FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
You are correct, I was thinking of Tron. Will amend.
I agree. As I'm fond of pointing out, in 1989 The Abyss 1982 Tron was deemed ineligible for the Oscar for best visual effects because it used CGI. Eventually generative AI will come to be seen as just another creative tool that can be used well and used poorly.
The other night, my girlfriend was watching the trailer for Hokum on her phone and I expressed my frustration that trailers for every new film in a particular genre are so similar. I saw the trailer for Obsession the other day and it was functionally identical to that of Hokum (and functionally identical to every other trailer for a horror film I've seen in the last five years: quiet, atmospheric opening; critic blurbs introduced using the Hans Zimmer BWAAAH bass drop effect; steadily increasing cut frequency coupled with steadily escalating volume and intensity of sound (typically introducing more and more high-frequency sounds in the form of women screaming and/or Psycho strings); after the climax, a period of "falling action" and relative calm and quiet. It's as if they have a template in Premiere called "horror_trailer.prproj" and just slot clips from the relevant movie into it. Horror movies are where the trend is most visible, but it's also true of thrillers, action movies, comedies and so on. I no longer look at the trailer for a horror film and think "that looks good" or "that looks bad": I just think "I am watching the trailer for a horror film". The homogeneity of the form has collapsed the distinction: the trailer for a good horror film looks practically identical to the trailer for a bad one.
It wasn't the trailer for Hokum that piqued my interest, but a headline calling it the first good Silent Hill movie – do you think that comparison is justified? It's also directed by an Irish director – I was intrigued by the trailer for his previous film Oddity but never got around to watching it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3hr ago
My girlfriend took me to the first one in the cinema and I was howling with laughter throughout.
Mindhunters is an unofficial adaptation of And Then There Were None from 2004, with the twist that most of the characters are FBI agents-in-training. It is spectacularly silly and cheesy. It features, among other things, Jonny Lee Miller doing a laughable Southern accent, the corpse of one of the most recognisable actors in the cast portrayed by an entirely unconvincing plastic mannequin, and Ice Cube saying "eeny-meeny-miny-mo: who's the next motherfucker to go?" in deadly seriousness. Absolutely nothing about the plot makes a lick of sense: the killer's plan hinges on impossible coincidences they could not possibly predict in advance; the characters (who are all, as mentioned above, FBI agents) behave incredibly stupidly when convenient for the plot; and Saw-esque death traps which would require, at the minimum, a vanload of equipment and several days' prep time are assembled out of an overnight bag in a matter of hours, without a hitch.
I've probably seen it at least ten times. It is tremendous fun.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
6hr ago
What a convoluted run-on sentence. Right up there with "he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died".
and then insisted that the person who called out your fabrication was being unreasonable and worse.
I will reiterate that there is a difference between duped by a claim made by others and inventing a claim from whole cloth. You don't have to believe the claim that Hamas livestreamed themselves committing assorted acts of sexual violence, but this claim did not originate with me and I'm sick of you people pretending that it did. The person accusing me of making up this claim from whole cloth was being unreasonable by so doing. I have already pre-committed to eating my words if this claim turns out to be false, which is more than can be said for any of the people in this thread accusing me of lying through my teeth.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
7hr ago
I never claimed that everyone had seen them.
LiveLeak has been shut down (news to me), and apparently its successor website is ItemFix. I did do a cursory search of ItemFix which didn't return anything relevant: it seems pretty light on war footage across the board (it seems police bodycam footage is their bread and butter). I didn't look any further than that; besides LiveLeak, I don't know where one would locate this kind of footage, nor do I especially care to find out. If respectable academic researchers have watched this footage and confirmed that it depicts what I believed it to depict, that's good enough for me.
It's not like I even want to watch gory footage of Hamas raping and torturing people, but it sure would be nice if their Western apologists could see exactly what it is they're defending instead of retreating into these "false flag" muh Hannibal doctrine evasions.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I am confident that there exists footage captured on October 7th by Hamas squaddies which depicts them doing things that any reasonable person would characterise as gang rape. If the full database of footage is made available for public consumption (as some Jews are already demanding) and it turns out that no footage meeting that description exists, I promise to eat my words.
It's possible that it was originally a subscriber-only post but then he unpaywalled it, though I've never known Freddie to do that.
Well, that just seems preposterous. Hamas's strategy of employing Gazan civilians as human shields by stashing combatants and armaments in civilian facilities (hospitals, schools, mosques etc.) is well-established. The only reason they employ this strategy is because they know that the IDF (and the broader Israeli population, by extension) assigns a value to the lives of Gazan civilians which is greater than zero, and would prefer not to kill them if possible.
