So excited

I can’t wait until September!

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David Moore

You really are setting yourself up for a fail.
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February 15, 2022 3:04pm
- Michael Johnston
  
  I fear you’re right. As much as I want to be able to look forward to this, I suspect it will be a huge disappointment, for a reason that can be summed up in one word: ‘Woke’. Woke and Tolkien are chalk and cheese. Woke is all about using stories as political propaganda whereas Tolkien’s literature is mythology. It is archetypal and touches us at a much deeper level than the political – a level that the woke don’t even acknowledge the existence of. Woke is kryptonite to mythology. I suspect that this upcoming production will be woke through and through and therefore will not capture the mythological magic of Tolkien at all.
  
  Apart from that, this is not being made by Peter Jackson, who pulled off the near-impossible with his LotR trilogy of films. “We shall not see his like again”, to quote from another TV franchise that started well but went horribly wrong when the showrunners ran out of source material.
  
  On the topic of source material, Jackson had well developed literature to work with, whereas this production will be based on the Silmarillion, which was put together from notes by Tolkien’s son Christopher after his father’s death. The Silmarillion is interesting to Tolkien nerds, but is not exactly a page-turner. Plot and characters will therefore be much more heavily constructed that was the case in Jackson’s films, again, by woke writers, almost inevitably.
  
  I so very much want to be wrong about all of this…
  
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  February 15, 2022 4:26pm
  - Tom Hunter
    
    … whereas this production will be based on the Silmarillion….
    
    Heh. Danyl Mclauchlan already nailed this years ago on his blog site, The DimPost: Peter Jackson to Film 95 Hour Adaptation of Silmarillion
    
    It is also understood that Jackson is planning to move away from digital representations of large battles – many of which occur in the third film, the Quenta Silmarillion.
    
    ‘What we did with Lord of the Rings was groundbreaking at the time but is now standard in the industry,’ said a spokesperson for Weta workshop. ‘What Peter hopes to do this time around is film real battles with real weapons and real carnage.’
    
    The Screen Actors Guild has yet to comment on Jacksons plan to butcher his cast but legions of Tolkien fans are signing up to die for the film.
    
    ‘I’d like to be eaten by a Balrog in the Battle of Sudden Flame, but I’ll probably end up being stabbed by some Orc,’ said one fan. ‘But that’s okay too.’
    
    As I recall it was the most (annoyingly) popular post he ever did thanks to all the Tolkien fanatics around the world who found it.
    
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    February 15, 2022 8:26pm
- ngatimozart
  
  He might be because they will really have to pull something excessively specifically out to beat Sir Peter’s productions. We’ll just have to wait and see. As long as they don’t do a final series of the GOT type cock up.
  
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  February 16, 2022 1:42pm
- Viva Christo Rey
  
  Yeah, I love LOTR but it has become apparent that in these times that they can’t make entertaining movies these days without cramming it full of woke nonsense. Peter Jackson did it with his trilogy but sadly the world has been in steep nose dive since that happened.
  
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  February 17, 2022 10:46am
cmm

Bread and circuses.
Female warrior? Looks like another wokefest.
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February 15, 2022 3:08pm
- redqueen
  
  You’re assuming ‘they’ identify as female… 😉 Tisk, tisk, old boy…or girl…or them :p
  
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  February 15, 2022 3:40pm
- Cinematic
  
  It’s true to the original novels. There are some hardcore chicks. And we have Ronda Rousey in real life.
  
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  February 15, 2022 3:49pm
- Nigel Kearney
  
  It’s Galadriel. She didn’t spend her whole life sitting in her garden having visions. Before that she was out and about stabbing people with a sword, and rightfully so.
  
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  February 15, 2022 4:00pm
  - Michael Johnston
    
    True, but I regretfully suspect that cmm is right about the wokefest.
    
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    February 15, 2022 4:27pm
  - Frank the tank
    
    She was a sorceress though. Can’t remember her taking arms in any of the literature.
    
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    February 15, 2022 5:59pm
  - alloytoo
    
    Unless you read the books or watched Jackson’s movies.
    
