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12d ago
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is just a higher budget/concept Gilmore Girls. Though it has better beats because it doesn't have to pad out entire seasons with silly plots and being something of a more exacting version of what came before it necessarily makes most of it better. Gilmore girls took like a season or more to find itself but the same kind of comedy, cadence of writing, loveably weird characters all exist there and if you're willing to deal with something 50% more plodding and girly, it's definitely worth a watch even if Lorelai is a much harder character to like than Miriam. It even does has the same thing where pretty much every man in the show is nearly perfect (except one or two) save for flaws that are basically trying to be remedied which makes them look even more perfect (like Joel in Maisel). There's also Bunheads which was the interim between Gilmore Girls and Marvelous Mrs Maisel which again is basically the same show with different content again. I do think that Daniel Palladino became more involved in the writing with Maisel than he had been previously, though he still was fairly involved but I think it made Maisel sharper or more cutting rather previous iterations. And the show basically existed mostly pre-woke being standard for TV shows so it's not really threading any needle. In fact many of the storylines which were probably thought of as benign back then wouldn't exist.
The Good Wife was a show I really liked but gave up about four or five seasons in because I could not handle the fact they stopped giving you information about the cases, but just started in the middle of the case and the audience wasn't privy to all the information about so it was hard to form an opinion on.
The Good Fight I watched all of because it was just that insane. It threads no needle and is basically about Trump Derangement Syndrome. And it's very hard to tell if they're being ironic. To some extent I think they are being ironic to have a certain amount of plausible deniability but I think they did lean into it specifically because I think it's literally what it is about. The main character is completely broken by Trump being elected that they try to change their life, they dedicate their life and time into fighting Trump, the world has this weird sheen that's somewhere between The Good Wife and Evil (another King spouses show) where Trump's impact on the world is given this surreal aspect. My brother once asked me if the show was being ironic when seeing an episode out of context and I said it was being post-ironic, which is something I'm not really sure what it means. But I think it absolutely is about people who have TDS are self-aware that they have it and just have to live it while they try to fix the reality warping impact of Trump by doing everything they can to fight his policies. But it's actually something where the people who are advocating for these things are not really trying to do it with misrepresentations, it does elide a lot of arguments that would win but gives the other side a lot more room to speak than most shows about wokeness (in the same vein as the good wife but not having nearly anyone who's a real main character representing the right, so it could come off that only side characters and bad guys represent anything pro trump or anti-woke) and I think part of the weird post-ironic aspect is the dissonance a smart person who understands that Trump is just a man is effected far beyond the capacity that a man should be able to impact so Trump becomes this kind of icon in the show that not only represents everything wrong with the world but a Cthulhu that always swims right and can only be observed with horror. The show starts the main character seeing Trump get elected on the news and dropping their wine glass in horror and ends with trump announcing his next campaign and dancing around as they watch in horror.
This is just a description because it's another spinoff of the Good Wife and not really a recommendation in any way: Elsbeth is another spinoff of the good wife and if you like or hate her character you'll know where you'll stand on that show. It's a Columbo made for children though it started a bit better than that, it's basically devolved into complete nonsense where characters act like they're from a Disney channel sitcom. I wouldn't recommend it unless you find Elsbeth from the Good Wife/Fight delightful and even then only for the first season. But I have a bias against Columbo style mysteries because they show you who did it (and this is even worse because at least Columbo has figure out how, Elsbeth just knows immediately past the pilot episode). It also is getting woker as it goes along but in the benign Disney channel sense where the preaching is not subtle but also seems like it's intended for children and not even in a condescending way.
Evil (sadly not a spinoff of The Good Wife) is another King spouses show that has a lot of modern/woke themes throughout. It basically takes the tone that woke is right by default and it is pervasive in culture but it's not worth getting in to the weeds over. So it will deal with a lot of woke topics but not really address them as you need to be preached about them. Just that woke is right (or mostly right) and lets deal with demon possession or whatever X-files thing they have this episode. It's actually very good at sort of presenting the modern world and not really giving too much of a shit about making it about being moral for a show about good and evil which is interesting. My main problem with the show is that it deliberately does not resolve information. It will show you demons, monsters, evil AI, and sort of just go well that exists (or maybe doesn't) your investigation is over. There is a lot of histrionic parenting and children talking over each other and a lot of people who checked out early cited these as problems but in terms of presenting the culture war aspect of the world and not really becoming a focused diatribe against it, it's better than the good fight and from what I can remember probably as good as the good wife because back then it was less contentious to be differently political/cultural than it was to be when Evil came out. (And I say sadly it's not a spinoff is because the main villain is Michael Emerson who is married to Elsbeth in real life and it would have been great to have their characters interact, he just plays a bogstandard villain Elsbeth when they finally got them together but Emerson's character here is great because he's almost like a cross between a Hannibal Lechter and Wile E. Coyote which the dissonance does kind of ruin the horror aspect of it but it makes his villainy fairly endearing.)
