https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurelings/comments/ql10b8/episode_407_salmon_chaos_entry_1098lk0506/
A restaurant chain in Taiwan caused a spate of name changes with a special offer, and Ken and John go into some depth on the history of name changes.
https://preview.redd.it/2xzd2b025vf71.png?width=524&format=png&auto=webp&s=01c58fbf157f9df838df18748d45045da226da40
John Roderick is prohibited from attending any future JoCo Cruise events after an investigation found he violatiled their Code of Conduct by sexually harassing a fellow performer, Laser from the band the Double Clicks, backstage.
I've thought a good while about posting this here, but Laser spoke up so people would know. I guess I'm putting that above my inbox going down in flames.
Know this: I feel conflicted about John. He is charismatic. Engaging. Endearing. He can spin a damn good yarn, and overall I still believe he has his heart in the right place. But man, does he fuck up from time to time. Not ok.
At least it helped me put the abrupt and ugly end of my favorite show into a bit more perspective. There was definitely more going into the decision to end Friendly Fire than the bean dad story.
Just to add: Laser uses they/them pronouns. I would kindly ask you to respect that.
Just heard this episode! It's great.
https://www.omnibusproject.com/377
I’m finding a lot of references to beans and antisemitism but I have no idea what’s happening. I’m not on Twitter and it seems like he deleted his account anyway so I can’t look for myself anymore. The max fun subreddit has also seemed to scrub all the posts about it, save one which only addresses people’s reactions to it.
From the bits and pieces I’ve gathered: John posted some fake story about beans (and maybe his daughter??). When people pointed out it was fake, he doubled down on it, leading people to dig up his old edgy joke tweets. This has lead to him being Cancelled, though I have no idea what the real extent of the outrage is or how justified it is. According to the McElroys, the event displays a pattern of behavior that they can’t get behind, though I still have no idea what that means. Apparently Jeopardy is also somehow involved and Friendly Fire might be canceled by Max Fun.
This all sounds like some absurd fever dream. If someone could give me a complete breakdown of what exactly happened I’d really appreciate it.
I’m not here to defend John Roderick, but I’d like to offer some words of caution. Those of us who listen to John Roderick, especially over many years, know how outlandish his humor and stories can get. They can spin into unpredictable directions and particularly with a show like Omnibus (with Ken Jennings), result in one-line zingers that are incredibly ridiculous and possibly offensive if taken out of context.
As far as I can tell, whenever I looked into one of the “problematic” slurs dredged up by twitter peeps, it was in the context of John mocking the people who would say such things. There was a rape one that was mocking people who make fun of rape. The mud-people/Jew one was mocking racists and anti-semites, and actually came from a thread where John was railing against the unjust expelling of a Black teenaged girl from a school.
I’ve not looked at the background of all of the old tweets, and some are not possible since they are partially private, but based on this informal investigation I’m calmed about understanding who the authentic John Roderick is: someone who is deeply thoughtful and attuned to nuance especially during lengthy conversation (which I think differs from twitter’s format by some measure), and someone who’s helped me be more compassionate, self-reflective, and humble over time. Unless material surfaces to demonstrate actual bigotry, the record is clear (if you want to look at the record truthfully -- i.e. not by selective screenshots).
98% of stand-up comedians* use off-color humor to get laughs (some of these comedians are actually racist, homophobic, etc., but the majority are not). John does that too, though he often does it by taking the voice of the bigot and exaggerating it with the purpose of showing how ridiculous it can get. (The recent twitter thread claiming to be the leader of Antifa wanting to harvest adrenochrome from babies is an example.) Maybe they’re not funny to everyone, but they also don’t communicate what twitter people wanted.
The collective outrage and yearning for a blood sacrifice is, in the Case of the Can of Beans, unjust. My urging of caution is in the hopes that people will look into what is actually being said, what is being amplified, and how problematic it is that rushes to judgment and execution occur based on the veneer of truth.
(* Scientific or not, it’s still the same percentage :)
Imagine my surprise when John Roderick made a massive storm all over the internet this weekend. He generally has a pretty dry, snarky sense of humor and tends toward subtle satire.
Naturally, bluechecks on Twitter, lacking in all understanding of subtlety, satire, or humor, found a thread he had written about fucking with his daughter about opening a can of beans. Turns out this amounts to LITERAL CHILD ABUSE.
After getting outraged, they dug into his history and found ironic replies from almost a decade ago.
Clearly he is an earnest antisemitic racist monster, and not someone intentionally mocking those types.
Also, you should check out the Ultimatum EP. It's really good, and amazingly prescient for something written in 2005.
I fell behind several episodes and just caught up and was surprised to hear the new theme songs. I figured something was up... so I did some digging and discovered the controversial tweets by John Roderick. Did the brothers ever address this directly or did they just switch songs and move on?
[Our actual AMA page is up. Please post questions there] (https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3fadzi/im_john_roderick_candidate_for_city_council/)
Hey everyone, this is John Roderick. I'm running for Seattle City Council position 8 and I'll be on /r/Seattle tomorrow from 12-1:30 to speak with undecided voters and answer some questions. I'm a musician and an artist who is passionate about expanding neighborhood-to-neighborhood transportation, increasing our city's housing stock across across income levels, community-informed police reform, and building municipal internet in Seattle. I'm looking forward to the discussion!
[More on my campaign] (http://VoteRoderick.com)
Has anyone read "Roderick" by John Sladek? It's about the first intelligent robot and although I enjoyed it, there were some confusing bits towards the end that I simply didn't understand. Maybe someone has read it and can help?
Spoilers:
What was the deal with Ma and Pa switching bodies? Why was Pa in that weird robot-company towards the end?
)