PyotrVerkhovensky
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User ID: 2154
PyotrVerkhovensky
9d ago
Acceptance of a situation is different from intentionally creating (or uncreating) the situation.
Taken to an extreme, if I there had been some screen that showed my autistic child would have been autistic I could have aborted her and immediately had a (higher shot at a) "normal" child. But just typing that sentence makes my blood boil.
I don't like that she is disabled, but I wouldn't trade her or our experiences for anything.
No, that is not my position. Each child has their own joys and challenges. Some are more difficult than others. One of my children is "mildly" autistic and it is a very different and more challenging relationship than with my others. But we have also shared unique and memorable experiences. A couple months ago she made a mistake in a piano recital and looked at the audience with a one of the most genuine sheepish expressions I've ever seen and said "sorry". The audience chuckled in appreciative surprise. She then started over and played the piece perfectly. When we got back home she was inconsolable because she had "made a mistake and everyone had laughed at her".
We shouldn't seek out "odd" children (unless feeling called to adopt difficult children), but we should accept what life throws at us and find the joy in that life.
PyotrVerkhovensky
10d ago
Arrival: A short review (Spoilers)
Villeneuve is a unique director. His movies use bizarre settings or scenarios as a backdrop to tell intensely human and personal dramas.
In Bladerunner 2049 he evolves the 1982 movie's dystopian frame into its full aesthetic. Skyscraper mausoleums, home to living creatures with dead souls and dying creatures with living souls. The ruins of Vegas. A glimpse, briefly, into a potential uprising. All in service of a story where a nobody ensures that a somebody has final closure.
In Enemy, it is not clear, even by the end, whether the story takes place entirely inside the unreliable narrator's mind. Huge spiders roam the city, eventually invading the protagonist's very living room (or mind?).
While Villeneuve's unsettling aesthetic is at its peak in Dune I and II, I consider them two of his weaker movies. There are two characters in Herbert's Dune: the planet itself, and the directed inevitability of massed humanity. What is personal must be in service to this setting. Instead, Villeneuve's interpretation foregrounds individual agency.
Fortunately, Villeneuve has already directed his SciFi masterpiece in Arrival. The alien ships are massive ellipsoids hovering impossibly mere meters from the earth. The aliens themselves walk on tentacle appendages, grotesquely squid-like. The camera frequently takes a near-first-person view, with panicked and claustrophobic breathing emanating from all speakers (1). These moments of enclosed fear are juxtaposed against equally breathtaking cinematographic vistas. The slow panning as the helicopter approaches the alien ship with low-lying clouds roiling across the Montana prairie. A human hand reaching fingers up as the alien's tentacles stretch downward.
Amy Adams is perfectly cast. In 2016 she could pass for 30 or 45 or anywhere in between, key to the time-bending unfolding of the plot. She treats her character, Louise, much like Villeneuve treats the movie: with understated grace and moments of sublime. Louise's loneliness palpably exudes in the first third of the movie, before running an emotional gamut from fear, hope, acceptance, and finally transcendence.
The science is inaccurate (2), but Villeneuve perfectly captures the academic aesthetic.
The idea that language constrains and shapes our experience of reality is thoughtfully if subtly explored (3).
While there are nods to liberal sensibilities (when a general tells Louise she made short work of insurgent Farsi recordings, she retorts "you made short work of the insurgents"; a soldier turns rogue following a phone call with his inconsolable wife and listening to the in-universe stand-in for Alex Jones), Villeneuve rarely lets politics infect his storytelling.
This movie feels quasi-religious and transcendent (4) in its celebration of life and meaning in suffering and loss. Louise through her contact with the aliens is able to view her life outside of time, revealing memory-like sequences of her future. This future includes myriad happy moments with her daughter, but concludes with her daughter's devastating death from cancer. Arrival climaxes with Louise joyfully embracing this future despite knowing that it means the premature end of her only romantic relationship and the heartbreaking loss of her daughter. The time that she will have with her daughter is worth it all.
Last week's discussion on Down Syndrome prompted this post. How many parents who have Down syndrome children would trade those children for nothingness? How many, if they had perfect foresight, would still choose to have the child? Age begets wisdom, experience shapes us, and relationships become our great source of meaning. A couple choosing to abort their Down syndrome child are doing more than making an expedient choice. They are depriving themselves and their child of a rich tapestry of experience; one that is perhaps more challenging and painful, but also one that can and should be fulfilling. A life of short cuts is a life cut short; not in time but in meaning.
