site banner

Friday Fun Thread for October 4, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Two random things:

1. The infamous "Yes, Diversity Is About Getting Rid Of White People (And That's A Good Thing)" by Emily Goldstein was not, as I'd always suspected, written by Nick Mullen, but rather by even more infamous troll Joshua Goldberg, whose arrest you might remember reading about in 2015.

He recently got out of prison, and has a substack and is a mod on rdrama.

__

2. You might recall SolidGoldMagikarp, and the mysterious GPT-3 "glitch tokens". The most powerful glitch token was petertodd.

Peter Todd has just been accused of being Satoshi by a documentary that just came out.

There are only like 6 or 7 usernames in this short list of mystical primordial artifacts that coalesced out of the hidden structure of the universe-simulation. Another of them is... gmaxwell

gmaxwell is probably just Greg Maxwell, who is a bitcoin core developer alongside Peter Todd. I haven't checked up on the latest theories so don't quote me on this, but last I heard glitch tokens were probably fragments that appeared often enough to be assigned dedicated tokens by the tokenizer, but were then cleaned out of the data before actual model training, so it never learns what those tokens mean. Peter Todd is probably not Satoshi, he denies it and everybody credible I've checked is clowning on it (including gmaxwell!)

Amazon has a reputation of having you do your own research while letting practically anyone peddle their crap on its platform. McMaster-Carr, on the other hand, is well-known and respected for having a massive curated catalog of fasteners and other hardware. If you need an M8 bolt, it will have just one offering for each length, will charge a premium price, but will guarantee it's not some chinesium crap you won't strip as soon as you tighten it.

Who are the McMasters of other goods? Toys, clothing, dimensional lumber, USB cords, dietary supplements?

McMaster-Carr, on the other hand, is well-known and respected for having a massive curated catalog of fasteners and other hardware.

Their website, from a developer standpoint, is top-notch.

Grainger and Fasternal have some overlap with McMaster-Carr, though there are some areas that their stock focuses are different that can be relevant.

Some mechanics would argue Snap-on as a tool-specific version, though I'm... not really skilled enough with any Snap-on tools I've used to recognize the differences well.

DigiKey and Mouser (and to a lesser extent Jameco and Arrow) would be the centralized spots for electronics components, where if you needed one chip even if it's been out of production for five years and absolutely positively can't accept a clone or a fake, they'll work for you, and it's still a major marketing argument. That said, while they still have pretty good catalogues and stocks, the combination of 'market' sellers and occasional parts contamination mean you have to do more filtering now than pre-COVID. For small orders, they can actually make sense to work with, since calling up Molex or STM directly and trying to order five can end up pretty similar in cost, and other shops just won't talk with you for less than 1k parts, but as you start trying to go to mass production getting a real connection to the underlying business for major parts becomes more important.

For network/IT, fs.com will cover most stuff, and make your wallet wince at the same time. Their network switches aren't awfully overpriced for next-day delivery where your office might struggle with the local Best Buy crap, but fiber equipment is not cheap and if you need it tomorrow it'll be really not cheap. The cameras are actually good for the price priced that I'm a little skeptical of their claimed NDAA compliance, though.

For user electronics cables, monoprice is the best I'm aware of. They've had a few supply chain fuckups, but especially as power-over-usb goes to higher and higher wattages, they're gonna be increasingly important.

For odd electronics adapters, big choice is StarTech. They're not the only people with USB-serial adapters (second place: TrendNet TU-S9s) I'll trust in safety-of-life situations, where a lot of amazon-grade or even Microcenter-grade ones will work kinda until they need to be reset, but StarTech's like this for everything they make, and they make weird stuff. That said, you do have to be careful, because they will retire products with few users, and then you're really up shit creek without a paddle -- I know the underlying (I think Silex?) driver issue that caused this to die off, but I know of three separate businesses that had to scramble because of it.

For user electronics cables, monoprice is the best I'm aware of.

I love their stuff, and I own a lot of it, but it's not exactly highest quality.

I've got bluetooth headphones where the ear padding is disintegrating completely. I love their retro over-the-ear headphones, but they're out of stock and I've pulled the cord on two pairs such that one cuts in and out and the other simply doesn't work on one ear.

Still, I will continue to buy from them, and appreciate the mention.

For odd electronics adapters, big choice is StarTech. They're not the only people with USB-serial adapters (second place: TrendNet TU-S9s) I'll trust in safety-of-life situations

I think they may have outsourced some stuff now -- I've got some weird KVM-type stuff from them that is great, but my work IT supplied a simple USB-C dock (probably the cheapest one in their catalog) that is utter garbage; drops monitors pretty often and semi-frequently drops all usb devices, needing to be unplugged from the laptop to reset. Definitely not safety-of-life grade.

Ooof. That's unfortunate. Wouldn't be the first time for them to have glorified reseller stuff, but that level of issue in pretty mainstream hardware is a real big downer.

Yeah I don't actually mind when this kind of thing is weird and janky on my own weird and janky systems, but if your thing is janky on managed-out-the-ass corporate windows laptops, it's a problem. (not least because on my own systems I can usually dig in and fix the jank if it bothers me too much -- the IT drones OTOH have only so much time to devote to such things, so 'unplug it and plug it back in usually works, if not reboot' is the best I can do for my team)

I'm kind of thinking it's heat-related maybe -- TBF I do have a lot plugged into the thing. I may now have enough pull to just ask IT to send me an HP one -- thanks for the reminder, lol.

