Friday Ephemera (746)
Incoming. || I don’t know if you want one, but they’re out there somewhere. || Suboptimal situation. || Hazards of cooking. || Failure to comprehend. || Hard to refuse. || A five-year pregnancy. || Singaporean punishment, a poll ensues. || The thrill of ballpoint pen alignment. || Publicly funded healthcare. || “Vaginally presenting” persons. || Are your contemplations situated? || “Mentally stable clients contradict the social justice worldview.” || Swift response. || Strategic withdrawal. || Simulated shrooming. Hilarity not included. || For when you’re transporting fluids at close to the speed of light. || Dissatisfied customer. || Maximum sparkle, only £11,095. || Meet Sissy the minx. || In case you missed it. || Good haul, methinks. || Dog-sitting, but with extras. || And finally, good as new.
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At the time, it seemed the necessary thing to do. To not play the expected role.
And I was quite annoyed.
By necessary, I don’t just mean expedient. It also struck me as morally correct.
Still does, in fact.
Messaging. It’s telling that he could write that without realizing what it revealed.
That forced me to go back and check “a certain scene” in Ender’s Game, which I haven’t read in a good decade. Ender doesn’t use a chair leg, so clearly you were referring to the rational choice of extreme violence rather than the choice of weapon.
I had already absorbed that lesson before that story was published, but cannot recall any earlier influences.
Bonus points if you read the (superior) novella.
[ Raises hand. ]
Don’t forget the cannibalism.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-orleans_b_6643
For @David, to help him further degrade his browsing history.
What, another Dune movie?
An extremely hasty scan of the transcript seems to indicate that they found Dune Prophecy boring, a sort of Game of Thrones in space. That would be ironic, given that the books became increasingly boring with each new sequel.
Back in the 70’s and 80’s, maybe even earlier, there would be an earthquake in Azerbaijan or Turkey or some other godfersaken place and the headlines would read something like “millions feared dead!” I would think to myself, millions? Really? That seems kinda…unlikely but…ok. That’s gotta be one hell of a cleanup. As the days/weeks passed I would scour the back pages of the newspapers tracking followup stories and watch as the death toll would…decline. By significant magnitudes. I would mention this occasionally but no one else seemed to find it interesting. Then the next earthquake in some other godfersaken place would happen and the stories would repeat themselves. I used to wonder if the “journalists” had boilerplate for each event and just change the names of the places and bump the numbers up or down a bit in case anyone was paying attention.
I was hoping it might be good. The Bene Gesserit being one of the more interesting aspects of the yarn. I may still give it try, for a couple of episodes, but I’m a stickler for pacing.
Frank Herbert himself had an unfortunate penchant for plots-within-plots, which quickly became boring and are no substitute for interesting people and situations. I abandoned him after the first few books, and never touched any of Brian Herbert’s books.
I quite like Emily Watson as an actress, and the trailer looked suitably expensive and grand in scale, but I can’t be dealing with inept pacing in a drama. As Daniel pointed out, there’s no excuse for it in an age of streaming, when episodes can be pretty much whatever length is needed.
I enjoyed Dune–and Dune 2 somewhat in spite of the deviations from the original novel–but the soundtrack was a persistent problem: I had to turn up the volume for the dialogue and then down dramatically when the events became particularly dramatic or even bombastic. I wish DVD players came with a sound compression option. (No point in wishing for Hollywood to return to the dynamic range found in 50’s movies.)
Heh. Bit of a faff. Also, DVD players.
You got a problem with that?
Just sayin’.
[ Gets “physical media or death” tattooed on chest. ]
See also:
(TED Talk in which NPR CEO Katherine Maher (and former chief executive of Wikipedia) explains that “the truth” is an outdated concept.)
You just need to use Closed Captioning.
Perhaps my biggest complaint was how they altered the character Chani. Bad.
I also struggle with the concept of Zendaya as an actress.
Well, she does know how to pout and scowl….
Which accounts for 87% of her performance in the Dune films.
Which calls into question the judgement of whoever hired her. Was it politics? Was she someone’s relative or lover? Was everyone smoking crack?
A friend of mine who used to work security taught me this trick. First, don’t let them get within arm’s reach. If accosted, reach behind your back with your right hand as if you might plausibly have a firearm in a rear belt holster, and say in a loud flat voice “STEP BACK NOW. DO NOT COME ANY CLOSER.” This is what cops do, and the opportunistic will dash if they think they’re about to tangle with one.
Many modern AV receivers do. Which amuses me as a practical audiophile, because the problem is that audio mixing has gone to shite even if you do have a 5.1 system. God help you if you’re relying on downmixing to 2.0 stereo. You need expensive audio gear to fix a basic recording mistake.
My current receiver (~$400USD) is a delight. It comes with a microphone and a cardboard stand; you assemble the stand and put the mic where your head is going to be, and then start the configuration test. It sends tones to all the speakers and automagically adjusts the levels so that the proper volume is sent to all of them. I haven’t had a problem with soundtracks overwhelming dialogue tracks since. Science!
What was the line? “I don’t believe she’s an actress, much less an FBI agent?”
It’s a bit disconcerting going back and re-watching the first Spider-Man movie; not only is Kirsten Dunst a terrible actress, it’s painfully obvious she’s strung out on heroin. It’s like seeing the coke nail on Princess Leia.
I had no idea.
My setup: Stereo integrated amp, 30 year old AM-FM tuner. I’ve never considered getting an AV receiver, as I wasn’t interested in setting up additional speakers for more channels.
Historical curiosity: Back in the 70’s there were some cassette recorders with dynamic range compression options: compress when recording from LP, expand when playing back from tape. And I vaguely recall some auto gear with compression on playback to deal with the road noise situation.
It’s like seeing the coke nail on Princess Leia.
The degrading acts she did to score free coke: