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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3413 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 17, 2026

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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Item 1 of 5

In 2023, California enacted a law allowing (city and county governments to allow) ADUs (accessory dwelling units) to be converted into condominiums that can be bought and sold separate from the lot's principal dwelling. According to the legislators:

The statewide median home price is nearly 800,000 dollars. At that price, only 17 percent of households can afford to purchase the median-priced single-family home. This figure is less than half of the national average, and less than half of the rate at the start of the pandemic.…

…The average size of a single-family home in California is 1860 square feet. By comparison, the average size of an ADU in California is less than one-third of that, at 615 square feet. Presuming a commensurate reduction in price, the purchase of an ADU would be affordable to lower-income households.

According to a news report, the municipality of San Jose now has become the site of the first actual sale of an ADU condominium under this law—750 ft2 of house according to the Zillow page and 2000 ft2 of land (plus a long driveway easement) according to the tax map, for 530 k$. (The property as a whole (principal dwelling plus ADU) is assessed by the county govt. at 715.4 k$ (494.6 for the land and 220.8 for the improvements).)

Item 2 of 5

  • A paraplegic is a “tester” of accessibility under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act): he visits, and then sues, businesses that fail to measure up to the ADA's requirements (the ADAAG, ADA Accessibility Guidelines). His latest target (he testifies that it's his 83rd) is a strip mall. He alleges: (1) Of the property's two accessible parking spaces, one is immediately adjacent to a driveway, with no access aisle for safety; (2) of the property's several curb ramps, one is too steep; (3) the sidewalk in front of the businesses is not sufficiently flat, making it difficult for a wheelchair user to open a business's door without rolling backward into the parking lot; and (4) a different curb ramp often is blocked by parked cars.

  • The paraplegic demands that several changes be made. The trial judge rejects most of them (removal of bollards in the sidewalk, addition of two more accessible parking spaces, reduction of parking-lot slope, etc.): they are not “readily achievable” within the meaning of the ADA, as they would drive out tenants (by exacerbating the property's existing parking shortage), jeopardize the property's grandfathered status under the municipal code (it has only 88 parking spaces rather than the required 104), expose the company to liability (businesses have been sued for not having bollards), etc. The company implements one demanded change voluntarily before the case is even over, moving the accessible parking space without an access aisle to a safer location (right next to the other accessible parking space, so that they share an access aisle). The judge finds that the company must accede to one more demand: changing the too-steep curb ramp from perpendicular (protruding from the sidewalk into the access aisle) to parallel (taking a 3-foot-deep chunk out of the 8.5-foot-deep sidewalk in front of the businesses).

  • The company moves for a new trial, complaining that a parallel curb ramp (1) would be too expensive and too difficult to get permits for and (2) itself would violate the ADA, but the trial judge rejects these arguments. (1) The company has presented insufficient evidence of the expense of the modification or the difficulty of getting permits. (2) The company's expert misread the ADAAG! He looked at the bathroom guidelines, under which door swings cannot encroach into required clear areas. But the sidewalk guidelines have no such provision, so the parallel curb ramp is fine. (The judge's opinion includes helpful diagrams.)

Item 3 of 5

Australian airline Qantas has announced plans for non-stop Sydney–London and Sydney–New York flights, using an Airbus A350 variant specially designed for long range. If these flights enter operation (expected for London in October 2027 and for New York at a later date not yet announced), they will surpass Singapore Airlines' Singapore–New York and Singapore–Newark flights (which use an older variant of the same Airbus plane) as the longest commercial flights in the world.

According to Google Flights, the current non-stop Singapore–New York flight reduces travel duration from 24–21 hours (with a stop in Manila, Hong Kong, San Francisco, etc.) to 19 hours, but boosts price from 1000 dollars to 1500 dollars. These Qantas flights presumably will involve a similar money-for-time trade-off.

Official marketing materials on the topic from Qantas are available on this page. See also the Wikipedia page on the longest non-stop commercial flights.

Item 4 of 5

[Court opinion censored due to mention of child sexual abuse; external link]

Item 5 of 5

New J⁎rsey is the only state in the US that forbids motorists from pumping their own gasoline. Legislative attempts to eliminate this ban regularly die in committee.

Surveys consistently show that New J⁎rseyans actually like this state of affairs. According to the latest one, a whopping 64 percent of NJ residents want to keep gasoline pumps full-service-only. This support holds across all population segments surveyed.

SegmentSupport (%)
Affiliation: Democratic71
Affiliation: Republican62
Affiliation: Independent58
Age: 18–3068
Age: 31–4466
Age: 45–6464
Age: 65–∞61
Gender: Woman74
Gender: Man56

My guy, can you please explain to me what you find consistently entertaining about underage sex and abuse related litigation?

The censored opinion for today is extremely tame—just a 17-year-old's allegation that her 19-year-old ex-boyfriend distributed their sex video without authorization. I find it quite hilarious that the entire controversy hinged on whether a locker-room joke made to the plaintiff's brother ("Yo, did you see the video of your sister?") was a sly reference to a video that the joker had actually seen (as the trial judge thought) or just a genuine joke that coincidentally happened to land on a sensitive topic (as the appeals panel thought).

It's less about any particular instance and more about the pattern.

A generic locker-room joke's leading to a restraining order is funny. Repeatedly impregnating your girlfriend's underage daughters (including while out on zero-dollar bail) is funny. Accidentally fingering your daughter because she replaced your wife in the marital bed in the middle of the night is funny. I don't know what else to tell you.

Perhaps you have not sufficiently <del>desensitized</del><ins>refined</ins> your sensibilities by reading thousands of pieces of (predominantly non-loli) hentai manga and erotic literature.

This is the fun thread so we should quickly move past this but I would delicately suggest some consideration for the fact that some things are broadly funny or fun, some things are niche, some things fail to land, and some things would be considered the blackest of humors or outright horrifying (especially when in real life instead of fiction).

I have, and I still don't find them funny. What's hot is not usually realistic, and realistic CSA is not hot.

I said funny, not hot.

Yeah see to me none of those are funny in any way.

Whichever it was, I hope the brother punched the joker in the face (and then went and kicked the shit out of the boyfriend). If we're going back to Traditional Values, male family members punishing defaulters who take advantage of female family members is part of the package.

New J⁎rsey is the only state in the US that forbids motorists from pumping their own gasoline. Legislative attempts to eliminate this ban regularly die in committee.

Wait, Oregon changed their laws? I had no idea. Apparently it's been 3 years.

As much as I try, I still can't get my head around the mindset of people that insist the government absolutely must prohibit them from filling their own car with gas, and only permit it to highly trained professionals (because all available evidence suggests filling up a car carries a deathly risk and requires very extensive professional expertise to accomplish).

As much as I try, I still can't get my head around the mindset of people that insist the government absolutely must prohibit them from filling their own car with gas, and only permit it to highly trained professionals (because all available evidence suggests filling up a car carries a deathly risk and requires very extensive professional expertise to accomplish).

In practice, as far as I can tell, the law isn't enforced. In the sense that if you are in a hurry you can typically pump your own gas and you won't be arrested or stopped or anything. So the practical effect of the law is that everyone has the option of having their gas pumped for them. If you are elderly; or dressed up; or it's a very cold day; etc. and you don't mind waiting a few extra minutes. Gas is relatively inexpensive in New Jersey compared to other states in the Northeast. So I think on balance people are okay with the status quo.

I think peoples' attitudes might change if (1) people were actually prevented from pumping their own gas; and (2) the price of gas in New Jersey caught up with the price in Pennsylvania or New York. (Keep in mind that the vast majority of people in New Jersey live near NYC or Philadelphia.) But absent that, the perception is that people in New Jersey are getting a good deal: The option of full service gas at a lower price.

Video Game Thread

Playing anything fun?

I'm playing Deus Ex. I've cleared out Liberty Island without killing anyone. Lots of baton, electric prod, pepper spray (surprisingly useful), and tranq dart usage. Fun, but time consuming way to play. I even had to take a few bullets in the process of keeping these wretches remain alive. I think I covered everything worth doing. Picked up all the weapon mods, used the account info for the ATM instead of hacking it (more credits this way), rescued Herman, etc.

The NSF commander has some good points about the plutocracy strengthening the governments and corporations while weakening the individuals.