McMaster-Carr, on the other hand, is well-known and respected for having a massive curated catalog of fasteners and other hardware.

McMaster-Carr is well-known for having a massive curated catalog of practically everything that an industrial operation could possibly need, and having it in stock and available on short notice. The fact that it will be a quality product almost goes without saying. And saying it's pricier is an understatement. I don't know about the website, but when my dad was a shop foreman he said there was a $25 minimum shipping cost on every order. They exist because if I'm running a factory or a steel mill or a chemical plant or any other kind of business, if something goes down and I need a part on short-notice they can get it there in a day rather than a week. For that reason, there probably isn't anything comparable for toys, or clothing, or other stuff that's ultimately inessential. There's no such thing as an emergency toy purchase. Their customers are willing to pay a premium because they lose a lot more money by not having the item.

Current McMaster-Carr will sometimes let you get away with better shipping costs (<10 USD for envelope-weight packages), although the prices for the products themselves are still extremely high compared to the typical vendor (expect 3x on common-use parts, and up to 20x for weird stuff). But they'll have it in stock, and it'll be on your doorstop tomorrow, short of a literal disaster.

Currently drinking gimlets with the missus and playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. What a surreal game.

Post you favorite cocktail recipes!

Start with a standard Manhattan recipe, but not only do you make sure not to forget the Maraschino cherry, you also add a dash of Maraschino liqueur and a dash of Cherry Heering.

Weeski: 1 1/2 oz Irish whiskey, 1/2 oz Cointreau, 1 dash orange bitters, 1 oz Lillet Blanc, orange peel (candied since I'm lazy) garnish.

Mint julep, but always with granulated sugar instead of syrup (to muddle the mint leaves better), and about twice as many leaves as the standard recipe calls for.

I have an undying love for a Godfather, though I rarely get them these days. It's just 2 oz whisky, commonly scotch, but I've had them with bourbon, whiskey, thinking about trying one with applejack now that I think about it. Then you add 1 oz amaretto. Stir, have over ice or whiskey stones and enjoy.

This is the drink I go for when I’m out on the town;

1oz Aperol 1oz Reposado Tequila Shake, pour into an ice-filled high ball glass

Pour 2oz dry Prosecco or Cava on top, garnish with ruby red grapefruit slice.

Comes out a beautiful salmon color if done right, it’s both light and boozy and keeps your tastebuds alert.

On the gaming front; I’m absolutely obsessed with UFO50, a top tier collection of 50 8-bit style games with modern design elements.

I’m not particularly nostalgic about the 8-bit era as it was coming to a close when I started playing games as a kid but these are really impressive. As a collection it’s astounding, some of the individual games are amongst the best I’ve ever played. And there are 50 of them!

Old fashioned - default specs - any crap bourbon like jim beam white label, orange bitters and the syrup used is the syrup from the 1886 pemberton coke recipe.

Basil smash - basil extract, gin, syrup, lemon juice

The orange peel garnish actually seems to make a difference to an Old Fashioned for me, but I'm too lazy to keep fresh oranges on hand and carve peels for cocktails, so I've recently got a jar of candied orange peels for the purpose, and that seems to add 50% of the value for 5% of the work.

Swapping out Pedro Ximenez Sherry for the simple syrup is one of the greatest small changes you can make to a classic cocktail.

It’s crazy sweet but figgy and date-y.

I recently put together a gimlet mix that is pretty decent but I can't for the life of me find the recipe at the moment. I'm a fan of equal parts cocktails, the Negroni being the exemplar. Most people are probably familiar but the recipe is:

1oz each of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth

Stirred, poured over ice

Orange peel garnish, express the oils before putting it in the drink.

Bold juniper-forward gins work best, they get lost in the Campari otherwise. I'm a fan of the humble Cinzano for a sweet vermouth.

Another great equal parts is the Last Word:

3/4oz each of gin, Green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lime juice

Shaken, served straight up

Garnish with a maraschino cherry

(replace the gin with rye whiskey and the lime with lemon juice for a Final Ward, which I honestly prefer)

And one more rec if you're feeling adventurous and since I love Fernet Branca, the Midnight Stinger:

1oz each of bourbon and Fernet

3/4oz lemon juice

little under a half ounce of 2-1 sugar syrup

Shake, serve over crushed ice

Mint sprig garnish

1oz each of bourbon and Fernet

3/4oz lemon juice

little under a half ounce of 2-1 sugar syrup

Shake, serve over crushed ice

Mint sprig garnish

Have some fernet, will try this today. In general I love amaro and almost all herbal liqueurs, I unironically like a thimble of jaegermeister as a digestif, like an elderly Frisian farmer.

It's probably the best cocktail with Fernet included, I really like Fernet and coke but it's hardly a cocktail at two ingredients. A lot of the herbal liqueurs I originally purchased for mixing have become favorites for just sipping as well, honestly its almost a shame to use stuff like Chartreuse in a cocktail since they pack so many flavors on their own.

I'd just like to say that Vanderbilt University has just beaten the #1 team in American College Football. They are now 1-60 against Top 5 teams.

That is all.

I love upsets. To the point that I sometimes have trouble rooting for the USA in the Olympics.

Reminds me of something the late great British sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney said a number of years ago: “You like giant killers. I like giants.”