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    February 15, 2022 6:03pm
- gump
  
  You’re upset because Tolkien wrote characters that were female warriors?
  
  This is a fantasy world. It does not exist. Do you understand the concept of fantasy?
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:52pm
  - mikenmildagain
    
    He seems to be upset about very many things.
    
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    February 15, 2022 7:50pm
  - Dave Winefield
    
    I think so. I have lived in this country for 78 years!
    
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    February 15, 2022 10:20pm
  - Sean OConnor
    
    You realise it’s OK to criticise someone who puts Lizzy Bennett on a motorbike even though Pride and Prejudice is fiction, right?
    
    Tolkien produced great literature and its tragic to see it bastardised for money and an ideology almost diametrically opposed to his (and which runs through his works).
    
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    February 16, 2022 9:44am
- ngatimozart
  
  Both the Elven and Dwarf races had female warriors. Don’t think I’d want to go into battle against a cohort of pissed off hairy dwarven woman armed with axes. I was thinking of Gimli’s line at the booze up after the Battle at Helms Deep.
  
  For the serious side, women have fought in battles over time and I don’t have a problem with it. The right for women to bear arms within NZDF came in during the late 1970s when they were given weapons training. Some of us guys took the attitude that it was about time because they an take our places in the trenches whilst we go down to the pub. After all you have to be practical about these things. Today women have acquitted themselves well within NZDF and we have one who lost her life during combat in Afghanistan.
  
  I served with woman during my service and there were very few who wouldn’t made the grade on active service. It would have been about the same percentage as guys. Then as now I didn’t give a shit about their sex, religion, colour, sexual orientation, politics or whatever. What was and is important to me and most of my mates is whether or not the person an do the job required of them and has our backs as we have theirs. If they do then that’s great; if they don’t then they are no bloody use to anyone except as sniper bait.
  
  Further afield women fought with valour in the French, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Czechoslovak resistance forces during, the Russian Army front line and partisan forces WW2.
  
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  February 15, 2022 10:30pm
- Paulie_
  
  I believe there’s a POC elf as well
  
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  February 16, 2022 4:25am
the deity formerly known as nigel6888

https://arkhavencomics.com/2022/02/11/yeah-its-gonna-suck-amazons-lord-of-the-rings-2/

“Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” JRR Tolkein

Galadrial in armour, elves of colour, female dwarves. “Intimacy Coordinator” on set.

Woke.
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February 15, 2022 3:18pm
- spanish_tudor
  
  All the females will be portrayed as invincible Mary Sues, while the males will be weak, conflicted, and useless.
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:12pm
- ngatimozart
  
  Galadriel used to wear armour. She was a bearer of one of the Three Rings of Power and IIRC fought in the War against the Dark Lord when Isildur cut off the Dark Lord’s finger bearing the One Ring. I could be mistaken, but am certain that she was a warrior as well.
  
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  February 15, 2022 10:34pm
  - Gus
    
    Paraphrasing what was said above “evil can’t create anything new, it can only distort and corrupt something that already exist”. So stop saying “this already exist”, that’s where you’re missing the point.
    I’m sure they will find a thousand excuses to make LOTR woke. I’m not interested in how good those excuses are.
    
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    February 16, 2022 12:21pm
    - ngatimozart
      
      I didn’t say that. Hmmm are you replying to a post of mine?
      
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      February 16, 2022 1:39pm
Libertarians are right

I too am excited but it’s tempered with the knowledge that they are going to wokeify it as much as possible. Unfortunately, wokeness seems to be more important to writers than actual ability these days.

Wheel of Time was the perfect example of this. I enjoyed it but the biggest ongoing theme of the books was differences (between genders and cultures mainly). A major part of this was that most of the main characters came from a small village. Of course they made the village multicultural and made women channellers as strong as men and completely ignored the underlying theme of the books.
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February 15, 2022 3:28pm
- RoboRob
  
  Re WOT. I thought they did ok on the men v woman channerlers. They clearly show logan as significantly more powerful than three strong woman.
  