(1) Watch this on a big screen and with surround sound
(2) At one point a whiteboard displays the "top 10" most famous equations including Black Scholes...none of which would be relevant to alien first contact. It is also preposterous that we perceive time linearly solely due to our linear language.
(3) Yes, the fact that this is the "reason" behind Louise's ability to view her life outside of time is not "subtle", but this reveal is blink-and-miss-it: my guess is most viewers would simply associate her time-bending ability with prolonged exposure to the aliens.
(4) Villeneuve grew up Catholic
PyotrVerkhovensky
29d ago
Bad takes on AI seems to be the one commonality across creed, race, and IQ. This one from theringer is a particularly egregious example, but its rare to find anything both sufficiently technical to understand how it does and could work, and sufficiently "big picture" to understand societal impacts. (Of course, many others would consider my AI takes to be just as bad).
My current modus operandi is to be whatever the other person is not. If they are an AI maximalist I am the pessimist. If they are the doomer I am the optimist. If they think this technology is all hype I become the autistic technologist with in-depth details and explicit examples.
PyotrVerkhovensky
30d ago
hey begin to think about targeting non-coding white collar work like finance and spreadsheet work since the models are not getting much better at JavaScript
This is already happening: https://www.anthropic.com/news/finance-agents
DeepSeek releases a model that is equivalent to 5.3 Codex
Already almost there if you include all Chinese companies, certainly will be by end of 2026: https://livebench.ai
Frontier models begin to entshittify as they are increasingly jailed to make them safer, while their private reputation is shattered among all of the normies who did not know how rights-violating the United States secret police are.
I'm with you on this one. We've already seen movements in this direction (eg, not releasing Mythos).
It's pretty clear to most people the general improvements to coding are dried up and a lot of the old hype was fake and tooling and chaining was the internal, secret meta from 2025 onwards
And more targeted RLHF, but yes agreed on this. However, I think there is still a ton of yet-to-be tapped potential in tooling, context, and feedback that will have massive impacts even at current model capability.
Overall my timelines are shorter than yours but I do think there is a "ceiling" and I don't think we are at risk of Yudkowsy's takeover scenario. I do anticipate "mundane" surveillance and increased slopification. My hope is in local/opensource models running on ASICs, which would at least alleviate privacy and intentional kneecapping concerns.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
God is outside time. Time itself is created.
As for why he created, here is one of the first results in a Google search: https://ses.edu/why-did-god-create-anything/, which is a simplistic but cogent summary of the Christian perspective.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
And this immediately fails the "and why couldn't that apply to anything else like the universe itself?" question.
I'm not understanding the thrust of your question. Are you suggesting the material world (or something in the material world) is eternal?
Every single thing is answered equally by "the Matrix creators want to fuck with us".
While I don't believe we are in a simulated universe, in this scenario the simulation's programmer would be, to us, indistinguishable from God.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
I wrote this three years ago, as a non-rigorous quasi-tongue-in-cheek argument for why I'm not an atheist. The TL;DR: the world I see is one that I would expect to see if God exists, which I consider (weak) Bayesian evidence for God.
Argument 1: Societal evolution and a stabilizing force
As societies evolve they adopt behaviors that benefit the society. Ideas that are destructive are either discarded or are adopted but with subsequent decline in that society, leading to internal or external takeover. Societal structures and frameworks arise from these behaviors and are likewise subject to the survivorship test. Every continent evolved a formal religious structure to promote societal cohesion and to provide society with an ethical or moral framework. The ubiquity of religion suggests that the instinct to religion is strongly embedded within the human psyche, and to remove the formality of religion is not to remove the instinct for religion. In the mid 1800s, Darwin, Marx, and Kierkegaard identified scientific, societal, and mental frameworks that removed the need for a God. For the first time atheism had rigorous answers to questions of existence, societal cohesion, and spirituality. Nietzsche summarized this nicely: "God is dead". But the psychological need for religion did not go away: it was merely replaced by classism, nationalism, communism, fascism, humanism, and many other "ism"s that were either spiritually unfulfilling for the adherents or physically destructive to both adherents and non-adherents. The brain is a physical part of the body and can evolve like any other physical part of the body. Attempting to remove a deeply embedded religious instinct is like trying to remove a hand: both the hand and the instinct evolved for a purpose.