Not from the USA, but I get this perspective. I admire sustained greatness, and am happy to role model it, but watching something that’s expected to happen doesn’t often set the pulse racing. Tennis over the past 15 years gave me the sports star I loved the most - Rafa Nadal. He was clearly putting in sustained greatness, but just happened to be playing at the same time as the two greatest ever, so he was often an underdog too. (Some of his matches v Federer and Djokovic at Wimbledon were like Shakespeare plays with rackets and balls.)

[In short, greatness is the left brain ideal. The emotion of a big upset is the right brain ideal.]

Doing research for NaNoWriMo and I have (yet another!) question for the medics among you.

How does one go about diagnosing a woman with a specific reproductive defect which prevents her from having children? MRI, CT, ultrasound, what?

The first port of call would likely be a hysterosalpingography (HSG), where we pay dye up the uterus and visualize its distribution, primarily to check the patency of the tubes and identify uterine defects like septate uteri and the like. You'd also certainly check for hormonal irregularities through blood tests. Beyond that, I'd assume a USG would be the next step, I struggle to think of anything a CT or MRI would immediately add for most of the common potential issues.

Beyond that, it depends on what the particulars of the infertility causing disease you have in mind are.

Not a medic, but a lot depends on what the problem is, and that's likely to be driven by how hard you want it to be to solve.

  • Endocrine disorders are the most common problem, usually sex hormone or thyroid related. Both can be diagnosed by interview and confirmed by blood test, but they can sometimes be treated (though not always effectively!), so if future certain infertility is a plot point you probably don't want to go with this.
  • Structural problems like damage or scarring to the fallopian tubes or uterus. These are usually detected via a mix of patient history and sono(saline)gram, with harder-to-diagnose cases going to an MRI (when available) or x-ray (when not). CT are sometimes used where other tests give unclear results and MRIs aren't available, but they're disfavored as the contrast agents don't really like going in that area, or don't like coming out afterward, and the radiation exposure is significant.
  • Ovary problems, such as cancers or cysts, can be trickier to detect, but they can cause infertility (such as by messing with hormone levels). The normal diagnostic pathway outside for people without fertility concerns typically involves complaints of abdominal pain, followed by blood tests and/or ultrasound, and finally a biopsy to confirm. But if someone's going in with fertility concerns, weird bloodwork, and abdominal pain it's plausible that they'd go to an MRI as a sort of broad-spectrum search, at least in the United States.
  • Genetic disorders are usually going to involve blood tests and/or family history work, unless the disorder has clear enough symptoms to start from there.

Yeah, uh, dude, this is like saying "let me Google that for you."

Presumably if the OP wanted a Copilot or ChatGPT summary he could have gotten one himself.

Give it five or ten years and I'll agree with you. LLMs haven't proliferated to the same extent that search engines have.

Avatar the Last Airbender is probably the best, most well-rounded show ever created. Fight me.

Counter Argument: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Edit: I see someone else has already made this claim.

I recently rewatched the whole thing after first seeing it 10+ years ago and it holds up really well. I would add a few more caveats than you but it is very well rounded. Definitely a show I would be happy to have my kids watch.

Season 1 is by far the weakest, just some dud episodes before they get into the flow of the story. Unfortunately I think the kid show vibes from the first half of season one turn off some older viewers. But it is ultimately a kids show so I can't knock it too much for that

It's hard for me to see how many show can be more well rounded than The Wire even if the last season dipped a bit.

Twin Peaks would like a word.

Not as well rounded. Also way too short and the storyline doesn't really make sense b/c it was cut early.

Still a great show.

I'll fight you. Avatar is just OK. It has moments of genuine greatness, but most episodes are pretty mediocre and the show as a whole drags on way too long. It isn't even innovative in that it can appeal to both kids and adults, because other shows did that first (Batman: TAS comes to mind as explicitly being made trying to appeal to both audiences).

I'll never say Avatar is a bad show, because it absolutely isn't. But it's vastly overrated by its fans. I watched it all, it got a solid "meh" from me and I have no real desire to watch it again.

NYEH!!!

i've never seen it, but it doesn't sound that good. It sounds like a bog-standard shonen battle-anime, power fantasy. An orphan boy gains superpowers to defeat the evil monsters and save the world. Along the way there are many fight scenes, against a progression of increasingly strong yet easily-defeated opponents. woo. Never saw that one before... What about that is "well-rounded"?

Nah, it pretty much avoids the shonen power curve as seen in Dragon Ball. The main character starts out reasonably close to the top of his game. It’s his relationship with the world that has to develop.

It’s worth noting that it also avoids the Naruto reliance on Talk No Jutsu.

Nah, it pretty much avoids the shonen power curve as seen in Dragon Ball. The main character starts out reasonably close to the top of his game.

What? The whole arc of the show is for Aang to learn to wield all four elements so that he can have the power he needs to fight the Fire Nation. Not to mention that he only beats the big bad through the use of the soul-bending power he gets late in S3. The show is shonen anime power curve through and through.

The soul bending bit is by far the weakest part of the show and is the one thing I truly dislike about it (much more than season 1 starting clearly as a kids show). It undermines the roll of the Avatar and one of the most important lessons Aang has to deal with - to be the arbiter of justice, you must sacrifice your own spiritual needs to protect the world. In the same episode, they completely undermine this important lesson with the soul bending. I understand why they did it (it is a kids show) but it undermines an important parallel of the real world, that to be the arbiter of justice is to sacrifice your own humanity protect other peoples.

