George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
My only formal experiences as a student taught driving were our weekly Driver's Ed classes that in I think sophomore high school. I remember the football coaches (for some reason) were the teachers--I wonder if they got paid extra for that? We had these machines you sat in and turned wheels and stared at video screens and worked the foot pedals. But mostly it was a dry-as-a-bone watching videos of re-enactments and remembering the rules of the road. In these videos you'd be on some residential street and suddenly a ball would fly out into the road. What, what do you do? This would have been around 1982 or 3.
When I had to drive on an actual road for the first time I was around 15, which is the age at which you could get a driver's permit (meaning an adult had to be with you in the car. I don't know if this is still the case.) We only ever had manual transmissions in our cars at home so I had to learn to work the gears and clutch, and there was a lot of herky jerky. Once I can clearly recall my dad, my brother and I driving to my grandfather's house, which was then about 15 miles away. My dad getting out of the car, me getting out, circling around from the passenger to the driver's seat. When we hit 55 it was the fastest I had ever driven, but this was a slow speed for other drivers and people were overtaking me and I had slower people in front and I had a moment of near-panic. I remember my dad telling me to man-up, though he did not use those words. "BUT I'VE NEVER DRIVEN THIS FAST!" I said. His response: "Well then I guess we're all going to die."
I will never forget those words, and what I guess was the resignation borne of frustration with which he said them. Anyway whether I in fact man'd up or not I don't know, but we did survive, got to the house, and I suppose I kept driving. Years later when I drove automatic it was like driving a bumper car at the fair--so easy as to be bizarre. And to my way of thinking offers much less control, though with the way cars are automated now I suppose controlling the car yourself is seen as quaint.
All this to say I recall the moments of panic, if not enervation. I never did driving school, though. And when I got to Japan and my international license ran out and I had to take the course test, I failed a total of five times. Bastards. I think this is because I was taking manual (what they call "mission") and the obscure Japanese rules for this regarding hand positions were unknown to me (Japanese people pay upwards of 4K to take driving lessons at driving schools, which teach these esoteric rules so people will pass the tests. It's a racket.) When I gave in and took the automatic test (by then my wife and I had an automatic anyway at home) the rater guy looked at me at the end and said "Where'd you learn to drive so well?" My father's words came back to me, but I just said "From my wife," which seemed to satisfy him.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
I don't know maybe it's age but all I can think of here is how nice it was to be in a room with my parents listening to them talk about whatever, when they were both alive.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
I don't mind political humor as long as it isn't laser-focused to sway my vote because of some misperceived social responsibility to be both funny and have the high ground. I think I'd like Steven Colbert as a man, like if I knew the actual guy, but he seems to be almost religiously democrat (unless he's changed recently) and that really prevents me from enjoying his comedy as I'm just waiting for his next hymn to Biden/Kamala (or whoever).
I remember Stewart in an interview chiding the later-year members of Crossfire (Tucker Carlson and I think Bob Novak) that their polarizing rhetoric was "destroying America" but then his own whole schtick became extremely partisan. My last straw was when he dialed back and accused his past self of "shitty and reductive" views on transgender issues, to wild applause. Know your audience, I guess.
I enjoyed the linked clip and once again feel like Twitter and its ability to raise my blood pressure (by reading responses) must in the end be a net negative for at least the Western world, maybe everybody.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
Not to geek out, but this is the passage from the book:
“Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy. Ever tried calculating a hyperspace jump?” Luke had to shake his head. “It’s no mean trick. Be nice if we rushed it and passed right through a star or some other friendly spatial phenom like a black hole. That would end our trip real quick."
So the book was ghost written by Alan Dean Foster from the story by Lucas. I assume the only reason "star" and "black hole" are used here are because they're things in space, and "there's a lot of space out in space" (thanks, writers of Wall-E.)
Anyway as I say this point can be discussed at length and I am sure on reddit and other places it has been, but my point is it always made sense to me based on my viewings of the films and having read the book.
I am also sure that it never crossed Lucas' mind to have ships doing hyperspace kamikaze jumps, and that this decision by Rian Johnson or whoever wasn't great. But it wasn't a dealbreaker for me.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2mo ago
My wife used to enjoy watching Japanese dramas back in the day, then after having kids sort of didn't have time, but now watches Korean dramas. If she enjoys them I would feel pretty ungallant shitting on them for what well may be cultural biases. I have often heard Japanese people say they prefer Western media because Japanese media is so bad, but these have usually been bilinguals who like English so who knows what's going on there.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I don't know if you are going to be able to get that here. Certainly nothing definitive. Though you may get reassurance--that everyone at some point, or at many points, has experienced and will experience a similar feeling.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we might fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"
This is admittedly George Lucas dialogue, but from the first, 1977 film. It suggests at least the possibility of randomly hitting solid (plasma) objects. If this is true or possible, the Holdo ship ramming thing has to be possible.