Another recent(?) show that thread the ideological needle is The Resident. It was a medical procedural that redeems what old men bad guys and has a black man and asian man as a villain at one point. It has some preaching about things but it's mostly about stuff like guns are bad and do a lot of damage (the most culture war thing I think I can remember) but wokeness is even less present than something like the Pitt and it feels like they listened to their experts, at least for the first few seasons, and they'd often mention things that feel like actual concerns of doctors. It's a terrestrial tv show and I wouldn't say it's great but it's passible and I remember very little overbearing wokeness that rubbed me the wrong way and I was surprised at how the show seemed to not get drowned out in being about the moral aspect of everything that happens (like the Good Doctor). If you like slightly above average medical shows then I'd recommend it but you gotta want a medical show and the standard familial/friend drama in any show that goes on for 20 episodes a season. Along with The Good Wife (Cary) and Gilmore Girls (Logan), it also stars Matt Czuchry who is pretty easy to look at (though gets a bit too thin in this show).
I wouldn't recommend this show unless you just like watching TV and don't care if it's good or bad but one thing I've pointed out before is Switched at Birth which had a whole arc about campus rape that was misinterpreted by everyone and resulted in a worse situation for all involved because the bureaucracy that had to happen because of the report (of which was done without the knowledge of the person raped) ruined everyone involved and there was no real bad guys except for the people that decided to report drunken sex (where the girl just reported she felt bad about it) as rape for someone else and the school destroying the man afterward because it was just a blanket policy for any situation where this came up. Her reputation is ruined as a liar because she didn't even believe she was raped and he reputation became that of a rapist. A lot of people were really mad that the storyline existed at all because they felt it denigrated women by not showing an actual situation that involved real rape.
Oh, there's also Criminal (UK): It's only a few episodes for each season and it also goes both ways on culture war aspects but it definitely shows the limits of what we should accept as blanket fact just because of the culture is woke. I'm actually shocked that the episode was allowed to come out considering how anti-woke it ends, a certain second season episode. Otherwise it's a pretty good show with a neat idea of being just the interview with the criminal and nothing else and watching them crack the case during the interview (it's not always about getting them to confess). Criminal Germany was probably the best one and Criminal France the weakest. But I really only remember the UK one dealing with the "woke" reality of the world, and maybe it doesn't thread the needle more than just showing results like the above campus rape situation where intentions and belief are not worth more than evidence.
I know he does sort of misrepresent republicans as confused democrats in his shows but Aaron Sorkin almost always has this idea of the world where people from both sides have ideas worth listening to and even moreso once he left the west wing (though I still think he ghostwrote for it occasionally) as people who can also put aside their differences and solve the world's problems. It's a little irritating listening to characters who are so smart they can't be wrong even if you agree with them but it never went out of its way to truly present people on the right as morally bad which I think is basically just the standard worldview of a young leftist person, sadly. Back when Studio 60 came out the show was basically the subtext of Sorkin have a relationship with a Christian woman and being angry and embittered about it because of his own Reddit style atheism but by the end the character that thinks this way is praying to God. Sure, it's a kind of literary reversal that's probably just for drama but I do think it works in a threading the needle kind of way where even if it's just something done with no lasting impact to wring as much out of a situation as possible it's still better than where we were a few years ago with New Amsterdam and All Rise that were basically pure propaganda in one direction.
I have so many shows in my head I can't really remember anything right now but if I remember more I'll post more, but there's still tons that exist before the current year and get to feel as good as the ones that thread the needle without really having any woke content at all. Granted a lot still fought the culture war in their own way, but it was so much better than it is now.
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12d ago
The Pitt felt like it had obvious woke energy but it was nearly subsumed by trying to just give glimpses of the doctors' personal lives and focus more on the cases. It basically speedran itself to being like half about the doctors' personal lives by the end where where characters personal relations happen to show up at the hospital for different reasons and it felt really forced. Though you're right the preachiness is very bad and eyerolling, but unlike something like New Amsterdam, it moves on fairly quickly in most regards from being entirely about preaching. I'd recommend it to anyone that can tolerate the idea that it's a good doctor show, probably the best currently airing, but it's also going to woke preaching that often seems nonsensical (admittedly the briefest preaching they make but the most hilarious was saying that being fat doesn't impact someone's health). Though maybe that is reflective of reality at this point, dunno.