What makes avatar great is that there clearly is a power curve where characters get more powerful over time, but what's much more important and prominent is that the characters grow and have emotional and physical challenges over time. The avatar is stupidly powerful, yes, but in Shonen anime the character arc is about getting more powerful to defeat the bad guy, while in Avatar it's much more about the change from a kid to an adult, and the emotional and moral growth you have in that journey. Diminishing it to just a 'shonen anime' overlooks a lot of what makes it popular.

But it starts with him already being a master of Air, and once he has good teachers he learns Earth and Water near instantly. Fire is only a problem because he is reluctant to use it due to an incident.

Aangs arc has more to do with accepting his role and using his inherent power rather than getting stronger by beating progressively stronger foes.

well-rounded

not OP, but it's suitable for all age groups and most people in a way you rarely see. Like, if you ask me for my favorite shows, I'd say Tatami Galaxy, Erased, Haibane, Mushishi ..., but all of those are special interests that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to random people. For Avatar I would.

It has all the superficialities of a typical kids show, while having a lot of mature topics, messages and fundamental world-view underneath. It's basically the opposite of modern hollywood, which tries to hide its childish attitudes behind a mask of sex and violence to seem superficially mature.

Watch it and find out, my friend. Quality is quality.

You're just wrong man. Aang has anything but a power fantasy, and that's kind of where all the dramatic tension comes from.

A monk steps out of a time capsule to find a world at war. He works the rest of the series to end the war while traveling through villages that have been affected by it in different ways.

Can't really disagree tbh. Though Fullmetal Alchemist:Brotherhood is imo even more consistently good, its only "fault" being that it's slightly less family-friendly.

That show is too long. That's a fault in itself.

Problem I have with most anime tbh. I'm not gonna sign up to watch like 300 episodes or w/e the fuck.

? Avatar has 61 episodes, FA:B has ... 64 episodes.

Oh fr? Thought it was longer huh

FMA:B is probably one of the best examples of a shonen anime/manga that told its story and wrapped things up in a timely manner. Stuck the landing as well which is damn near unheard of in the anime world...

Second adaptations weren't nearly as common back then, and I think part of the satisfaction with Brotherhood is because the first adaptation didn't land properly at all. It's been ~20 years, but the whole meeting in London, then later Weimer Germany including Hitler struck me as some of the goofiest shit imaginable. To keep with the metaphor, didn't quite stick the landing, looked at the judges, and then decided to make an incredible jump launching themselves headfirst at the ground.

Well as you probably know the manga wasn't finished at the time so they winged it. Badly, as you say. Still, the faithful parts of the original adaption are quite good, music/animation etc. Kino in its own way

Yeah, the original FMA had some very memorable scenes early on, but it jumped the shark more than Hellsing's OVA did, and that one was supposed to include random nazis.

Is very good. It’s a shame about the tone of the first episode. It’s hard enough to sell peers on a cartoon.

what do you think is off about the tone in the first ep?

It’s too goofy. Aang has a serious attention deficit and shouts too much (“Will you go penguin sledding with me?!”), and it’s overall too manic for the sole purpose of not giving away exposition in the first episode.

The show gets so much better once they leave the Southern Water Tribe. But I don’t know any adult friends I could convince to push through till then.

Mmm fair. It is a kids show.

My wife watched it as a kid and tried to get me to watch it with here not long ago. We stopped after the first 2 episodes because it felt pretty kiddy and her pov was that it must have been more childish than she remembered.

That's understandable, but it's a shame. I think the very next episode is the one where Aang is confronted with physical evidence of the genocide of his entire people in the ruins of his hometown. The humor (and even some slapstick) does stay throughout the series, but it's woven in better.

Then there's this great short scene that hits very hard when you've already seen all of Zuko's antics Uncle Iroh has had to guide him through.

Struck me as very childish. Stopped there.

In retrospect, Hunter X Hunter had the same issue and turned out great. Might be grounds for giving it another shot.

It's literally a kids show hah. But it dives into much more mature themes and handles them better than almost any other show I've seen.

If you liked hxh, then you will like avatar as well. In fact Hxh imo has serious issues with padding towards the later arcs, while Avatar has solid pacing throughout - if anything, it's the early episodes which feel more like that and it gets better.

Miami ACX Meetup at 6PM @ Lagniappe next Saturday (10/12), come hang out if you’re in the area

The new joker is so bad that both critics and audience score at rotten tomatoes agree at 33% . In a way I am impressed how they achieved that with the talent and budget that they had. It is not exactly culture war because in culture war usually there is sizeable gap between the two score.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/joker_folie_a_deux

I still don't understand why the first one achieved the acclaim it did, although that might have been primarily the result of the expectations I had going into it than the film itself.

When I heard that it had won the Golden Lion and was being praised as this incisive portrayal of mental illness, I was anticipating a sensitive, intelligent art film. What I actually got was an overwrought early-2000s psychological thriller, which clumsily attempted to tie in Arthur Fleck's origin story with Batman's (to the detriment of both) and featured a completely superfluous pseudo-romantic subplot for no good reason. The supposedly realistic portrayal of mental illness bore about as much relationship to the genuine article as Norman Bates in Psycho.

The only really positive things I can say about it are a) Joaquin Phoenix conjured a genuinely impressive performance out of a decidedly underwritten character, the most powerful portrayal of the character since Heath Ledger's; b) the score and cinematography were decent, if unremarkable; and c) I liked that they made no attempt to sanitise the violence in the film, and instead endeavoured to milk it for all the horror it was worth. The latter choice lent the film a gritty integrity which would have been sorely lacking without.

