Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
PaperclipPerfector
7hr ago
(text post)
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
I spend more time than average in fast food subreddits. I have just been tickled pink by one recently submitted to /r/jerseymikes. For those who don't want to click through, it's a meme image of the ham they slice for their sandwiches with the following text:
In any case, I don't care about it being a loogie in the face of the Creator or an affront to my GP when looking at my blood pressure. I'm very opinionated about what makes a good sandwich, and I think Jersey Mike's absolutely crushes the nationwide competition. I still recall vividly my first taste of a true Italian (complete with prosciutto!) from Lenny's in the Memphis airport 20 years ago that changed my life. That place is now a shadow of its former self, but it's interesting how times have changed. These places couldn't even survive in ideal locations in the southeast back when I was a Subway sandwich artist and now they're thriving. Awesome, because my palate was built for thin ham.
(Side note - the humorous caption above is in fact mostly incorrect for at least Boar's Head. Their process involves using whole pieces of meat but forming them through force as opposed to ultra heavy processing.)
Jimmy John's has superior cold sandos to Jersey Mikes, but no one can top the Big Kahuna cheesesteak from Mikey.
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So I got Pikmin 4 for Christmas from my wife, and finally started playing it. Parenthood can be like that sometimes.
I've loved Pikmin since I played the first one on my secondhand Gamecube in college. It has subtly evolved over time, and while I'm going through the motions on this 4th one, something of the spark from the first one seems missing.
The time limit is gone. This is controversial, and the series seems to alternate between having one or not. Despite the time limit putting me off from even trying the first game until I'd played virtually every other Gamecube game worth playing... I think I really like having it. The second game got rid of it, the third game brought it back, now the fourth game has gotten rid of it again. Definitely takes some of the pep out of your step, knowing you have as long as you want.
The game also feels enormously easier? I think I went almost 10 days before I lost a single Pikmin. I don't know when this change happened. Maybe I'm just that good at Pikmin these days, but I recall Pikmin 1 was a constant war of attrition the Pikmin were so oblivious and easily killed by everything. Pikmin 2 even more so. There was a constant need to grow your Pikmin population to cope with this. I actually don't remember how hard Pikmin 3 was in this regard, but Pikmin 4 is effortless so far. I think I still have a lot left though, more than half, so I suppose I'll see how that keeps up.
I keep going back and forth about what I think about the controls. The Gamecube title's used the C-Stick to send your hoard of Pikmin at enemies and around obstacles. Outside of that Pikmin were dumb as a rock and would happily kill themselves all sorts of creative ways. Now you can have all your Pikmin ride on a dog with you, and even outside of that they seem to have pretty good pathfinding? On the one hand, probably solid quality of life features. On the other hand, they trivialize or completely remove types of puzzles to solve from previous games. And I'm not sure the loss of these aspects is replaced by anything enabled by this QOL features.
I'll probably post again after I beat it, but my feelings about it now are that it's not bad, but it's pretty mid for a Pikmin game.
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The Bell Curve Meme strikes again, cinema history edition!
I had long known of the Reddit midwit, clickbait anti-American, hipster propaganda factoid that Sergio Leone's seminal A Fistful of Dollars, the film which made Clint Eastwood a star, was nothing but an unlicensed ripoff of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. headlines tell us that Leone "ripped off" Kurosawa, or "Plagiarized" his movie. Notably, Kurosawa would get a 15% stake in Dollars after a lawsuit, and made more money off that 15% than he had off of Yojimbo. I'd long accepted this as a fact: the superior Japanese Samurai film was ripped off by the inferior Western cowboy movie!
But, then I started an audiobook of Dashiell Hammett's 1929 noir Red Harvest, one of his Continental Op books. And what is Red Harvest about? A Mercenary protagonist, middle aged and experienced, nameless, hired or co-opted by crooked criminal warlords in an oppressed town, who plays them off against each other to clean up Personville (Poisonville). It's Yojimbo! Kurosawa acknowledged the influence of another Hammett novel/film adaptation, The Glass Key, in his creation of Yojimbo, but when you read Red Harvest it's obvious that the plot is the same. Dollars might be Yojimbo in the Southwest, but Yojimbo in turn took Red Harvest out of the 1920s Southwest and moved it back in time and across the Pacific.
And it's interesting to me for a few reasons.
The universality of Western culture and globalization of culture earlier and earlier. I've said before that Don Quixote is the proper recipient of the title First Novel, in that it is the first book with a novelistic structure that everything afterward was influenced by, there is no author anywhere after 1945 writing novels who hadn't either read Cervantes or was influenced by people who had; where something like The Tale of Genji can't make a similar claim (though arguably one could make that claim about Genji for authors born after 1985 or so). Kurosawa is iconically Japanese, and iconically among westerners a sort of saint of foreign art film vs Hollywood schlock; but his ideas were often influenced by Western originators. Everything is much more intertwined than people would have you believe.