It's basically like ER if it was done as a single shift with episodes being in real time, which lends itself very well to the reality of it. I don't know if it's real but the way it presents itself and shows treatment rather than explaining it to the audience feels as real as I'd expect.
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12d ago
I like to think of Zorba, at this point, as a being that has ascended to higher plane and the remaining mods are communicating with his astral essence through sacred rituals and prayer.
I don't want to multiquote because that's usually the failure mode of long discussions here that are contentious but there are a lot of questions here which I'll assume are not rhetorical. I want to make clear that I've mostly been talking about WhiningCoil and Steve just stems from that. This is a thing I've seen many times and it's probably why I've come to believe that the mods can never admit they're wrong and it's that someone new or unknown to me insults an active poster and they completely get away with, no warning, no ban nothing. The active poster insults them back and they get banned. And If I argue that this is unfair the mods will come out and tell me that I am wrong, and stupid. Both of which I accept and know but I also feel it's kind of a bad look to just break the rules in this way but I'm actually not in favor of banning anyone for anything except spammers and trolls who are specifically trying to disrupt conversations so I think it's just something I need to get used to or along with.
I don't know why you think I am your enemy or am acting as such but my disagreement does not represent that nor is my idea that you should admit that WhiningCoil's ban was made in haste and basically guilt by association with a post that shaped its meaning showing up after and appearing next to it related to owning the mods or anything like that. I think it's incredibly bad moderation to do something like this because it changes the rules to be more than they are stated. If you want the rules to be different there's a sidebar, I mean there's no explicit rule about calls to violence at all or "fedposting" if that's what rule Capital Room and WhiningCoil were banned for. But there's certainly no rule that says even if not explicitly stating a call for violence if it looks adjacent to it then you will also be banned. As I've said in another comment I believe that he was actually controlling his rage and bile when making that comment and if you wanted to ding it for being low-effort, sure, but somehow it's about breaking a rule that doesn't exist if you interpret what was written uncharitably. And if the end result was simply this single day ban I would not care because I generally don't care about bans that happen that aren't about users personally insulting other users. But I meant what I said that this ban will be used as reasoning for a longer ban in the future, so it absolutely does matter because long bans are one of the big reasons why people choose to never come back. The "never admitting wrong" is about this.
I get that you feel that Steve needs to be banned for breaking that command. But when a ban like this happens it's like something designed to get Steve banned. Like how apparently, I, because I don't post enough, am allowed to insult other people, but if someone insulted me back they'd get banned and I would not even get a warning. If what I'm doing right now would get me banned save for the fact that I mostly lurk then by all means ban me, I actually am extremely uncomfortable making posts in the first place and would prefer to be warned off or sever the possibility. I end up making comments like this because I am incensed and severely wish that I hadn't in the ensuing replies.
What are you supposed to do when people violate rules over and over? It depends on a lot of things. I think letting it go is the most optimal situation since I generally don't care if someone violates rules that do not impact the level of discourse here. At the end of a comment chain when people get jokey, no I don't think they should all be banned for low effort, but if they start conversations that way it needs to be curbed. Steve being mean to you guys may affect how other users respect you, sure, and you've gave him a specific rule about it. But to me the context actually matters. Just like you give lurkers or newbies leeway that you don't for regular users it might make sense to give leeway based on the context of the situation. You banned someone for a rule that doesn't exist which they may or may not have violated depending on how uncharitably you take their post. Steve breaks his rule. I get it you have to punish him because you've tied your hands but 30 days when I've seen nothing to suggest from any mod that WhiningCoil actually broke a rule except for the initial ban post that just seems to say "well, i feel like i should ban you too because this is a little too close to the other post that actually broke the rules," which again I'll point out that this annoys me but wouldn't get me out of scrolling if it didn't mean that it's another step toward that user being gone forever because in a year this will be part of an incompletely cited list of situations in which WhiningCoil has broken rules in a specific direction leading to a long ban. And that's why I think it's not a 1 day ban that doesn't matter. If this place operated differently then I would believe differently and not respond like this.
I don't think that you should ban people forever because you hate their opinions but luckily, I'm not Steve so I don't have to pretend that this should reflect on what I think. And I should make clear again as well because of the implications in your post you're not my enemy. My opinions are not really that aligned with Steve or WhiningCoil or the people that think you mainly target right wing posters and are trying to get them off the site. I think that it's more reflective of the fact that Steve and WhiningCoil (or from the other side who just got banned token_progressive) are very emotional about their beliefs and for some reason being emotional about beliefs gets you banned. I hate to use Dase again but if he unemotionally calls a poster an idiot or despicable, or Trump a retard, it barely registers amongst the other AI content because he genuinely seems to not care about whether he's insulted you or broken any other rules. But if you care and say the same things, god help you. How do you deal with it? Just moderate with the same charity and context you're apparently giving me because I don't post often enough. Or with the same leniency and blind eye given if someone isn't that invested in the rule they've broken. I can't ask you to be anything more than fair and I don't want you to be harsher and I'm not going to change the system or rules so that's where we are.