Well - it was the first non shitty comic book movie since thor ragnarock, the main performance was amazing, and there is something utterly enjoyable in watching someone that is only kicked when trying to play by the rules finally snapping. And the realization that if enough people snap simultaneously it will be hard to stop them.

Probably that was what scared Hollywood - that the small people filled with angst liked it and liked the protagonist.

People like to throw taxi driver, but I think that falling down is somewhat overlooked as the inspiration.

I noted the parallels with Falling Down, a movie I disliked far more than Joker.

The cult classic signal boost means movies become memes and, if the meme gets popular, they trend from underrated to overrated. Although maybe that's just how the culture creates consensus in general.

'93 had some real cultural bangers. Looking at the link I clearly missed a a few highlights! Falling Down is lower in the list at #33. Snobbery aside, I appreciate it was made instead of an additional Grisham or Clancy derivative screenplay.

'93 had some real cultural bangers

What are the entries highlighted in yellow?

The Fugitive holds up pretty well, and In the Line of Fire absolutely slaps. John Malkovich is fucking terrifying in it.

Initially I intended to highlight "cultural bangers" as a comparison to Falling Down's more humble release, but when I actually looked at the year I just ended up highlighting movies I liked, remembered fondly, or considered significant. Excluding the you-can't-handle-the-truthers (not gonna rewatch to see if I actually would like it as an adult) and Dennis the Menace (nostalgic but not a cultural banger); Into the Line of Fire which I haven't seen in 15+ years, but recall as a solid thriller. The Fugitive I watched a few years ago and it definitely holds up.

If I look at a list of a year like 2022's box office I need to scroll past the top 30 to make a new, equally meaningless highlighted list. The Northman was cool-- down at #55. I imagine I would enjoy Everything Everywhere, but haven't gotten around to watching it. Nor RRR, which I've been told to see, though I am no Bollywood fan.

So, you and your snobbery can eat a big spoon of Free Willy along with your Falling Down takes, bucko.

Everything Everywhere

Watch the first half, then stop. The second half is just the jokes from the first half beaten like a dead horse.

I enjoyed Top Gun Maverick despite never having seen the original. Suzume was decent, even if it's transparently the director trying to recapture the magic of Your Name (which also describes his previous film Weathering with You). The Black Phone was alright but forgettable, and not a patch on Sinister by the same director. I didn't like The Banshees of Inisherin at all and don't understand the hype one iota. The fact that Tár is at #85 is a travesty, easily the best film on this list and it's not even close. Decision to Leave was pretty good, not as good as Oldboy.

The Banshees of Inisherin Top Gun Maverick

I clearly didn't read the list. I saw both of these and enjoyed them both. Top Gun was, ironically, a breath of fresh air in its formula. That was the normie take and I agree with it.

I enjoyed Banshees. Tragedy, absurdity, and a story told through a dialogue that wasn't convoluted for the sake of complexity. Carried by a pair of actors with a chemistry and history together I appreciate. I also recall it being smartly humored. It kept me entertained and it worked. But, I may well be the cinema equivalent of a midwit, so a slightly different artsy but not-arthouse film might be my kryptonite.

Tár

Is on my list. I'll add Decision to Leave and give Suzume a try. My boomerism typically limits my anime viewings, so my exposure is limited to Miyazaki films (great!)

More comments

Joaquin Phoenix conjured a genuinely impressive performance

This is why I liked the movie. The guy can act. I've loved him in everything he has done.

"Her" was a masterpiece.

And I even liked him in "Napoleon", even though the movie itself was ahistorical garbage.

Napoleon is pretty great if you consider it less as a serious biopic on the life of Napoleon and more as an adaptation of a British political cartoon circa 1812.

I guess overwrought early-2000s psychological thrillers are just that much better than 2020 bullshit -- if somebody wants to start churning out mediocre-but-fun 90s movies again I won't complain.

Bad Boys 4 arguably did this this Summer and did well at the box office. Feels straight out of the 90s.

Exactly, the standard of Hollywood slop in 2019 was so poor that a movie which would have been straight-to-DVD in 2004 makes a fortune and is praised as a masterpiece.

Was straight-to-DVD ever particularly viable for (wannabe) psychological thrillers? I got the impression that it was used more for genre schlock and feel-good films.

I'm thinking about seeing it this afternoon to see how I feel about it, but the reviews don't bode well.

How was it? I'm surprised by how unified everyone is in not liking it.

Just saw it myself. Didn't love it but if it hadn't been a musical I would have said it was "good". An amazing piece of art that just wasn't that enjoyable to watch. In contrast I'd put the first movie at "great", no qualifications.

I don't really get the "dunking on incels" critiques. Like who came out of the first movie identifying with Joker?

I'm impressed by them trying to make a sequel at all. The first movie didn't need one, it was an exploration of a loser's life: stupid, awkward, ugly, poor, mentally ill Arthur Fleck is not the usual charismatic megalomaniac madman that draws people in like a maelstrom. The clown posse overtaking Gotham didn't worship the real Joker/Fleck, they worshipped a meme, like QAnon. He has his 15 minutes of fame and is then arrested and institutionalized.

How exactly do you make a sequel to this story? The old Fleck is gone, his story has been told. The only pitch I can come up with is the QAnon/book ending of Fight Club/The Huduscker Proxy one: while Fleck is being intimately acquainted with haloperydol, the group that worships the Joker grows. They break him out of Arkham asylum and start asking him for guidance. His simple ideas are amplified by the group effort and result in his growing notoriety.