The way this claim has been used as a bludgeon by a certain kind of cinema hipster, to point to the originality and superiority of Kurosawa over the cowboy movies made in the West. How is that claim impacted by Kurosawa in turn taking Hammett's Noir and turning it into Samurai fare? Hammett in turn was original, in that he drew directly from his work with the Pinkerton's and his involvement in leftist politics for his inspirations. But is anyone really original? Dostoyevsky said that there were only two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. So at some level nothing is ever going to be original-original, that's not the nature of human culture. Not that I question the Kurosawa-Leone monetary settlement, hey he deserved it for the shot-for-shot remake, that was worth some money. But the cultural credit he receives, and the subsequent scorn heaped on the Westerns, seems excessive.
Just one of those clever factoids that's missing the "fact."
...aren't Kurosawa and Leone basically currently at the same "they made seminal classic movies but let's face it, appreciating them doesn't really make you a cinephile as such by itself" status?
I wouldn't be plugged into the cinephile universe enough to tell you, just enough to have heard the factoid and been amused to find out it was, as ever, more nuanced than that.
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Ufc 317 this weekend and highly encourage you all watch it. @Tanista comment on lat weeks thread about Jon Jones, one of the better mma fighters, behind only the likes of GSP, Fedor etc retired after holding up the worst division, heavyweight, for two years has made people who watch the sport happy.
Ilia Topuria, Payton Talbott and Joshua Van are three entertaining young fighters who are blockbuster entertainment whilst also being extremely talented.
Topuria was the featherweight champ and knocked the last two greats out in succession, something that is unprecedented and this was likely the greatest title run in the UFC impact wise for the division. Topuria is a pressure fighter, defensively sound, sleeps people with one punch and wants to be in the pocket. He fights a now past his prime Charles Oliveira who himself was the pressure fighting guy at lightweight, the division Topuria is fighting in now.
Talbott is a very online young guy and the first fighter to tweet about Sam Hyde incessantly making him someone I root for now. He fights at 135, a division above Van who's at 125. Mma is very stale, boring and not worth watching now. The UFC wants no big superstars to emerge as they want a total monopoly on the business so that they pay fighters as little as possible. The thinking of this kind has made the peak we saw in 2016-17 look like a different world.
The other fight in this card features 125ers who can sleep people. Lower weight classes are a treat to watch. As a long time fan, I hope you folks tune in, buy, pirate, watch it at a bar, whatever. Ufc 317 is on this Saturday, you can watch the embedded vlogs ufc produces to get some more context about the fights if you wish to.
then
Getting some mixed messages man.
Anyhow, I will be watching it at a bar with a bunch of guy friends, as much an excuse to be social as anything.
Have to agree with the general assessment of UFC logic. At best, I'm ambivalent on Dana White, he's clearly done a lot to get the sport mainstreamed but so many of his basic tactical decisions with regard to the business are hare-brained from my perspective. The commentary on the fights tends to be ass, the officiating has been questionable (a bit better of late?), they won't adopt new gloves to prevent eye pokes, and it is really unclear if they want to market as a brand of semi-family-friendly entertainment (they're on ESPN now, after all) or keep things 'gritty' and amp the bro-ish, violent and unapologetically masculine nature of it. They still have Octagon girls in skimpy outfits, the fighters curse regularly in ring interviews, most of their sponsors are likewise still aimed at the Titties 'n' Beer crowd.
Like, you ask me, the entire point of UFC is to set up the most interesting fights/matchups possible and encourage the top contenders to fight as hard as possible for a win, and generally avoid safe, riskless approaches. Big purses and other monetary incentives are a good method. Bring in the best talent from across the globe and get them to give their best performance.
Yet they sideline or outright oust their most effective, driven fighters half the time. Thinking specifically of Mighty Mouse and Ngannou.
Maybe there is some logic to mitigating the chances of a fighter reaching superstar status, once they're popular and wealthy enough they tend to dictate their own terms on when/if they fight. Like McGregor. If the UFC can keep them on a tighter leash then in theory that means they can arrange and actually deliver good matchups consistently, if the talent is there.
But also the actual fighting is getting to a point where the 'optimal' style is somewhat predetermined. Unless you're a talented kickbox-wrestle-jitsu practitioner, you're going to get stomped by someone who is more well rounded than you, no matter how good you are at your particular niche. Maybe that's how it should be, but its just a fact now that "MMA" is not literally "mixed martial arts" but really it is a style unto itself, it isn't really about pitting different styles against each other anymore.