Or simply do what you're going to do anyway, my incensed reaction is completely impotent. It's easy to comment from the sideline, I know, but that's the only view I have and like your tough shit comment about me not seeing the sausage getting made for a myriad of reasons, I think it goes the other way as well, if you're reversing bans or removing things from people's record and not telling people then you can't expect them to take that into account when judging the situation.
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13d ago
The charity I was referring to was to WhiningCoil. But I can see, as usual, you guys can never, ever admit you were wrong or made any kind of mistake in moderation. It's not a small ban that is basically nothing because it's the reason why Steve was just banned. Every modhat is one step closer to a permaban unless you are a mod or someone like Dase who gets to show up like TrannyPorno every month and insult a bunch of people and get a warning for one of the five insults and the others are ignored and each one of those ignored posts and the warning would be a ban for someone like Steve or WhiningCoil because even if you guys can't see it it's pretty obvious to me there is a bias against a certain type of poster that comes down to not liking how they post and never the actual content because I've seen "fedposting" like WhiningCoils about once a week here without any even warning. But the point is Steve just got banned for thirty days for an accumulation, if this ban means nothing about WhiningCoil then it surely wouldn't be used against him in the future for a 30 day ban, right? I've never seen that to be true.
And I'm not advocating for banning Dase (I don't even think TrannyPorno should have been banned) but I do think direct insults toward other users is actually the worst thing to allow to slide in a forum. But even moreso than not giving charity to WhiningCoil, that maybe he didn't actually fedpost because you have to assume things to make that true, but that absence of charity becomes even more absent when this will get used as a accumulation of infractions that gets him further banned for an increasing amount of time. I've said it before but if you want people to not actually post something then actually make the consequences matter because saying "this doesn't really matter but don't do it, 1 day ban" is always going to lead a permaban and at this point that pretty much feels like its the point because I've been pointing this out for years and years.
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14d ago
I'd say what whiningcoil said was carefully worded if his intent was something similar to capital room's. I think you meant to say you've never seen a carefully worded long piece get modded around here. And it's true, just write two paragraphs and your week ban will end up just being a day or write seven paragraphs and you'll just get a warning, despite the content being exactly distilled down to the single sentence it could have been. Words, words, words, should literally be written in to the rules.
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14d ago
This is a terrible ban and using his comment about the obvious troll poster troll posting and getting away with it because charity is endless to new posters who pretend not to know anything is ridiculous.
But the reason this is a terrible ban is because WhiningCoil's ban was a joke on several levels of both being bad and lazy and sets an assuming the worst kind of rule to the forum as a whole that I'm sure will go well.
But the bad moderating here seems to be here to stay if you can't just admit that you made a mistake and should actually be as charitable to the people you mod as they are supposed to be to you.
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14d ago
Well, then I'm not sure what your response is supposed to mean. FC didn't call for violence, neither did WhiningCoil. How do you get around this unwritten rule that means if you post something short you will be interpreted as uncharitably as possible? I guess words, words, words works in the way it always does for every rule here but WhiningCoil didn't break the rule, at least not the one they're blaming him for. And your suggestion seems more like a "how do you get away with writing bullshit on your homework? just write nonsense for a few pages they never actually read it." than a real suggestion of how someone should conduct themselves.
And I should note that FC was warned for that post, just not banned. So, even your acceptable version of how to express oneself in that situation is not a pure example of the right way to post.
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14d ago
You were a part of the discussion that happened two months ago that pointed out that the post cited in TW's Schism reasoning post which did not call for violence. And even the spicier FC post cited by others doesn't seem to be calling for violence either unless you interpret people saying that they hate and want others to die as being actual calls to violence which is not how I understand the term/phrase. I'm guessing you disagree or maybe didn't see the posts Nybbler made.
For me, saying you think that the only solution is killing people and saying that you hate these people and if they tried to destroy your home/city that you'd kill them is a far cry from the same thing. But no amount of words, words, words is going to make it acceptable for FC to have said that the right should just start shooting leftists because they are evil and not because they should defend their lives and property with violence and that they're indifferent to their own destruction because they believe they are evil.
I just want to make it clear that I really don't think calls of violence are allowed or tolerated,even if worded eloquently or verbosely. In fact, for the most part tiny posts like capital's or whining's are let slide far more often and mostly because it's assumed that we give charity to other posts. Capital's is pretty impossible to afford charity to but Whining's post is pretty easy to do so.
