fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4mo ago
Star Wars wasn't Rian Johnson's to destroy
Let's be so for real here though, the prequels were mid and only redeemed themselves way later on.
The Force Awakens was SO BAD. TLJ is probably worse, but TFA was actually so bland and pure slop. Rise was also terrible, and it would have been just as bad if TLJ had been better. So many unforced errors that Rian didn't cause.
fmac
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4mo ago
because what else can you even do?
Obviously nostalgia is providing some fuel here, but there's actually so much you can do. Star Wars shines because the universe, while logically inconsistent (I'd take over so fast with a Dyson swarm that makes missiles it's not even funny), is such a VIBE
All the best Star Wars content is the side stories. It's a clone raid on a McGuffin factory. It's the story of a bounty hunter getting caught up in something big. It's a tale of exploration in the Old Republic. Basically take any plot that would work in a Western, and give everyone blasters instead.
The graphic novels went so hard.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4mo ago
Thank you for expressing my thoughts better than I could have. I started composing a version of this comment in my head as I was reading my way down, but I don't even have to.
fmac
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4mo ago
I think Holdo was supposed to be incompetent. Why are all the rebel leaders in Star Wars so good at their jobs? Real militaries are full of idiots who get their jobs through political connections, and rebel forces even more so. Her strange appearance ("admiral purple hair") also suggests this. The movie is just being realistic here- an incompetent person is placed in high rank for political reasons ("the force is female!") and disaster ensues
This is hilarious. Otherwise I'm not sure if I agree, although I like this flavor of Star Wars cope. @hanikrummihundursvin put it perfectly.
fmac
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4mo ago
Yankee agency became an object of fascination for him: "Should an obstacle appear on the public highway and the passage of traffic is halted," Tocqueville told his readers, then "neighbors at once form a group to consider the matter; from this improvised assembly an executive authority appears to remedy the inconvenience before anyone has thought of the possibility of some other authority already in existence before the one they have just formed."
I really like antibiotics and the Internet but fuck me reading shit like this makes me want to RETVRN so bad.
This photo broke my heart when I saw it in person, similar vibe, we've lost something
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4mo ago
Unbuckle.
Of all the hills of masculinity, this is by far the stupidest to (literally) die on. Literally all downside, zero upside.
I used to get way more speeding tickets
lol. lmao even. One day you may go flying through your windshield and paint yourself across the ground like a meat crayon. The people in the other car will hopefully think "damn, what an uncucked belt-Chad, unbounded by a feminized and broken society".
Godspeed warrior King
fmac
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4mo ago
Holding shift while right clicking goes to the non Win11 menu
Your probably clicking too far to the right/not on the file name itself so it's selecting the folder
fmac
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4mo ago
idk man just sharing my lived experience , you should check your 504 bad gateway-privilege
fmac
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4mo ago
the slavs just suck at coordinating multi prong advances whether it is armored or unarmored
I believe this, but I also believe that drone ISR and resulting drone directed fires (to say nothing of drone strikes themselves) have made armored assaults, and worse breaching a minefield (already one of the hardest ops) an order of magnitude harder.
I am confident that in some sort of US Army vs Russian Army showdown, while the US Army would probably eventually prevail, as they are much better at independence and adaption (and importantly, course use more smoke and EW due to less micro from generals in the back). But they would get fucking SHELLACKED in the process.
Now of course they wouldn't breach the minefield without first airstriking everything remotely enemy shaped within 100km, and then go on to airstrike anything remotely shaped within 1,000km before they even contemplated the breach.
So the real lesson here is that if you don't have air superiority, offense is really really fucking hard. Defense was always powerful in the modern era, but with drones it got even better
fmac
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4mo ago
Because they worked out a solution, the USA was however credibly willing to throw down in a full nuclear war to stop this
fmac
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4mo ago
This is my feeling, but there's a non-zero chance Trump wakes up one morning and ditches all the tariffs, and shit moons.