Fine, fine, you'll say the IDF doesn't really care about Gazan civilians' lives, but know that it would be bad optics in the eyes of the international community to kill them willy-nilly. But assigning a greater-than-zero value to the lives of Gazan civilians for reasons of pragmatism and realpolitik (as opposed to "high-minded European notions about the intrinsic value of human life") is still assigning them a greater-than-zero value. It's telling that this is an asymmetric strategy: no Hamas leader or foot-soldier is going to hesitate before attacking an Israeli military installation out of concern for civilian collateral damage.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I'm going to have to plead "revealed preferences".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I, for one, do not assign zero moral value to members of my outgroup. While I accept that the average Israeli is probably more likely to take seriously accusations of rape made against Palestinians than accusations made against Israelis – I do nonetheless believe that the modal Israeli assigns greater moral value to members of his outgroup than the modal Palestinian does. Call me a Zionist shill if you must, that's what I believe.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
Rape denialism is inexcusable coming from anyone, but particularly hypocritical coming from individuals whose catchphrase was "believe women" for the better part of a decade.
If you'd prefer me to amend my comment to "Numerous witnesses independently witnessed Hamas squaddies gang-raping women on October 7th; Hamas squaddies filmed and publicly disseminated footage of them assaulting, humiliating and sexually torturing women; but they did not, strictly speaking, livestream themselves gang-raping women", then fair enough. But this seems like just about the most macabre kind of hair-splitting I've ever encountered.
Even then, if a group of armed men surrounded a woman and collectively forced her to undress before humiliating and sexually torturing her, I think few people would object to characterising that as "gang rape", even if technically none of the men forcibly penetrated the woman with his penis. Likewise if the men in question were wearing GoPros on their person, I think few people would object to characterising that as "a group of men filmed/livestreamed themselves committing gang rape", even if, again, none of the men forcibly penetrated the woman with his penis.
But why am I even saying any of this? You've preemptively decided that any factual claim that makes Hamas look bad and portrays Israelis as victims is "Zionist propaganda". You've preemptively decided that any organisation advancing any factual claim that makes Hamas look bad and portrays Israelis as victims is therefore a sinister Zionist organisation. I might as well argue with a brick wall.
I ask for evidence of this happening and it turns out that, in fact, you have no such evidence whatsoever. No such livestream exists. You lied. You made it up. Why did you do that?
If this specific claim turns out to be untrue and you want to accuse me of having been duped by Israeli war propaganda, then go for it. But I didn't "make up" this claim. It did not originate with me.
you're going on a hysterical rant about things I never said.
Dude, it's right there. You said "Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel"."
I mean, if Hamas livestreamed themselves committing gang rape then surely a link to it exists somewhere, right?
There is the film Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre, which edits hundreds of hours of Hamas-produced footage into a 47-minute documentary. According to people who've seen it, some of the Hamas-captured footage implies sexual violence has recently taken place. Netanyahu defended the decision to publicly screen the footage on the grounds that, without doing so, people would deny or downplay the extent of Hamas's brutality. Sadly, it didn't have the desired effect, if your reaction is any indication.
In addition, the Civil Commission maintains a more extensive archive of footage, although for obvious reasons it isn't a publicly accessible database. They are planning to give access to academic and legal professionals over time. I look forward to the day when several of these individuals watch the footage, confirm that the linked report described its contents accurately, and get immediately dismissed as "Zionist shills" by you and your ilk.
Andrew Fox claims to have seen footage which was not included in the aforementioned documentary:
Back in 2024, with a visiting group of senior military officers, I was shown part of the sexual crime evidence discussed in the Civil Commission report released today; evidence far beyond the infamous 47-minute reel. It remains the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life, which to this day causes my voice to hoarsen and the hair to stand up on my arms when I talk about it.
There are things that permanently alter your sense of what human beings can do to one another. There are images and details that do not fade, because they are not merely violent; they are desecrations. They are crimes against the body, against the dead, against the living, and against the idea that humanity has limits... the rapes are what [Hamas] are most desperate to deny. Every time I have written about what I have seen, the response has differed from the usual abuse. The bots arrive in far greater numbers. The replies are filled with smears, mockery, deflection and outright denial. The purpose is not persuasion. It is intimidation. It is to make bearing witness so exhausting, so poisonous, and so socially costly that people stop doing it.
But I know you've already dismissed his account as lies.
entirely secondhand Israeli war propaganda reports
I have a very hard time believing that the only reason you don't believe this report is that it's "secondhand information". I don't think you would immediately change your mind and accept that Hamas really did what they're accused of doing if you personally spoke to the people who attended Nova and confirmed to you the things they'd witnessed.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
read my blog already Ft!
My bad, I've been putting it off. I assure you I'll read at least one post before the day is out.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
I thought of using GIS alright. Is it free?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
I hate e-readers, reading books on them feels like work. I'd never buy two phones at the same time, but hanging on to my old phone while it's still working makes sense.
I wasn't critiquing the Grey Lady in particular here. I very much doubt the author of this specific article would dispute that Hamas committed sexual violence on October 7th. I'm critiquing the double standard among woke leftists, who demand exhaustive beyond-reasonable-doubt proof when a member of their in-group is accused of sexual misconduct, but when a member of their out-group is accused of sexual misconduct, even hearsay is deemed sufficient to condemn them.