Empires of the Undergrowth - pleasant surprise, very interesting RTS. Ant colonies as factions, underground layer for nests, surface layer for resources to contest, and perhaps invade other nests. Neat campaign framing - gene stealer ant colony in lab setting as overarching story, isolated missions between main story chapters, stylized as microdocumentaries, varied ant species in scenarios highlighting their tactics, dynamics, food sources (with narrator guiding you along, in character). Main story is more light hearted, with fun voice acting (first 60 seconds here give a good impression). The slightly indirect control over the ants can be a little annoying, but ant respawns are cheap, losses expected. Challenging, "Hard" mission difficulty is really is exactly that. Highly recommended, a lot of fun.

It's also currently a steal at 70% off.

Playing Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, which I last played over a decade ago. Very much a product of its time. You rather get the impression that the Danish writers lacked confidence in their ability to write convincing Anglophone tough-guy dialogue, and compensated by just having every character (and I mean every character) curse a lot. The voice actors do what they can with the material they're given, but the results are... not entirely convincing. Comparisons to Michael Mann are unavoidable, with setpieces clearly modelled on Collateral and Heat (for most of the game Kane carries a black bag on his back much like those De Niro, Sizemore and Kilmer wore during the bank heist, and Lynch sans glasses even looks a bit like Waingro). Sound mixing is atrocious, with gunfire sounding weak and tinny and dialogue sometimes inaudible (and not, I think, as an artistic choice). When Spec Ops: The Line came out, its gameplay was so poorly received that some people suspected it might even have been made bad on purpose, but it's a mechanical masterpiece compared to this game: how on earth do you design a cover-based shooter without a dedicated "get into cover" button? Tonally, it actually has a lot in common with Spec Ops, with everything constantly going wrong for the protagonists no matter what they do. I've heard some people interpreted the game as sort of a deconstruction of Grand Theft Auto, and that makes a certain amount of sense: the decision to populate most levels with numerous civilians who will inevitably get caught in the crossfire certainly didn't happen by accident. Gritty, sloppy fun, for all its faults.

During and after playing through Spec Ops The Line, I did suspect that the mediocre drudgery of the gameplay served a meta storytelling purpose.

It certainly gelled with the tone of the story, but the developers have made it abundantly clear that they set out to design a game with fun gameplay. The resulting monotonous drudgery, it seems, was just a happy accident.

I finally played the Deus Ex prequels a couple years ago, after rage-quitting the first long ago when I hit the "we subcontracted our boss fights and forgot to mention stealth options" debacle. With that fixed, they're pretty good. Not as good as the original IMHO, even if you take the ancient graphics of the original into account, but they had most of the same philosophical/semi-open-world "feel" of the original, which is more than I could ever say for the sequel.

(YMMV - I may have been the only one looking forward to the planned "They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics" Deus Ex Remastered so much that I'd have paid $30 for what looked like a high-end fan mod)

As long as I'm replying:

Last month I finished Subnautica. IMHO there's no replay value here, because overall there are better mechanics elsewhere in the survival+base-builder genre, but the story and exploration makes a single playthrough more fun than the same number of hours spent in any such competitor I've tried.

A few months ago I played through the 2015 King's Quest. Not as good as KQ6, and probably not as much better than most of the series as you'd expect from a decades-newer game, but it wasn't disappointing. A bit of a stumble on the second chapter but a surprisingly sophisticated combination of nostalgia and maturity overall.

I contrast this to Return to Monkey Island, which I played through last year, which was trying to accomplish the same combination but utterly failed to stick the landing. The most positive thing I can say was that it wasn't as long a game as these others, so there's only 10 hours of my life I regret not spending on something else.

In between those I finished Spider-Man Remastered. For adults IMHO it's not as good as the best of the Assassin's Creed series, but it's more fun than most of that series, and on top of that it was child-friendly enough to let my kids play too.

There are already HD texture mod packs for the original Deus Ex that look a million times better than the garbage they had planned for the "remaster". The remaster looked like this meme: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT7KdIf21VCrWUXW6j7fEf_-I1MQCz0W9GcQYPnK8uow8qikhGeVbpohbI1&s=10 There are also mods that revamp the character models that aren't to my tastes but still dona much better job than the remaster.

"packs" plural? I think "Project HDTP" was the only decent complete one I ever looked up; did I miss anything better?

Ah, I used the Revision mod and didn't realize it bundled HDTP in with it, I assumed it was a different mod.

This reminds me of the 'remaster' of System Shock 2. My boy, they killed my boy..

Seriously the mod community had already done a better job and you didn't need to repurchase a 25yo game at current year prices.

Fun, but time consuming way to play.

This was my issue with the Deus Ex games in general. They really seem to want you to play stealth, and it's fun, but it just kills the pacing.

Yes! I was going to start a similar thread. I’m not much of a gamer. Was a Nintendo kid growing up in the 90s. Played games in the early 2000s - mainly sports games. Have some older consoles but largely very behind on gaming and never had a gaming PC. Was playing Skyrim on an old laptop but now have upgraded to a true gaming PC. First, I’ve modded the hell out of Skyrim to make the world feel more alive. Also trying my hand at Baldur’s Gate 3. Any recommendations? I’m open to pretty much all genres.

Play Oblivion Remastered if you like Elder Scrolls. It looks great. So does Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing. The new Indiana Jones looks pretty amazing with PT too.

Isn't Oblivion Remastered considered an extremely-low-effort port, abandoned by the developers with most of the bugs left unfixed?

abandoned by the developers with most of the bugs left unfixed?

Thus perfectly replicating the experience of the original for modern gamers.

/s I've never played either. Previous discussion here.

What. No. It's one of the best remasters I've ever seen. It's not a bad 'port' to PC either.

Yes it runs like crap on potato PCs and yes there are some bugs, but I considered it to be almost as good as you could hope for in a remaster.

You don't even need path tracing for Cyberpunk to look absolutely beautiful. My graphics card can't really handle it, but can do the ray tracing setting fine, and when playing the game I would frequently stop just to admire how pretty it is.

Yes! Thank you! Adding them to the list.

Still playing EU5, mostly. Pity I'm too old and busy to make a proper mod for it, like I did for CK2. Which came out... in 2012. Yeah, I was definitely younger back then.

How are you finding it? I'm away from my desktop right now, so havn't been able to try the latest patch.

It's still rough. They have fixed the most fun exploits like -100% proximity cost and -100% diploannexation cost, but it's still full of more boring exploits like expelling everyone into your capital city, infinite trade arbitrage and battles ending in stackwipes 95% of the time.

EU5 is so boring I can't even bear to watch my favorite EU4 streamers play it. Too much realism spoils the fun.

It's completely unrealistic right now. You need towns to feed the countryside, my Russia is regularly only 50% peasants by 1700, the whole world is swimming in money and food.

My kid got me into Warframe.

Been meaning to check it out for a decade now and hey it’s pretty good!

I played free for 30 hours then spent 20$ when they were having a 50% sale and got some cool cosmetics and another Warframe - have four of them unlocked so far.

I’m @65 hours over several weeks and it’s still fun - hour to 1.5 hour sessions a few times a week with a few 3-4 hour long ones.

I’ll clear out the star chart and do some end game stuff and call it a day - I’ll probably spend another 20-40$ on it.

Scratches an itch.

Finished Kane and Lynch, thought I'd give Trepang2 a try. Thought I was cut out for hard mode. I was not.

Playing Factorio (again), trying out the new quality of life features they're adding in the 2.1 beta branch. 2.1 is the final planned feature update, basically only bugfixes once it's out of beta, sadly.

Already got a rocket launched, currently working on uranium enrichment and getting some space platforms set up. The 2.1 update added logistics between space platforms so I'm planning on making one (or a few) around each planet to save myself a ton of rocket launches by crafting all that stuff up in space. This also means I'll have go to Gleba first (shudder) so that I can get advanced asteroid processing.

If you're playing it for the first time, please keep posting your takes. Very interested to see how it's aged.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulu

Basically a coop Survival Horror Extraction game where you need to Conquistador loot an eldritch horror infested jungle in 17th century South America. The main draw of the game is manipulating player experiences so they see and sometimes hear different things (eg you see your teammate as a zombie or a transparent shadow) to disrupt progress.

It's got a lot of jank and is poorly optimised (Unreal Engine 5), but when it works, it really works. I love the setting and the atmosphere. Its hard to eldritch horror right, so this one deserves a lot of credit. Still I want to see advancements in QoL, optimisation and melee combat development.

Replaying MENACE now that it's had a substantial content update. Still not feature complete, or content complete, but it's been long enough that what's old is new again. The biggest change is an overhaul to the very minimum viable product "OCI" system, which covers ship upgrades and orbital call-ins/buffs. There's a ton more variety in what you can do, on and off the field of battle.

