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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Spectre tried to have a lot of twists, none of which worked.

    Spoilers for Spectre going forward. First the film pretended that Waltz wasn’t Blofeld, he was some other character. He looked like Blofeld and acted like Blofeld, but he was someone else entirely. Then the movie happens and guess what… He was Blofeld. Second, they made Blofeld his secret brother for some reason. I think everyone enjoyed Skyfall and it was a fun little peek behind the mysterious “James Bond” figure, but it was also a risk. Skyfall was just so well told that it largely worked. So they tried again, but it was just silly. Remember James? Your long lost secret adoptive brother that you forgot? It was like a soap opera. Finally we’re going to recon all the previous films and say that Blofeld did it all. Maybe if they had told that story better it would have worked, but it just came out silly.

    I think if you want to do Blofeld, especially as the Craig serries was full of origin stories, you have to introduce or hint at him much earlier.




  • I mean the US is heavily car centric. Self driving cars are an attempt to adapt to what the reality of the world currently is.

    We should absolutely be doing things to make cars less of a requirement by improving public transit and creating more livable spaces that don’t require cars, that can even be the primary goal, but it won’t eliminate cars completely, and if it does it will take A LOT longer than self driving cars.

    Self driving cars are a great idea, but they aren’t a fix everything solution, they just one part of an overall solution.

    Quick edit: Also the cars Musk is developing are not even close to what we need. He’s being deliberately obtuse and creating more problems than he’s solving.








  • For #4 if the Random instance weren’t “new”, then calling the nextInt() function would definitely have side effects, since the next integer would pull one away from the random stack.

    However unlike the first three which will run within a consistent amount of time, #4 will take an unknown amount of time to run, so you can’t just collapse it and eliminate the loop.

    For example a very simple race game where a participant moves a random number of steps each turn, we may want to time how long that race takes. We can’t just say that they will reach the end immediately. In fact technically we don’t know that they will ever finish the race… But that’s the halting problem and a whole other issue.



  • Sinners spoilers

    I liked the movie, but it had issues.

    The first half of the film sets up a story of two brothers coming back from war. We learn their backstory, we meet others, it’s got “based on a true story” vibes and it’s well told… But it isn’t that interesting. It’s just setup that you hope pays off later.

    Then we first meet the vampire. It’s a weird scene. You’re primed for a realistic story but then the guy is adamant about being invited in, that’s weird. He’s being hunted, that’s weird. And then sure enough, he’s a vampire.

    Now the film is interesting. From that point up until the vampires are all (mostly) defeated, it’s a banger of a film. Action. Intrigue. Music. It’s got it all.

    Then we have an extra bit of action killing KKK members. It doesn’t really need to happen for the story, but it’s fun action and it kinda wraps around to the first part of the film.

    Then we have like 3 endings. The third one is just a bonus, but 1 & 2 leave you feeling differently about the world and story you’ve watched.

    The truth is you could cut away about half the film and it would still be a good film. That’s why it feels boring. You need to get the audience into thinking it’s one kind of film, just so you can surprise them with the other.