Dumbledore wrote on Oct 23, 2021, 07:20:
opinions... what are they? lol

Your argument is that a tv and soundbar are a 100% replacement for a movie theater. I provided counter examples both objective and subjective. It may be my opinion that Aliens feels like a brand new film in a theater after a lifetime of seeing it at home, but even then, your argument doesn’t hold because if you stay home from good cinemas, you’re never going to see another 35mm print in your life.

Dumbledore wrote on Oct 22, 2021, 08:43:

Ozmodan wrote on Oct 21, 2021, 17:45:
Dune needs to be seen in the theater. Watching it on TV is just not the same.

nah. even before covid theaters were a dying business and everyone knew it. now they're a nice place to go to ACTUALLY die since only morons would go sit and breath recirculated air with a bunch of other people dumb enough to do that.

the home theater these days is vastly superior to the overpriced movie theaters and the best part, no ignorant fuckwads sitting behind me talking the entire time while kicking my seat. i fully celebrate the death of movie theaters. it should have happened a long time ago.

You mean you can see a projected 35mm screening of a classic film at home presented by the director and cinematographer, and then have a panel discussion afterwards with audience questions? So cool that you have the means to do that!

Snark aside, seeing The Terminator and Aliens in midnight reparatory screenings breathed new life into films which I had seen literally dozens of time, but only ever at home. Films simply are not the same experience at home.

If you don't want to go to a mainstream multiplex to see the latest Marvel movie, I can understand, but if that's all you ever went to, then you never really went to the cinema. This is a cinema: https://www.ifccenter.com/

Wouldn't Sam Fisher be pushing/over 70 at this point? IIRC, he was a veteran SEAL with a decade or two of experience during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and he was called out of retirement to work for the NSA in 2002.

Cutter wrote on Oct 7, 2021, 21:54:
So...hatemonger makes beautiful music is the story? Is that supposed to be implausible or something? Even Hitler did good for Germany - initially - in spite of everything else. The sun shines on the just and the unjust alike, doesn't it? Even a broken clock gives the right time twice a day.

Well it's an obit for a guy who, DQ11 score not withstanding, most recently was in the news for comments to the effect that Imperial Japan did nothing wrong. It's less befuddlement and more trying to capture his legacy: revolutionary video game composer, particularly in the 80s and 90s, who became mired in controversy in his final decades.

Acleacius wrote on Oct 1, 2021, 17:10:
Sorry, no way I'm going to a theater. I haven't since covid and I'm not sure I care if they go out of business.

I fly back to NYC on Sunday now that my office is finally fucking reopening. One of the first things I have planned is to see a 35mm screening of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I for one at least want cinephile theaters to absolutely stay in business.

Cutter wrote on Sep 29, 2021, 13:36:
Anyone have a particular brand or type of coffee they prefer? I generally drink Don Pablo - off Amazon, which is a "Medium-Dark roast - Whole bean Arabica coffee". At Xmas I'll buy me ma, and myself, some Kona coffee.

Stumptown.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 27, 2021, 20:46:
BTW, thanks for the heads up on The Terror. I'll be watching E01 tonight.

Hope you're enjoying it. It slipped under most people's radars despite being exceptionally good.

Does anyone actually like Discovery and Picard? The reactions only seem to range from “I’ve watched it and I didn’t hate it” to “I hated it”.

1badmf wrote on Sep 26, 2021, 02:50:
eh i would still feel bad. i'd still give him the knife-to-the-brain coupe de grace.

Maybe. I had doubts about it the first time I tried cooking lobster, but the fact is they are extremely alien and faceless and unintelligent. I generally try to trap and release bugs that wander into my apartment, but if that’s not feasible, I’m also okay with killing them: I found my response to killing a lobster was exactly the same. I had spent money and was about to have a delicious meal, ergo into the boiling water goes the weird sea bug. If the water is at a rolling boil they die in well under ten seconds and don’t have a developed enough brain to experience suffering, just an instinctual pain/danger stimulus response.