I feel like they could have gone a different route with the talk show character Murray. They made him too much like Johnny Carson. A show and character resembling Dick Cavett would have been able to navigate the complex emotional aspects of what Arthur did on the subway. I thought that was the weakest point of the film. Murray didn't give Arthur what he wanted, IMO, which was understanding. Instead he got ridicule.

Joker (the film) always reminds me of Christine (2016), about the on-air suicide of Christine Chubbuck, and anecdotally, I heard that she is somewhat of a martyr for the incel community, as well. I sympathize with her more than I do Arthur from Joker because she wrestled with her interpersonal and intrapersonal struggles for as long as she could before they became too burdensome.

It's a Joker-themed courtroom jukebox musical with a bad ending that retroactively undermines the previous film, which was a Joker-themed King of Comedy and Taxi Driver remake that only did as well as it did due to the Batman IP and the media acting like it was the catalyzt of an impending incel revolution. It was a dumb idea from the start. Might've been a Matrix 4 situation, where Todd Phillips didn't want to make a sequel. Not sure.

WB is a dumpster fire and DC is on life support. Good luck James Gunn. You're gonna need it.

The joke being shared on social media is that this Joker film actually will cause mass shootings, but only on account of how bad it is.

Everything I've heard and read about this film sounds like it's almost apologizing for audiences liking the first one so much.

I'm still playing a shit ton of Mechwarrior 5, but I encountered a problem. The 32:9 UI Fix mod I'm using bugs how Arena fame is handled. Every mission I complete, it re-awards me all the fame I've ever won again, complete with pop ups with each rank I pass. It wasn't too bad the first time. Now that I'm rank 4, it takes an excessively long time. The root of the problem seems to be that the mod was authored prior to DLC6 which adds arenas. But I figured I could fix that myself.

Let all 114 GB of the Mechwarrior 5 modding toolkit download last night. Took a peak at the uasset files the 32:9 mod replaces, found the one that needed to be reimported where the Arena fame was bugged. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Opened it up in the mod tools, corrected its UI positioning for 32:9 again, pak'ed the mod. Only thing that happened was, I think some amount of unprocessed arena outcomes were queued, but in a bugged fashion. So when I first attempted to use my mod, it just spammed the fuck out of me with seemingly blank screens. I thought it was broken worse than before, but then turning off all mods had the same problem. So I just hit spacebar until they all went away, caught up on whatever unprocessed event queue was happening, and now it's right as rain.

There is something magical about being able to peak behind the curtain of things and change anything that annoys you on a PC.

I know this is more of a "small scale question" and not exactly "fun" but it's also relatively time-sensitive and I want to pick this community's brain in particular (EA people might have thought this stuff through, etc): does anybody know the most bang-for-your-buck way to donate to relief efforts from Hurricane Helene? Any efficient charities that are trustworthy and have good scale and minimal grift/overhead?

Samaritan’s Purse is one I’ve known about for a while and in crises actually donate to. Their max admin take is 10%, and there’d be hue and cry in the churches if it were mismanaged. They’re already mobilized for the area.

It’s run by Billy Graham III, the famous evangelist’s son, and the organization has been criticized for requiring volunteers to sign a controversial Statement of Faith which disavows homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, they’re committed to helping everyone they can on a given charity project, regardless of demographic or creed. They also have two helicopters, so they’re ready for the washed-out roads of Appalachia.

I’ll put my non-tax money where my mouth is and donate $50 right after I post this reply.

Title insurance is a scam. For every $1 that a title insurance company collects, only 5 cents are ever paid out in claims. Other countries (not the US) have central land registries and dispense with title insurance altogether. Title insurance acts as a tax on every real estate transaction.

So... how do I get in?

I worked as a title attorney for a decade. It's not a scam. Most of what you're paying for isn't to theoretically pay off future claims, but to pay for work done up front to prevent future claims. This requires them to send someone down to the courthouse to gather all of the title documents, which are than sent to an attorney who looks for issues and drafts a list of exceptions that the policy won't cover. If the exceptions are minor things like utility easements and the like that don't really affect the value of the property, the company will write the policy. About a third of the time, though, there are major issues that require the insurance company to do further curative work before they'll move forward. The reason such a small percentage goes toward paying out claims is because the vast, vast majority of your premium is spent on getting assurance that there won't be any claims.

Now, theoretically you could forgo the insurance and research the title on your own, but this will inevitable cost you more than just getting the damn insurance because you're now paying the full hourly rate for an attorney who may or may not have any significant experience doing title work, whereas the insurance company has an attorney on its payroll for a lot less, and this guy does nothing but titles. And they'll also be able to delegate a lot of the legwork to other staff, who also do nothing but titles. So you're paying less for a superior product. Theoretically you could also do the research yourself but I highly, highly would not recommend even thinking about even attempting this. Even having spent ten years doing titles that were much more complex than typical residential real estate transactions, there's no way in hell I wouldn't buy title insurance. I've seen too much.

Other countries (not the US) have central land registries and dispense with title insurance altogether.