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1mo ago
I'm nearly certain it was 20th Century Fox but I can understand the confusion as by the time show actually ended 20th Century Fox didn't exist anymore and became 20th Century Television when Disney bought them which also happens to own ABC so really the show ended in the hands of ABC anyway in a roundabout way.
Your point would be better taken if they didn't continue to make the show (Roseanne) except under a different name (The Conners) and just say that her character died.
For the most part ratings don't matter anymore because they're all too low. And anything that just says "ratings" is likely bullshit because the amount of people that watch it also doesn't matter or hasn't in the past, it was all the demo, 18-34 year olds who watched. Years before what your talking about Harry's Law was I think also the second highest rated show on NBC but it got abysmal demo ratings so they cancelled it despite it being owned by the network.
Last Man Standing was not owned by ABC it just happened to air there and at that point they're only making money on commercials so while ratings might matter there, the fact that FOX actually owned the show makes more sense why they'd pick it up if it was cancelled elsewhere.
More and more shows have very little value if they're not owned or anomalistically high in ratings (speaking for terrestrial television). Funnily enough, both of those things were true for ABC and the Roseanne revival. Though the Conners didn't drop much in the ratings so they probably saved an enormous amount of money, but it remains to be seen how much value they lost in the brand, because selling The Conners to a streamer probably loses you money if you instead had seven more seasons of Roseanne.
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1mo ago
If you're going to be installing like three or more (modern AAA) games at once then I'd recommend getting a secondary SSD (nvme or otherwise) on top of whatever you get. The install sizes are insane nowadays and unless you want to uninstall and reinstall games all the time then you probably want at least an extra 500GB SSD (which would be lucky to get you five modern AAA games). Most new games will be at least 100GB if not 150 and they're only getting bigger. I haven't noticed that much difference with an NVME drive compared to a regular SSD but NVME is a bit of future proofing if they finally start doing stuff with direct storage. The best part about NVME is the form factor, it just feels so much better to install than a big clunky box with wires.
If your wi-fi connection drops sometimes I'd recommend getting a powerline adapter. It should be about equal to wi-fi if your wiring is good/new but more importantly it will be stable and won't drop connection if you're going to play games online. If your wi-fi is rock solid it doesn't matter though.
Without pre-installed windows make sure you at least have a usb thumb drive available so you can put an installer on it.
For a mechanical keyboard Gateron switches for mechanical keyboards are usually cheaper and better than cherry switches in most people's experience because they're smoother. They usually try to sell you red, brown, or blue switches. Red is light, smooth, almost mushy in comparison to others. Brown gives you feedback but no clacks. Blue gives you feedback and clacks, like a typewriter. I prefer blues the most but they will be annoying if you hate clicky-clacks or share a space with someone who is annoyed by that (or also play games online with people over an open mic). I'm not that much help on this because mechanical keyboard people seem a lot like audiophiles or wine snobs where I feel like most people will not notice things aside from the major descriptors. For example, red switches feel very much like membrane keyboards to me and I know that's sacrilege.
Another bit of sacrilege, I would recommend getting a controller. Not simply because some of them play better with that (classic example being dark souls but anything with analog movement) but because kb&m tends to hurt my hands after extended play whereas controller usually just wears out the tip of my thumb at most, and more important to me is the lean-back experience is so much nicer than lean forward when it comes to playing games and relaxing. Your mileage my vary and I certainly am not saying it's better in any way but comfort but pretty much all first person shooters/third person action games I default to controller. I know if it's pvp you're getting murdered but as someone that doesn't play pvp games that doesn't matter to me. They are quite expensive though and buying a nice one is important. Also, this depends heavily on the type of game you're playing if you aren't into old emulated games/platformers/third person action games it doesn't really matter (i still play any strategy/rpg/sim with a kb&m). I'd recommend an 8bitdo pro 2 but some people really like asymmetrical sticks.
Sorry, I realize I'm talking as if you don't know how to do anything or what anything is and I assume you know most of this stuff but I thought I'd chime in.
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3mo ago
If you've seen backpack battles (the link is a demo), it's very similar. Basically, it's an autobattler where you buy/obtain items between asynchronous PVP battles (the battles are fought based on other players' setup but you're not playing against them in real time) and the items will synergise with each other in more and more complex ways. So, say you get a bunch of fruit and each fruit does a specific buff between attacks and you also have something like a fruit bag which gives a buff for each fruit you have.
To me, nothing about the bazaar looks better or more interesting than backpack battles, in fact it looks dumbed down and mobile-gamed by comparison, but it seems like people like it a lot better but I've heard people say they preferred its less complicated take. Though I prefer Super Auto Pets to Backpack Battles but maybe that's just beause it's perfectly playable on mobile (maybe the Bazaar will be but it's still in beta and PC only for now, I think). Funnily enough both of these other games were inspired by the Bazaar which has been in development for the better part of a decade.
