pigeonburger
1d ago
Reviews in general have that problem, but if you focus on the text instead of the score you can usually get some useful information. Ignore the Karens complaining about rude employees or the manager not taking their problems seriously, or the 5 star reviews probably prompted by employees or bots and focus on unique information. A Google Maps review recently warned me off an automated carwash that was malfunctioning on one side, with the reviewer having pictures of his car half washed as proof.
pigeonburger
1d ago
That's just magical thinking.
Cool, can you tell me what neat gadgets are kept at Area 51?
The testimony of Maduro's guards makes it sound like the US actually deployed magic against them (probably only sufficiently advanced technology, but what's the difference in practice?) It also read differently from other known accounts of incapacitating device prototypes I've read. Clearly the US has cards up its sleeve, I wouldn't be so sure of what they are and aren't.
Being a powerful guy and still being uncertain if it'll be enough to survive, or save the day? THAT starts to scare me.
To me, relative powerlessness still counts.
Also, I don't mean necessarily personal physical weakness as powerlessness; I still see the uncertain and unknown as aspects of powerlessness.
I wouldn't consider Aliens' main genre to be horror because for the most part the marines don't feel helpless, but the parts that do feel more like horror are the ones where they relatively weakened; the first engagement where they have their ammo taken from them and can't see shit for instance. Ripley arming up with the flamethrower duct taped to the pulse rifle, or with the power loader, to confront the Queen and save Newt feels more like a victory lap, a crowning moment of badassery, when the character regains her power. Just like you know right from the start when you hear Hudson's cocky "I am the ultimate badass" speech that he will definitely die, you already know when you see Ripley riding that elevator looking actually badass that she will definitely win.
I feel like movies that really elevate horror to a new level are those that play with that powerlessness in less straightforward way, and as you mention the powerlessness can be being unable or uncertain to be able to protect a loved one. The Exorcist is a great example, the movie is a giant metaphor for parents feeling powerless to help a sick kid. Rosemary's Baby is a uniquely feminine horror movie, in that the powerlessness it targets is towards the loss of social power. A woman's power is in being able to compel people around her to care about and for her. In Rosemary's Baby, a woman that is used to having the status and deference given to her as a middle-class wife in a time and place that valued that role, has that power stripped away from her as she transitions into a motherhood role. Suddenly her worries and well-being are being ignored. No one listens to her. She's no longer the target of everyone's care and attentions, the baby is.
pigeonburger
2d ago
And that movie only 'works' because of that brief period where CRT TVs, VHS tapes, and landline phones were the most common tech of the day. I don't think you could remake it effectively now!
It could be argued that One Missed Call is an attempt at making The Ring for the cellphone generation. Of course, it's not nearly as good, but it's not the worst either.
And as I understand it the recent crop of horror films avoid this issue by making the horror come from psychological conditions that may or may not have a literal personification onscreen, sort of a 'the monster is inside you the whole time' concept, or more abstract "racism/sexism/right wing politics/relationship drama" as the looming allegorical danger.
This can be done in a fresh way, though; The Babadook is very on the nose, but the fact that it's something we can definitely sympathize with makes it work more than the monster was the personification of something we all reflexively condemn. The Boogeyman attempts it with another sympathetic metaphor but with much less skill.
And the concept of being 'locked in' and conscious whilst your body is compelled to commit violence against people you care about is indeed horrifying.
It indeed taps into the root of horror: powerlessness.
Exclusivity is what makes luxury goods sell for such a high price, the reputation for high quality, outside of sometimes the very initial push that started the company, is a cope so that one does not have to admit they are that so vain and easily manipulated that they bought a technologically inferior watch (automatics are technologically inferior to quartz watches) at car prices just to keep up with the joneses. Expensive materials and manufacturing techniques are also a cope. If Burberry had kept the exact same quality and sold their products cheaper at prices chavs could now afford, upper-class people would still have turned away from the brand; they were buying because it separated them from people like chavs.
In the digital world, exclusivity is difficult. Digital data is freely copiable. The only way you could get exclusivity of a digital product is through a database; a company would sell you an exclusive digital product and would ensure its exclusivity through control over their database. But that requires that you trust these people when they claim their product will be kept exclusive and that you trust that they will still exist in the future. If you bought an expensive pet or mount in a MMORPG, that lasts until the servers shut down, and if someone makes a server emulator for the game then anyone can have the pet or mount.