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  February 15, 2022 4:50pm
ronsegal

If it is anything like the recent Wheel of Time series then prepare to be disappointed. Robert Jordan must be turning in his grave with his fantastic saga of 13 books being so rudely disembowelled into a short 8 part series. Could almost have been made as an expensive insult.
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February 15, 2022 3:34pm
- Raphael
  
  They’ve already said they’re including things Tolkien know about
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:10pm
- ngatimozart
  
  Yes but a second series is coming so I’ll wait and see what they come up with. I do think that a lot of subplots have been glossed over and that will ruin the story later on.
  
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  February 15, 2022 10:37pm
Sir Cullen's Sidekick

But remember – it is not being filmed in NZ. It has moved to UK I believe.
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February 15, 2022 3:39pm
- Ultima
  
  No, the first series was filmed in Aotearoa, mainly in Tamaki Makaurau I believe.
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:09pm
Cinematic

Amazon are putting out some decent stuff. Far superior to anything Netflix are producing.
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February 15, 2022 3:45pm
- surfing
  
  Stranger Things is good, Haunting of …series… great, Black Mirror, Umbrella academy, behind her eyes, the witcher, ozark, orange is the new black ,was ok but got bad .
  
  Theres more , but, thats what I came up with for now.
  
  One thing is true though, it’s a golden age of original content.
  
  One thing about wokeness though, there are far more gay and lesbian relationships going on tv shows than in real life. They’ve overcompensated…. and Dr Who being a woman….pfffft…. never watched Dr Who since then.
  
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  February 15, 2022 4:31pm
- Raphael
  
  You haven’t seen the mess they’re making of Wheel Of Time.
  
  Amazon is desperate for a show to rival Game of Thrones and is trying to make either WoT or Lord of the Rings into that show.
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:12pm
  - James Stephenson
    
    Their version of Reacher is apparently far superior to Tom Cruise’s film though.
    
    Subscribing to Amazon will have to wait for the Missus to get whatever she’s watching on Netflix finished and then Disney’s turn for the kids to watch Boba. I’m refuse to have more than one streaming service on the go at a time.
    
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    February 15, 2022 5:56pm
Winsome Peters

It’s probably gonna be full of nauseating woke bullshit:

Woefully contrived female characters, weak vacillating male characters, an over the top ethnically balanced cast and homosexual or transgender hobbits and elves.
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February 15, 2022 3:45pm
- Blackbob
  
  There’s no probably about it, it is.
  
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  February 15, 2022 5:35pm
nz_aj

The first series will forever remind of what might have been. Amazon are signed up for a minimum of 4 more series, which won’t be filmed here.
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February 15, 2022 3:46pm
- Sir Cullen's Sidekick
  
  Yes it won’t be filmed here. So Jacinda cannot claim credit for it, but I am sure she will do it…
  
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  February 15, 2022 6:12pm
Tom Hunter

So excited

Oh Gaawwdd. Things like this really do make me wonder how connected DPF really is with our changing world.

You were super-excited about the first of the Star War’s sequels as well, when even the trailers told you it was just the original 1977 movie storyline dressed up with some new characters. And of course it was all downhill from there, so much so that it’s dead within Disney, with faint talk of perhaps re-booting the series again by pretending these last three never happened.

This will be the same – but worse, because it lands in the middle of the Woke insanity that’s emerged in the last few years and which even the Star Wars franchise did not have to deal with.

This series is going to be killed the same way every other such story has been in recent years. I did appreciate the comment that exploded from Ring fans around the world after the Superbowl commercial for this:

’Evil cannot create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what was invented or created by the forces of good,’
J.R.R. Tolkien

As that article states:

This is intentional, not accidental. The brands and franchises that our culture holds up in high regard are being repurposed in order to create pre-made delivery systems for their message. It’s an attempt to normalize their politics by embedding them in things we love. In reaction, many people have abandoned these properties and denounced them.