Though I'm maybe too biased since the genre isn't for me since I don't like PVP games as they turn into perfect play or lose simulators after a few months.
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3mo ago
There was a conversation someone repeated recently to me that they overheard from teenagers that basically ended like this: "It's so weird that you only talk to your girlfriend IRL. Like you're not even friends on instagram, it's kinda cringe."
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3mo ago
I saw this post near the top of /r/all on reddit a few days ago. And I'll see something similar a few weeks from now. I don't think most people are capable of understanding scale beyond thousands. I know most people don't understand net worth. But a lot of this seems like willful ignorance because it conforms to what they want to believe.
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4mo ago
Even then it's only apples to apples for certain countries. I remember someone arguing that China had a better infant mortality rate than the US and I looked it up. From what I could find China's IMR is measured at over 28 weeks gestation or greater than 1000g but you'll still find people that will claim the US has worse IMR than China because arguments are soldiers and their fingers are in their ears.
From what I remember looking up about this if you adjust for pre-term births the US's IMR ranking doesn't quite get to comparable countries but rises dramatically and the IMR rate of black, native american, and pacific islander was double that of white, asian, and hispanic. I'm sure those factors are going to make the US numbers look bad comparatively as long as higher portions of its population have those demographics.
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5mo ago
I agree with you but it's not confined to the online right, at least in a different context than literature. Moralism has infected horror movies with fervor lately. All logic and/or narrative is thrown out the window in favor of making sure the point of the movie is stamped onto the screen in big bold letters.
Take "The Substance" there are massive leaps of logic and narrative flaws that abound but, because the movie has a message, it's acceptable and celebrated. It often reminds me of Yud's Universal Fire. "Who cares if it doesn't make sense this story has magic and monsters." Whether it's laziness or a lower bar horror has just become mostly this now. There was a horror movie that I quite liked a few years ago called Relic that essentially just gave up at the end and had a sequence that made no sense so they could spell out what the meaning of the movie was and it almost ruined the entire thing for me because the narrative itself completely collapsed at the very least so they could stamp the message of the movie on the screen for idiots.
I feel bad saying that this is kind of a sexes thing but it kind of is and I don't mean to say that women are bad at making horror movies, they usually make 2/3 of a great horror movie and then the last third is a muddled mess that could probably be saved but because people aren't willing to criticize them about this and the breadth and depth of horror movies sucking beyond this is unimaginable to people who don't follow the genre, then the movies keep spiraling into deeper and deeper into "no plot, only message" until we get something like the Substance where it's filmed and presented like a David Lynch movie except where every single metaphor/motivation/symbolic thing is cudgeled into your brain rather than being mysterious or even hiding the story.
I think it started in earnest with how well the Babadook was received and even though it's a woman writer/director I don't put it on that movie, the fact that the story can be a metaphor is one thing, the problem arises when it's literally the only thing it can be because every other possibility has been burned to the ground with sequences that make no sense. But it's an increasing trend that I hate because it ruins the narrative at least every single time because no one bothers to just weave it into the film they just give up near the end and say, "here's the moral" and then because it's horror most people just clap.
I remember listening to Joss Whedon's commentary on Serenity and through it he kept saying things about the plot to the effect of, "if this were a movie then this bad thing wouldn't happen but it's not a movie." Essentially, the world has to exist in shades of grey and darkness to reflect the reality of the situation, until there is a reflective point and things become black and white, the moral highground is taken and the good guys can win because it is now a "movie." Thinking of this it just made me think of Tarantino's take on how he must write a plot in a meme format compared to that take and him just saying something like, "The plot is this way because it's cool."
I know most people would consider them on par and plebian but the messaging, academics, morals of a piece of art becoming louder than the rest of it just serves to make it worse in my opinion but every time it's done its celebrated and used as a shield in the same way you can't complain about a plot of a fantasy novel because there's dragons, you can't complain about the plot of these movies because it's a metaphor or even a better refrain being that you just don't get it.
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5mo ago
Maybe not intentionally going hot but it seems very culture war just going based off of reddit's reaction. The response is either shrug, "good", "more of this", or "I don't wish violence on anyone but..." and those are just the ones that aren't removed by the mods. But this is nothing new for reddit, there's a fair number of subs dedicated to anti-capitalism sentiment and they post often about killing rich people in the same way that pol would post about the day of the rope or whatever. I've seen many conversations on reddit that all boil down to:
Eat the rich.
Okay, but you don't mean kill them so how do we solve this problem?
I meant what I said.
