidney transplant program at Brown University and a holder of an H-1B visa, was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Logan Airport in Boston after returning from a trip to Lebanon, held in custody for 36 hours, then deported and placed on a plane to Paris, even though she had not been charged with a crime. On March 5, 2025, Ranjani Srinivasan, a graduate student from India at Columbia University with "an M.Phil in Urban Planning from Columbia University, a Master's in Design from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Design from CEPT University in India" who was working towards her doctorate in Urban Planning, received an email that her student visa had been revoked, without evidence to justify the decision, and two days later ICE agents knocked on her apartment door looking for her, prevented from entering only by her roommate refusing to open the door, an event that scared Srinivasan so much that she fled to Canada the next day. On January 25, 2025, ICE agents detained Jessica Brösche, a German tourist, at the Mexican border in Tijuana on suspicion of trying to work illegally in the United States, and held her in detention for six weeks, including eight days in solitary confinement, before allowing her to return to Germany on March 11. On February 18, 2025, Lucas Sielaff, a German tourist, was arrested at a Mexican border crossing by ICE on suspicion that he had stayed longer than allowed on his previous visit to the United states, and he was held in custody by ICE for two weeks before they released him on March 6 and allowed him to fly back to Germany from San Diego that day. On February 26, Rebecca Burke, a British tourist, attempted to enter Canada at a border crossing with Washington State, was told by Canadian authorities to return to the U.S. to get additional paperwork, and when she returned to the U.S. to do so she was arrested by ICE and held at the Tacoma Northwest detention facility in Washington state for 19 days before she was taken from the center "in leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs" and put on a plane back to England. These are only a handful of stories that are making the news, but together they paint a picture of a country that has suddenly become much more hostile to anyone who is not from here, and that combined with President Donald Trump's extreme belligerence towards Canada, Ukraine, NATO, and other ostensible friends and allies of the United States has prompted many people around the world to boycott American products and postpone traveling to the U.S., both possibly indefinitely. Has anyone calculated how this unwarranted hostility towards other nations will affect our economy and overall reputation internationally? I don't know, but I know two months of this nonsense is bad enough, so four years' worth will undoubtably be much, much worse.
Episode #1017: Watch it Twice
First Broadcast: 3/31/25
To quote from the article "AMC Premiering Swedish Movie In English Using AI-Powered 'Visual Dubbing'" on Gizmodo:
AMC Theaters, always one to hop on the latest trend, is premiering a Swedish movie that uses a new form of AI-based dubbing to make it appear as if the actors are speaking in English. Instead of merely replacing the voice tracks with ones recorded by actors in another language, the movie Watch the Skies will additionally see actors' facial movements altered to make it appear as if they are speaking in English.
As you might expect, we here at Free New York have some strong feelings about this idea, not the least of which is: Doesn't technology like this continue to make it more difficult to know when you're seeing something that's "real" or not? Instead of trying to make a foreign film more localized, shouldn't we instead be more embracing of a foreign film's foreignness? Don't techniques like the above ignore how some concepts are difficult--if not impossible--to adequately translate from one language to another? If you're not going to watch something with subtitles so that you can hear the original audio, shouldn't more respect be given to the art of dubbing to fit the action as it is on screen? Does this increase the possibility that such techniques will be used to reanimate dead actors on screen, or create even more convincing "deepfakes" to deceive people? Excusez-moi de vous déranger!
Episode #1018: One Weird Trick
First Broadcast: 4/7/25
On Sunday, March 30, 2025, Donald Trump said in an interview with Kristen Welker of NBC News that "I'm not joking" when he was asked to clarify if he was thinking about running for a third term as President. "There are methods which you could do it," he added. To be clear, despite speculation about whether loopholes exist to allow such a thing to happen, the Constitution has been clear that this isn't allowed since the passage of the 22nd Amendment in 1951:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
Ah, you say, but what about the scenario Welker presented to Trump, where Trump would run for Vice President on a ticket with JD Vance--or some other stooge--who would run for President, win, resign, and "then pass the baton to" Trump? "Well, that's one," Trump agreed. Except, it isn't, as the 12th Amendment to the Constitution indicates:
But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Trump isn't eligible to run for a third term for President, so he's automatically not eligible to run as anyone else's Vice President. At least, that's what any sane reading of the Constitution would show. Anyone trying to do end runs around these Amendments is clearly violating their combined intent, which is to limit any President to no more than two terms in office. As Derek Muller, a Professor of Law at Notre Dame University specializing in election law, told the Associated Press, "I don't think there's any 'one weird trick' to getting around presidential term limits.'" Then again, in a world where Trump's people insist that tariffs are tax cuts (they're not), and that the U.S. has a right to acquire Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Gaza (it doesn't), I shouldn't be surprised when the man himself toys with yet another thing that he is clearly not allowed to do. Is this flurry of doublethink deliberately calculated to drive people like us in the reality based community mad? If only that schmuck had gotten one more season of The Apprentice, maybe none of this would have happened, but I can only dwell on the past for so long.
Episode #1019: This Is Efficient?
First Broadcast: 4/21/25
On a national level, there might be too many bad things happening to count, but on a local level, one of the big stories in New York City is how incumbent Mayor Eric Adams has decided to run for re-election as an independent, even though he still maintains his party affiliation as Democratic. Could this be because his polling among Democratic voters topped out around 15%? Maybe. Could it be because Andrew Cuomo, the former New York State Governor who is now also running for Mayor of New York City, was polling over 30% among Democrats? Maybe. Could this all lead to what I call a "nightmare scenario" where Eric Adams--who was once a Republican and seems to be overly cozy with Trump--runs on one independent line, Jim Walden--an attorney who looked into running as a Republican--runs on another independent line, Andrew Cuomo--who famously helped Republicans gridlock the New York statehouse when he was Governor--runs as the Democratic nominee, and Curtis Sliwa--who is currently endorsed by the Republican Parties in all five boroughs--runs as the Republican? Yeah, that would not be a good selection for any Democrat, or anyone else on the left side of politics for that matter. Fortunately, things aren't that dire yet, as our ranked-choice primary this year allows us to select up to five people whom we'd rather have as Mayor, and as long as none of them are Cuomo, the Democrats will stand a good chance at nominating someone who isn't just a "Republican Lite" candidate for once. Of course, that still leaves the general election, where Eric Adams has a not-impossible chance of winning even a four-way race, which John Lindsay and Joe Lieberman each proved could be done after they both lost their own respective primaries. So, on the one hand, don't despair, because a lot can happen between now and November; but on the other hand, let's still try to make sure things don't go from bad to worse!