Digression 1: definition of Religion 1
What is religion? It is a group of people gripped with singular purpose and convinced of their moral superiority. This definition is also the definition of a mob. In the Christian liturgical tradition, on Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) the congregation participates in the reading of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and shouts "Hosanna!" The very next week the crowds in Jerusalem shouted "Crucify!" and in the reading the congregation participates in this cry as well; reminding the congregation that it was our sin that crucified Jesus. But it does two other things as well: it forces us to look inwardly and realize that we ourselves are capable of great atrocities. Probabilistically we would have been in the mob crucifying Jesus, convinced of our moral superiority. How easy and almost pleasant it is for us to read Anne Frank and identify with her fear and suffering. But if we were in Germany at the time it is far more likely that we would have been her tormentors. The second thing shouting "Crucify" does is lets us glimpse the power of a mob in a setting in which no mob can actually form, and is thus an annual warning of the danger and power of untethered collective moral action.
Organized religion is a countervailing force to the mob. It provides a structure and an outlet to the "religious instinct" without it devolving into mob brutality.
Conclusion to argument 1:
The above argument demonstrates the utility of organized religion but says nothing about the truth of organized religion. Certainly not all religions can all be true, since they mutually contradict. Can and should a society be built on a lie? Plato's Republic answers affirmatively, and philosophers have debated this ever since. I personally hold truth as a fundamental requirement for a "good" society; societal structures can only be as sound as its foundations. Thus argument 1 does not hold much weight for me. However, if the thrust of this argument is correct, the onus is on atheists to create a deep, meaningful, and sustainable philosophy that can replace organized religion.
Argument 2: The problem of evil and suffering
Few people would argue that suffering and evil exists in the world. If there is no God, then there is no basis or criteria for categorizing anything as good or bad. Our (almost universal) acknowledgement of injustice and suffering must then be an evolved mental condition which is either to be discarded (along with religion as a yoke of the past) or to be irrationally embraced (in which case why not also irrationally embrace religion!). As most people, including atheists, do believe in concepts such as suffering and injustice, they implicitly behave as if God exists. And thank God that they do! Despite the perversion of our mental and physical world as a result of humanity's fall/sin God's common grace has put a restraint on our depravity.
Discussion 2: definition of Religion 2
If atheism is the null hypothesis, then there is not enough evidence to reject the null. However, the above argument points to inconsistencies in atheist's behavior that would be accounted for if God exists. Likewise, if theism is the null hypothesis, there is not enough evidence to reject the null.
Every logical statement begins with a set of a-priori assumptions or axioms. Where do these axioms come from? Are they truly self-evident or is there an element of the arbitrary or even mystic about these axioms? Described in this manner, the set of axioms or principals by which we structure our reality can be considered, in some sense, a religious dogma. Religion, in this light, is the foundation on which every scientific, social, and physical structure is derived.
While this is an interesting thought experiment it is not all that convincing for my larger argument. There is no line of argument that goes from "postulates are religious" to "religion X is correct".
Conclusion to argument 2:
If I posit the existence of a just and moral God (and indeed, God would define justice and morality), and if I additionally posit that mankind is made in God's image, then I would predict that even in a fallen state that mankind would exhibit tendencies to morality and justice; albeit tainted and obscured by our separation from God. Indeed this is exactly what we see.
On the other hand, if there is no God I would predict that while there are certain evolved cooperative tendencies, that these evolved tendencies would be no stronger than that of "traditional" religion and could be just as easily cast aside. However, we do not see this.
In my experience, the atheistic approach to ethics, morality, and justice feel like a "turtles all the way down" argument. That said, I do acknowledge that just because a position is poorly defended does not make that position incorrect.
Argument 3: reductio ad absurdum
If I were an atheist, I would likely believe that we are living in a simulation. I believe that we ourselves may be capable (given another few hundred years) of creating an advanced simulation that could closely mirror our own; if we are capable what are the odds that we aren’t already in a simulation. There would be only one “reality” but millions of simulations. And that is only assuming that humans are all there are: it could easily be that just as our current video games have characters that are mere shadows of their human programmers, that we are mere shadows of a higher race that has created the simulation.
