TheActualDevil @ TheActualDevil @sffa.community

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2 yr. ago

The Handmaid's Tale (TV Show), hands down.

The first season was emotional but I've gotten through it multiple times as I've tried re-watching to get through season 2. I got a little farther the last time I tried, but man, it's so visceral and constantly beating down the protagonist and everyone around her. That's the point and it's great, it's just so depression-inducing when there's just no uplifting points. IT does not let up in beating you down with the horribleness. I just can't keep going when it goes on for so long.

There's one other option:

They could make games outside newer versions of the same game. Game studios used to (and many still do) make a game, put it out, then get started making a whole different game. Even with the modern ability to update games,

1. Put game out
2. Update game to deal with unforeseen bugs found once the masses have access
3. Maybe put out 1 DLC if you want
4. Make a new game now. A different game.

Then why are we taking their opinion over our own?

Typically, when people cite something like that, they defer to an expert in that field. In this case, maybe an anthropologist? There's nothing in the training to be a physicist that prepares them to understand the early stages of civilizations forming, let alone is longevity.

I've had this Excel workbook open for an hour now and my boss is asking why I'm just staring at it. But thank you?

remained mindful of the naivety of all people, including themselves,... to prevent allowing hubris to allow poor decisions.

Not to spoil a 60 year old book, but didn't they have a plan to genetically engineer a literal savior to mankind with hundreds of years of selective breeding? A little like the pot telling the kettle it's too sure of itself.

At 4 AM this morning I learned there was a smoke alarm in my office. Also that the beep it makes when the battery is dead is loud as fuck. Loud enough to wake me from a dead sleep in another room.

So I work with a lot of people from a variety of countries. Some of those countries have really bad governments. When we joke about each other's countries, it's about the governments. I remember this guy who used to work with me from the Philippines. It was near the beginning of lockdowns and just after Duterte was elected. He made fun of the shit Trump was saying and doing, and I got to joke that they had their own Trump(maybe worse) coming. Australian co-workers laugh along when we joke about their shit politicians.

What we don't do is joke about the people or the culture. That's shitty. All those people are just as much victims of their own circumstances as we all are of our own. But we're adults who work with each other every day and it's easy to remember that we're all real people. The internet however...

I haven't noticed Americans getting upset when people criticize shitty government policies or decisions. At least not from people who aren't boot-lickers from jump. The problem is when people make fun of American stereotypes. Americans are fat and loud and whatever. Like, if all you heard was people talking about Canadians being stuck up about needing things written in French or topped with poutine, it would probably get old, right? "Go cry at your Tim Horton's and take your polar bear for a walk." (okay, so I had to google Canadian stereotypes and it's a short list.)

I don't like America's gun culture either. And I hate when it comes up there's always someone who comes in and preaches the gospel of the 2nd amendment. It also doesn't feel great when people make that generalization about me. This thread is full of people saying Americans are dumb and racist. That's just shitty behavior that no one bats an eye at because it's normal to make those jokes. If I started making comments about like, French people smelling bad or (insert some other offensive thing. I don't keep track of bad stereotypes and I'm done googling it) then that would also be bad and it's a thing I think we should start calling out across the board.

I mean, on a molecular level there is no difference. I feel like they even did the whole ship of Theseus thing several times. And the obvious one is the 2nd Riker. Enterprise (the series, not the ship) saw the addition of transporters to starships and they talked about it a lot in that episode. Bones in the original refused to use them because he understood the science of it and knew people were essentially being killed and reassembled every time they were transported.

I always got the impressions that people who said non-replicated food tasted better were either deluding themselves or that extra flavor they attribute to the food is like, non food things in it. Leftover dirt, mold starting to grow.... Kind of like how completely filtered water is tasteless when the minerals and other fine particulates are removed. Transporters, as a side effect of how they work, remove illnesses from the body (Except when it needs to not for plot reasons. And don't get me started on the billions of bacteria that exist in our body all the time that are necessary for life that wouldn't count as "you"). So presumably, they would remove all those tiny things in food if transported, and obviously wouldn't create them in the first place if replicated.

But aren't the tides caused by external gravitational forces (the moon?)

My immediate thought when I read the post title was of the old subreddit, r/thedonald. The intent was to be a place to sarcastically post "pro Trump" memes to make fun of him and his supporters. The outcome was that it was removed by reddit for being filled with Nazis and hate speech when actual Trump supporters just took over, flooded it with hate and racism.

I don't think one can ever really actually know intent, really, but knowing what a person states as their intent can be interesting. I just don't think it actually matters very much. Outcomes are what actually change things and affect other people.

That's literally all work in capitalism. You use your time and body to do things for other people in exchange for money. We're all prostitutes, only a few of us have sex for it.

"It's a very true dichotomy!"

Proceeds to make up an imagined scenario with a ridiculous fake name to prove it's reality.

I mean, sure, you can blame this batch on the internet and necessary SEO, but good artists being skipped over is nothing new. There were days before the internet (and even after it's implementation, but before the ecosystem you are talking about existed) where artists and band with immense talent were lost to time because things didn't line up just right for them to be successful. Bands played gig after gig, sending their singles to record companies and nothing happened. Just being good at a thing has never been enough. That's just step 1. Often, the right person has to see you, and that person has to be in the position to elevate you at the time. Maybe that industry guy was just in a bad mood that day and wasn't enjoying any music and you just got a bad night.