Or some nerd cracks a new LLM/AI algorithm/paradigm and stuff mega-moons
Etc etc
Timing the market is RISKY
Personally, I do actually intend on not buying any more S&P ETFs for a bit, I'll probably get some more world-market equity and keep back a bit in cash
fmac
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4mo ago
It was fixed for a few weeks but the last day or so got bad again
fmac
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4mo ago
It's absurd, the split between "settings" and "control panel" is one of the stupidest things I've ever experienced from a company that prints money and has infinite resources
In windows 11 right click a file, get one style, click more options, get a second older style is bizzare.
In some menus you can go 3 generations deep from a win11 menu to an win 7(ish) menu to a ~win 95(ish) menu in successive layers. So ridiculous.
fmac
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4mo ago
They keep painting over the cruft that’s built up since windows vista
Since Vista? I swear they have so much legacy tech some menus are an archaeological expedition into the deep past of XP and even earlier
fmac
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4mo ago
You were a wonderful Aladdin and don't let anyone tell you otherwise <3
fmac
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4mo ago
I haven't but your comment was a very effective hook, and now I'd really like to read whatever thought you have bouncing around
You should tell the story!
fmac
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5mo ago
Infinity Indians. I'm not even joking.
I've read so many of your comments but I never realized you were Justin Trudeau's alt account this whole time
fmac
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5mo ago
OH
thank you I totally understand now
Our systems are too complex for us to actually understand how they work
I feel so blessed to live in your world. I just learned that cow genomics are massively boosting cow productivity and milk quality, and there's literally lasers they zap cow sperm to filter it for traits (gender?).
I'm so happy there's people who's job it is to figure that out
fmac
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5mo ago
I didn't see any Democrat making the case that the budget sucked
They didn't vote for it? The government shut down?
"Suck" in this context = unable to pass as is
fmac
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5mo ago
Back to your earlier point, I shouldn't need to pay you a bunch of money because Left Inc already has tens of billions of dollars slushing around ten thousand NGOs and Think Tanks, and I very much notice that all of that produces approximately nothing that anyone wants to point to as a rigorous policy wonk argument.
Oh I see what you're saying. Yeah fair enough I guess, that is definitely true.
They're too busy paying administrators to figure out the most equitable way to deliver money to the homeless unhoused person experiencing a lack of a structural roof temporarily but oops! we spent it all on administrator salaries.
I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with The Motte but maybe my reading comprehension today sucks because I'm really tired.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Oh sweet, so all the previous shutdowns are retroactively the Democrats' fault now.
I mean, yeah? I'd assume so, I have 0 knowledge of any previous shut downs. They should probably have negotiated better. Given all the shut downs ended, I'm sure they eventually did.
Idk why the immediate assumption to dunking on Republicans is "oh you must gargle democratic balls"
No, I love shitting on the Democrats.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
writing anything for public consumption
I don't think it's possible to meet your quality requirement as I understand it and also be even remotely consumable for the public. If it's consumable, it's going to be short, high level, and summarized.
If it's a "massive research undertaking to inform an actual laa or policy" it's going to be 100s-1000s of pages and an absolute snore fest of stats and legalese.
There's a fair bit of substacks and blogs that discuss econ/politics/infrastructure but they're short and readable, by definition
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Where are the "I know everything about trains" type posts laying out a sensible, state level energy policy? Anyone have an expansive-yet-granular solution for healthcare?
If you paid me a bunch of money I'd write one for you. But producing these is a full time job so you'd have to employe me in lieu of my current job.
Working groups throw dozens of people and thousands of man hours into papers
Exactly (I can't comment on the "no one reads them" part). Effort posts on that level of "basically actually government policy" are epic undertakings that 0 people on the Motte will do for free, as it's an actual job.
The best you'll get here is effort posts, which I guess you don't find good enough?
I was pretty happy with mine the other week explaining that why even if adding people to a city brings down average income, it's still accretive to overall city value/GDP/wealth.
View of Hamilton by the Canadian artist Robert R. Whale.
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