Sadly this seems to have broken every mod, but the base game is plenty of fun.

Played the first mission of the original Crysis. I like it so far.

I'm excited for blood of the dawn walker

Just got Risk of Rain 2 on Steam sale. Was very glad to see it has aim assist built in! I liked the original Risk of Rain and was worried that this one would require more technical skill to play (the original didn't require any aiming).

Still learning the ropes but having a great time so far.

Guild Wars (the first trilogy and expansion, not Guild Wars 2 the MMO) is a game I played back when it released. I’m still fond of it and it’s recently had some stirrings with a relaunch and update within the past year as Guild Wars Reforged.

Worth a look if you’re into older fantasy adventure games with tactical (but not action) combat. The skill system is inspired by Magic: the Gathering — you choose eight skills out of a pool of >1000 (and the game is balanced around team play, so multiply that by 4 to 12 people/AI), kind of like building a deck. Despite the game being more fun when played with other people the AI companions are serviceable too, so you can play entirely solo.

It’s reasonably cheap at this point too, for the amount of game that you get.

I was first! 1 minute ahead of you. :D

Haha, quite.

How is the Canadian forest fire smoke affecting you?

I feel like I'm in my own personal version of silent hill right now. The sun is almost fully obscured.

I've never seen it this bad where I am. Usually its just a haze that knocks 10-20٪ off my solar panel efficiency. Today it smells like burnt rubber and the smog reminds me of my visit to Beijing. And this is down in the far exurbs of the DC metro area.

What do you do to keep your airways safe?

I'm staying the hell inside.

At this point we'd probably need to anex Canada and genocide the "natives".

First time?

Buy an air filter, if you still can. Otherwise, DIY one. You might need one for every occupied room depending on your house size and how well air mixes in your house. If you don't have filtration, indoor air quality will eventually equilibrate with the outdoors.

You still have N-95s in your closet leftover from COVID right?

Costco.com, Winix C909 air purifier. It comes with a 2-year supply of replacement filters, which is a better deal than can be found at Amazon. Depending on the size of your home, get multiple.

I bought 2 and some jackasses stole the extra filters and returned it to Costco, then Costco shipped it to me. Had to return it and get a replacement. It was easy to rebox though.

I wasn't asking for my own sake. I don't live in a wildfire area (so far).

But the answer seems to be: plenty of air purifiers in the home, because the air outside seeps in and becomes the air inside. And high quality masks when going outside.

Yeah. I looked briefly into DIY CR Box air purifiers, and while they can be quieter, more efficient and/or cheaper I don't have the time or skill to craft them. Easier to spend $200 at Costco and get a ready made purifier, and snag sone KN95 masks off Amazon for when you need to be outside.

Dodged it, I live in northern Virginia. But currently finishing up a week at the beach down in the Carolinas.

The local pool board I'm on had a discussion about closing, they ultimately decided to close for guard and patron safety.

I lived in Montana for a few years, smoke doesn't affect me until you reach the point where the smoke is thick enough that the sun is no longer a disc.

There's some smoke in the air near DC but the whole thing seems like the typical weather overreaction that's common here.

Where I am, the sun is no longer a disk. It's pretty wild to see if you're not used to it.

Sun? What sun?

Indoors it just looks like it's overcast outside. Outdoors, it's almost unbearable, with your lungs burning with every breath.

I’m in Mi. for a wedding and it’s a real bummer, since it’s normally gorgeous this time of year!

Mi.

A daring synthesis. (The traditional abbreviation is "Mich.", while the newfangled postal abbreviation is "MI".)

It was and we ended up having it outside. Fortunately it cleared up a little bit and we had a good time!

We were going to drive up to the UP yesterday and it has canceled that trip.

Military remote viewer who not only discovered that aliens have bases here on earth that are used as repair centers for UFOs, but also discovered (via remote viewing) an entire planet of Bigfoot-like creatures. The Bigfoots are being harvested as slave labor by a more advanced alien race. This is important stuff.

The Bigfoots are being harvested as slave labor by a more advanced alien race.

Bad news for the future of robotics.

I had the same thought lol. Modern AI has ruined a lot of sci-fi stories.

TBH this all "slave labor" always sounded ridiculous. I mean, you have interstellar technology and energy appliances that can evaporate stars, and yet somehow you still need to feed slop to extremely inefficient biological machines to mine minerals for you? I can see it as a punishment method, but as an economic model? Never made any sense.

Cultural/religious prohibition against manual labor (of certain types) being performed by machines?

Well, that's like when archeologists find some artifact they don't understand, they classify it as "religious", because anything can be classified this way and it doesn't have to make any sense. Who knows what kind of weird religion those people had, right? But that's not good writing, that's almost literally deus ex machina. Proper worldbuilders don't just push weird stuff into religion.

yet somehow you still need to feed slop to extremely inefficient biological machines to mine minerals for you?

I've always assumed that any species that evolves in the context of a hierarchical social structure is going to go to insane lengths to preserve their status as "not at the bottom of the social hierarchy" when that species goes post scarcity.

It may be inefficient to have bigfoot mine your coal, but at least you can sneer at him for being low humanoid capital while you watch him do it. That has to be worth something.

There are much more efficient way to sneer at people. For example, full citizens can sneer at latini, latini can sneer at socii, socii can sneer at provinciales, and all of them could sneer at barbarians. All of it could be done without enslaving anyone. People are very good at constructing hierarchies, there are so many ways. Even if post-basic-material-scarcity society there would be some scarcities, not everybody can command a space ship or be the best Klingon opera singer of the galaxy.

AGI implies the ability to produce agents that are more sneerable than anything humanity has ever encountered. Call it supersneerability.

There's some alien hegemon out there playing Stellaris with an overly detailed spreadsheet that can prove you wrong. Probably.

In my time arguing on the internet, I've encountered a disturbing number of people who seem to think that having power over others is more desirable than any level of technological advancement. We have degrowth people IRL.

In my time arguing on the internet, I've encountered a disturbing number of people who seem to think that having power over others is more desirable than any level of technological advancement. We have degrowth people IRL.

This is nothing exceptional, this is how baseline normie human works. If you see it as strange and unexpected, be grateful to gods/fates/fortune for beautiful bubble you live in.

I don't think the baseline normie would openly admit, even pseudonymonously, that they would trade vaccines, central air and the internet for the power to rape chambermaids.

Each time I've had that conversation, it's been a similar path.

A. Capitalism fuels technical advancements that help everyone.

B. Those advancements only help the rich. They hoard them.

A. The newest tech may be gatekept by cost, but prices always come down. Even poor people in America have a level of physical comfort completely unavailable to a medieval lord.

B. But the lord still had more power! He had servants to make his life easy, that he would abuse and be horrible to.

A. The freaking Sun King shivered while a servant chipped at his frozen breakfast fruit because Versailles was impossible to heat with fireplaces. The average person on welfare in America can have fresh fruit at room temperature in the dead of winter.

B. That doesn't matter compared to the power over others!

Even if many normies would likely be at least mildly abusive with power, it takes a special kind of ideologue to openly talk about the power over others being an end in and of itself.

I don't think the baseline normie would openly admit, even pseudonymonously, that they would trade vaccines, central air and the internet for the power to rape chambermaids.

They quite literally did this, openly, in 2020-2021. As you recall, it was seen as acceptable to the baseline normie that the group that invented the vaccine be given it last because Muh Social Justice.

"Don't be hideously evil to your fellow citizen" only works in times of positive-sum growth. Once the reality of degrowth sets in (including that which is permitted to be imposed by said hideously evil fellow citizens since the rest are too busy making money to notice it) the knives come out and the spiral begins.

it takes a special kind of ideologue to openly talk about the power over others being an end in and of itself.

Somehow when people imagine going back in time to middle ages, they always imagine themselves as a knight or noble, and never as a peasant who works 18 hours per day. Despite the latter being vast majority.

Having power over others is the only way to balance out others having power over you.

I thought degrowth people are just Gaia worshippers that think humans need to be punished for their sins against the Goddess.

In 2026 they're often socialists who are mad that there are hierarchies that do not have them on top. In fairness, this was also the case for many of the "gaia worshippers" (watermelons).

Big if true.

Surely you mean Bigfoot if true?

... I'll get my coat.

Well, as long as they're not shooting the bigfoots, whatever they're doing is probably legal.