None of this requires you to support Israel, think Israel isn't committing a "genocide", think Israel isn't a settler-colonial apartheid state, think the Palestinians don't have a legitimate grievance etc. You're welcome to think the IDF is just as bad (or even worse) than the people they're fighting. You can sympathise with the Palestinians (even sympathise with Hamas) while acknowledging that Hamas committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on October 7th. But you do, in fact, have to acknowledge that Hamas committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on October 7th. That part is not open for debate.
And it is absolutely not a strawman to say that some woke leftists, pro-Palestinians or Joo-posters will deny to this day that Hamas committed any sexual violence at all on October 7th. I have personally met these people. I may have been dunking on a weakman, but I was not dunking on a strawman and I quite resent that accusation.
I feel like it's really not that difficult to make the cognitive leap from the assertion in one sentence "Hamas filmed and distributed themselves committing acts of sexual and gender-based violence", to the inference that the word "assault" in the following sentence is referring to sexual assaults. In fact, it's such an obvious cognitive leap that I think not making it could only be the product of motivated reasoning.
But if you insist on me excerpting other relevant portions of the report for you, you lazy sod, then so be it:
From the section "key findings":
Hamas and its collaborators used sexual torture to maximize pain and suffering. Victims endured brutal acts, including burning, mutilation, rape, restraining, forced insertion of objects into the genitalia, shootings to the faces and genital area, killings and abuses in front of family members, and executions.
Hamas and its collaborators inflicted SGBV in multiple locations, employing recurring patterns of abuse. The Civil Commission identified at least thirteen patterns of abuse across multiple sites, including: 1) Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assaults; 2) Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation; 3) Deliberate shootings to the head, face and genital area; 4) Killings and executions following or committed in conjunction with SGBV; 5) Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and desecration of bodies; 6) Forced nudity and exposure; 7) Handcuffing, binding, and restraint of victims; 8) Public displaying and parading of women and children; 9) Abduction of mothers and children; 10) SGBV inflicted in the presence or near vicinity of family members; 11) Filming and digital dissemination of SGBV, including use of social media to document, glorify, and amplify the atrocities; 12) Threats of forced marriage; 13) Rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men.
From the section "operational preparation prior to the attack":
A wide range of documentary material seized from the bodies and homes of perpetrators, and recovered from October 7th sites, demonstrates that the attacks were not a spontaneous outbreak of violence but rather were planned and rehearsed with specific instructions to kill, kidnap, and humiliate civilians.107 The Civil Commission has reviewed extensive operational materials, notebooks, checklists, maps, phrasebooks, and tactical guides that guided perpetrators on how to enter civilian communities, how to control victims, and what commands to use in Hebrew during abductions... These materials further include Arabic‑to‑Hebrew phrase lists with imperatives and humiliating commands (for example, commanding victims to “take off your pants/take your clothes off,” “lie down,” “spread your legs”), as well as kits containing zip ties and other materials to physically restrain victims.
The word "rape" appears 309 times in the report, 29 of those as part of the phrase "gang rape". The section "Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault" is five pages long, while the section on "filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" is three pages long. None of this is open for debate.
Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel".
It is so, so tiresome how you immediately pivot to arguments-as-soldiers mode. You demand evidence that Hamas did the things I claimed, I provide it, and you instantly pivot to "well Israel is just as bad so who cares". We weren't debating whether Israel was just as bad as Hamas, or who is worse: we were debating whether Hamas really did the things they filmed themselves doing and disseminated. It is a simple factual question, not an ethical one.
Hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a double standard being applied here.
Only if your worldview depends on you failing to understand what's right in front of your nose. The rape, gang rape, sexual abuse, torture and humiliation committed on October 7th was exhaustively documented, perhaps an outright majority of it by the perpetrators themselves. If this Palestinian man really was raped by a dog belonging to the IDF, that event was not exhaustively documented by anyone, including the alleged perpetrators. Joo-posters have no trouble believing that the dog-rape occurred, but it seems no amount of documentary evidence will persuade them that Hamas really did the things that they filmed themselves doing and proudly disseminated. (By contrast, if the IDF filmed this Palestinian man being raped by a dog and distributed it on their own channels as a form of psychological warfare against Hamas and the Palestinians, I would have no trouble believing that it really happened. I'm not the one with the double standard.)
As described in Tuesday's thread, months ago I had an idea for a work project using geographic projection. @ToaKraka suggested using GIS, which I'd never used before, and I started work on Wednesday. While I'm not coding anything from scratch, ChatGPT and Gemini have been immensely useful for everything from sourcing the data I need, to writing Excel formulae, to optimising my workflow. I'm finding it so absorbing to work on that I even took a working lunch break today. After three days' work I already have something I'd feel pretty comfortable presenting to senior management, and would like to do so next week.
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