The problem there is that we would have to essentially run a full title for all land going back to patent. Most title insurance companies only do a 60 year search, because claims beyond that are rare enough that occasionally having to pay one isn't a big deal. But it becomes important if you're making ironclad assurances. You could theoretically get around this by passing a marketable title that acts as an effective statute of limitations on claims, but you stil don't avoid the basic problem: It would still be really expensive. How long and how much do you think it would cost to run full title on all 585,000 parcels in Allegheny County? You're probably talking billions, when you consider that a lot of these are going to be industrial and commercial properties that have much more complex titles than a simple residential subdivision lot. Rural counties have fewer parcels, but rural work poses its own problems; those titles are almost never easy. Then there are the associated costs of curing all those titles (a buyer can always walk away), developing and implementing the system, and dealing with the inevitable lawsuits that follow. I did a lot of work in Ohio right when oil and gas was starting to take off. The state had passed a dormant mineral act that sought to simplify things: Rather than having to track down the innumerable hard-to-find heirs of someone who severed a mineral interest in 1919 and then forgot about it, any interest that hadn't seen any action within the past 20 years would merge with the surface. Seems simple enough on its face. This led to a decade of wrangling and counting, with the Ohio Supreme Court getting involved on several occasions, to determine when an interest is actually terminated. We basically had to hold off on interpreting it for a while while the cases worked their way through the courts. I doubt the wholesale termination of old surface interests would be that much different.

I hate being "let me explain how to fix this industry which I know nothing about" but this is themotte so here goes.

Why, instead of doing all that work, doesn't a title insurer simply collect the payment and not do any work? If the current claims payout is 5%, maybe now it goes to 10%. Complicated mineral claims? Pschaw. I'll only do title insurance for houses and apartments.

I wouldn't rule out that a lot of insurers are stupid and lazy and this is their basic process anyway.

How long and how much do you think it would cost to run full title on all 585,000 parcels in Allegheny County?

Presumably you don't built the registry from scratch. Just every time someone "runs title" it goes into the database and the next time someone runs title it just pulls the record for a flat fee of $50 or something. That said, I do acknowledge that the government fucks everything up so it probably would be some horrible boondoggle.

Presumably you don't built the registry from scratch. Just every time someone "runs title" it goes into the database and the next time someone runs title it just pulls the record for a flat fee of $50 or something.

I have a feeling this is how the UK does it; the ancient system still applies (unlike those continental countries like Germany where every piece of land is registered), but each new purchase is registered, so slowly the records are built up. Just googled and apparently 83% of British land is now registered with the Land Registry.

Why, instead of doing all that work, doesn't a title insurer simply collect the payment and not do any work? If the current claims payout is 5%, maybe now it goes to 10%.

Because doing the legwork means the insurance is significantly cheaper than other forms of insurance in proportion to the total benefit. If I get the 15/30 minimum liability coverage in PA, it's probably going to cost about $800/year. $800 for a max payout of $30,000 means I'm paying 2.6% for one year of protection. On the other hand, the cost of title insurance on a $300,000 house is going to run about $1,500, so I'm paying 0.5% for protection as long as I own the home. If policyholders were paying $7,500 annually for title insurance, it might make sense to forgo the examination, because you'd then be able to absorb huge losses.

There's also the moral hazard issue where people don't attempt any funny stuff when they know they aren't going to get away with it, because there will always be a title search. Say I own a house that I'm offering for sale for $300,000, but I still have a mortgage that I owe $200,000 on. I list the property with a real estate agent, and Bob agrees to buy the home for the listed sale price. Bob's lender asks you to write a policy for their loan amount, and Bob purchases his share, and you write a policy for the full $300,000. At closing, the bank cuts me a check for the full purchase price, and I deposit it in my bank. After that, I stop paying on my existing mortgage, the bank forecloses and kicks Bob out of the house, and both Bob and the bank file claims for the full $300,000.

This lien isn't the kind of thing that's normally even a problem for title insurers; we'd just note it in the report so the closing attorney knows that the mortgage has to be satisfied to resolve it. But it's a serious risk if you don't even know about it.

Complicated mineral claims? Pschaw. I'll only do title insurance for houses and apartments.

Title insurance is mostly for homes and apartments, though commercial properties are insured as well. I did mineral work mostly and I've never heard of anyone insuring a mineral interest.

Presumably you don't built the registry from scratch. Just every time someone "runs title" it goes into the database and the next time someone runs title it just pulls the record for a flat fee of $50 or something.

The issue with doing that is that the company running the title isn't trying to uncover or resolve every possible claim against the property, only the ones that are likely to become problematic from a business perspective. It's essentially a cost-benefit analysis. If the government is guaranteeing title, however, it has to be ironclad. Due process requires notice and opportunity to be heard, which means that a more extensive search needs to be done, and all interest-holders have to be notified and able to present their case. I talk about this more in the post below, but what this means is that a complicated quiet title action needs to be performed so a court can make a determination of who owns what. Several states had this process for a while, but it proved too cumbersome to become popular. The countries that have it now started it when most of the land was unseated, and the system could be developed from scratch.

I'll add that 'full value of home and land' isn't the cap for a title insurance payout; depending on the contract, certain types of breach (most notoriously unpermitted work, but also certain liens that attach to properties) can exceed the value of some homes or business locations.

They can, but the policy has coverage limits that are usually what you pay for the property.

The problem there is that we would have to essentially run a full title for all land going back to patent.

Would you? If you're the state, you can simply make it so that "in fifteen years, we will switch to a central registry. If you think you have a claim to this land, contact us before ten years from now, or you lose it".

And even if not, it's a one time payment that permanently does away with 'running titles', so it's still probably worth it in the long run.

