netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Absolutely.
Watching the Darth Vader LARPer wake the fuck up? Adam Driver totally could have sold it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
It’s a fix because “hothead learns to respect the bigger picture” is a Star Wars narrative in a way that “young prodigy becomes cowed by failure” is not. The latter is less fun and even more sanctimonious.
Like, imagine if Luke’s response to losing his hand was “huh, I guess Yoda was right,” and then he goes back to Tatooine for the rest of his life. Lame!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
You’re forgetting something.
TLJ was written in 2015 and rewritten in early 2016. This was circa season 5 of Game of Thrones. Subverting Expectations™ had never been more popular. Johnson wanted to make a twisty movie because he thought it would be good. If you don’t believe me, look at this interview.
So that really is where it all stemmed from. It was thinking about Kylo's path, thinking about where I wanted him to be at the end of the movie to set him up for the next film. And thinking okay, that means we're gonna clear away this slightly more familiar dynamic of the Emperor and the pupil. Clear the boards from that, and then that's much more exciting going into [Episode IX], the notion of now we just have Kylo as the one that they have to deal with.
Hilarious in hindsight, sure, but not at all what you’d expect from someone trying to salt the earth. He knew, by this point, that he wasn’t writing or directing the next movie. Dude just didn’t want to remake ESB or RotJ. Hence Luke contrasted with Yoda. Kylo with Vader. Snoke with the Emperor. None of the scenes which call back to the OT play out the same way.
This is…actually a good idea? It’s crucial to a lot of high-quality sequels and reboots. Take the initial conditions and play with them. Invite viewers to jump in and out of the original mindset. I could derail into all sorts of examples from comics to anime; deconstruction is popular for a reason, especially among outsiders. Auteurs.
Rian Johnson was not hired to play that auteur. He certainly wasn’t given free rein to redefine canon. I’d say the game was rigged from the start, but the January ‘16 rewrites suggest otherwise.
(As an aside, the production timelines for these films are absolutely insane. Trevorrow was hired for RoS before TFA even released. What fraction of those TLJ rewrites was a response to TFA’s mediocre foreign performance?)
Point is, the movie we saw was thoroughly made by committee. All the stakeholders got something by sacrificing, well, the fundamentals of plot and likeable characters. You’re not seeing Johnson’s devious plan to disarm the franchise. You’re seeing his team’s attempt to ride the deconstruction bandwagon.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
I promise you, that’s not what committed leftists think they’re doing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
You’ll want to link it as a top-level comment in the Culture War, per the reasoning here.
Aside from that, welcome to the Motte!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
Huh?
I don’t know what specific comments you’ve got in mind, but there’s a pretty obvious difference.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
I highly recommend Cryptonomicon as well. Ranges from good to amazing depending on your interest in computing and communications.
Prescient in a hilarious way, too.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
What would you change?
The government outsources quality control by letting each guild collect its rent. There’s deadweight loss, but that’s the price you pay for hedging out some of the worst outcomes.
Maybe we have the capacity to do a more laissez-faire model based on reputation? It’s more plausible now than in the Yellow Pages era.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10d ago
My Texan mind simply can’t comprehend the prospect of hundreds of pounds of snow sitting on my roof.
As for controllers—do you actually like them lighter? I feel like the heft of a Switch pro controller is much nicer.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10d ago
No, not that one. I was talking about the clock with 20 comments, literally all of which are praising Donald Trump.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
No, no, there’s definitely a beast keeping her in the castle.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Okay, but what if Bob is a Christian baby…?
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the end of a long day, or because I dealt with an AI-psychotic crackpot earlier, but I can’t follow this at all. Surely there’s a more elegant framing.
I definitely don’t see why it’s culture war. Not unless this is a devious way to criticize the woke left.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Isn’t that fully generalizable?
Time and money spent on elder care isn’t spent on roads, farms, or a warm campfire. How far down should our current course take us?
I find it far more likely that there’s a control loop. Negative feedback. At the extreme end, it’s “I won’t starve to keep Grandpa alive,” but it doesn’t have to get that far.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
While I get the impression you’d say this no matter what was in these files, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
The indentured servitude pact still doesn’t account for Earth’s inevitable immolation in the expanding Sun.
If you want to write something off for failing “eventually,” you’ve got to be more specific.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Community college has cheaper tuition, and it’s more compatible with an existing house/kids/job. So you’ll get people who could have gotten into state schools, but couldn’t or wouldn’t go. Not sure how the percentages stack up.
I’d like to see the pre-COVID numbers for two-year colleges. I suspect the pivot to online offerings closed some of the gap. Less reason to settle for the shorter degree if they’re both being run from your guest room.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
OotP was my favorite at the time. In hindsight, I suspect that was entirely due to the Department of Mysteries.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Agreed. I should have elaborated.
When UC and others decided to cancel standardized tests in the wake of COVID and/or Floyd, various people said it was going to harm math ability in the incoming classes. They were right, of course, and should be recognized as such.
The ones I’d rather not credit are the Chris Rufo types, who are happy to crucify the College Board for anything and everything except the SAT. Same for the overlapping group of anti-credentialists. Really, this is a big win for one of the pillars of the college application industry.
Oh, and I guess I expect the scientific racists to run with this result, too. Causation be damned.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
#2 seems obvious to me. The committee seems to agree, judging by their recommendations. Giving up their best predictor of math ability had consequences.
Expect this to get wielded as a cudgel against anything that might possibly be called DEI.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Wait, 15 years? Was there a sea change after the recession, or something?
Anyway. I was putting together a response about supply vs. demand shocks, and how the change in student population really doesn’t have to represent a change in the overall one. Then I read the recommendations section of the actual report.
The majority of our workgroup recommends…a systemwide reexamination of the possible return to standardized testing.
Guess what year UCSD dropped their SAT/ACT requirements?
If you throw out the single best metric you’ve got to measure math ability, you are going to get more variance. Doesn’t matter if the population got worse or even better, you are giving up your ability to find them. You’ll have to use proxies like (inflated!) grades and made-up clubs. The workgroup was quite unsatisfied with their options.
This is rather frustrating. The SAT and ACT genuinely do have a host of systemic problems thanks to their effective duopoly on standardized testing. Apparently Goodhart’s law wasn’t one of them. But it’s not for lack of trying—you can’t drive a block in my town without hitting a Karen Dillard. Too many suburban strivers racing to the bottom. That whole ecosystem is only going to be boosted by all the dissident rightists looking to score points against DEI. Big win for credentialism.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
There’s a squeaky fan or something at my office. It sounds exactly like the ostinato strings in a certain track from Halo.
If I don’t comment in the next couple days, grab your shotguns.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
The Empire basically never defends its people. Sometimes it actively sells them out. This is because the Empire doesn’t really have people. It has subjects, measured only by their value to the Emperor.
It might be more accurate to compare the New Republic to Imperial splinter warlords (Zsinj, Isard) or to Pellaeon’s Imperial Remnant. None of those have a great track record vs. alien interlopers or even each other.
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