The same is likely going to happen to Lord of the Rings, as it’s the latest victim of reimagining from a group of people who have lost touch with the people.
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February 15, 2022 4:17pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  Everything is political for sad sacks like Tom Hunter. I feel sorry for him.
  
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  February 15, 2022 7:54pm
- Jim
  
  You are on point there, just a different type of corporatised propaganda to the daily BS news cycle.
  
  Ricky Gervais (again) defiantly pointed out a few uncomfortable truths to the Hollywood elite class in his Golden Globes speech.
  
  https://youtu.be/iJOb9xHggS4
  
  “no one cares about movies anymore, nobody goes to the cinema anymore”
  
  “most films are awful, just remakes”
  
  “this award means more to you than anyone else”
  
  “you’re in no position to lecture, you know nothing of the real world, so if you win please no political speeches, just come up here, collect the award, thank your agent and f@ck off”
  
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  February 16, 2022 6:50am
andrewo

If this excites you, you must lead a pretty dull life.
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February 15, 2022 4:18pm
Sean OConnor

Why be excited? This is something written by a bunch of orcish wokes with a Tolkien badge slapped on it. I hope it sinks faster than Numenor, with less staff escaping.
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February 15, 2022 4:39pm
emmess

The drinker asks ‘why put in that kind of work when you can haphazardly toss in a bunch of race swapped characters?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QJbAbe2yyo&t=2s
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February 15, 2022 4:48pm
- alloytoo
  
  Indeed I enjoy the Drinker’s criticism.
  
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  February 15, 2022 10:17pm
- Paulie_
  
  Absolutely brilliant vid
  
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  February 16, 2022 4:40am
- Fuzzysnuggleduck
  
  That was brilliant.
  Funny, but also right on point and a truly considered response to people who don’t like the lore of LOTR twisted to suit a modern ‘message’ about diversity.
  The other side only has accusations of racism (“you are a Nazi”) against those that are disappointed with beardless & black dwarf women.
  He also had a good point that there were diverse races in the stories already, but they were in distant regions (like nations and cultures tended to be, before modern times).
  …..So why didn’t the series create some lore for the Easterlings, or Harradrim?
  The Witcher series just decided to slip in black/African elves into their elvish tribes too.
  And then so many historical series on England more recently seem to need to show blacks or asians, even in the royal court of England.
  It is so obviously contrived and jarring.
  
  Like he said, if the film ‘Black Panther’ had a sequel that just happened to have an Asian tribe living in the same geography with the movie’s tribe, without explanation, or Wonder Woman suddenly had males amongst the Amazonians….people would be annoyed and puzzled.
  
  The youtube talk by ‘The Critical Drinker’ there is actually on point and clever enough it should be made into a transcript and published.
  A good response to the main deflections I see that just call disapointed LOTR fans ‘Waaacist’.
  
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  February 16, 2022 9:35am
Jim

Serious point the government is not covering: I wonder what number vaccine we will have to receive in order to go to a NZ cinema in September 2022?
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February 15, 2022 5:35pm
alloytoo

Beardless Dwarves? Blasphemy.
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February 15, 2022 6:04pm
- ngatimozart
  
  Definitely and their women should be hairy and axe swinging too.
  
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  February 15, 2022 10:40pm
Frank the tank

I’ll go in with an open mind as I did with Wheel of Time.

Nothing can be as shit as the last 2 seasons of GOT when the 2 idiots didn’t have any literature to copy.

The problem is that they picked the wrong timeline to pursue. They should have gone earlier when the wars were greater, the dragons bigger and the elves more bad ass.
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February 15, 2022 6:04pm
Inandout

This guy sums it up nicely. Poor Tolkin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QJbAbe2yyo
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February 15, 2022 6:15pm
greybeard

Puerile rubbish.
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February 15, 2022 6:47pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Haven’t we already seen this? I could have sworn that I went a red carpet parade a few years ago.

I must be getting old.
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February 15, 2022 7:12pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  The entertainment industry is very big on franchises, and slavishly copying movies and shows that have been successful. That’s quite simply what works and what makes the big money.
  