NFTs enabled true exclusivity in the digital world; not only is the ownership of an NFT on the ledger not copiable, but you can also guarantee exclusivity through code; the code itself limits issuance, meaning that at no point the issuer can decide to make your NFT mass market and destroy its value. What Yugo Labs and other collectible people figured is that the crypto crowd is ironic enough that they would be willing to purchase exclusivity tethered to something essentially worthless (generated ugly monkey avatars), after it took off they started adding a marketing cope to keep attracting less irony-pilled buyers to drive up prices, that it was actually membership into an club, that it gave you access to unique experiences, etc...
Note that I'm defending monkey pictures here not in the sense that I think they're a good thing, but that they're no more vapid than luxury goods that sell on being purposefully exclusive, they just have less of a fig leaf to hide that vapidness.
There's NFTs as in "monkey pictures" and NFTs as the technologies. NFTs enable digital property that escapes the issue of control over the database. Right now, digital ownership is based on a) the database admins will not tamper with "your property" and b) if they did, courts will adjudicate the issue and force the database owners to restore your property. In that context, it being your actual property is debatable, it's more of a contract you entered with the company to get certain services that is kept by that same company. The contract's original, binding version is not yours, the original is in the company's control and possession. NFTs means that this contract, for instance, digital show tickets, is inscribed onto a public ledger that is hardened against tampering, not just an entry in Ticketmaster's database. A house is actually a great example of what an NFT could represent; owning a house is not having the house in your pocket, it's having the deed in your name. An NFT could be the deed to a house; it would be unique, impossible to (practically) forge, kept on a public, safe ledger (again, not just an entry in someone's database), and there's all sort of neat stuff you could do with it; keys and locks that unlock with proof of ownership (or a revokable proof of access from the owner). Legal and financial transactions (like mortgages) that are adjudicated automatically by code, etc... Whether we'll get there anytime soon is questionable, but that's what the technology enables. Anything unique could be represented as an NFT.
The monkey picture kind of NFT is mostly just playing around with the economic effect of introducing exclusivity to a market, untethered from any other inherent usage value. The image is typically not even part of the NFT (as in, it's not written into the blockchain, as that is expensive, at least if you want to keep it on the base chain; it's kept externally), so what you're paying for is more like certificate. Often the image is created by an algorithm, so if you have the code and your token's properties you can recreate the image. You could recreate any of the other images too, but you wouldn't have the certificate to them. You can then use proof of ownership of that certificate programatically, for instance your ownership of a monkey could be verified by anyone and used as a ticket to access a party where you get your retinas burned.
pigeonburger
4d ago
Thanks! Personally, I'd reciprocate but sadly I doubt Canadians as a whole would, at least not these days.
pigeonburger
5d ago
It's also an added, compounding layer of difficulty and complexity launching and landing on them. A country being able to build carriers is impressive, but not as impressive as one that's able to launch planes like from them like clockwork with few accidents bar rounding errors, under stressful war conditions.
pigeonburger
6d ago
If nothing else she's useful to keep around in a visible role rhetorically, as she can be paraded as an example of Democrats moving so far left they're leaving their own behind.
pigeonburger
6d ago
I actually thought the right wing infighting a ~month ago had died down, but maybe it's coming back?
It's not, extremely online shock jockeys that only extremely online shock jockeys of both sides care about are not representative.
Sorry I couldn't find a link to the same clip that was not reposted by another extremely online shock jockey, but the right seems pretty united right now. https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2029586732614557943
The people who use the phrase use it in the way you would say "late-stage cancer". You can infer what they think of capitalism from that. It's usually college-age people or redditors who used that kind of phrasing initially, though it's become common enough that you see it pop up elsewhere from people who don't necessarily hate capitalism (often in the way capitalism is blamed for the excesses of consumerism). In general, it expresses that capitalism is unsustainable and that the thing that's called an example of late-stage capitalism is an example of how a dying capitalist system will break down and fail, or of how capitalism ends up killing its host.
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