DTulpa
1mo ago
The Pandora Radio option is there mostly for car trips with other people. I'm not really a George Michael or Prince fan and wouldn't acquire their albums. But 80s pop hits are the best pop hits, and they're definitely more palatable to others than, say, Autechre. I don't mind firing and forgetting a playlist there as long as we're having a good time.
I think what made me pull the trigger years ago on setting up my own media server and foregoing streaming was deciding one Thursday that I was going to watch David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man' that coming weekend. I saw it on Prime, noted its availability, played a little bit just to have it at the top of the queue, and made the plan. Friday night rolls around and it's gone; 'Unavailable in your region'.
15 minutes may seem like a lot to some folks these days. But that's all the time it took to download a blu-ray rip, fire it away, and put this nonsense behind me.
DTulpa
6mo ago
I remember reading that Hemsworth was tapped for a US adaptation of The Raid films. I didn't think it would work because American fight choreography wouldn't capture the appeal of silat.
Suddenly I'm watching a prison fight in Extraction 2 that feels very similar to Raid 2's. And it works! Sure, the protagonist has merc gear and guns, and it dodges direct comparisons to the Indonesian films since it's not an adaptation. But without knowing anything about Extraction's production history, it feels like vestiges of the old pitch made their way in.
DTulpa
11mo ago
I have no idea who Pence or Biden may have exposed their documents to while they were sitting in their garages. So maybe indict them any way well after the fact.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Understandable, and a fair enough play. Despite my last post, I'd probably do the same.
One does lament, though.
DTulpa
9mo ago
Yeah, this all intuitively rolled into my mind after the incident. Not shocking in any revelatory sense; more a "this how things really be" reminder/wake-up from the artificial, socialized script everybody's trained to have - particularly in a corporate environment.
If Justin is Castro's son, and he with the Canadian government vociferously deny it, then who is sewing seeds of low trust.
DTulpa
29d ago
Then I think your nose will serve you right here. I know here in TheMotte we've had people praising the writing and also those unimpressed by it, and the latter consistently brings up zaniness and the 'it's a fun romp' vibe as criticisms. And regardless of writing quality, everybody pretty much agrees this is a Larian game with a BG skin, not a proper continuation. The horniness of the companions alone makes it feel juvenile to me.
Outside of a dabble or two, I don't table-top. But my understanding is that Critical Role played a big part in reviving DnD in the age of streaming and Let's Plays. I went to a DnD birthday party years ago for a girl who had no awareness of any of the rules or anything, but wanted a game held because the show looked so fun. She was very confused when we explained to her that she had already wasted all her spells in the first combat encounter, when all she really wanted to do was girlboss a mage.
That night was fun, don't get me wrong. But I felt like I got a decent insight into the kind of person CR was appealing to: people who like the drama, the self-expression, and the costumes of table-top, but are quickly in over their heads when they have to roll for crit or w/e. So they just watch others do it.
I don't necessarily think this framing is wrong, but this certainly isn't the kind of anodyne charity deployed in the wild.
It's all well and good to say that 90s liberalism would drift into a kind of conservatism as times change. What I see is progressives habitually claiming that this new strain of 'conservatism' is actually the latest genealogical strain of fascism and white supremacy that traces its lineage to Nazism or similar. You see the difference, and so you can surely understand why that tribe may balk at this "No no, you really are technically right-wing" insistence.
I agree that some of this is 'embarrassed conservatism' being expressed by people who probably identified as good liberals up until the 2010s give or take. But some of this is because there are consequences to being frankly conservative. Few are going to honestly embrace the conservative label if that immediately and unfairly typecasts them as villains.
I'll admit to not seeing it outside the occasional clip, so maybe you'd like to put an asterisk there! But it's not my cup of tea from the outset. I liked it at the time, but I'm over Rick & Morty zaniness and yelling and have been for a while. I've also become very picky about animation in general, and the 'popular default' look of the show kills my interest.
I think there was also a cartoon/live-action crossover with SNW? Ehh... It has this obsession with winking self-reference that undercuts the whole thing for me.