What thing do women enjoy doing as leisure which involves the largest social organization? For men it’s probably something video game related: guilds with up to thousands of players, clans with dozens, or some large joint Minecraft projects, etc. What is the largest social organization that organically develops among women? I’m thinking it may be something related to fandom, eg k-pop fandoms probably organically develop into large organizations. Or maybe true crime communities that work in unison to piece together information across thousands of individuals. It’s interesting that these are both evolutionary — either loyal devotion to the männerbund, the tribe of virile men, or else village gossip, ensuring the safety of the community.

For men it’s probably something video game related: guilds with up to thousands of players, clans with dozens, or some large joint Minecraft projects, etc.

Sports fandom? Tailgating, making big ol' tifos, that sort of thing?

Isn’t tailgating usually just a dozen or so people though? A somewhat low-level organization

Maybe political activism? Demonstrations and activist orgs seem to attract a lot of women.

The Women's Institute has about 170,000 members, although these are really hundreds of individual chapters (a la Freemasons) so not sure if it counts.

I think you're right that it's groupies/fan clubs. Even before everything went online there were massive networks of fan clubs for each popular performer.

Maybe something like the American Contract Bridge League, about 130,000 members, mostly older women. Bridge used to be a very popular semi-organized past-time among housewives in the 1940s--1970s.

Okay, I think that beats my example.

Groupies 100% if they haven't already been swept into their partner's activities.

Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, or maybe Christianity as a whole is the organization with the largest amount of organic female voluntary adherents. Groupies for God, if you will.

I was thinking more about those that are totally controlled and managed by women, at every level, but I think certain female monastic orders could fit in here. And you’re right, it is similar to a devoted fandom

When you start talking evopsych, you really have a way of making it sound like a sneer. I also think it’s foolish to model 1000+ member associations like they’re under Dunbar’s number.

Anyway, I’ll submit SCA, which I think is very female-heavy and more of an organization than any fandom.

Daughters of the American Revolution.

190,000 active members.

The activity is ancestor worship, roleplaying corporate positions, dress up, and pin collecting.

That's meant to be tongue in cheek, my mom is in the org and roles her eyes at some of the stuff they do, but also likes the social interaction.

My mom is the one that verifies peoples genealogy and then organizes a signoff party where the local chapter all signs off on the new member. She recently got some of her sign-offs rejected because she apparently used the wrong blue ink pen. She was livid with these ladies.

Is there any overlap between this forum and development forums in the vein of SkyscraperCity and CityData? SkyscraperCity is an urbanist forum, and I find it intriguing to browse threads there to see what infrastructure projects various cities are undertaking, including my nearest city.

CityData was originally more of a real estate forum where people could start threads to inquire about life in various American suburbs and small towns, and it's quite fascinating to learn about the amenities and ins and outs of a random small town most people overlook in a state that I've never set foot in. It's branched out into different subforums for politics, philosophy, theology, and hobbies. In a sense, it is like a smaller Reddit that is substituted with conservative boomers. The caliber of discourse tends to be higher as you don't have stoned vegetables giving their dilettante conjectures, though it does have a few occasional trolls.

I used to look at CityData back in the early days, like 2007/2008, but the posts got samey pretty fast, basically "Where should I live?" and people suggesting the same city neighborhoods/suburbs. When the conservative boomers took over it became damn near unreadable. Nobody could post anything in the Pittsburgh forum without the thread quickly devolving into the most predictable conservative talking points; the city is a mismananged, crime-ridden hellhole and would be much better if Republicans whipped it into shape and turned it into whatever exurb they prefer, which is obviously so much better. Everything was a waste of money (even if it was a Federal grant that would have just gone to another city). It was like reading the local news page on Facebook, except it was the same few people who had to get their 2 cents in on everything. At that point I quit even occasionally checking it, only to come back a few years ago and find that at some point the mods made it clear that all politics must be contained in the politics thread, at which point the sub just died, as the only people who were posting at that point were doing so to make cheap political points.

Hmm, with regards to activity and the people who post, I do think it depends on the sub-forum. Like many other forums, you have a select few crap-stirring regulars that make the experience less pleasant, and once you know which handles to ignore, it gets much easier to participate. There are some neighborhoods and suburbs that some people treat as the be-all and end-all, but I also do see healthy pushback to those kinds of sentiments by others. I appreciate that the people who post there tend to be more articulate and conscientious than Facebook or Reddit users, even if that bar is in hell. I would definitely consult CityData before a turboprogressive city sub if I wanted to solicit some relocation advice.

Personally, there's just something surreal about browsing through 2008 threads about the subdivision I grew up in, or one about a small town an American friend I've met here in Europe tells me he was raised in. You get to learn about the local chamber of commerce, gossip about municipal scandals, hidden gems such as an art gallery or a biking trail most people in the area don't know about, and the agreeable subdivisions of an otherwise poorly reputed suburb, etc. As a zoomer, I imagine this is the closest I'll get to living in the 2000s zeitgeist along with watching TV shows and listening to music from that time window.

I like CityData. It's one of the few places you can find honest assessments of neighborhoods which acknowledge their racial/ethnic demographics, something that has been completely taboo on Reddit and mainstream media for decades. (Even mentioning ethnicity outside of "bad thing happening, POC most affected" contexts gets you downvoted to oblivion and/or banned. (I've got a hunch that this is because the "intellectual elite" don't want the white hoi polloi to realize how far the Great Replacement has already gone.)) A nearby mid-rise apartment neighborhood called Mosaic has been overrun with Muslims for some reason, and a reddit comment that was quoted as calling it "Mosaicistan" was removed for "hate speech" or some such retarded reason.

What art style was discredited the most by the AI? I have just encountered the works of Guillem H. Pongiluppi when someone posted his Chapterhouse: Dune illustrations, and I can't tell if they are AI or not. Both my eye and free detectors scream they are, but he's been drawing in this hyper-realistic, full-effort, high-contrast style for a long time, and this is the style that a lot of diffusion models use when you tell them to draw something "realistic, highly detailed, trending on Artstation". Imagine wasting years mastering a style that diffusion models will learn from your work and devalue your whole portfolio.

Or is he cleverly doing AI-washing now? Why draw anything yourself, if you can tell a model to draw "like Guillem H. Pongiluppi" and then get angry when someone compares your work to "AI slop"?

/images/17843613116444316.webp

I refuse to believe that LinkedIn posts were ever anything but a weird kind of avant garde performance art, so I'm going to say LinkedIn posts.

"Here's what having my avant garde performance art being accused of AI usage taught me about B2B sales!"

Interesting. I think the AI effect comes from the lack of meaning permeating his pictures. The characters are posed dynamically but without purpose. Gargantuan objects loom randomly. All sorts of outlandish crap from our commercial trash-heap culture are juxtaposed in a way that brings out their banality. Subtextually it's undermining itself, presenting a sort of anti-meaning. It's funny that he's probably going for these effects deliberately, whereas it's more of an inherent byproduct for AI.

I was not aware of Pongiluppi's art until just now. It is not what I'm into at all but it is effective for a certain market or applications where you would want that kind of style. You're right that a lot of AI art generators create things that look like his style, but really that's more of a problem with the taste level of the entire internet that scraping every image then weighing the output (or whatever) leads to this sort of aesthetic too often. I constantly have to tell ai generators to stop making everything look so high contrast, so epic, so deviantart, so hollywood 2010s film poster bla bla bla...........

I don't think any art style is "discredited" by AI, in the same way that PS2 graphics didn't "discredit" Alex Colville's art from the 1960s that looks freakishly similar to PS2 graphics. The reproducability of a style has more to do with the models/technology than the artists, for example AI can much more easily create artwork in the style of Van Gogh or Monet than it can create a high quality vector graphic design in the style of, say, Herb Lubalin, but it doesn't really mean that the value of a Monet painting is now less than the value of any graphic designer's work.

Last weekend Dublin hosted a "Trans and Intersex Pride" parade, allegedly attended by "thousands" of people. (I was out of town so I can't comment on the turnout.) Inevitably, it quickly devolved into an omnicause™ parade, with the announcers proudly announcing that the parade was both anti-capitalist and in support of a free Palestine from the river to the sea.

I just saw a poster advertising the parade which hadn't been taken down yet, on which the slogan was, no joke, "Transsexuals are Revolting".

Jeez guys, don't be so hard on yourselves.

(I'm sure that this play on words was intentional, but it still strikes me as terrible optics. One of the most common complaints trans people make is being thought of creepy and gross: I cannot fathom why the organisers signed off on a slogan which on its face amounts to "yes, trans people are creepy and gross".)

We're taking it back!

It used the word "transsexual?" Is that word more common over there? It's almost entirely been replaced by transgender here, so the use of transsexual here would make me suspect a troll posted it, not someone part of the parade.