Then it sort of just devolves into people agreeing with the sentiment that wealth inequality's only solution is violence. You can say this isn't culture but class but it seems to me the lines have already been drawn where being rich is always bad unless the person is sufficiently left. The CEO being despised for being in Healthcare seems like a fig leaf that just fits better than most for people from the outside looking in, but if this was an oil exec or a finance exec, the talking points would be different but the people celebrating would be just as fine with it.
I tend to avoid the anti-capitalist subreddits and whatever overflow they might have into the many left-wing subreddits. So, I imagine, there's more than I think. A decade ago there wasn't any specifically large anti-capitalist subreddits, then things like /r/antiwork and /r/workreform started, now there's stuff like /r/fluentinfinance and other hydra heads that are all the same thing, when they're not celebrating or justifying events like this they're just posting the same things that they must know are lies, whether they pretend that profit is revenue or that rich people's net worth represents the amount of currency they can spend at any moment. It seems clear that the celebration isn't coordinated by the left but the overlap between the tail and the head is pretty hard to figure at this point. There were memes in /r/adviceanimals about the killing and at some point it became a specifically left wing subreddit, but /r/pics, which also became a specifically left wing subreddit, doesn't have anything about it which leads me to believe the sentiment is organic, to the extent that its possible to be on Reddit anymore.
Hatred is lifeblood in the culture war and if the rhetoric is constantly "nothing will change unless poor people decide to rise up and kill their oppressors" and something like this happens where it's no big deal to kill a CEO, comments are talking about how they'd get off with jury nullification, "it's literally the same thing as killing a nazi," or venerating Shinzo Abe's assassin because he deserved to die for being conservative in a thread about this killing, then it's definitely going to either give the culture war fuel or become another overt part of it even if it turns out that the culprit was a hired assassin by a rival company.
It reminds of Trump's assassination attempt and how, whether or right or wrong, it was claimed that it wasn't political. Just because something is done absent a culture war motive doesn't mean that there isn't a culture war angle.
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6mo ago
I'm not sure if you're objecting to the claim that the media is saying Trump is being normalized or that people are complaining that media has been normalizing Trump. Both have happened a lot.
Fallon: I Didn't Mean to 'Normalize' Trump
The Case for Normalizing Trump
Don't Normalize Trump's Vision for America
Normalizing Trump: An Incredibly Brief Explainer
We are Normalizing Trump. Again.
Protesters Outside of New York Times demand newspaper "Stop Normalizing" Trump
This has been going on since 2016. I mean the media obviously aren't normalizing him, in my opinion and experience, but people are certainly claiming that it's happening.
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6mo ago
I'm not crazy, am I?
If you were trying to convince others that you're not crazy I wouldn't let them read this post.
What you're describing, that level of deviancy from the norm can only be, to me, explained as mental illness. They're clearly not "fine" even if they're fine with the rape.
But say they're not, then maybe they don't consider it rape at all and this crisis of being abnormal wouldn't occur to them.
So it wouldn't indicate reducing criminal or social penalties for rapists. And I don't think it would indicate reducing support or funding for rape victims, a majority of which are still traumatized in the normal way that everyone thinks they are. But maybe it would suggest something along the lines of... giving people the benefit of the doubt?
It probably already does this. People who consider what happened to them not that bad are probably not reporting it as a rape and if it happened out that it was reported they're probably not testifying, not getting a rape kit, not taking pictures, and even assuming all this is done just happenstance of them enjoying the experience, their descriptions, testimony, and demeanor would probably end up maybe allaying some amount of criminal penalty.
But even considering all that, you break a law, you get punished by the law, some things are mitigating, but someone enjoying a thing because they have a mental illness doesn't make it okay.
The rape your requiring in this hypothetical means the person being raped can't be aware that it is going to happen. Even if they enjoy the act their agency is still being taken without their permission. Even doing something I like, I wouldn't be thrilled to have this forced on me and my time taken.
This kind of thinking is like "it's okay to steal from rich people because they won't miss it." or "it's okay to attack that guy because pain don't hurt and he loves to fight." Maybe you could use that as mitigating factor in sentencing, but no, there's no benefit of the doubt. In fact, what is the doubt here? That we should give people a pass if they encounter a .01% individual who is not bothered by their victimization?
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6mo ago
I mean, I'd also laugh at the idea of it being a blitz as well. Something can't really be a blitz if it never slowed or stopped from its starting pace.
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6mo ago
Or at the very least gatekeeping. Ostracizing posers or not granting them entry/status would make it much less socially enticing to take on any "trait" that you want. Bring back shame. Everyone knows that a large portion of people claiming statuses conferred by being trans or gay or nonbinary are clearly doing it for status. Not being able to turn people away from a group means that the incentives of the group change to fit the people that don't belong.