I think a lot of these attempts to course-correct after DIS and PIC are just doing the obvious "make it more positive and fun!" pivot, but still not understanding that the appeal is more than that? That's all well and good, but what I miss the most is the professionalism and maturity. This is one of my favorite scenes from TNG, because I think it encapsulates the thoughtfulness and quiet dignity that Trek embodies to me when at its best. Two fully grown adults have a legitimate disagreement, they talk through it diplomatically, when it's resolved you know they're both fully back on the same team, and it's over within 3 minutes instead of dragged out for the whole episode (or a season, god forbid). I try to think how a modern writer would play this out and all the excessive drama or sentimentality they'd load it with.
I was in that trench, too. I don't share your view of that period. Plenty of Christians condemned WBC, and this was casually disregarded as inauthentic or meaningless because we perceived very little daylight between WBC's stance on homosexuality versus Christianity on the whole. "WBC is disgusting, but at least they're honest" was the kind of thing you'd read (or write yourself) in a lot of those spaces.
Worth remembering that WBC was paid attention to primarily for its protesting of soldiers' funerals - an act that I'm sure you can easily imagine pisses off people of with all sorts of different politics and faiths, including Christians who were against gay marriage! The image of some Jesus-loving Good Ol' Boy passively accepting Phelps and co picketing his dead son's funeral is a bit hard to swallow.
And since we're comparing notes on history - I don't know why anybody should go hunting for the unicorns of consensus-bucking trans spaces when a lot of us here have spent the last 10 years watching their political movement steamroll nearly every forum and platform we used to be part of, and got to see first-hand how these spaces got captured, converted, and degraded. I am not lacking examples of what I see as the default MO of trans and trans-supportive spaces. If somebody wants to show me a trans space that goes against a lot of the current progressive orthodoxies, I'll happily peek at it. But then we will be clear that the thing making their lives harder isn't right-wing bigotry, but a prog-aligned media that doesn't consider them worthy of attention. I think you have a good point that perhaps they are reluctant to criticize their messengers out of fear that it may result in wave of Red Traditionalism crashing over them after tampering with the barricades. But I think if you're already subscribing to that dynamic on anything, it's too late. You're practically a foot soldier, whether you're enthusiastic about it or not.
DTulpa
6mo ago
And most people would probably be with you in punishing J6ers if the previous consensus on violence hadn't been utterly thrashed by progressives and fellow sympathizers. So yeah, they're not judged as harshly because the standards changed. We weren't aware they had changed, but media consensus dictatated otherwise. And this is somehow incomprehensibly alien to you? Come now. That's a pose.
So you would be willing to throw the book at J6ers because you feel they objectively warranted it. Congratulations; now what? I am more interested in fair treatment than I am justice as a terminal goal, because I think that's the superior algorithm for a host of reasons. So what if I think J6 qualified as violent by some technical metrics? So does play-shoving a friend, and I'm not going to entertain anybody calling that violent just because Webster says so.
So if BLM wasn't violent, then neither was J6. As I said before, this is indeed partly cynical. But is also deadly serious. I refuse to call J6 violent because of the valence of that word, much in the same way I don't consider assimilation to be cultural erasure, that taxation is theft, or that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is ethnic cleansing, even though any of those could be considered technically true. This isnt being cryptic, or hiding behind a mask. Why do you assume this some deliberate, self-inflicted partisan error?
No impugnation intended on my end either. I don't blame any of them for ditching cubicle life, and I have moments of almost immaturely wishing I could get pregnant, if only to have a readily-accepted excuse to escape its doldrums. The women who left are displaying perfect sanity, and I don't think it reflects badly on any of their work ethics for the reason you point out.
My last paragraph was mostly included as an interesting anecdote because of how much it struck me coming from a woman's mouth. It's the kind of comment that is typically pattern matched to a certain male 'MRA' type that certainly exists online, but I've never heard uttered in the real world. I'm sure some men think it but have the sense to never vocalize it. But when I do hear something that cutting and uninhibited, it is nearly always from women directed at other women. An interesting dynamic with probably other observable parallels, but another topic.
