George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Well put. Thanks for the response. I think the fictive scenario of the film is a way of putting this very idea into play. Gosling's character (K, I think, was his name) is the central protagonist of that film, and his interactions with both humans, constructs like Joi, and other replicants is the meat (cough) of the story.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
The use of the word 'tards here is pointlessly adolescent. If you mean Down syndrome? Thats not hard to write. It could just as easily be Asperger's or even some type of autism. If your point is specificity of language, perhaps begin by being specific yourself.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Yours is a materialist view, as I'm sure you would acknowledge, which is at odds in this case with the spiritualist view. The latter would (might?) have a more ready answer to the source of the "elsewhere," namely a divinity or sacredness inherent in the human, or something similar.
There is a scene in Blade Runner 2049 that I think of when reading your comment. If you have not seen that movie stop reading this, unless you don't care and probably won't watch it anyway.
Unlike the original film, in this one Ryan Gosling's character, the protagonist in the movie, is revealed more or less immediately as artificial. Meaning not human, but not a simple robot. He is a "replicant," therefore has the "more human than human" characteristics of the replicants of the original film, though is an upgrade of sorts, and his journey living out this experience and discovering his limits is part of the story.
What I imagined reading your comment however were the scenes with his artificial paramour, Joi (Ana de Armas) who is usually confined to his home. She is not a replicant (presumably replicants are high-end or otherwise expensive), but is a product line available to the masses. She is basically a chatbot, but one whom he is able to "see" via holographic projection (she has many of the same qualities of so-called Chatbot paramours in our current age in that she remembers things, can seem to have feelings, is available to communicate at any time, and is always happy to interact, but unlike what we have this year--maybe next?--she can be hologrammed into existence, her mouth syncs with the words that she speaks, she can walk around a room, and she can even somehow pair holographically with a physical female so that she, Joi, for a brief time seems to have flesh and blood).
Gosling's character decides to take Joi out of his house via some technological bauble called an "emanator" where she can seem to be physically with him--on-the-go, as it were--like your chatbot girlfriend on your smartphone, except he can also see her moving outside in the world now, cast into a physical (if still untouchable) holographic shape by his emanator. It is made explicit to us, as the audience, that putting her into an emanator does not come without danger. In a way that seems odd technologically for us in 2026, where ChatGPT or name-your-bot interlocutors are stored on servers and not in any one physical device, once you put a Joi into an emanator she is locked there, and thus you must take good care to keep the emanator from harm. A bit of narrative telegraphing perhaps, for his transferring her does not end well. He eventually meets various antagonists, and one of them cruelly takes the emanator (and thus Joi) from him and stomps on it. This crushing of the emanator thus ends Joi. For plot reasons in the film, then, the Joi that he knew is destroyed at this moment, wiped from existence, but not before she almost gets out the phrase, directed at Gosling's character: "I love you."
The pathos here--if there is any, if you do not reject the premises--is that Gosling is himself not a human, and nor is Joi human, yet the pain he "feels" (if putting this in quotes is the right move) has been made to be understandable to a human audience observing these events unfold. Understandable to me, at least.
So my point. Think of how attached people are just to their smartphones--these non-sentient pieces of metal and plastic we carry with us. Watch the face of someone in 2026 who has forgotten or lost their phone. It's panic. It is as if you have taken away one of their senses. I predict with the advent of chatbot relationships (and I expect these will go far beyond the fairly oddball people who marry their Replikas, and will merge into the mainstream, and in the not distant future) if/when these are suddenly cut off, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. And the obvious retort will be: "But it wasn't real." Indeed.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I have seen it a few times and quite enjoyed it. I read the book afterward. I try not to analyze works of fiction that I read/watch if they affect me viscerally, which the movie did. I think because of the frequent use of cut scenes more than anything else.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
studies show fighting is emotionally beneficial for males
Care to link?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I'm not sure I agree with many of your opinions here, particularly that all women are apparently mostly the same. I've heard feminist women make the same charges against men and I agree with them about as much as I agree with you. Anyway I'm compulsive when people can't find things so hopefully I've found your video.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
I agree with this.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
If it's anything like Japanese, there must be waves of argot depending on the writer and context, that change from month to month. Even LLMs used as translation tools have trouble keeping up.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Aboslutely.
Going to use this spelling in the future, though still thinking of the right context.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
It would not strain credulity for me to hear that, even now, many in evangelical circles believe that satanic witches are real or were real at some undefined point. But these would be protestants.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
I don't doubt you, but is this a newer alt or were you a lurker before?
I smiled at your opening--what is the phrase? "Ignore every sentence that comes before the but."
It's not as if I do not understand your points here. I do. I also think that repeated bannings are extremely tiresome and eventually have no teeth. People will even open with "I'm gonna be banned for this..." and so on. Or some similar phrase. I'm breaking my own rule here but I often feel as if @Daseindustries has a simmering contempt for nearly everyone in this forum, in particular anyone who disagrees with him.
