GraniteM @ GraniteM @lemmy.world

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922

Joined

2 yr. ago

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

--Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

I think originality is overrated. Hear me out.

Example 1: Star Wars should plagiarize more. Original Star Wars is Hidden Fortress in space, plus a bit of WW2 dogfighting and some car culture flavor. Late period Star Wars has been taking original Star Wars, blending it up, and pouring it back out again. Not enough plagiarism. Top Gun, but make it Star Wars and call it Rogue Squadron. Three Musketeers, but make it Star Wars and call it Three Jedi. Take your pick of old detective noir stories, set it on Coruscant, and call it the The Dantooine Falcon. Stop ripping off Star Wars in Star Wars, and go back to ripping off other properties, and it's a license to print money.

Example 2: Stop trying to make movie franchises progress forward in time; continuity and originality are overrated. James Bond has been making virtually the same movie for over sixty years, and people still love it! Bond goes to exotic locale meets and beds some number of beautiful women, engages in a bit of extreme sports, foils the plan of some flamboyant villain. The actors are regularly changed without comment. The movie is always set "right now." Bond has (almost) always been 007 for "a while." Continuity virtually never spans more than a couple of movies until it gets reset to zero again. And it's still going strong as a franchise! Pirates of the Caribbean could have used this pattern and just kept making crazy pirate adventure movies forever, but they got wrapped around the axle trying to keep a continuous plot going forward. Should have gone the James Bond route.

Stop trying to make original movies that advance an overarching plot across a franchise. Make movies that have already been made and that don't take the franchise anywhere. You can't go wrong.

Don't forget about PFAS!

Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy a jetski, and have you ever seen someone look sad on a jetski?

Proverbs 26:18-19

Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death, Is the man who deceives his neighbor, And says, “I was only joking!”

Could they do the thing that airports do with geese, where they get a Labrador to run around and bark at the birds and the birds say, "Ehh... fuck this area" and leave of their own accord?

DO NOT CREATE THE TORMENT NEXUS

I saw a car with these two bumper stickers:

That was a very confusing day for me.

There's no way in fucking Hell that Trump would willingly stand in the way of a bullet.

There's no way in fucking Hell that Trump could keep quiet about it if he was actually an active participant in a conspiracy. He'd have tweeted about it by the end of the week.

There's no way in fucking Hell that the people around Trump could orchestrate an attempted assassination without it blowing up in their faces somehow.

The ear was probably hit by a tiny fleck of glass from a shattered teleprompter, and then with Trump no doubt on blood thinners it would bleed like all get out.

Just keep assuming ever greater stupidity and incompetence all around and you'll usually arrive at the correct answer as to what happened.

That's not a bad explanation.

Qui-Gon: Credits will do fine. [while attempting a mind trick]

Watto: No, they won’t.

Qui-Gon: Credits WILL do fine.

Watto: No, they won’t.

Qui-Gon: [Walks down street to money exchanger] Trade me these credits for Hutt bucks [Does mind trick]

Money Exchanger: Okay!

[Qui-Gon returns to Watto]

Qui-Gon: Here's a pile of Hutt bucks. Sell me a functional hyperdrive.

Watto: Okay!

[Roll credits]

I assumed that it meant "toast."

Literally this

Homophobes: "We can't legalize gay marriage! The birth rate would collapse! If men could marry men, then what reasonable man would ever choose to marry a disgusting, weak, woman over a strong, virile, muscular, sweaty, musky, oily, maaaannnnnn..."

The rest of us: Dude. Bro. Dude.

Teddy would never.

A "New York minute" is defined as the time between when the light turns green and when a New York driver will honk their horn at you.

What the fuck is wrong with kids listening to their shitty parents?

/I know a lot of people get raised wrong in households that teach them wrong things and it takes a lot of effort to get better, but... it's pretty astounding to me to imagine someone listening to their parents tell them that Donald fucking Trump is a Cool Guy.

via SMBC:

1. Tater tots are basically an entire potential meal of their own. Not a French fry, but I may actually prefer them as a possible main dish.
2. The best French fries. They are the perfect side.
3. If you want to fancy it up a bit. Suitable for formal occasions.
4. Taking the one-dimensional line of the French fry and extrapolating it out to two dimensions. Still a good ketchup conveyance, but starting to get into the issue I'm going to bring up with...

5, 6, 7. Not a good enough ratio of crispy outer fried surface to gooey potato inner. I prefer crisp, but when I bite one of these, I have a good chance of just getting a mouthful of scalding hot potato napalm, or what's worse, cold potato cement. Not ideal.

'8. Yeccch.