I think you're taking too narrow a view of "claim to this land". There's a common perception that these primarily involve claims involving a fee interest in the surface that arises from something like an unresolved estate, divorce, etc. The reality of the situation is much more complex. Consider a typical rural parcel in Western Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia, or Southeastern Ohio:

A 20 acre tract with a house was purchased by the current owners in 2004. It has a clean chain of title with no gaps going back to patent. It was never part of an estate, lawsuit, divorce, bankruptcy, Sheriff's sale, or anything like that (the last two sentences are wholly atypical, but I'm simplifying things here). In 1901 the surface owner sold the Pittsburgh Seam coal to an intermediary who in turn sold it to a mining company, and through several further sales and corporate mergers it's now owned by Consol. In 1917 the oil and gas was leased to Allegheny Heat and Light Company, who drilled a well on the property in 1919. In 1922 the surface owner conveyed the property by deed and reserved "1/2 the oil and gas" underlying the property. The owner of the severed interest has since passed and the reserved 1/2 interest is now shared among 16 individuals, in unequal proportions. In 1940, the surface owners conveyed the Freeport Seam, but this coal was never mined. It is currently owned by Massey Energy. The 1919 well is still producing, meaning the 1917 lease is still in effect. Through various mergers and assignments, the lease is now held by Tri-Star Energy, LLC. In 2012, Tri-Star assigned the production rights to deep formations to Noble Energy. Noble then assigned the deep rights to Chevron but reserved an overriding royalty interest equal to the difference between 18% and the existing royalty burden. Statoil then assigned these rights to Rice Energy, who then merged with EQT. EQT, looking to develop the oil and gas, entered into a joint operating agreement with Chevron involving the Marcellus formation. 10.575 acres of the 20 acre tract were made part of the Piston Honda Unit. Piston Honda was then included as part of a $1.2 billion mortgage to Wells Fargo. EQT then sold the deeper Utica formation rights to Pennzoil Production Company. Over the years, there have been several recorded easements involving the property. The owners are aware of a gas line that crosses the road near the house and runs along the property's western edge, and some old telephone lines that cross the back corner of the property and may or may not be operational. When the property was purchased in 2004, it was financed through a mortgage with Wesbanco that is still in effect. In 2015, the owners took out a $25,000 revolving credit line with Dollar Bank that remains unreleased.

Under your proposed system, I count at least 27 potential claims to the property, and that's assuming that the surface owners won't have to make their own claim. "Contact us" is also vague, because in any reasonable system "contact us" means "file suit for quiet title". I say reasonable because no land registration system worth its salt would simply take a naked assertion of an interest in real property at face value. What's realistically going to happen in this situation is that every mortgage company, coal company, oil and gas company, telephone company, power company, water company, and other potential lienholder is immediately going to look through their records and file in rem actions against any piece of property upon which they have a plausible claim, seeking declaratory judgment that their claim is valid and that their interest can be recorded in the land registry. I don't even know how this would work in practice, because all those claimants would theoretically have to provide notice of the suit to all the other potential claimants, which would result in a huge mess of lawsuits that no calendar control judge could possible make heads or tails of, and there are additional complications that I won't even get into here. The worst outcome would be that the couple who bought the land in 2004, got title insurance, and haven't had any problems since are now going to find themselves defending numerous claims, and are likely going to have to spend a ton on legal fees just to maintain what they have. Is that 1965 power line easement still valid or not? West Penn Power is going to argue that it is. Companies will never concede that any right of record has been invalidated.

This is why land registration systems typically put the burden of proving title on the surface owner. In the Progressive era, this was touted as a reform over traditional title, and something like a dozen states implemented land registration systems between around 1900 and 1917. Most of these have been abolished, and the remaining ones are just pale ghosts of what they were intended to be, vestigial remnants of ill-considered reform. The problem is exactly what I stated earlier: If you're going to make title ironclad, you have to ensure that the registration accounts for all existing interests. And to accomplish this, you have to provide anyone with an interest due process to ensure that their property rights are respected. What this means in practice is that someone seeking to register title under these systems was required to conduct a thorough search and file suit in court, with any conceivable interest holder notified in the suit. Even in the early 20th Century, with fewer than 100 years having passed since patent and things like mortgages and mineral leases in their infancy, this proved an expensive prospect, which brings me to your second point:

It's a one time payment that permanently does away with 'running titles', so it's still probably worth it in the long run.

Is it? The problem is that it places all of the burden on the person seeking to register the title. I've handled partition suits before, which are similar but much more limited actions, and you're still looking at 5 figures to resolve the suit. Get into a situation where you have to notify every party with an interest in the property, and you're now looking at the cost ballooning exponentially. All the minor claims that a title insurance company would ignore under the presumption that no one would raise them (and that if they were raised, it was rare enough that they'd just pay), now have to be litigated. And how is a court to determine if you've done the proper due diligence? If a title is registered, it's supposed to be indefeasible. But what if a critical party wasn't properly notified of the action? What if the party seeking the registration intentionally did a half-assed job in the hope that potential claimants would slip under the radar? This became a problem in states with registration as the 20th Century wore on, as the process essentially became a way for people with questionable titles to legitimize their claims so that they were beyond reproach. Otherwise, what's the benefit to the landowner? Pay $25,000 (conservatively) now so that future purchasers can save a couple thousand bucks on title insurance?

Tangential, multifamily housing lobbyists oppose government lease registries. But if we had them, even at state levels, it would massively reduce squatting. As is, in many jurisdictions, squatters exploit that law enforcements considers it a civil matter, until the formal eviction process is completed, and won’t intervene.

One example of the requirements is offered by New Jersey Statutes title 17 chapter 46B. (Different states will have different requirements.) Right at the top, there's a minimum capital requirement of 750 k$.