FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
6hr ago
AGHBRL? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Greta Lee is to Celine Song as Daisy Edgar-Jones is to Sally Rooney.
OotL: Song and Rooney both wrote stories (Past Lives and Normal People, respectively) heavily drawn from their own experiences in which the protagonists are thinly-disguised versions of their respective authors. These protagonists were portrayed by actresses (Lee and Edgar-Jones, respectively) who each bear a passing resemblance to the respective authors, but who are vastly more physically attractive.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
8hr ago
It feels pretty mean-spirited to describe tech billionares as simply "nerds". Maybe they started off as humble computer nerds, but that was a long time ago and they've done a lot of other stuff since then.
Scott's working definition of "nerd" is something like "unusually intelligent, but lacking in social skills". Which still seems like an apt description of e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, in spite of his billions.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
8hr ago
I didn't think journalists were supposed to do "If you don't like the speech they gave, imagine a better one and report on that instead".
When the journalist likes the politician in question, this is called sanewashing. When they dislike him, it's called "dog-whistle politics".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
Yes, there are ~70k YouTube channels with 1 million subscribers or more, against a population of 115 million YouTube channels. She's more famous and well-known than more than 99.5% of all YouTube channels. That seems "popular" to me.
Those two videos were literally the only times I'd ever seen her.
Okay. So? Occasionally I'll be watching a movie, and I'll recognise an actor who had a small part in a movie I watched many years prior and whom I haven't seen in anything else since. (e.g. I watched Minority Report the other night. The guy in the opening sequence who tries to murder his wife after she cuckolds him once went on a date with Rachel in Friends, where she gets pissed and makes a fool of herself. Haven't seen him in anything other than that movie and that episode.) I would say I'm "good with faces", not that I have a "photographic memory". The latter term implies that you have total, perfect recall of everything you have ever experienced, even things that happened years or decades prior. It does not imply that you can identify the celebrity in a video after not having seen a picture of them for a long time. I'm sure you can't tell me what you had for breakfast on April 9th, 2015.
It is also my impression that most people don't remember exactly which random Internet conversations they have open IOU-a-sauce for over timespans of years.
Well, most people don't have random Internet conversations, so this claim might well be true, but vacuously so.
I don't think you have a photographic or eidetic memory. The abilities you're describing seem fairly typical of a person who's above-average in intelligence and conscientiousness, which describes most people who post here.
Only two million subscribers? Gosh, that only puts her in the 99.94th percentile of all YouTube channels. What a nobody!
ChatGPT tells me the videos on her channel have been watched a collective 247 million times. Even assuming that only one-tenth of those are unique viewers, a population bigger than Florida has laid eyes on her at least once. Maybe "extremely" was overselling it, but she's a very popular YouTuber by any reasonable definition.
New Year's resolution check-in:
- I realise that, for the last few weeks, I've been neglecting to include updates on my resolution to post at least twenty-six blog posts this year. Fear not: I haven't been slacking. In August I published two posts about the Jason Arday scandal, both of which I cross-posted here. I posted an article this afternoon, expanded from this post. That brings me up to twenty-one posts so far this year.
- Went to the gym three times last week and again on Monday evening. My lower back isn't fully healed and I have a big event coming up in two weeks so I'm not taking any chances with squats or deadlifts: just bench press, pullups and cardio until the week beginning the twenty-first. I can deadlift 1.82x my bodyweight, squat 1.33x and bench press 0.77x.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
One of our friends in particular had plans that didn’t involve being unceremoniously fired while on paternity leave, just 9 days after the birth of her second child.
Huh? Is this a trans-identified female who was on "pa"ternity leave?
AIUI eidetic memory is quite common among the autistic, though admittedly not universal.
My understanding is that even the existence of eidetic memory is a controversial proposition among psychologists and neurologists, making me sceptical about any claims of its incidence within any given demographic. If you have any non-anecdotal evidence backing this up I'd love to see it.
No offense intended, but am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that you were able to recognise an extremely popular YouTuber? Surely this isn't what most people are talking about when they throw around terms like "eidetic" or "photographic" memory. If you have more impressive examples of your ostensibly eidetic memory, I would also love to hear about them, but if this is the best example of your capabilities, I'm highly dubious.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Yes, and exceptionally tall people sometimes bang their heads when walking through doorways. And yet, curiously, men are willing to shell out a quarter-mil to make themselves taller. You don't see a lot of people spending money to make themselves shorter.
Autistic savants are exceptionally rare (as my sister, a paediatrician, pointed out, the likelihood of an autistic child being a genius is roughly the same as that for an allistic child, which is to say, staggeringly low), and not a central example of how the term "differently abled" tends to be used. There are disadvantages associated with being exceptionally numerate, exceptionally strong, exceptionally fast, exceptionally attractive etc.; there may even be certain advantages on the margin associated with being disabled (blind people save a lot on their electricity bills!). But on net, virtually everyone would still prefer to be exceptionally fast vs. wheelchair-bound, exceptionally strong vs. paraplegic, sighted vs. blind and so on.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Did you hear they've come out with a meal plan specifically designed for plain-looking women?