Also if we are to make exceptions now, that necessitates, if not sending out the ravens to beckon the permabanned return, at least clicking whatever unban button there might be for all who are in that category. Welcome back, persona grata, Darwin, or insert whomever you might prefer stay out of the party. And that list is in the hundreds at this point, though no doubt many of them are alts. Hlynka, for all his interesting posts, I believe was the guy who came at @self_made_human of all people with "Maybe it's because English isn't your first language" or some similar jibe. (I may be wrong, if so, I'll delete that. Edit: I'mnot wrong.) The issue isn't the one-off rudeness. It's that this sets a tone, and that tone is repeatedly read by everyone who browses the Motte, including lurkers--lurkers who may be very intelligent but are much more likely to remain lurkers if they get the sense that we are just another forum where playing the dozens or insulting your interlocutor for some imagined peanut gallery (aka modern "debate") is the norm. I'd personally prefer we avoid that.
You counter that temp bans are a solution. I'd agree if I thought they'd solve anything, but again the permabanned have shown repeatedly that they don't give a rat's ass about decorum, that they're above any ruleset for their own absurd reasons, and that the longer they interact with anyone who disagrees with them the more likely they are to revert to childish form. Time after time, ban after ban.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Still confused. So a dress shirt? Buttons fastened?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
How the hell do you put on a shirt inside out? Was it a t-shirt? A polo shirt? That would make sense. But you mention buttons. I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely trying to picture this.
That no man mentioned it does not mean that no man noticed it, btw.
This is interesting to me but should probably just be banal. I can remember many years ago having a similar encounter, also in a parking lot, beside a river at a newly built-up area for taking strolls along the riverside. At the time I was young, probably (cough) better-looking than I am now, and in the throes of youthful heartache over a girl I am still in touch with (now a woman with children the age we were then.) I went there to clear my head, maybe throw a few rocks in the water, and find a bit of peace. Within minutes I was approached by a young gay man. I do not remember the encounter except my own probably awkward demur followed by a hurried departure from the area. I probably gunned the engine on the way out. It was a Volkswagen Jetta, I remember that. I only went back there once, and was sure to take a girl with me as defense.
What is interesting is not the shared experience, but that mine was so long ago, and yours was recent. That in this era where being gay is considered so acceptable that we have people criticizing "heteronormativity" as in some bizarre way (bizarre to me, at least) deviant and unhelpful, you still have gay men trolling the lonely places in search of blowjobs. Yet another example of how the dances are different (heterosexual vs. homosexual), the latter being less of a dance and more a yes/no proposition, straight to business, seemingly more like a tacit negotiation than any kind of wooing. #Notallgays, sure, but then I would ask: Are there places where a straight man can more or less reliably go to find a girl who will fellate him, and is she there in that area because she is yearning to fellate someone? I mean, of course, without money changing hands.
The riverside area is still there, as far as I know, and I am not the only one of my straight acquaintances who had such an experience. Straight men do at times drive out to solitary places, get out of the car, and sit on the hood. For no real reason, but definitely not In Search Of a handjob.
The app thing is not surprising, and I'm sure there must be much more licentious such apps in Japan, covering, as Japan does, all the lascivious kinky bases.
This begs the question of what you mean by "valuable regular." Some people post constantly, and I routinely scroll past their posts. Some post rarely but have been here (using the same alias) since the reddit days.
If a new person who posts intelligent, well-worded, thought-provoking comments (or whatever else we are imagining is a standard bar) is then insulted and demeaned by another user, is that okay because the insultee is not yet a regular? This gives indefensible license / licence to frequent contributors to behave like impudent teenagers.
For the record, while I may not agree with some of your own posts (though I usually do), I have never read you behaving rudely to another member here, even when you, perhaps more than many others, have been repeatedly antagonized. This is a standard I would like everyone to at least try and follow: Yours. It isn't as if the people concerned here haven't been repeatedly warned, even begged with (in my view) overly charitable praise.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Without talking about specific banned people (who are banned and thus can't join the conversation) I disagree with the people complaining about the bans. People can either follow the rules or not. It isn't rocket science. It's trivially easy, short some sort of personality issue, but even there, let's encourage responsibility for our own actions, yes?
As far as I know you can read the wisdom of some of these posters over on reddit or elsewhere. That's a click away.
If this forum is to be anything at all, let it be a (virtual) embodiment of its rules and standards. If it isn't, fuck it, what is it then?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
Any other medications you're taking other than the 5-hydroxytryptophan?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
Edit: you meant the other book, nvmnd
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Saying 'you gain weight because you ate more calories than you consumed'
Word choice is a bit funky. Burned probably better.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Congrats! Wishing a healthy and happy pregnancy and delivery
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
Christopher Hitchens (in?)famously wrote that essay on this topic many years ago, arguing the opposite, but I always thought it was tongue-in-cheek, and his response to those who disagreed with him was usually something along the lines of "If they want to make such an effort to entertain me, well I'm happy to be amused."
Popping up in my Instagram feed a lot is Arynne Wexler, who I would consider very attractive, though she may not precisely have the little drop of Retsyn that would actually make her my "type." People will obviously disagree.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
I have never used a dating website but generally I avoid straight answers when I don't know the person. Keep everything light and turn it back on her. She'll get tired of this eventually, but then you have to zag instead of zig. I used to be of the "Be upfront and honest about myself" school, but I was very alone for that entire time.
What if they are an ethnicity from Laos?
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