Now, as to why this kamikaze or automated hyperspace trick isn't used regularly, no idea. I'm sure there are EU authors somewhere scrambling to find a rationale. I could probably think carefully and come up with a few myself if I had the motivation, which I do not (not out of any dismissal of your question).
There are a lot of random issues even in the original trilogy. Tie bombers going over the asteroid field. A space slug with, inexplicably, a mouth full of incisors. The boats on a wave phenomenon of spacecraft floating upright in the same angle. To say nothing of sound. I suspend disbelief, as the saying goes, willfully. Until I don't.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Have you actually seen it? Your post here offers a compelling view but I have read similar though probably intentionally vague critiques online, particularly the scathing Forbes reviews. I passed on reading all of them because it's too easy to let reviewers chisel pre-formed opinions before one watches.
You seem to be (though I could me misconstruing) making a lot of assumptions about what I would suggest are considerably varied backgrounds and environments of red tribe folks, but to clarify he's a 56-year-old welder, former cop, who grew up as I did on Star Wars and hasn't really enjoyed any of the shows since ESB, though like me he is a fan of both Rogue One and Andor. White guy. Republican voter. Probably more rightwing than he lets on to me--he would consider me relatively left of himself. No stranger to what you and others have termed "noticing," but, similar to myself, doesn't let himself get sidetracked if the story is good Usually only really annoyed when the plot points veer too far from the understandings we all had of the *lore when coming up. (C3P0 as Anakin's droid for example, does not sit welI.) I once asked him, as an ex-cop, if he got annoyed when women were presented as martially capable, physical badasses. He said it didn't bother him; he knew plenty of good female cops (and has always been a fan of Gina Carano.)
Anyway thanks for the response, throwaway number 5.
*I could discuss at length the Holdo Maneuver, as it was eventually called. I would suggest that that scene didn't undue any previously established canonical point. Many other parts of the sequels did really irk me but that wasn't one of them.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Have you watched it?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Welcome to the Motte. When you say "this" is so very tiresome, what is the "this" you are referring to? Existence? Or the navel-gazing that you may be prone to? In my experience eccentricities are what make the world go round. Short of those who are intolerable, I like variety in individuals (and in the end I may be one of the intolerable ones for many).
Also is there not always the opportunity to--once you know what you do not like about yourself--change it? Generally I agree with those who say most people do not change, or, if they do, they become worse, but I don't believe this is true for people who take a sudden decision to alter themselves. Sometimes this is because of an outside event (e.g. someone dies, they themselves almost die, etc.) but it can also be a moment of realization, a quiet epiphany brought on by something otherwise benign. It's possible to do better.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
There are currently way more varieties of statin (medically hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-coenzyme A reductase inhibitors or HMG-CoA inhibitors) than ever. The enzyme inhibited by statin consumption (typically once a day, after a meal or before bed) is involved in synthesis, within the liver, of blood cholesterol. Many of the stories creating the bad rep for statins were from, say, thirty years ago (1987 was the first year statins were available, specifically Lovastatin). Mainly used now are atorvastatin, rosuvastatin, fluvastatin, and pitafastatin, and the differences in these and why they are used are more complex than I understand but involve how much cardiovascular risk is involved for individual patients.
Having written that, I will say that there are controversies over whether a change in diet (not necessarily reducing dietary cholesterol per se, but reducing saturated fats, and increasing fiber intake) and increase in exercise can do the same thing statins do, providing better overall health and QoL over a longer time. There are also cases of idiopathic reactions to statins that have more to do with individual differences than problems with the drug itself (the same reason you see death as a possible side effect of many drugs if you read the fine print. It is possible under the exact right wrong circumstances that a drug will kill you.)
I was prescribed Rosuvastatin about a year ago, after my TC was up to like 290 and my LDL 170. I was taken off of it after three months of much improved cholesterol levels (my HDL notably did not really go down by more than one or two (mg/DL), which is good). Then after going off statins my levels went up again and I was put on them again by a new doctor. This new doc seems much more interested that I never ever skip a day (maybe he's being paid off by AstraZeneca.)
Doctors like Robert Lustig (an endocrinologist) will say the focus on LDL is unwarranted and we should be looking at VLDL and the HDL/Triglyceride ratio. (You mentioned your triglycerides are high. That is unequivocally a red flag and opens you up to a higher likelihood of a cardiac event of some kind). Peter Attia says we should be looking at Apolipoprotein B (Apo B) as the one to keep low. Neither of these are usually measured in routine clinical settings.
To answer your question, statin use has had side effects on some, but after a month of use typically a followup visit/blood test will detect whether you're having a bad reaction (fatigue, myalgia, problems in the liver, etc.) My answer as usual is to communicate clearly with your doctor and ask questions and insist on as unambiguous an answer as possible. Also don't be afraid to ask for certain checks/tests, though depending on where you are and insurance requirements, etc. I don't know how effective that will be.