I was surprised by that myself. Maybe they're trying to reclaim it? Other than that slogan, the poster just consisted of the name of the parade, the starting point and time, and photos of various placards ("Hands off our HRT" etc.), so it seemed to be legit.

"My Lord, the peasants are revolting!" "Yes I know, I can smell them from here."

Classic joke. I can't see this as anything but mockery.

Mockery of who?

That's actually a good question. My instinct was that this is mocking transgender people, but after thinking more there could be some sort of ironic meta-mockery as well, like associating people who think transgenders are gross with the aristocracy. I think if that was the intent, though, it's a pretty big miss, because people will make the basic association (trans == gross) more easily than the subtle one.

Anyone else think the new Kimi K3 is overhyped? I tried it on openrouter and it thought for 15000 tokens only to produce a pretty incoherent response. Code-maxxed perhaps, not really a conversationalist.

I know various technical people said 'oh they're not distilling look at how these benchmarks are so high', I can't help but think Kimi stole a Claude base model and then did their own post-training on top of that. And their post-training was a truly nightmarish hack-job, given how locked down Fable was.

Hopefully Deepseek comes up with something good soon and at a better price, gives us a little more token efficiency.

I get most of my AI news from Zvi, and he suspects its real capabilities are less than its benchmark scores would suggest.

Also, everything since Mythos (except Fable) has been overhyped as being able to do some of the same tasks as Mythos can, where the "same tasks" they can do are the easy and less dangerous ones. The difficult and dangerous work of building an end-to-end exploit given a codebase remains otherwise out of reach.

The difficult and dangerous work of building an end-to-end exploit given a codebase remains otherwise out of reach.

Probably also for Mythos. We haven't seen that claimed verified.

I don't know what your threshold for "verified" is, but non-Anthropic companies are making that same claim based on their own tests. For example, Exploitbench shows Mythos (and GPT 5.5, but nothing else) gaining full control of a PC in their tests, and UK AISI found that it could take over a (simulated, weak) corporate network.

I don't know how much more verification you need at this point.

Wavering as to whether to call this Drunk Chef Review or Drunken Chef Review, but either way - two chefs visit a Michelin-star winning restaurant and get progressively more nissed as a pewt while enthusing over the food.

First time they did this.

nissed as a pewt

Is this an Irishism of some sort? Never heard this phrase before

It is a humorous Spoonerism for "pissed (drunk) as a newt".

What are your predictions for the odyssey ? Will it bomb, will it flourish, will it be meh? What it has going on for it are Nolan, star studded cast, one of the greatest adventure tales ever told. On the other hand for every Dark Knight in his career, Nolan has produced a Dark Knight Rises and all of his movies are one hour longer than needed. The casting has definitely some strange and odd choices. And whether there is appetite for mythical destruction in the public after massive woke coded fantasy and other flops in the last few years remains to be seen.

Personally I will probably skip it, unless invited by some extremely hot chick. After so much culture warring - I just can't get excited for the big Hollywood productions anymore.

I mean, I'm not touching it. All the promotional material looks awful, and the interviews I hear about are all the usual subversive plattitudes about undermining the original meaning of the work. I know there probably aren't many Odyssey stans since schools no longer teach western civilization, but I doubt there are enough anti-fans either who are willing to pay to see the original story ruined/subverted.

The reviews are stellar and I was served a Ben Shapiro review on YouTube and even he liked it. It's going to be a monster.

Didn't Shapiro like Return of Skywalker?

IDK - but lots of people were far less mad at that than TLJ.

In his review for Odd he argues that the weird casting ends up being fine, if someone of his politics goes for that....

I don't watch many movies, I'm a bit burned out on Nolan and the trailer looked dreadful so I'm most likely skipping this, unless there is some really good WOM from people I know IRL.

It's a bit strange, seeing the almost universally glowing reviews and then the the national newspaper I'm subscribed to kind of trashed it in its review and then posted a series of other articles on why it and Nolan are kind of bad, for completely non-CW reasons.

Ultimately it's Nolan though so I don't think it can bomb.

A Swedish newspaper: Svenska Dagbladet

There is practically no competition in terms of summer blockbusters right now, and Nolan has a lot of name recognition. Same with The Odyssey, most people have at least heard of it. It could be the biggest trainwreck of a movie ever produced and people would still go see it just on that basis. Critics are going to glaze Nolan no matter what. If it turns out to be a complete stinker in terms of audience reviews, it's going to hurt Nolan's next movie, not this one. (Edit: currently it's sitting at a 89 critic score on metacritic, and a 5.1 user score...)

I'd be surprised if it cracks a billion though, because the movie doesn't seem like it will appeal to the Chinese / international market.

(Edit: currently it's sitting at a 89 critic score on metacritic, and a 5.1 user score...)

Kinda strange. On rotten tomatoes it is 96 and 97 correspondingly. Is there a history of audience score mismatch between metacritic and the tomatoes?

A billion will be huge success. What is the break even point of the movie - usually it is around 2.something the budget?

Critical Drinker hasn't released his review which is strange. There is chance the movie is so good he has nothing to rant about, but it is doubtful.

If you want to get a bit tinfoil hat, Rotten Tomatoes is a subsidiary of Comcast. So is Universal Pictures, which is the distributor of The Odyssey. If I were a conglomerate that owned both a movie distributor and a movie review aggregator, it sure would be tempting to crack down on "inauthentic review bombing" or whatever.

Apparently break even is $650-750 million, given the large budget and marketing costs.

After the movie leaked on 4chan, apparently they have been frantically DMCAing anything with even a single frame of the movie. That might be making things difficult for reviewers.

We're those real? They looked terrible, I'd have guessed they were footage shot but not used.

On one of Drinker's recent vids he mentioned he was visiting a con and there'd be a break in uploads. He's previously pointed out good things in movies his audience expected him to dislike (e.g. one of the Wicked movies). Hopefully he's not too audience-captured to call things honestly here.

I don't think it'll flop, woke fatigue usually takes time to set in (Star Wars 8 grossed a gigajillion dollars) and Nolan's track record gives him the benefit of the doubt.

As for whether it'll be good. Probably? It's a good story, by a good director with good actors. I'm of the opinion that you should lean into the goofiness of the Odyssey because the underlying plot is kind of grim, but we'll see how this one goes.

Granted I haven't watched all of Nolan's movies recently, but I don't think he's made a good movie since The Dark Knight Rises. Interstellar and Tenet were both godawful, though the former at least had a banger soundtrack. I would expect this movie to be more of the same.

Interstellar has grown on me. Tenet had a good idea but couldn't execute it in a way that was entertaining.

Dunkirk was quite good. Oppenheimer was well shot and had sharp dialog up until the final scene with RDJ, which was so unbelievable it took me out of the movie.

Interstellar I've enjoyed watching several times. Tenet I did not enjoy as much but it was a great moviegoing experience. Just as counterpoint.

I saw it yesterday and I liked it a lot. It's definitely not perfect and I can see certain things that could ruin it for people, but overall I think if you enjoy Christopher Nolan films in general, you will enjoy this one. I'll try to say some things about it without spoilers.

Two major things I could see ruining it for some Mottizens and why they didn't ruin it for me:

  1. Culture war. My impression is the culture war nonsense is pretty superficial, so for me personally it didn't bother me too much. Okay, race swapping Helen is silly, but I don't feel like the culture war stuff affected the interpretation and the themes of the story. I feel like Nolan genuinely had a vision for this film that doesn't have much to do with the culture war du jour. I didn't get the idea that this is some conscious progressive subversion of the original story at all. I think all of the actors that were complained about beforehand as diversity hires, did a fine job or at least not a bad enough job to ruin the film for me. In terms of less superficial stuff, the only culture stuff that popped into my mind while watching the film had to do with the fact that the theme of hospitality plays a major role in the film, which it also does in the book btw. There was a line or two where I was thinking, maybe they want me to think about immigration or something in relation to this hospitality stuff, but if that's the case, the film is sending a very ambiguous message about it and not just pandering to progressive culture war memes. Honestly, the fact I was thinking about immigration culture war here might well be culture war brainrot on my side.

