FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
48m ago
God, that is awful. I once knew a woman who was a nurse in a rehabilitation hospital, and about 90% of her patients were either motorcycle or horse-riding accidents. I'll never ride a motorcycle. I even worked with a guy who was in a pretty serious motorcycle accident and nearly lost a leg, and he still rides motorcycles to this day. Like, dude, how many hints do you need?
With regards to Terminator, every time travel story ultimately has to take a firm philosophical position on whether the past is mutable or not. The original The Terminator was an enclosed, self-contained story which took the stance that the past was immutable: the ending reveals the entire story to have been a stable time loop. Terminator 2 set out to surprise audiences at every turn (oh my God, Arnie is the good guy this time!) which extended all the way to its ending and its reveal that, in stark contrast to the original movie, the past is mutable. The film ends on a note of optimistic uncertainty, with the protagonists' actions appearing to have averted the future apocalypse for good. This was made even more explicit in the original scripted ending which depicts Sarah, John and Sarah's grandchildren in an idyllic future Los Angeles, which was thankfully cut for being too sappy, on-the-nose and tonally dissonant with the rest of the film. (James Cameron has a recurrent problem with indulging his inner Spielberg and wanting to end his films on a corny sentimental note, only for cooler heads to prevail in the editing suite and instead opting for something more ambiguous and restrained.)
Not having seen any of the sequels following the first two, all my knowledge of them is secondhand, but my understanding is that every subsequent sequel has set out to follow the example set by Terminator 2 and have its philosophical attitude to the mutability of the past directly contradict the attitude espoused by the previous film. This leads to an interminable game of "the past is immutable – no it isn't – yes it is — no it isn't – is – isn't". With a binary question, the number of times you can surprise audiences by changing the answer is exactly one. When Terminator 3 revealed that Judgement Day was still going to happen, audiences didn't find this exactly as shocking as Terminator 2's implication that Judgement Day could be decisively averted; rather, it registered as a regression to the original film's status quo. In spite of Cameron's strenuous efforts to reinvent the entire franchise from the ground up with Terminator 2, by the end of Terminator 3 the franchise was back almost exactly where it started. Eventually audiences just got sick of being jerked around and lost interest: no permanence, no stakes.
Another reason might be a bit more mundane. The Terminator made the most of its limited budget, but some of its visual effects looked pretty ropey even at the time. Half of the appeal of Terminator 2 was getting to see a story very similar to the original (indeed, the plot beats and structure are so similar that in some ways it's more like a remake than a sequel), but with an expanded budget and VFX wizardry. The visual effects of Terminator 2 were mind-blowing on release and have aged incredibly well. But you quickly run into the law of diminishing returns: while I'm sure the visual effects in the subsequent sequels were marginally superior to those of Terminator 2, they could never hope to match the quantum-leap sensation of the transition from The Terminator to Terminator 2. "Come see the Terminator, with visual effects that will blow your mind" is an easy sell, unlike "come see the Terminator, with visual effects very slightly improved over previous Terminator films".
More Americans supported Palestine than israel in a poll for the first time in the US.
Citation requested.
I find it fascinating that all of your doomsaying predictions about Israel consistently fail to come to pass, and yet this doesn't prompt any reflection or reconsideration on your part. Since it began, you've been repeatedly assuring us (including as recently as yesterday) that Israel's war in Gaza has absolutely nothing to do with its stated aims of destroying Hamas or recovering the hostages, and is solely motivated by a desire to create a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. As a fellow European citizen, I can't help but notice that, two and a half years after the start of the war in Gaza, this refugee crisis you've been warning us about has conspicuously failed to materialise. Indeed, the number of asylum seekers claiming refuge in the EU actually fell between 2023 and 2024 (a trend which appears to have continued into 2025), and there doesn't appear to have been any spike in the proportion of those refugees who are Palestinian (who I assume would be included in the "Other" category). Sincerely – where are all these Palestinian (or Lebanese, Syrian or Persian) refugees arriving in Europe? Not only has there not been a massive spike in refugees arriving in Europe from these countries, the absolute number has declined since the start of the war in Gaza.
There are two possible explanations. Either Israel waged its war on Gaza in a deliberate attempt to engineer a refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep, but it didn't pan out as intended (in which case they aren't as competent as they present themselves; or, more to the point, as competent as you seem to think they are). Or engineering a refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep was never Israel's aim.
One might naïvely assume that, when a prediction you made about Israel didn't come true, this might prompt some reflection on your part, perhaps even an admission that you were mistaken in your apprehension of Israel's true motives. But no such admission is forthcoming. Your claims about Israel's sinister motives were conclusively proven false, but Israel remains exactly as nefarious and inscrutable in your eyes as ever. Your hatred of Israel appears wholly uncoupled from any specific action Israel takes. I wonder what Leon Festinger might have made of you.
Out of interest for someone largely ignorant, is "ayatollah" a hereditary monarchic title? If he dies, is there an immediate line of succession so that somebody else becomes the ayatollah?
FtttG
1d ago
I'm saying the fact that something was true in 2007 doesn't necessarily prove that it's true in 2026.