Someone (a programmer?) has created the simulation. The programmer has created the universe from nothing. The programmer has defined the physical rules and constraints of the simulation. In a very real sense, this programmer is god to the simulated universe. The programmer would want to track progress of the simulation by having the simulated “agents” communicate back. In our simulation we call this “prayer”. If the programmer reads the logs and sees that the simulation is giving some feedback, the programmer could intervene in the simulation to correct some of the parameters. It is also very possible that the programmer didn’t just set physical constraints but also gave instructions for how agents should engage with each other (religion). The programmer may also have added random amounts of “aberrant” behavior in each agent (sin). The aberrant behavior caused divergence from the original set of instructions and led to multiple religions.
Thus if I were an atheist, I would be forced to acknowledge the high likelihood of a god existing. I would need to divine the will of the programmer and would be forced to carefully assess the major religions for glimpses into the original instructions. In short, I would be very religious.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
WandererintheWilderness hit the last one well, so I'll hit the first one.
God isn't material in the way that the cosmos is material. There is a creator, and there is creation. God didn't come from nothing, he was everything. We, as the creation, are finite and restricted by the constraints that God put into the created cosmos. God has no such constraints.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Yup. Most Christians (myself included!) are "functional atheists". The current milieu is one of agnosticism rather than spiritualism, and it is easy for professing Christians to fall into that cultural rut. Of course, most atheists in 1600-1700s Europe were "functional Christians" when the surrounding culture was "Christian".
I do disagree with your claim that Christians should be doing every action possible to save themselves from Hell. Reformed/Protestant Christianity says that outside the work of the Holy Spirit even our good deeds contribute to our damnation (they are done out of alignment with God's desire). It is only through Christ's atoning work that we can be reconciled to God ("made alive in him"). Salvation comes from acceptance of this reality (or predestined selection for this reality, if you are TULIP inclined), not from any work/action that we can do.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit"
To which I would retort, "thank goodness we have the expectation of divine rewards!". I'd much rather live in a world where extrinsic pressure constrains intrinsic depravity, especially if that extrinsic pressure comes "for free" (vs, eg, a heavy police state).
The infernalist position tends to correlate with extremely dogmatic, rigorist, and frankly spiteful believers who are often extremely difficult to have open and productive conversations with.
I resemble that remark!
Universalist: Holds that all will ultimately be saved
Infernalist: Holds that some face eternal punishment from God
I think defining the frame in this way is too constraining. Will there be universal reconciliation (that is, every soul reconciled with his Creator)? Unlikely: only those who come to faith and repentance through Jesus will be reconciled to the triune God. Will those not reconciled be faced with eternal torment? The Bible doesn't definitively state that either. Certain particularly evil creatures are destined for the lake of fire, but it is possible that the vast majority of humans who reject Christ will simply be eternally separated from their Creator (which would certainly be a regretful and sorrowful condition, one that might be characterized as an outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth).
While I don't see much evidence for the Universalist position in the Bible(1), that doesn't mean that I don't hope for it. My church regularly prays for "the salvation of all" while believing in limited salvation (and many believing in limited atonement).
I’ll also admit up front that even before I did this research, moral intuition insisted that eternal hell is not a true teaching. I can’t conceive of a good and loving God who creates a universe in which legions and legions of His creations, made in His image, are tortured brutally for all eternity. It simply makes no sense whatsoever.
One of Man's most pernicious and perpetual tendencies it to make God in our own image. When severe corporeal punishment was synonymous with justice, God's judgment was emphasized. Now that complacency and comfort are idolized, God's love and forgiveness is emphasized. Christians I otherwise respect, including C.S. Lewis and Bishop Barron, fall into this trap. Modern man is in love with his own mind(2) and thinks that God can be constrained or limited by our own (created!) minds, and fits him neatly into a box of our own making.
Eternity, forever, infinite, etc. are complicated concepts, and it makes sense as to why people wouldn’t really grok it or be able to reason about it well.
I don't think anyone has a definitive answer to what the afterlife or the new heavens and the new earth will be like. The Bible gives us glimpses, as if seen through a glass darkly, but I don't think it is for any human this side of eternity to have a clear frame (or, in our finitude, to even partially grasp) what that future may be like. Scripture is inspired and God-breathed, but God chose to impart only a partial peek into the eternal mysteries through Scripture. What I do know is that God is good (and would be so even/especially if non-believers are eternally tormented).
(1) Even John, the apostle most given to poetic imagery and speaks the most of love, has the most vivid descriptions of the punishment and doom waiting those who resist God.