  2. If you are a history nerd and care a lot about adaptations being super faithful to the books and historically accurate and such, there is probably a lot to get hung up on in this film. All of the armor and boats and stuff have nothing to do with Bronze Age Greek stuff. There are some shots in flashbacks of Agamemnon in armor at Troy and frankly he looks more like batman than like anything authentically Greek. For me it probably helped somewhat that I only read parts of the Odyssey like 15 years ago or something during Ancient Greek lessons in high school. I had some overall familiarity with the story, but when something surprising happened to me I couldn't be sure if this is some detail that I haven't read or forgotten about or whether this was a deviation from the source material. There are one or two hamfisted interpretations/themes in there where I thought it would have been better if he didn't spell it out as much as he does. On the other hand some Nolanisms were actually incorporated skillfully in harmony with the source material. Nolan always plays around with time and non-linear storytelling, but the original source material is also somewhat non-linear, so that actually worked surprisingly well.

I think those are the two major things I think could ruin the film for some people who are sensitive to those issues. Now onto two things I really liked.

  1. When we compare it to the 2004 Troy film, one massive difference in which Nolan is much more faithful to the source material: it includes a bunch of supernatural stuff. If you've ever read a fragment of Homer, you will know that the gods aren't vague background things, they are very much actively involved in the story. Honestly, if anything, we probably should have had even more and more direct involvement of the gods than Nolan gives us, but I think Nolan gives us about as much gods as modern Western audiences can handle without it becoming goofy.

  2. The characters at times behaved not at all like modern westerns. That is to say, while some influence of contemporary morality and values that we all take for granted is impossible to avoid in something like this, otherwise the film would probably be completely unwatchable for modern audiences, there is a degree of violence and brutality that is at least somewhat trying to represent the original Bronze Age story, rather than sanitizing everything for modern audiences.

Overall, if you're so fed up with culture stuff that you immediately rage-quite when you see a silly raceswap even if it is somewhat superficial and doesn't affect the underlying story, you are probably not going to enjoy this film. Otherwise, if you enjoy other Nolan films, I can recommend seeing it. It isn't perfect, but I personally enjoyed it a lot.

I think it's gonna be too heavy on the dark and brooding and too light on the action. So many of the trailer shots are the brooding looks and traveling and not enough of the action. Which might be more accurate to the story. Also people are gonna hate the story of what happens at his home while he is gone. It adds a lot of length to the story with a very long payoff time.

But it's Nolan so maybe the action will look awesome and kick lots of but.

But it's Nolan so maybe the action will look awesome and kick lots of but.

Not if I go by the trailer with the Laestrygonians. I hope the battle scenes are much better than that mess.

I like Nolan as a director but he doesn't film great action sequences. His best ones involve massive vehicles or airplanes; anything that is human-on-human is a blurry, boring, mess.

I don’t know if it will bomb or not. But I watched a CAM bootleg on my computer this evening. It was literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Now, given that it was a pirate copy and most people don’t n ow what that means, imagine someone with a camera on a tripod in the projection booth filming the screen. As such, I can’t really say if the visual impact of the movie makes up for everything else. But since the fidelity was so low, I have to judge the film by its characters, theme, acting, dialogue and plot. I give it a 2, 1, 0, 0, 1 in each category. Overall score 1 out of 10.

I just watched The Return last night. As such the final scene with Odysseus, the bow, and the suiters was particularly horribly executed. I beg everyone who’s watching the Nolan movie to go find and watch The Return. That movie is also flawed, but the final scene is absolutely epic. Watching Matt Damon swing and axe around in a circle like a retard is laughably bad. And watching him play a famous archer and basically hip firing a bow and arrow is so silly.

I saw one good review say it was “Bracingly modern”. With that, I agree.

Are all Nolan movies this bad? I know he’s got some detractors out there, but I recall telling people I liked Oppenheimer. I need to rewatch it to see I was just caught up in the hype of that too.

It’s hard to emphasize how bad I thought a lot of it is. And then to see the critical reviews give it a 10/10. And I’m sure all of the normies will rave about it too. Am I just crazy?

It’s the worst movie Ive seen in quite some time.

but I recall telling people I liked Oppenheimer

At the time I said this for Oppenheimer - It becomes one of all time best movies if you remove everything but the Manhattan project.

I saw one good review say it was “Bracingly modern”. With that, I agree.

Are all Nolan movies this bad? I know he’s got some detractors out there, but I recall telling people I liked Oppenheimer.

This movie kinda was Oppenheimer. Matt Damon single-handedly caused the Bronze Age Collapse,that event with a famously singular cause, and the movie is wrestling with that.

I heard about that bit, and I can only think it is supposed to refer to "I solved the problem of how to conquer Troy and have Greece win the war, which meant the Greek fleet all heading home at the same time, and then they (like myself and my ships) had to invade islands for food and supplies, and killed the inhabitants, woe is me, the Bronze Age Collapse is all my fault".

Funnily enough, reviewers whose tastes often align with mine (we all agree Rings of Power is terrible) saw the movie and really liked it, so it must come across way better on the big screen when you watch the entire movie, because the trailers were dogshit.

The movie does posit that the Sea Peoples are returning Greeks for that reason.

But that isn't even the main problem. The movie outright states that the thing that caused the collapse of the entire civilization was the breaking of xenia/Zeus's law because of the Trojan horse gambit and the attendant sack (no mention is made of the much more unambiguous violation of hospitality that kicked off the war).

The movie makes an outcome whose cause so uncertain we debate the causes today into a pretty straightforward monocausal event.

Funnily enough, reviewers whose tastes often align with mine (we all agree Rings of Power is terrible) saw the movie and really liked it, so it must come across way better on the big screen when you watch the entire movie, because the trailers were dogshit.

It's much better than I thought from the trailers. Trailers were awful and bland and I suspect that's part of why the antiwoke stuff was able to dominate. The PR just didn't give you much.

TBF they didn't have to. The story is the story and Nolan is at the peak of his powers in terms of box office draw.

Are all Nolan movies this bad?

I haven't seen The Odyssey (and won't unless someone physically drags me along), but I think he's a tremendously overrated director. The Prestige is his only film I can really say I like without major reservations. Oppenheimer is overlong, tedious and populated by characters who seem more like robots than human beings: it is beyond me how anyone could honestly claim to have enjoyed the last hour. Memento is gimmicky nonsense (comparisons to the similarly overrated and contrived The Usual Suspects are well-deserved), a puzzle to be enjoyed once and discarded. Tenet represented him at his most indulgent, and could have been a lot of fun (its "core mechanic" certainly has a lot of cinematic potential) if not for its infamously appalling sound mixing and charmless nepo baby leading man: unlike Oppenheimer, at least it was never boring. The Dark Knight had a soundtrack which effectively conjured a mood of dread and anxiety and a staggering performance in Heath Ledger's Joker (I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the best performances in any film so far this century), but I think the effectiveness of that performance has distracted audiences from noticing some of the film's glaring flaws, namely a plot no less implausible than any other capeshit film, an anticlimactic ending, and action sequences just as incoherent as those in the rest of his oeuvre. (In spite of all that, I'd still probably put it in the W column for him, if begrudgingly. I can imagine myself watching it or Batman Begins if I was on a long-haul flight and there was nothing better to watch, the same circumstances under which I watched The Prestige.) Interstellar showed this infamously cold and remote director attempting to go a bit softer and Spielbergian, and the results were embarrassing: sentiment is not something you can fake, as anyone who's used generative AI will tell you. Dunkirk was a transparent attempt to do a Bri'ish take on Saving Private Ryan, and benefitted from featuring extremely sparse dialogue (believable dialogue was never one of his strengths), but missed the memo that Ryan's bloody, brutal grittiness was an essential element of what made it work: a gritty PG-13 war film is a contradiction in terms. I haven't seen Inception since it was in the cinema, but don't remember especially enjoying it, and have always found the basic concept of "it's a movie which is a metaphor for making movies" kind of silly and masturbatory. (I do remember feeling exceptionally annoyed at the Nolan fanboys patting themselves on the back for being able to follow the film's plot, and insisting that anyone who didn't like it was just too thick to understand it. It's not Primer, lads.)

I've noticed that every time a new Nolan film comes out, it makes a lot of money and critics praise it to the heavens as his best film yet – but inside of a year, everyone has completely forgotten about it, which I take as a tacit admission that these films are ultimately rather shallow and unmemorable. I bet you'd all completely forgotten about Dunkirk before reading this comment, hadn't you? Inception was probably his last film which made any kind of durable impact on popular culture. Not only that, but he's getting worse over time: neither Tenet nor Oppenheimer were good films, but the latter was measurably worse. I have a hard time imagining anyone will be talking about The Odyssey ten or even five years from today: even his biggest fans certainly aren't talking about Tenet now. People will say the latter film might have made a bigger impression if it hadn't had the bad luck to come out during Covid, but that's cope and everyone knows it.