I feel like a lot of the people getting their status out of things like: nonbinary, genderfluid, aromantic, pansexual, pronouns, or getting status out of things like unverifiable or self-diagnosed illnesses, or even things like homosexuality and bisexualty are getting that status because of the power that has been given to trans ideology. If you take away the idea that you can just claim an illnesses or trait and become a protected, unique, and celebrated person then, in an ideal world, the words become just words again.
I hear a lot of younger people call themselves many things but I find it very hard to believe them, even to the point that I don't really believe some people when they say they're gay because when they do they're 90% of the time obviously doing it so that people will treat them differently/better and I base this on it being brought up apropos of nothing and having yet to see said person give off any other tell that they might be gay, like ever having a boyfriend/girlfriend or even exhibiting other traits that I'd associate with being homosexual. Might be just a normal response of a person who is actually gay trying to fit into society these days but if that's the case it's a sad state of affairs.
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6mo ago
I use the CSS provided from this post from John_Doe_Fletcher:
https://www.themotte.org/post/1076/smallscale-question-sunday-for-july-14/231158?context=8#context
.active.arrow-up::before {
color: #bd2130;
}
.active.arrow-down::before {
color: #0062cc;
}
I played through past the first real boss and missing the QTEs is very punishing. I haven't encountered a one-shot but if they're all missed you will lose. It's not an optional feature you can ignore.
There is a tutorial girl you fight and before the game starts proper you can fight her again and she has two attacks. One is easily dodged or even parried, the other was a combo of attacks that I wasn't able to dodge ever, even having failed the battle twice. The dodge/parry window feels really bad. I had to stop and look it up and someone on reddit said that the game is very punishing if you're used to dodging and parrying like it's Dark Souls because it's already too late if you're trying to hit the button the moment before the attack like how it works in more action oriented games. The main problem is a lot of the attacks work like I described the tutorial girl, they're either pretty easy to dodge or fuck I can't imagine ever dodging that.
Thankfully that side battle was harder than anything else even the first real boss. Partly because the game is in many other ways like Dark Souls. It seems designed so that everything can strictly be accomplished without leveling up at all because dodges and parries negate all damage and every enemy attack seems to be able to be dodged and parried.
The game, so far, is entirely linear with many small secret hidden areas and one side mini-boss. There are rest points that refill health, let you level up, and respawn normal enemies. Without intentionally grinding, but still searching all the dead end branches that came from the path, I was killing normal enemy groups without them ever having the chance to attack. And the first boss, I missed several QTEs against it and was still easily able to kill it without too much trouble (maybe it gets worse this boss was fairly slow in its attacks). But you seem to be able to infinitely spawn enemies and just grind levels if something is too hard. If the pattern follows what I've seen either one-shotting bosses must come much later or people are playing glass cannons because you can upgrade health and defense which I've been doing since I suck at dodging.
This does seem to have the hallmarks of most things I dislike about modern JRPGs. QTEs forced into combat, armor is cosmetic only, your equipment is basically just three slots of accessories and bespoke weapon classes for each character, extremely linear (so far), only three characters in battles (I haven't gotten that far but it looks like this is true), it takes like an hour for the game to actually get started-- but in spite of all that it's fun, the story is well told and actually doesn't waste time despite taking forever to start. Combat is fun even if the QTEs are there to enshitify it (imo). Basically in combat you have guns which let you use mana points as a single bullet and you can shoot the enemies weak points for massive damage or break down shields with them, it gives a good feeling of freedom within the combat to do a lot and I assume it gets more complex later because I have a piece of equipment that has a chance to give an enemy burn on gunshot and another that gives crit bonuses to enemies carrying burn status. It feels good that there's designed patterns of combat that give the whole thing a kind of choreographed cadence if I didn't have to dodge the enemies after it'd feel better but beggars can't be choosers.
I'm the kind of person that outright throws games away if they seem to rely too much on the timing based things in turn based systems (chained echoes, sea of stars) and this game does that and maybe worse but I don't feel like throwing it away because the story and presentation seems far more interesting and actually told by an adult to an adult and I it doesn't feel like it's yanking me around in terms of story switching perspectives, endless exposition or tutorialising. I'd definitely recommend it with the caveat that yeah the dodging is there, it's bad (half the time) and it matters way more than I'd like. I only hope that people are wrong about being one-shot by bosses and haven't upgraded their defense or health at all.
Editing because I just started playing again and the moment after I had quit and made this post the very next thing was entering into an overworld to explore so it's no longer a Final Fantasy XIII-esque hallway rpg. So, basically linear for the first hour of actual gameplay, I suppose.
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