Warning/caveat, this is not my specialty.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I'm not sure where you read that or if you may have read that this occurs in certain circumstances, but I know that in Japan, for instance, it is routine to stop prescriptions for certain statins (e.g. rosuvastatin) after 90 days to check then cholesterol levels after a period. There is no danger except for cholesterol levels rising again, as far as I am aware.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Fair enough!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
When Lucas sold off SW to Disney, he famously compared it to selling off a daughter to white slavers. He obviously had to walk back that comment publicly but I expect he was simply speaking his honest view at the time. On the other hand he has voiced considerable support for Bob Iger.
If your point here is that Iger is looking for political clout points I am not sure I agree, but then I also don't see this kind of businessman as an ideologue. Lucas says "no one knows Disney better" than Iger, whatever that is supposed to mean (I bet I know at least three Japanese young women who know Disney better than Lucas or Iger, but probably not in the way Lucas meant).
I can't speak to @Botond173 's query on the wokeification of Marvel properties but I think one of the tides that has risen all media boats has been the regulatory decision to promote DEI in filmmaking. Disney was recently outed by Musk but Warner, Paramount, Netflix, Sony Universal, etc. have all to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly far from firsthand) implemented similar policies. I am surprised to discover it was only five years ago that the actress Frances McDormand chastened Hollywood with the cryptic term inclusion rider.
What happens then is what I'll call a Procrustean approach to storytelling, where whatever one starts with has to be hacked up to fit a particular standard. This is not always bad, mind you, and talented artists can often do their best work under restrictions. Robert Frost, according to my poetry teacher long ago, likened free verse to playing tennis without a net. Unfortunately when no one has any historical perspective nor gives a rat's ass about anything but current progressive epiphanies, bizarrely tone deaf films like The Eternals get made. If there is any test of Time I don't expect that film to pass it. Of course I've been wrong before.
On a side note, the cancellation of The Acolyte SE2 and the licking of collective chops at this kind of ironically makes me want to go back and watch it now. My very red tribe buddy back home, who watched it and found it benignly viewable, asked me to watch it and explain what the anger is all about.
edit typos
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
You seem to be aware of reasonable counterpoints to your objection. You can always simply opt out.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
All just my opinion. In general the films are better than the television dramas. I don't find the US film industry so bad separate the pandering to progressive mores. But then I don't see that many new releases and very rarely any streaming originals
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I wish I'd gone to your school.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I cannot say why they are popular but I suspect one reason they must be more popular than, say, Japanese dramas, of which there are many, is that as perhaps saccharine and sentimental the K dramas are, they are better acted, scripted, and directed, and have higher production values, than their Japanese equivalents.
Japanese dramas (with few exceptions), possibly never meant to cross the ocean to international viewers, are in my view not only vapid and wooden (cast, as they are, by domestically popular "talent-o" with no discernible talent in addition to career actors) but directed as if the viewers are subliterate cretins. Any emotional scene is cut so that you may clearly see the reaction of each actor (in case you are unsure how you are supposed to feel) subtlety is abandoned for over-the-top hysterics. The Japanese films that exhibit some degree of artistry and which make waves internationally (such as the Academy-award-winning Drive My Car in 2021) go relatively unseen in Japan (until they win an award). Think of the criticism of Marvel. Then take away the effects, the experience of the actors, the multicultural nods in terms of casting, any attempt at realism, and the humor. Then add back in hamfisted direction, overreacting by everyone (in ways that are the polar opposite of how the regular person would actually behave in Japan) a soundtrack seemingly composed for a children's show, a plot scripted so predictably that after the first ten minutes this same child-viewer could accurately write the outcome, and you've got the typical Japanese drama.
Korean dramas offer generally more complexity, even if it's just a love triangle. Having written out all that I really don't know what the deal is. They're mostly romances, if that is a clue. And populated by quite beautiful actors, though you suspect that if you were to actually meet any of them in real life they would seem oddly unreal, like a walking AI generated beautiful asian person. This is I suspect due to extensive cosmetic surgery. I see lots of Korean tourists regularly trying to achieve this same look but I suspect they have less-talented surgeons.)
Kpop is popular here, yes. Where once One Direction drove flocks of adolescent girls into NOVA English language schools, the present generation studies Hangul and holidays in Seoul and comes back disappointed with Korean toilets. I cannot keep up with which group is who and there always seem to be new ones.There was a thread about them here a while back.
(As an aside, I sat through the much-lauded Drive My Car on a plane once and at more than one point felt an almost physical boredom. And I do not bore easily. Maybe it was the long haul flight.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I find chopping them to hell and back and sautéeing them with garlic in butter an effective strategy to banish all mushroom associations. There is still an earthy taste but in this medley it works.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Get a baguette. Slice it lengthwise and observe the spreadable area. You'll need that much of the following.