I wonder if they should start introducing different obstacles to the octagon, or adding in strange conditions. "In round 1 they're covered in cooking grease. In round 2 they'll have an eyepatch over one eye. In round 3, their legs will be tied together with a two foot rope to limit movement and kicks. Round 4, they fight while each gripping a Bandana as hard as they can.
Or just go full Super Smash Bros. and let them opt to have Tasers, baseball bats, and small incendiary devices dropped into the octagon if a fight goes past 3 rounds. Or is that WWE's shtick?
I kid, but if you want to break out of the current local maxima for the current dominant fighting styles, you will have to adjust the parameters somewhere to force new optimizations.
Fighters are great, the management and the people running the business are short sighted.
Agree on all points. The speculative exit economy that ruined software follwoed mma. Dana is a scum who should have his assetes liquidated for lobbying and stealing money from fighters whilst never having done anything more than cardio kickboxing. UFC did not save MMA, it would have risen from Japan, they just made it worse via monopoly. They just wanted to sell it and the things like standard uniforms and stuff was just a way to convince investors
That is a cover for thier real incentive which is to sell tv rights to ESPN as PPVs keep sinking in the gutter. The Ali act that saves boxing cannot exist in MMA as fighters cannot unionize, this makes the fights worse as Dana and co dont want you to get too popular like mcgregor or want any independence like Fedor. They just want people who will take lifec hanging brain damage for 10k show and 10k win. Not a surprise they are business partners with another entity that loses relevance everyday, WWE.
Its not set in stone. Beyond BJJ being made totally irrelevant (bjj not submission grappling, bjj is about guard play, something that will get you killed in an amateur fight), the "meta" keeps changing regularly. In the early days you had a mixed bag with wrestle-boxers dominating, then we shifted towards more kickboxing, it keeps swinging back and forth. The outputs per fighter is way higher now, prodigies who are good are defensively better. Every weight division has bigger fighters which means that you have more knockouts but also a higher willingness to step in the pocket and punch in combination. The bjj aproach of take pass guard has been replaced with dragging the guy to the corner of the cage, once your hips are not stationary, you cannot play guard. The sport is still fun, its that the UFC much like the WWE wants to kill the outliers who will demand what they are worth like they do in boxing.
Yeah but you do see a ton of flair. Caucasian wrestlers, kickboxers, american wrestlers, freestyle wrestlers, submission grapplers all are very different. The first true MMA only background guy was Rory Mcdonald funnily enough.
Or they can introduce powerslap inside the octagon and lose them even more money lol. But jokes aside, they should add two more weightclasses between 155 and 185, pay scouts money like actual sports and remove weight cuts. Beyond that, allow kicks to the face on the ground, stand people up if they clinch too long on the fence and sign fighters late. Signing fighters via the contender series leads to people like Bo Nickal who cannot get good and end up as midlding fighters with no style. Luke rockhold had a style, you could see that he built it to kill wrestlers, could not have looked like had he been admitted earlier.
Lol, pro wrestling is worse now because people know of mma so the scare factor goes out, beyond that the peak of it in the last 40 years, the attitude era was defined by adult themed storylines and outliers like Steve Austin, The Rock, which the WWE does not want more of. So they up the ante in the usage of fake weapons and falls but its not compelling because the two things i listed are simply not there anymore. You tell someone that you like pro wrestling now, you will be seen as a wierdo as the product is for kids. I do not watch it but Jim Cornettes podcast gives a fun rundown of why its bad now.
The current style is good. Every belt holder currently is someone who strikes and gets finishes. Less than a tenth of the roster is made up of wrestlers and wrestling defence gets better each year as anti wrestling is easier than trying to take people down. The UFC just needs to hire scouts, let fighters unionise, make more money. Boxing is very fun now. We have had superfights on the regular whilst Dana does not want Jon Jones to leave despite having a worse string of opponents in the past two years than Sam Alvey. His contender series is a terrible idea too.
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The variation could at least be semi-realistic, to be in keeping with the original idea. Longer/no rounds, ground that really sucks to be on, 2v2, etc.
That'd be interesting. Recently watched a video that shows that Jiu Jitsu loses utility when you're not on soft/forgiving ground.
If it was 2 v. 2 I'd prefer some kind of tag-team format, since actual two v. twos inevitably turn into 1 v. 2s, which always end badly for the one.