In contrast I don’t think I could slaughter a chicken, cow, or pig unless the alternative was starvation, and even then I’d feel bad about it.

Just wanted to plug cooking lobster at home. It's super easy and not at all intimidating once you actually go and do it. It's also kind of hilarious if you happen to get an energetic lobster because they will try to fight you despite their claws being rubber banded shut. Just grab the sucker by the tail with tongs and dump him head first into boiling water: when the shell is bright red, it's ready to eat. You're not gonna feel bad about it: it's just an overgrown sea bug.

Fucking bell curves, how do they work?

I wonder where someone who doesn't understand a normal distribution ranks in intelligence.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 12:41:
Even so, not even Jared Harris can really seem to move the needle for me and I really like Jared Harris as an actor. He was absolutely awesome in "Chernobyl", for example.

Check out season 1 of the The Terror if you haven't already. Harris, along with Tobias Menzies, was utterly superb.

Dacron wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 12:28:
My only beef with Crisis 1 is the gorgeous forest part of it seemed really short, but the mountain alien part when on forever. Preferred the first half of it.

It depends heavily on play style. IIRC, there are 11 levels total, with 6 taking place in free-roaming levels where you fight North Koreans, then 5 linear levels where you fight aliens. The free roaming levels can be completed very quickly if you make a beeline for the objective, on the order of 10-15 minutes; if you explore thoroughly, they take about an hour each. In contrast, the 5 linear levels that make up the conclusion are only 20-30 minutes each, but since they're linear you're committed to that full 20-30 minutes of playtime. Given the drop in quality, the linear conclusion is gonna be a slog no matter how you slice it, but my recollection of the game, which I played through maybe 3 times, is that there's an amazing 5 or so hours followed by 2 very boring hours.

WaltSee wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 14:54:
I also hated Groundhog Day™ the movie...;)

Tell me you have no taste, without telling me you have no taste.

Bishi wrote on Sep 12, 2021, 15:49:
Can we get a list that isn't overwhelmed by wank asian games just by pure numbers.

Haven’t played them myself but the Tales of games have a solid reputation.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 9, 2021, 05:40:
Blue, I'm interested in how you feel about Kurtzman's (nu)trek shows?

I'm not Blue, but my basic take is that they are Star Trek as written for fans of The Avengers movies. People are allowed to like stuff, and if you like epic spectacle, more power to you. But if what you liked about Star Trek was embodied in episodes like Who Watches the Watchers, The Inner Light, or The Visitor, then nu-Trek basically has nothing of interest.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 16:30:

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 14:45:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 12:10:
SFC 3 but not 1 or 2?
No Starfleet Academy?

When you have questions about an article, it's usually helpful to open the link. (SFC 1 and 2 are both "Coming Soon" and Starfleet Academy has been available for some time.)

Pffft. Who reads the article?

Haha, well in fairness I read the article and still fucked it up: Armada 1 & 2 are forthcoming, SFC 1 is already available, SFC 2 is ???, Starfleet Academy is already available.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 12:10:
SFC 3 but not 1 or 2?
No Starfleet Academy?

When you have questions about an article, it's usually helpful to open the link. (SFC 1 and 2 are both "Coming Soon" and Starfleet Academy has been available for some time.)

Since Facebook produces large data sets through their main product, they likely trained this AI on that data. Unfortunately, Facebook, at least in the US, is a pretty right wing, and therefore pretty racist, online community where posting images of black people with words like “monkey”, “ape”, or “primate” is extremely common. Unsurprisingly, an AI trained on data with such an association would begin to infer such an association. I mean just look at the 21st comment of this thread: once the forum right wingers found this thread it took only a dozen comments for some one to call black people (worse than) primates. AI trained on predominantly right wing social media comments is going to start making pretty racist inferences.

FaciesLiber delendus est.