(2) And, gnostically, hates his own body.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
There is a chasm between "get people to act in ways that benefit society (and themselves)" and "there is a transcendental/objective morality". The first is certainly explainable through natural means. My point is that many atheists speak and act as if we live in a universe with the second. I can think of three explanations for this behavior:
- Living in ignorance (an unexamined metaphysic)
- Cynically adapting to a culture that speaks in moral language thus adopting a noble lie. While this certainly is not outside the bounds if there is no objective morality, it does lead to inconsistency (the worst sin!) for at least the set of atheists committed to rationalism and truth.
- Genuine belief in objective morality with the awareness of their philosophical inconsistency.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Making a formal dogmatic declaration is significant. I heard someone speculate that the timing existed to preserve veneration of Mary against a Protestant world that was increasingly dismissive of her. Meaning, without these formal dogmatic declarations, Protestants might have converted into Catholicism without gaining respect for her, bringing in their own "the mother of our Lord is just a woman," attitudes and eventually reducing Catholic devotion to her.
Indeed, what I would have been like would I have become Catholic in the 1800s :).
There are no external constraints on God. I think you are assuming here that Logic and God are different essences, and God's being is constrained by Logic. But instead, Logic is God's unchanging will. Logic is what it is because of God's Being being what it is.
Pretty sure I said the exact opposite (and in agreement with you)?
"Barron seems to be hinting that God could not "make a triangle a square", that is, that God is constrained by logical impossibilities. But this is such a small view of God. God creates our minds and universe. Our minds invent or discover things like logic, or define things like squares or circles. Whether spawned by our intellect or embedded in the structure of the cosmos, these concepts (including logic!) are part of Creation itself. God created the conditions under which we can model physical reality with math, structure, and logic. Logic is a model. Logos is Truth. Logic is created. Logos is the Creator."
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
I don't think there was a single reason. She felt led towards it. The closer she got to Catholicism the closer she felt to God.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
There could be an atheistic/evolutionary explanation for why we have disgust at certain outcomes or behaviors. But I don't think the atheist could self-consistently apply moral weight or language to that disgust. Yet we still see (many) atheists use the language of justice and morality and often reveal a belief in it through their behavior.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Reformed theology is going to have a very different emphasis on predestination.
I think those outside Reformed theology put more emphasis on Reformed theology's supposed preoccupation with predestination than Calvinist's do :) (Many such cases).
I have extended family that go beyond "mere" five-point Calvinism and say that there is no point in evangelism due to predestination...and even they rarely bring it up. They certainly act in this world as if they had agency!
A list of books by Pope Benedict XVI might be a starting point as well.
Thank you, I'll take a look at these.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
If anything I hope it’s true. If it isn’t, I lose nothing, if it is, I gain everything; if nothing else, it’s a good ideal to live toward.
On the contrary, "And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable."
I'm also reminded of Shatov in Dostoevsky's Demons:
"I believe in Russia. ... I believe in her orthodoxy. ... I believe in the body of Christ. ... ".
"And in God? In God?"
"I … I will believe in God!"
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Khaled Anatolios is, I believe, Orthodox :). There is much to like about Orthodoxy. I like how slow it is to move (if at all!) and I like the national flavor of the Orthodox churches, which I think is a much better practical model than the Roman model. However, while both Catholicism and Protestantism have rich histories of missionary work in obedience to the Great Commission, I feel like the Orthodox church has become insular and introspective rather than evangelistic.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
The problem of evil is a thorn in the side of modern Christianity. A benevolent God would never allow something like childhood brain cancer; there are obviously better ways to test the sons of men than to inflict a random child with maximum pain before they have the cognitive capacity to understand what’s going on.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
"Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord."
Jesus affirms the accuracy of human moral intuition. His parables compare the reasoning of God to the reasoning of man. His sayings are based on a sensible person’s intuition.
I don't consider the human desire for justice to be wrong in and of itself, but it certainly has been fouled and corrupted. Our intuitions may be emotionally "correct" without the object of that emotion being "correct". Eros is not sinful, but Eros outside of Man and Woman united before God is.
I am also partial to my explanation because it elevates evil to a near-Godlike power, which… it is. Why else would Christ be waging a war in the heavenly realms unless it was? Why would his death be needed unless it was? Why else would He call it the ruler of the world? And I think our era needs to see evil as an insanely powerful ruler over the world — this is also conducive to wellbeing.