If Insomnia, Following and The Dark Knight Rises are widely considered indisputable masterpieces, that's news to me. I have a hard time imagining even Nolan himself would claim TDKR exceeds either of its predecessors in the series.

In spite of all that, it's almost disappointing his films largely leave me cold, as there's a great deal about him I respect. His insistence on shooting on film and keeping CG to a minimum is admirable: as incoherent as his action sequences are, from a purely visual standpoint I think many of his films will age far more gracefully than many of their contemporaries. I likewise commend his refusal to simultaneously release his films in cinemas and streaming platforms. The decision to cast a black woman and a trans man in The Odyssey was probably a sop to fend off the entirely warranted accusations of his being a crypto-conservative: politically, The Dark Knight can be summed up as "the PATRIOT ACT was good and necessary, actually" – not a sentiment I'd endorse, and yet not one I can imagine any other blockbuster director encoding into one of his films. Dunkirk was unabashedly, unapologetically patriotic in a way few films of its type are these days (something progressive critics recognised on release, derisively characterising it as a film made for Brexiteers and taking him to task for depicting the British armed forces of the 1940s as fuggin' white males, a historically accurate casting decision he made a point of repeating in Oppenheimer). Politically, he's probably the Hollywood mogul with whom I'd have most in common, and can imagine him being a very interesting dinner party guest, as long as we were talking about something other than movies.

I also agree that The Prestige is probably both his best and most underrated work (I haven't seen Momento or The Odyssey, though). Great unity of effect, and manages to line up the plot and theme in a way that is pretty rare.

I probably remember more about the South Park episode parodying Inception than I do the movie itself.

I agree that Nolan is overrated, but I think it proves how desperate audiences are for solid filmmaking craft, which is something that Nolan does really well. He builds big sets and shoots on location and performs real stunts, and at least makes an effort to utilize the power of visuals. I don't plan to make a special effort to see this movie, as I'm just not a mythology enthusiast to begin with, but I'm willing to believe that it's much better than the usual theatrical dreck.

Agreed. As much as I might criticise the man, I'd take one of his films over the modal green-screen Marvel/Disney slop any day.

I saw a clip someone uploaded and oh boy. Nolan just went straight for the liberal political discourse. It was Penelope and Odysseus in bed at night with baby Telemachus beside them, and she was trying to persuade him not to go to the war, and he came back with the geo-political strategic reasons why the establishment were pursuing this war and it was unavoidable (Agamemnon was using Helen's abduction as his excuse to break Troy's trading monopoly, he would not give up on that, so Odysseus had no way to say no).

Well doesn't that just scream ancient Greek epic of martial honour and warrior values to you, modern audience citizen? How can you not love and applaud this movie?

And of course it was as dark as the inside of a badger, but that's only because us proles don't appreciate subtle modern cinematography.

I really wish he had gone the Shakespeare adaptation route and set this in 1950s USA or 1890s British Empire or some damn thing. That would be a fresh take and he could then insert his Colonialist Politics For Beginners lectures without them seeming as much out of place.

EDIT: I'm not saying Nolan is wrong about that, in fact it's part of the historical interpretation take on the siege of Troy (and very well-established by now, so he's not doing anything novel for those who have read even a little on this), and of course Odysseus as a canny political operator himself would have been well aware of all that in the background motivation. But it's so jarringly modern to come out with it like that while in the trappings of ancient Greece that it breaks immersion and makes you go 'this is Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway' and not 'this is Odysseus and Penelope'. Odysseus and the other suitors swore the oath, back in the day, to go to the help of her husband. That's what is dragging him into this expedition: he is honour-bound by his oath (ironically, suggested by him as a solution to Helen's father) to join Menelaus and be under the authority of Agamemnon as leader. Helen's abduction by Paris (whether or not she went willingly) is an insult to the honour and reputation of Menelaus personally and to Sparta politically, and since Paris is the son of the Trojan king, Troy has to answer for it. It's all a tangle of obligation and status and upholding the warrior caste standards, as well as manoeuvring for political advantage. Reducing it down to "breaking trade monopoly" is tin-eared.

Odysseus doesn't want to go. How will he get out of it? Is being an oath-breaker better or worse in this case? If Odysseus is prepared to break solemn promises, how can you ever trust him? If he breaks this promise, what about promises to spare enemies or make peace? Is this war justified? Even if it isn't, can he break the oath?

I don't know if Nolan explores all this, or just has three hours of Damon mumbling and grumbling while squinting at the horizon.

Funny thing is that the movie can't commit to being modern. Spoilers, obviously.

Instead of the modern materialistic view of the Bronze Age collapse (i.e. complicated confluence of material factors like drought, loss of tin supply, etc. - people are still debating) it's a straightforwardly moralist tale (humans break gods' law and suffer) except that the morals are themselves very modern. We hear nothing of Troy suffering for Paris' violation of sacred law.

Instead the entire Bronze Age ends because Odysseus didn't apply "do unto others" to his grand ploy in the middle of a war. The rules-based international order sustained by xenia collapses because it cannot bear the betrayal.

There's a sort of divine hiddenness that's also a bit strange given how the movie preserves other supernatural elements.

This leads to the most ironic coda possible for this whole thing: Emily Wilson, who became the scapegoat for this movie's deliberately modern dialogue and themes online, criticized it for being too modern

I got my bum pinched, visiting a gay bar on the day of the Pride Parade in Glasgow. It was more bemusing than offensive. TBH, I'm not offended at all, I went to one of most famous/notorious gay bars, and I was well groomed and wearing pointy shoes. Dunno what the women are complaining about.

It's only a matter of time until you write your coming out as bi post.

If by "time" you mean the Heath Death of the universe. I'm painfully straight, as in I'm straight and it causes me pain.

Says the guy hanging out in a gay bar for Pride who enjoyed the attention of having his backside pinched. Suuuuure you are as straight as a ruler 😁

Now ma'am, let's review the evidence like good Bayesians. I spend most of my drinking hours at a gay pub. My friends here skew overwhelmingly LGBTQ: my closest friend in the area is an asexual lesbian (a contradiction in terms, though she reports only 90% confidence, down from 99%, so the market is moving, and I might be to praise/blame for rehabilitating men). The regulars assumed I was in a relationship with a bisexual man. I was not. I just tolerate him because he's a good guy who looked after me during a bad stretch, which I gather is what relationships are, but never mind.

Further data: my younger brother came out to me as gay. At least five independent observers have seen photos of a distant shrink uncle and rendered the verdict "this dude is so gay it hurts." I wear nice Chelsea boots, and spent my first months in this city genuinely puzzled as to why obviously gay men kept complimenting them. I may have written an ethnographic analysis in a gay pub.

Any reasonable model, fed these inputs, converges on one conclusion. And yet:

I was also offered, variously, two blowjobs, a rimjob, and a golden shower. I declined with gratitude. It is good to be desired. It is also good to have boundaries.

I have been propositioned dozens of times, across various states of sobriety, by men. The answer remains no. I appreciate the interest, truly. But I love women, an affliction exactly as inconvenient as it sounds, and one for which medical science has no treatment. My sole consolation is that they like me back.

Says the guy hanging out in a gay bar for Pride

(I was in Glasgow to see a woman. She was busy, so I killed time at... gay bars.)

Bro, no judgment, but you sure talk a lot about how many gay men come onto you (because you hang out with gay men) and then get really defensive about how totally not gay you are. Like, at this point either you're doing a bit, or...

It is a bit? I would hope that's blazingly obvious my man. Would you prefer I start throwing in "/s"? I find that approach crass.

I think you know me well enough that you should believe me when I say that if I had any real desire to engage in happy fun times with another man, there's nothing stopping me. Why don't I? Because I don't care to.

I am not gay. I am not a bisexual in denial. I like putting penis in vagina. I have the self-awareness to find it rather amusing that I find it fun to hang around gay people. I have been accused of having the musical taste of a gay man, but then again, they're the Jews of the music industry (let's not talk about the gay Jews).

It's become enough of a pattern that people are asking questions. It may not in fact be because you are gay, it could be because you've discovered a new subculture that makes you feel at home while you are going through a tough time and helps you connect with your brother (I think you said he was gay?) it could be something totally different. However it's usually because you are gay so even if that isn't it - it is certainly an impression you are slightly giving off.

I well understand why people might suspect I'm gay. I find it amusing, really, since at least to my own satisfaction, I'm as zero on the Kinsey scale as one can get. Adjusting for the kind of floating point error you wouldn't notice on a pride float.