FtttG
1d ago
I think if Israel currently posed as grave a threat to American national security as claimed, it shouldn't be hard to find a credible source arguing as much within the last decade.
FtttG
2d ago
Fair enough, although I can't help but note your source is a decade old and based on a report published nine years prior.
FtttG
2d ago
I don’t want that guy being loyal to a country that is considered one of America’s top espionage and influence threats
Weasel words. "Considered" by whom?
FtttG
3d ago
For me, the visual aura usually precedes any actual pain, and if I find it I take two paracetamol (and drink lots of water), it usually prevents the part of the migraine that actually hurts, and the visual aura generally subsides shortly thereafter.
FtttG
3d ago
I came to the end of the last chapter. At 101,232 words, the fourth draft of my book is now almost 12k words shorter than the third. But I'd like to get it to an even 100k (rounding down), so I'm doing a second pass on the unusually long chapters, and considering recording myself reading the whole thing aloud so I can identify any clangs that aren't obvious on sight. The consensus from last week's survey is that neither of the two opening paragraphs I came up with is particularly strong or compelling, so I think the opening will need to be reworked.
FtttG
3d ago
"If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." – Prince Philip
This was included on a list of Phil's worst "gaffes", but no Chinese person I've mentioned it to has been offended by it, or even contested it. They really will eat anything that moves, and more power to them.
FtttG
3d ago
I Love You, Man is a fairly safe and predictable comedy, but the chemistry between Paul Rudd and Jason Segel is strong and endearing, and I laughed plenty of times.
FtttG
3d ago
The only movie I've ever seen with a date-rape sight gag. And it works. And the movie got away with it.
FtttG
3d ago
The first one to come to mind is The Nice Guys, from writer-director Shane Black, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. His 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang holds a special place in my heart for being laugh-out-loud hilarious, meta before being meta itself became a tiresome cliché, and featuring a romance between two believably flawed characters with amazing chemistry who I genuinely wanted to end up together. The Nice Guys doesn't quite live up to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but is nevertheless a consistently funny movie, Gosling and Crowe bounce off each other very well and the 70s nostalgia is a fun vibe.
FtttG
3d ago
I wouldn't find this surprising in the least, although I have met a couple of lesbians who grew up in Asia and who were as tomboyish as you'd expect based on their sexuality.
FtttG
4d ago
New year's resolutions check-in:
- Posted my fifth blog post of the year on Monday, offering my two cents on the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge. It was expanded from a comment I wrote here after the Annunciation Catholic shooting last August. I'm sad to say the points I made remained exactly as relevant six months later as they were at the time.
- Went to the gym three times last week, again on Monday, planning to go this evening. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 4 reps, squat .98x for 9 reps and bench press .82x for 7 reps.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
- Have completed 8/11 modules in the SQL course.
How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son?
FtttG
4d ago
I agree, but I think butches vastly outnumber femmes, and even the typical femme will be significantly less conventionally feminine than the average straight woman.
FtttG
5d ago
One main difference is that PornLesbians look conventionally feminine, whereas RealLesbians usually don't. RealStepmoms will be unlike PornStepmoms in many ways (less attractive, smaller breasts, less sultry, less promiscuous), but both tend to be conventionally feminine in terms of dress sense, hairstyle, makeup etc. "Just like the real thing, but hotter" is a smaller gap than "hotter than the real thing and with a completely different dress sense, hairstyle etc.".
I personally know several divorcés, but off the top of my head can only think of one stepmom.
I suppose what I was really getting at is that being a stepmom is rarely the most salient fact about a person in a way that "lesbian" is. "Lesbian" is a highly salient trait about Megan Rapinoe, such that when someone says "lesbian" she might be one of the first people who pops into your head. Meanwhile "bookkeeping clerk" isn't a very salient trait about someone. If someone says "bookkeeping clerk" you would probably draw a blank, even though statistically most people surely know at least one woman in that line of work. I think "stepmom" is more like "bookkeeping clerk" than it is like "lesbian".
FtttG
5d ago
I can't imagine the average stepmom is especially attractive, but how many stepmoms can you name off the top of your head? It's not a highly visible identity in the way that "lesbian" or "black" is: no woman introduces herself by stating that she's a stepmom. Probably the only time we hear about women raising the children of her husband from a previous marriage/relationship, it's a celebrity, who are selected for being attractive. Hell, even searching the term "stepmom" (specialised websites excepted) would probably just bring you to the movie Stepmom (starring a young Julia Roberts). Most of the time you hear the word "stepmom" used in the media, it's in reference to an unusually attractive woman!
(Funnily enough, the primary context in which I heard the word "stepmother" growing up was the "wicked stepmother" archetype in Grimm's fairy tales: that being an evil, sexy woman who seduces a hapless man and persuades him to abandon or kill his children. I wonder to what extent porn studios are consciously playing on this archetype. Certainly the "stepmom" in porn videos is a wicked, conniving seducer.)
Personally, the incest/faux-incest trend in porn never appealed to me – I just find it creepy and off-putting, and downright paedophilic when it comes to the "stepdaughter" stuff.
Thank Christ I don't need to add several thousand micromorts to my lifestyle just to get laid.
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