Some butter. Some brown mushrooms. An avocado. A thing of garlic. Salt, pepper. Cheese, if you dare.
Chop the mushrooms so fine it's like they're no longer mushrooms. Chop the garlic almost as fine. Throw this into a pan of sizzling butter. Sauté. Not too terribly long.
Cut open the avocado into two halves. Depends on what kind you have but I have only ever really had Haas. Use a spoon to scoop out the halves into a bowl, where you then mash it all up. If the avocado is unripe or overripe, crack a beer and order Chinese. Otherwise continue.
Spread the avocado over the baguette flat parts. Spoon the sautéed mushroom mixture onto it, spreading evenly.
Put shredded cheese on if you want. I do.
Toast this under a broiler until the cheese is bubbly. If no cheese, wing it. Give it a few.
Salt and pepper it. If you have olive oil (which you should) drizzle some of that on.
Eat.
You said healthy and this isn't particularly healthy, arguably. But it's good even if you don't particularly like mushrooms, and I'm guessing you don't. Neither do I.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
In Japan these are the things I have seen on people's phones, keeping in mind that it's rude to observe other people's phone screens, that there are little sheets you can put on your phone to prevent anyone viewing it at an angle, and that I prefer when possible to avoid being rude. These are in no particular order of frequency.
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Inane games. Battle games with little armies. Dragonball games where you wail on a computer opponent and then it wails on you. Candy Crush. That watermelon game that is similar to Tetris, probably. Other assorted time-sink mind-killing games.
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LINE. That's like Whatsapp ot whatever it is you use wherever country you are. Females tend to have hundreds of unread message indicators. The most I have seen is 127 unread messages. Reading and texting, often with long nails in a way I think I could not do.
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News sites with printed text.
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Either Instagram or whatever shows little reels (TikTok and YouTube now also do this so I don't know.) Lots of swiping, smiling, expressionless gazing, swiping, swiping, swiping.
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Twitter/X. It's still pretty big here I think. There was a recent kerfuffle about an Olympian (an athlete, not a god), I think an archer but maybe not, who suffered a bit of online bullying. Online bullying is a touchy subject here since the high profile suicide a few years ago of a television actress/talent who was sub tweeted relentlessly due to her performance on a reality show. You may know more about this than I do.
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Music Spotify maybe People gaze blankly with earbuds in in a way that must keep Ray Bradbury spinning perpetually in his grave. They pause occasionally to adjust volume or fast fwd. Or whatever.
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Cooking/recipe stuff. This may be specialized reels (see above). I do see lots of how-to cooking vids being viewed.
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Rarely, sports. The people who do this are usually older, probably retired men who don't GAF and sometimes watch with the volume on. This is annoying. It's almost always baseball. If it's a young guy it will be soccer and through earbuds. I have never seen anyone watching sumo on their phone.
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Dramas of some type. These days Korean dramas are big. In the old days Hollywood movies were much-beloved. Tom Cruise and maybe Tom Hiddleston (called Tomuhi here) may still stir the loins of some Japanese women, but these days the Koreans have definitely gained ascension in the movie/drama category.
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Delivery Health sites. Translation, Call Girls. They will be laid out in a grid for you to choose which girl you want. Admittedly I have only seen two guys on their phones doing this, perhaps on their way to some paid assignation.
I did ten but I could probably write more. Anyway that's Japan. And as I say I don't look very often, truly. I make it a point not to. But sometimes the trains are congested to an improbable degree and one sees.
And yes all very anecdotal.
Edit: All of this on public trains/buses fwiw
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Very well could be, I admittedly have not read any other Weir work. It's driving me nuts though.
Using this kind of voice is an iffy proposition. I happen to like Holden Caulfield but I understand now how some people viscerally dislike him and by extension Catcher in the Rye.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I don't disagree. I just find the constant use of these terms unnecessarily childish. Why not say "I was ravenous"? "I was suddenly keenly aware of my own hunger" "I had reached the table and brought a bun to my mouth before I had even thought about it"? Or any of a dozen other ways to write the sentence?
I don't know if you have read Weir, but this book at least is replete with a goofy humor that for me at least falls very flat. He is a bestseller so maybe there's a wide audience for this type of writing. I'm not part of it.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
Interesting (or maybe expected) that after reading a playwright's autobiography you'd come away with the impression that he was a modern-day Shakespeare. I have seen only film versions of a few of Simon's plays, and Biloxi Blues in particular annoyed me (mostly because no one on the production crew apparently knew how a Mississippian would pronounce "Biloxi.")
(Bih LUX ee, not Buh LOX ee.)
My Japanese wife once was cut off by a woman in another car and I heard my wife scream "CUNT!" This had never happened before and hasn't happened since. Road rage is interesting.
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