Am I offended when people online suspect I'm gay? Not really. If I cared, I wouldn't supply the material. I'm more annoyed when people take my rather definitive declarations that I'm straight as evidence of denial. Gee, the dude who regularly writes essays about falling in and out of love with women is gay, is all I can say to them. Bisexuality is a harder to adjudicate diagnosis of exclusion, but we've moved past the ICD-10 paraphilia era.

I can only sigh in exasperation. If I regularly defend gay and bisexual subcultures against attack, it would take a particular form of intransigent self delusion to not acknowledge tendencies to join them. I don't acknowledge them because they don't exist

Honestly, there's are plenty of prosaic reasons I hang around with gay people. I started going to a gay pub entirely by accident (I have that essay about the shock of realizing it's a gay pub, I'm not very observant at times), and picked up gay friends. This well predated my brother coming out, but might have contributed to him feeling comfortable doing so. He could see I was more than comfortable treating gay people as human beings, though I can only hope that he had enough reason to trust me before that. Humans are weird like that, he could have told me a decade back and I'd have had his back, that's what brothers are for.

What else? Those environments are, as you suggested, quite novel to me. And there's always some drama going on, I pack my own popcorn. I also appreciate that they're quite understanding and accepting spaces, not that that's for my own benefit. I do not like moral busybodies, not that you can't find them there too.

More recently, I'm seeing a (straight) woman heavily enmeshed in the culture. She dragged me to a drag queen night the first date (I went willingly, I was just curious), and her best friend is a gay influencer. That kinda constrains the option space for me, you know, not that I particularly mind. If there's booze and people to tell me about their mental health issues, I'm content. You only get one of the two at work.

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It is a bit? I would hope that's blazingly obvious my man. Would you prefer I start throwing in "/s"? I find that approach crass.

If this is just a bit, it feels a little disingenuous. You frame it in terms of whether you mind being groped, but whenever you tell us about this stuff happening, you are implicitly bragging about your sexual desirability.

Not accusing you of doing this consciously, but that is how it comes across, especially since it is a regular thing (imagine a female poster who regularly makes cutesy complaints about how her male friends keep simping for her)

I am not gay. I am not a bisexual in denial

It was more bemusing than offensive. TBH, I'm not offended at all

I'm not entirely straight myself, but from observing, listening to, and reading the accounts of fully heterosexual men, any kind of sexual contact with another male is gross and disturbing. The fact it was just "bemusing" does not sound fully heterosexual.

I find it fun to hang around gay people

You aren't just hanging out with people who happen to be gay though - you're going to explicitly gay events and spaces, where you expect beforehand to get sexually touched by males, and this doesn't deter you. I'm reminded of how people with weird fetishes often want to just have the fetish dynamic just happen organically, instead of having to seek it out:

  • Oh no - I've been captured by a latex-clad, busty blonde femdom Mord-Sith who tortures me (but also sexually teases me sometimes, to uh, make the torture psychologically worse)
  • My wife caught me looking at sissy porn, so now she is forcing me to become her feminised cuckold slave, thus freeing me from the stress and responsibilities of being a man
  • Fascists have taken over and removed women's right, so now I have to have sex with and get impregnated by Chad be ritually raped in "ceremonies" by "Commanders"
  • I just like hanging around gay spaces, and sometimes this leads to me being sexually touched by men. I'm not into though, I just let it happen as a lark. Maybe I should do some light experimentation with them, for a part 2 to my amateur gay ethnography survey

...if I had any real desire to engage in happy fun times with another man, there's nothing stopping me

Aren't you in a (presumably monogamous) relationship with a woman?

It seems to me that your chief complaint is that I'm too secure in my masculinity. Uh, what am I supposed to be doing about that? No, seriously. I have few qualms about hanging out with gay people or in gay spaces, or both at the same time, because I genuinely don't particularly care how that comes across. It's clearly not affecting anything IRL. God knows most women would prefer their would be husbands be more like gay men in some regards, as long as they don't actually sleep with other men.

I'm not entirely straight myself, but from observing, listening to, and reading the accounts of fully heterosexual men, any kind of sexual contact with another male is gross and disturbing

.... Fellas? Is it gay to kiss your homies goodnight? Oh, only if you use tongue?

I don't really care that a drunk dude, in a gay bar, pinched my ass. I laughed and waved him off. If he'd gone further, I would have made it very clear that his approaches were unwelcome. If he still kept it up, his nose might have a quick date and breakup with my fist. It's never gone that far, because gay men aren't barbarians. A polite "very kind of you to like me, but you're wasting your time" is usually met with laughs and/or apologies.

Some straight men would be more physical and angry about things, but you wouldn't catch them in gay spaces either.

And now, if you're postulating that this is some kind of weird fetish? All I can do is sigh and turn off my phone. Or just go to sleep, because I need the alarm in the morning.

Aren't you in a (presumably monogamous) relationship with a woman?

I don't think anyone has started taking testosterone while I wasn't looking.

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asexual lesbian (a contradiction in terms,

As a boy I had 3 or 4 crushes before I ever had anything like a sexual urge, and yet they were all crushes on girls. "Asexual heteroromantic" would have been a good descriptor. I presume asexual homoromantic people exist too, in great numbers before puberty albeit smaller numbers after.

My friend, were I listening to a female colleague going on about how she kept being hit on by lesbians even though she was a straight cis woman, and then it turned out she regularly visited lesbian clubs and bars in the company of lesbian friends and was always being identified as a lesbian because she dressed like one and had the regulation lesbian haircut and was having confused hot chicks hitting on her at Pride parades...

... I'd wonder. I'd wonder a lot why she didn't just stop hitting up lesbian bars if she didn't want to be hit on by lesbians since she was so terrifically straight?

"Gosh, why am I putting on these love handles? It sure can't have anything to do with the boxes of Cadbury's Roses I keep eating!" 😁

I was in Glasgow to see a woman. She was busy, so I killed time at... gay bars.

And your wife doesn't understand you, and you're only staying together for the sake of the kids, and you're getting that divorce any day now, honest, so just keep hanging on while we have this affair, O mistress mine. Yep, I believe you!

And your wife doesn't understand you, and you're only staying together for the sake of the kids, and you're getting that divorce any day now, honest, so just keep hanging on while we have this affair, O mistress mine. Yep, I believe you!

Now then, I have expressed fondness for older women, but while I might be visiting Ireland out of boredom, no need to go that far. I like you for your brains ma'am.

You'll be otherwise occupied in Pantibar or the George.

This all reads like you're halfway to Narnia. I'm sorry.

I'd left my coat in the closet. Next to the real skeleton I owned in med school. I mean, I do own one still, it's just a bit hard to access.

Just beware: when a skeleton dies, it turns into even bonier bones.

A hunter is walking in the woods searching for the biggest bear he can find when he stumbles across a giant brown bear. He pulls out his shotgun, steadily aims, and fires at the bear. The bear seemingly falls into a nearby ditch and appears to be dead. The hunter slowly walks over to the ditch, until he feels a tap on his shoulder. The man turns around, and just as he does, the bear asks: "Did you shoot me with that shotgun?" The man replies "Yes", and the bear throws down the man and starts raping him.

In a few weeks, the hunter devises a plan for revenge on the bear. He brings his double-barrel shotgun and is really ready to get even. He walks through the woods and sees the bear, so he steadies his aim, shoots the bear, and the bear falls into the ditch, seemingly dead. The hunter slowly walks over to the ditch, and just as he does, he feels a tap on his shoulder. When the man turns around he sees none other than the very same bear standing above him. The bear asks the man, "Did you just shoot me with that double-barrel shotgun? To this the man replies "Yes", and the bear rapes him.

After a month has passed, the man has recovered and is very eager for revenge. He brings an elephant tranquilizer this time and is sure he will have enough firepower to take down the bear for good. Just as before, the man is walking through the woods when he sees the very same brown bear. He steadies his aim and fires. The bear falls into the ditch, and the man slowly walks over to him. After searching for a while, the man is tapped on the shoulder once again. He turns around slowly to face the brown bear. The bear then asks him, "You don't come here to hunt, do you?

I have interacted with bears. But politely, and from a respectful distance. It's the twinks you have to watch out for.

>strong, dominant rapist

I see why many women say they prefer the bear.

Dunno what the women are complaining about.

This sentence actually made me angry. 10/10 bait, made me reply.

Can't let Count do all the work, can I?

I object to this characterisation of myself.

You object to many things, dear sir, and they're rarely to be believed. We'll see what the judge has to say about it.

And you just got pinched?

They took my pennies from me.

"He's so gay he can't walk in a straight line!"


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