I appreciate your conception of Evil as being a true/near-equal antagonist (though I don't agree with it). I do think (as hopefully can be seen from my other comments) that we need to take Evil/Satan/Sin more seriously.
The endless speculation and articulating just empties the Cross of its power.
Up to a point, I agree. "Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies".
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Thank you for your thoughtful response, it gives me more to think about.
I agree that the History in general (and the Biblical narrative in particular) is part of a cosmic drama. I think Reformed types can often get lost in the "logic" of religion rather than appreciating the beauty of the story. If Jesus was "Calvinist" (in method if not theology) he wouldn't have spent much time on parables! God sharing in suffering humanity is part of this beautiful story, though as you mention there is a tendency among liberal theologians to make this "identification" the means of atonement (God understands us, and thus forgives us...a very narrow view of God's omnipotence and a very low view of sin).
As an aside, I've never heard any Protestant of any denomination say that Michael is Christ; it is certainly not the understanding that I grew up with. However, I did grow up in an environment where Satan rarely mentioned, and if he was it was almost in embarrassment. He played his part in the temptation of Adam and the mirror in the temptation of Jesus (and pre-millennial, pre-trib, dispensationalist types believed that Satan would be unleashed in the end times), but otherwise holds little place in the story.
PyotrVerkhovensky
2mo ago
Thank you for sharing this.
The post-enlightenment condition is one of lost credulity and child-like faith. It is almost a second fall: a loss of innocence that can never be regained. Modernist man can't easily believe in anything outside himself. Post-modern man can't even believe in himself.
There are certainly great scenes.
Taken as a standalone movie, there is uneven pacing, a terrible addition of a Warg battle that eats into runtime with no purpose, and a cringy elf-reinforcement.
But the Two Tower's biggest flaw is how it fails to set up the Return of the King. Very little happens in the movie. By the end of the book, Gandalf and Pippen were on their way to Minas Tirith. Frodo had gotten through Shelob's lair. In the movie Frodo has gone maybe 20 miles and is no closer to Mordor than when the movie started. Isengard is defeated but it was a comparative gadfly next to Mordor.
An inordinate amount of screentime was spent on Rohan and it's plight. We had the sub-plot with the two kids riding to Edoras. We had the Warg battle. We have the "10K Uruk hai are going to destroy the world of men" resulting in an (admittedly epic) battle that feels disproportionate relative to the weight of Sauron's forces in the next movie. We even have Aragorn telling a kid that there is always hope.
In ROTK we don't feel as strongly for Gondor as we do for Rohan. Gondor is not given as much room to breath. There are no sub-plots. Pippen doesn't meet Beregond's son, which would have given us characters to invest in. The activities after Shelob's lair are rushed, with Gondor's army teleporting to the Black Gate and Frodo and Sam covering 50 miles of Mordor in a couple of scenes. Aragorn is never seen speaking to anyone from Gondor in the entire ROTK...because all the time for such conversations was monopolized by TTT.
The trilogy would have been much stronger had the Two Towers been more competently managed.
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
That is not how it reads:
"Of course, it is likely enough, my friends," he said slowly, "likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song."
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
Hard disagree. Evil keeps coming back because the Elves give up on Middle Earth. But even as evil comes back it is less potent: Morgoth was the true baddy, Sauron is but a servant. Saruman becomes a lesser version of his former greatness when he turns to evil, and even his voice fails him. He becomes a mean beggar by the end.
The NBA is particularly embarrassing. The players don't even try to hide their feet shuffling and routinely take five-step layups (I remember when "the Jordan layup" was a jibe for the (illegal) three-step layup). The whole culture around the NBA is bling, showboating, loud, celebrity-driven. There is no honor. Iso plays are considered the mark of a great player, instead of teamwork and making the extra pass.
That said, the NBA is still about winning. The game has adjusted massively over the last twenty years with the analytics revolution. Height matters but not to the same extent. Big men are only valuable if they can also hit a three. Mr. Process himself is not a bad three point shot, and Wemby at 7-4 shoots threes like he is Reggie Miller.
Basketball as a sport is great. Pickup games can be fun even with a range of talent. It doesn't take an entire field like soccer or football. Half-court games mean 20 players can simultaneously play on a single court.
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