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  February 15, 2022 7:57pm
Brenty

Why on earth no KB posts today seriously engaging with the biggest political event in a generation? Who actually cares about American television?
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February 15, 2022 8:41pm
- Paulie_
  
  You men the ? ⛺
  
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  February 16, 2022 4:44am
Billy

Tolkien literally said he wanted LotR to be kind of folklore for England, so then why are there black Hobbits and Asian elves? It makes no sense. Might as well make Black Panther Asian. That’s how much sense this makes.

Not to mention, the stories they are making are completely new. They aren’t even Tolkien’s stories.

Let’s face it, this isn’t LotR. They’ve just hijacked Tolkien’s work and the the he built to sell something different and hope that loyal fans will be duped in to giving them money anyway. It seems DPF has fallen for it.
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February 15, 2022 9:19pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  “Must have racial purity in my TV fantasy show”
  
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  February 16, 2022 6:29am
  - Fuzzysnuggleduck
    
    Strawman. Complete twisting of what is the issue here.
    “Must not twist a well established vision and world-lore to suit my own personal identity politics of the moment”.
    
    If people want black elves (when they are uniformly described as ‘fair’) to be shoehorned in, and want a magical forest look more like Queen St Auckland, then they should write their own stories.
    
    Your response is so dumb and shallow in thinking.
    It is like the linked Youtube commentator above said (much more thoughtfully than you), that ……people are NOT saying that you can’t have diversity or other races in stories – but Tolken is a well established world ………
    It doesnt need to be recreated in a way that makes the content-corporations feel ‘woke’.
    This is a wedding of political correctness and big business. It adds nothing to the lore, at the very least a distraction, and at worst actually offputting.
    
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    February 16, 2022 9:44am
  - Sean OConnor
    
    Your tribe is obsessed with altering and cancelling literature for ideological reasons, not ours. We just want fidelity to authors and artistic merit.
    
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    February 16, 2022 9:47am
lazza

The passion and obsession with Tolkien has thankfully missed me in the dark-fog-hype-elitism … and disappointed expectations of my reverence.

My favorite literature includes mostly bios and factual accounts, some fiction such as “Dune” or the realism of “Hunt for the Red October”.

Fantasy… Nahh.
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February 15, 2022 10:25pm
RdM

Reminds me I could offer for sale my early hardback editions of The Two Towers and The Return Of The King, the former with a fold-out map that’s larger than A3… I don’t have the first, The Fellowship Of The Ring.

I’m also reminded of an amusing satire of a purported conversation with Noam Chomsky about the politics of the latter …

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/part-one
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/part-two
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/part-three
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/part-four

“It’s ludicrous to believe that this ring, or any ring, is indeed a “ring of power”—whatever that could mean—or that it, as an inanimate object, is “evil,” or, indeed, that the fate of Middle Earth depends upon its destruction. We are supposed to accept this because Gandalf has recounted a couple of legends of dubious legitimacy. As we will discuss, the truthfulness of these legends is highly suspect, bound as they are in a conspiracy to keep the indigenous beings of Middle Earth under Elvish thrall. Hobbits, a race hopelessly addicted to pipe-weed, are, from Gandalf’s perspective, the ideal example of a malleable native people. How fitting that they are selected as the “bearers” of this worthless bit of jewelry.”

It’s a very funny satire;- I’m glad I found it again.
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February 16, 2022 12:35am
Aunty

Why aren’t there any Asians in it?
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February 16, 2022 9:02pm
SHG

This looks absolute shite. It looks like formula Hollywood dreck written by disposable contract hacks.
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February 17, 2022 11:13am
Schmegegge

“Report: Amazon has received $4.7B in tax breaks globally over the past decade; $4.1B was from the US and weak disclosure laws could put the rest well over $600M”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmvk8/amazon-has-received-at-least-dollar47-billion-in-subsidies-globally-watchdog-says

Given the frequent critiques leveled at subsidies in these pages, seems a little odd that it’s not expressed for this rort.
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February 17, 2022 7:48pm

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