I saw the film probably in my late pre-teens before ever being aware of the conversation around it. It struck me immediately as parody and/or satire. The opening of the film has a grinning child soldier with that old-timey propaganda feel that even a middle schooler would detect as an intentional riff on grandpappy's jingoism. Then a minute later you're watching men scream as they're haplessly ripped apart. I even had the sense that everybody in the movie was too good looking to take seriously. And I remember feeling bad for the Brain Bug when it was getting that painful looking device shoved into it at the end, and I felt instinctually that this was intended, at least in an "oh that's awful..." morbid gag kind of way. My reception of it as satire was more visceral than intellectual.
If you're looking for something in the literal text of the script to show it's hand, I'm not sure how well that would fare. To me, there's just so much artificiality in the world and people who inhabit it that it's hard for me to see it as anything other than an extended pisstake.
So boom shoot is out, and you're ideally looking for something more current. So we'll skip the usual list of 96-08 'classics' I'm sure you're aware of to one degree or another.
Have you checked out the Metro series? I've yet to play the third entry, but I quite enjoyed my time with the Redux versions of the first two. They don't lean into the pure shooty aspect of games like Halo or Destiny quite as much, although they are still shooters first and foremost. There's a lot of quiet exploration, sneaking around, and even a few linear mini-tours through underground Moscow. I'd describe it as STALKER without the jank and sandbox elements, if you're interested in that kind of tone and atmosphere.
S'all opinions, but nearly all the new Trek stuff is awful to varying degrees. Strange New Worlds may the best of the bunch (not saying much) by virtue of not being a nihilistic, mean-spirited mess, but you get the impression the writers would rather be penning Buffy. I'm not dead set against a musical Trek episode, but when you have your Klingons mimicing KPop instead of Klingon Opera - without even the presence of Q to justify the absurdities - it's just a lollygag.
If you have any fondness for TNG, S3 of Picard is surprisingly decent, and probably the best sendoff for the cast under these current conditions. But even so, it feels more noteworthy as an impressive salvage operation given what came before. It's also bittersweet seeing the flame flickering on the candle again, knowing it's soon to be buried in turds as if to apologize for being decent for one single season.
Also, spoiler for the ending dilemma if you'd like a little thematic titillation: The youth of the Federation has been infiltrated and brainwashed by an alien enemy to destroy it from within. Space Boomers need to save the day.
Gotta say I found this pretty bold in today's age where media goes great lengths to kiss younger generations' asses, and I'm surprised I've barely even seen it discussed! There's no moment where the plucky young cadet winkingly upstages the Enterprise crew, thank fucking God.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Imp always seemed more direct with his disdain. darwin would couch his with the sort of "Have you considered" plausible deniability wrt the rules, but transparently just calling people assholes. That or just terminating a convo with evasiveness.
I think there is some value in reflecting on "Maybe you just suck?". But I don't expect many people to do it when asked, and it was noticeable that despite being a sometimes quality poster, Darwin's effort levels would evaporate by the time he was issuing those queries.
Of no particular import - I also pegged guess as a darwin alt just because the posting style seemed so familiar. Not that I have a problem with it.
DTulpa
11mo ago
My default assumption, but I can also see current-day writers avoiding it because "I feel icky just even writing the word". Part and parcel of modern writing being unble to write anything outside of its own perspective, and coming up with ridiculous (yet strangely gimped) caricatures when it attempts to.
DTulpa
11mo ago
Is Fasnacht all that spicy? Some bizarre imagery and some grotesque caricatures, but not really Love Parade circa '99 (RIP). More of a colorful brass instrument party that occasionally invites itself into your pub, killing any attempts at conversation without yelling.
DTulpa
1mo ago
Gaming communities by my experience were solidly anti-War on Drugs, anti-foreign intervention, anti-Bush (and the aspirant neocon world order he represented), anti-censorship, anti-gun, and pro-gay marriage. Of course there were stalwart holdouts who bucked those trends to various degrees, but there was no way to mistake the dogpiles and multi-page sniping they dealt with as a measure of high popularity.