They seem to be in a decent spot right now balancing overall safety for competitors while still allowing some bloodsport, and obviously it is in nobody's interest for competitors to get devastatingly hurt on the regular. It runs counter to their strategy of getting mainstream appeal, but I'd say they could afford to do fewer large events per year and focus more on really stacking the big ones up.
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If you're tired of the unrealistic peace treaties of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron, one enterprising company has published a board game about the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War One: Versailles 1919. Here are some of the 52 different "issues" that can be resolved as part of the game. (The players are UK, France, USA, and optionally Italy.)
Kurdistan (Middle East, 3 victory points):
French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to USA happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest, +1 to Balkans unrest
UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, −1 to US happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest
Independence: +1 to self-determination, −2 to French happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest
No Kurdistan: (no effect)
Palestine (Middle East, 4 victory points):
UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, +1 to Middle East unrest
French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to UK happiness, −1 to US happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest
Arab state: +1 to self-determination, −2 to UK happiness
Zionist state (28 years early!): +1 to UK happiness, +3 to Middle East unrest
Prussia (Europe, 5 victory points):
Germany: +1 to industry, −1 to French happiness, +2 to Europe unrest
Danzig corridor: +1 to German containment, +1 to Europe unrest
Poland: +2 to German containment, +2 to Europe unrest, −1 to US happiness
Slovenia and Croatia (Balkans, 5 victory points):
Both independent: +2 to self-determination, +1 to Italy happiness
Slovenia independent, Croatia in Yugoslavia: +1 to self-determination, −2 to Italy happiness
Both in Yugoslavia: +1 to German containment, −4 to Italy happiness
If unrest in a region gets too high (perhaps due to an event card—Eleutherios Venizelos, Ho Chi Minh, Ibn Saud, etc.), an uprising may cause a settled issue to become unsettled, requiring a new resolution to be agreed to. But keeping troops mobilized to quash unrest will make your people unhappy.
The same company has also published board games in the same vein for negotiations during (not after) the War of the Sixth Coalition (UK, Austria, Russia, and France) and World War Two (UK, USA, and USSR). These two games have slightly more military action. (Which is more important—achieving your long-term diplomatic goals, or actually defeating the enemy in the short term?) All three of these games have solitaire/bot rules.
Have you played any of them? Are they fun? I've played the Crusader Kings Board game (just solo) but really enjoyed it.
I purchased them out of sheer amazement and thankfulness that they exist. I don't have any spare time/energy to play them, though.
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Court opinion:
Keith allegedly sustains injuries from a car crash in which Carlos is at fault. Keith sues Carlos for damages.
In federal court, Carlos files for bankruptcy. In state court, Carlos moves to stay (pause) Keith's lawsuit, since Keith's claim must be disposed of as part of the bankruptcy case. Keith opposes the motion, arguing that, since Keith is seeking only Carlos's insurance coverage of 200 k$, and nothing from Carlos's actual funds (which now are part of the bankruptcy estate), Carlos's bankruptcy case will not be affected by Keith's lawsuit. The trial judge accepts Keith's explanation and denies the motion for stay. Likewise, the bankruptcy judge lifts the automatic bankruptcy stay that applies to all demands for payment made against Carlos, solely for purposes of Keith's lawsuit, and explicitly up to a limit of 200 k$. So the lawsuit continues in state court.
At trial in state court, the jury finds that Carlos is liable to Keith, not just for 200 k$, but for 1.6 M$! Carlos moves to limit the damages award to 200 k$, in accordance with the prior agreement. But the trial judge rejects this argument, claiming that any limits on the verdict are the province of the bankruptcy judge, not of the trial judge.
By this time, Carlos's bankruptcy case has been completed and closed. Keith goes back to the federal bankruptcy judge and moves that Carlos's bankruptcy case be reopened so that the entirety of Carlos's new 1.6-M$ debt to Keith can be ruled nondischargeable. But the bankruptcy judge rejects this argument. Having agreed that he would not seek more than 200 k$, Keith now is estopped from reneging on that agreement.
With the bankruptcy judge's opinion in front of him, the state trial judge acknowledges that Carlos need not pay more than 200 k$ to Keith, but still refuses to modify the jury's damages award. Rather, the trial judge thinks that the official damages number should remain listed as 1.6 M$, and Carlos should first pay the 200 k$ and then submit a separate application to discharge the extra 1.4 M$. Carlos does so, but still appeals this rigmarole.
The state appeals panel reverses and remands for the trial judge to reduce the official damages number to 200 k$, since the bankruptcy judge's stay was limited only to damages not exceeding 200 k$. (This is in 2025, regarding damages from a car crash that occurred in 2018.)
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