And we have examples of visual artists dying in obscurity only for their art to hit it big after their death. It's a whole trope in the art world. Van Gogh is probably the most famous. He died penniless having only sold a single painting while alive, and that was to his brother, a frickin art dealer! He even had a guy on the inside and couldn't make it. Impressionism was a new school, but not exactly empty. As a genre it basically got it's own museum in the Musée d'Orsay, and still, one of the greatest artists in the genre (and probably all art) couldn't get a fucking break. Talent is often not enough. Luck and timing have always been more important.

I mean, easier? Sure. But I don't think most people would find it easy to just say go torture a guy. At least I hope so.

I've genuinely been trying to understand how people like the movie so much. The first time I watched it, I thought it was bad. So I came back to it a little while later and give it a second shot. Maybe I was just in a bad mood that day? Everyone seems to love it. Nope, still bad. Even gave it a third shot a few weeks ago and it felt even worse.

I read the first 3 books a few times, but I always try to put aside the source material when it moves to a new media. And the movie seemed to me like it was just a string of barely connected scenes, tied together solely because they shared characters. It was almost entirely just book references without trying to make a story out of them. It was entirely spectacle, and they still couldn't really get the scale right, which I think bugs me more than anything. It shows these giant buildings and ships that hint at vast crowds of people, and we only ever see a handful at a time on screen. Even "crowd" scenes are sparse. It feels like they're trying to make Arrakis feel giant and daunting to show the difference between the expansive dessert dwarfing crowds, then realized they didn't have the money for crowds so they just zoomed in on 4 people.

And they should have ended the story sooner. End with the climax battle and them getting to safety and save everything after for the next movie. Use that new time to actually get me invested in the characters, or the setting, or the story... anything. Make the first movie about palace intrigue as they know they're in danger and not sure who they can trust and gaining allies. Instead, all of that got like, one scene each and only makes sense if you've read the book. The best thing I can say is they put a tiny bit more effort in to showing Paul using the Voice before it's relevant to the story. So at least they cared enough about grounding that. Just not about literally anything else.

I desperately want someone to win me over and tell me what makes this a good movie. I feel like I'm missing something.

My poor understanding of this situation is that, of the team working on it, one guy was like "We need to hold off on publishing until we're 100% sure." Then another guy was like "lol, gonna publish anyway and leave you off the paper." The hesitant guy gets wind and rushes to publish (with everyone included) so as to at least be included in the process.

Also, there's a thing about the first published one only had 3 people on it, making it eligible for a Nobel, but more than that does not qualify.

But overall, I agree! It's not like it being publicized stops them from working on it. They will still be working on it, and it's definitely a step towards progress. Technological process tends to be lots of small improvements to the same system over time until someone comes up with a huge leap. Then the process begins again by constantly improving on that new technology. Hopefully, this is that next huge leap in energy.

Plus, with their process so far published, more people are able to work on it without starting from scratch. It would suck for the original scientists, but be a net good overall if the early publication led to someone else being able to move farther then them because they now have access to it.

Great deal. You get 10 hours pay, they get perpetual use of your likeness for all eternity and you don't have to work ever again! Great deal for somebody.

I mean, he's aware of his popularity and privilege. He's made a few comments clarifying that it wasn't to "stick it to Amazon." He does have a problem with Amazon's business model when it comes to authors as well as the traditional publishing industry's barriers to new authors and he understands that these are people's only real option. He used that clout he has in the industry and his fiscal security to try help open up other avenues for publishing. And yeah, the guy is rich, but not publishing house rich. Printing thousands of books, then distributing them likely takes more liquid cash than he has available. He had a good idea of what it would cost and that's what was asked for on Kickstarter. If he hadn't made that, all the people would have kept their money. If more money was needed, he is rich and could probably cover it. I don't see any risk here that anyone shouldered except for him risking his goodwill with fans.

I try to be skeptical of people. Particularly successful people who have made a lot of money. But from everything I've seen, the man lives his values and seems to be a pretty good guy. For his Kickstarter books, when he was talking to Audible about the audiobook versions, they offered him a very good deal. Then he pushed them to tell what a typical author would get. When he heard how bad a deal that was, he refused.

The man really cares about books and their place in this world. He has been successful and made a lot of money and social power in the industry from decades of writing. Now he's using that to try and make the industry a better place for all writers while also still getting his books to his fans.

And my understanding is that his employees at Dragonsteel have profit sharing as part of their working there, on top of their paychecks. So any money he makes is also distributed throughout the staff. He also seems pretty liberal for a member of the LDS church and has spoken about his views evolving over the years as he's realized the reality around him. He seems like a pretty genuinely good guy doing his best to change the industry for the good of all writers.

Did you have your location services turned on around other people who likely did google that kind of thing? Or connect to the wifi in that house that almost certainly put in a search or 2 for that game? Or people who were there that Google knows you interact with? Did they Google it? Or was it just a very popular thing that was huge in the zeitgeist that day for everyone? We are tracked in so many ways that don't require them having to store and analyze literally every conversation that everyone has (Both sides of the convo as well!)

I would argue that calling a possibly humorous image posted to the internet a meme, is itself a meme in language and has gone past our ability to stop it.