On the question of socialism, it was a mixed bag. Hugo Chavez fans were mocked for their earnestness, but there was a general sentiment of "If only we were a bit more like Sweden". The second invasion of Iraq may have had some initial support, but it was clear people had largely soured on it within a few years. "Slut shaming" and similar things were topics with no clear consensus that percolated for a decade before spectacularly erupting. Trans wasn't really thought about at all. We 'knew' that drug laws were brought about because of racism, and we 'knew' that US black people were getting the Rodney King experience every week. Noam Chomsky was a thoughtful old dude, and Kent Hovind was lol.
I know you may quibble about what constitutes being 'on the Left', but the idea of leftists feeling pushed out of communities because of rightists is something I can't even conceive of over the last 20-30 years unless we're only talking about the those on what we used to call the fringe. Today's modern SJW may have indeed felt unwelcome back in those spaces, and they may have been aggrieved enough to see themselves as attacked from right-wing forces. Wouldn't make it true, any more than a Republican forum turning away Nazis would make said Republicans on the Left.
DTulpa
2mo ago
Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'm not sure if matters of consent are of the utmost primacy to me.
I have no interest in being hamstrung by the circumcision debate while more clear and obvious ethical violations are occuring in front of our eyes. Especially since nobody's going to harangue me for having incorrect opinions on circumcision.
I get why it may be logically consistent and principled to go after both circumcision and gender transitioning wrt to minors, but I think reality is screaming for some triage and focus here.
I can't believe I'm asking this years after the fact - but did Trump actually say "They are rapists"? Because in that sequence of words, it's obvious to me it's possessive 'their'. As in 'their drugs, their crime, their rapists'. But everybody up to a VP candidate in the debates just so conveniently interprets it as him calling Mexicans rapists or whatever. And now it's one of those things that "Everbody knows he said" like the fine people smear job, the koi fish smear, and 'Tim Apple'.
I hope you understand that this is one of the many reasons people who aren't already persuaded by this hackery place low value in your assessment of what constitutes moderate or far-right.
Something about 'Ron's book ban'.
This morning I read an article about a Florida school district removing some dictionaries because they included definitions on the word 'gay'. Wether you think this is a sincere attempt to avoid litigation or an insincere stunt, I leave to the audience.
DTulpa
5mo ago
Fair point, but it's worth noting that issue is under the larger umbrella of concern regarding mistreatment and misadvisement of children. Are more girls seeking treatments and surgeries than boys? That could be enough to justify the intensity of the spotlight. And critics of the medical and educational institutions are clearly against the whole program. It's not like 'indoctrination and mutilation of boys' is expempted from judgment and ire.
Outside of that - and excepting a can or worms like Audrey Hale - when's the last time there was any kind of national furor or argument over a trans man taking a 'real' man's spot? The only time I see trans men given any kind of attention lately is in regards to how tough being a man is, apparently. Whenever these debates come up, they're given a kind of perfunctory acknowledgement before people go back to arguing about what's truly on people's minds: an uninterrupted parade of MtF Dylan Mulvaneys.
I think there's obvious reasons why this is so, but I'm guessing we're all somewhat aware of the talking points.
Given what I saw in the last US election, I'm not too keen on letting the average low-info, TV-enraged person have the process of voting greased up for them any further. It's an imperfect process, but I would afford a minimum of respect to people who at least took the time to leave their home, get in line, and sacrifice a few hours of their lives for democracy. Those who are not physically able can make a similar gesture to request their own mail-in ballots. I would say this miniscule effort demonstrates and engenders more skin in the game than automatically sending every Joe and Jane a ballot just waiting to be filled out after a CNN story on a candidate gives them a frowny. It's not evident to me why their input - lazy as it is - should be given any due by default, or further enabled. I can't think of anything positive or constructive they contribute to the process, but certainly a few negatives.
Democracy has always suffered from the dilemma of "what if the idiots vote the wrong way", but maybe we can stave off the worst of it by putting up these bare minimum of barriers? Like, I see a future where people can vote for their presidents via their X accounts or a similar platform. I'm sure that would be amazing for generating 'skin in the game', and also be utterly horrible precisely because said skin doesn't exist. You laugh at a GIF of Biden falling down AF1's steps, then punch the button for Trump without getting off your couch. I would like to stall that as long as possible.
How close was he?
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