It's called the
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Yes, I agree, I support Romeo and Juliet laws.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
I don't consider "child sex abuse material" a dysphemism. Pornography, by definition, is produced with the consent of those depicted; children definitionally cannot consent to being sexually exploited; ergo, sexually explicit videos featuring children cannot be pornography.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Shit craic pal. Wishing you a speedy recovery.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
That was my first thought. But during the day, Substack shows me notes I agree with, many of them posted by Americans. In the wee hours of the morning, it shows me notes I disagree with, exclusively by Americans. I don't get it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
I've made it abundantly clear that the "war" to which I referred was the recent escalation of hostilities which began in October 2023, not the broader Israel-Palestine conflict.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Why, when I open Substack during the day, does the algorithm generally show me notes that I agree with – but when I open it late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, I'm presented with a cavalcade of libtards?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
But a lot of the examples of bad writing they cited were distinctly modern ones, whether at the stylistic level or in terms of plot construction (e.g. the array of plots that no longer work since the invention of the mobile phone).
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
The link in my comment worked. The only difference between the two comments is that backslash.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
Looking at the markdown, there's a stray backslash between "film" and ")".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
I would prefer if they actually used fragments from real novels as examples and spend their effort on explaining less obvious problems than "don't make your characters too perfect or completely pitiful".
Sounds like a great way to make a lot of enemies in the publishing industry.
Evidence in favour
- Minority Report is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, for whom
the question of what's "real" and what isn't is a nigh-omnipresent theme. - More specifically, the film was originally pitched as a sequel to another adaptation of a short story by Dick,
Total Recall, a film which constantly, explicitly toys with the idea that almost the entire film is the protagonist's fantasy during a failed memory implantation.
- More specifically, the film was originally pitched as a sequel to another adaptation of a short story by Dick,
- In its depiction of a dystopian, authoritarian future United States, the film is one of the most bleak and cynical in Spielberg's filmography, right up until
Anderton is imprisoned, at which point the film's tone undergoes a complete 180. Anderton's ex-wife Lara frees him from prison; at Lara's request, Anderton's old colleague Jad helps expose Burgess (the man who framed Anderton for murder); Burgess commits suicide; the Pre-Crime program is shut down; the Pre-Cogs are sent to a quiet cottage in the countryside to recuperate in peace; and Anderton reconciles with Lara, closing the film with a baby on the way. - The last words spoken before Anderton is imprisoned in a comatose state are from the prison sentry: "It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes.
That all your dreams come true. " - Some of the plot developments after Anderton's imprisonment strain credibility. Perhaps the screenwriters got lazy, or perhaps these implausibilities are deliberate hints:
- In the world of the film, retinal scanners are omnipresent and the primary means of identification for everything from targeted advertising to paying for public transport. While on the lam, Anderton has his eyes replaced with those of a Japanese man to avoid getting caught out in public, but hangs on to his old eyes, which he uses to get back inside the Pre-Crime headquarters. It is certainly surprising that his access privileges wouldn't have been revoked after he was accused of pre-murder, but in the film's defense, the scene in which he re-enters Pre-Crime HQ happens only one day after said accusation: it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in all the excitement, someone might have neglected to revoke his privileges. But later,
Lara uses Anderton's original eyes to access the containment facility, forcing the prison sentry to spring him at gunpoint. That no one would have bothered to revoke his privileges after he'd been convicted of murder, at least several days after being first accused, after he'd already used his eyes to gain illegitimate access to a secure facility, strains credibility rather more. - After having done an admirable job of covering his tracks up to that point in the movie (and for several years prior),
Burgess carelessly slips up by revealing to Lara that he knows more about the murder that prompted Anderton's escapade than he's letting on. - Prior to Anderton's imprisonment, none of Anderton's colleagues (with the exception of the Pre-Cog technician) allow their loyalty to him to get in the way of their professional responsibilities. But after Lara springs Anderton from jail,
Jad agrees to publicly embarrass Burgess, against the explicit recommendations of his colleagues, purely because Lara asked him to on Anderton's behalf.
- In the world of the film, retinal scanners are omnipresent and the primary means of identification for everything from targeted advertising to paying for public transport. While on the lam, Anderton has his eyes replaced with those of a Japanese man to avoid getting caught out in public, but hangs on to his old eyes, which he uses to get back inside the Pre-Crime headquarters. It is certainly surprising that his access privileges wouldn't have been revoked after he was accused of pre-murder, but in the film's defense, the scene in which he re-enters Pre-Crime HQ happens only one day after said accusation: it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in all the excitement, someone might have neglected to revoke his privileges. But later,
Evidence against
- The film is directed by Steven Spielberg, no stranger to happy endings and not known for directing films
designed to make the viewer question what's real and what isn't. - As noted above, the containment sentry suggests that, while comatose in prison, the inmate will have visions in which
all their dreams come true . At first glance,the post-imprisonment sequence would seem to meet this description: Anderton escapes, Burgess is exposed, Pre-Crime gets shut down, Anderton reconciles with his ex-wife. But would a long-serving lawman like Anderton really dream ofBurgess evading justice for his crimes by committing suicide? One would imagine that Anderton would either want justice or revenge: Burgess killing himself would be disappointing on either count. - If the audience was intended to interpret the film's ending as
Anderton's dream, one would reasonably expect his subjectivity to be more foregrounded in the first two acts of the film. But it isn't, and the film adopts an objective, omniscient perspective, with numerous scenes in which Anderton isn't present.
Great comment, agreed on all particulars.
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