DreamyDolphin

The Marseillaise scene is an excellent choice - a lot of the actors in that scene were actual refugees from the Nazis, so their emotions were genuine and powerful.

The bank heist opening of The Dark Knight is perfectly structured and paced.

And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.

Helpful tip: if, hypothetically, you come across a prolific poster who seems to only thrive on bitter negativity, you can go to their profile and click the “block” option next to the “follow” one near the top of the page and they’ll never turn up in your browsing again. Good for peace of mind.

My obscure nostalgia moment from the N64 was the game Blast Corps, where you had to destroy buildings with a range of vehicles to clear a path for a nuclear missile on a truck. Getting the side-swiper to skid just right was so satisfying.

And of course Banjo-Kazooie, as much for the immersive soundtrack as the colourful worlds.

That’s a good question, and probably too early to know for sure given all the shifts and changes currently happening. I’d say the platform could go either way, and probably will oscillate between the centralised/decentralised extremes over time.

On the one hand, the idea of it is obviously focused on decentralising and letting everyone have their own instances; on the other hand, people tend to cluster, we like to see and be seen, there’s a thrill of pride in having people acknowledge and react to your words and a converse feeling of emptiness when you make a brilliant observation and no one is there to notice it. It’s that desire to be part of a larger group that will inevitably lead to some centralised nodes in the fediverse and a bunch of ghost-instances floating around with one or two dedicated/lost individuals posting into the void. Within those busy nodes is where the same cycle of push-pull between “everyone gets a say no matter how unhinged” vs. “I’m in charge here so I decide who gets to speak” will play out.

Absolutely, power has been agglomerating in larger and more consolidated bodies over the past few decades in the western world (notably right-wing parties fuelled by rage and the tech behemoths fuelled by cash), so it’s a question of whether there’ll be grass-roots energy pushing back to claim more power for people or whether it will end in a more forceful consolidation of power, either by oligarchy or would-be king (though the latter seems unlikely, as there’s no one both charismatic enough and driven enough to claim the crown, but who knows).

Fingers crossed that the end result brings us a better world.

The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there’ll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.

I wonder how much of this stems from that announcement a few weeks back that Wagner was going to be subordinated to the MoD? I haven’t heard anything about it since it was announced (since my main source of information was that front page of the internet which just descended into its own civil war…) From vague recollection, Prigozhin said he was refusing to sign any contracts formalising such arrangements but Putin was backing the defence minister Shoigu on this one, to presumably try and rein in Wagner a bit and keep the game of musical chairs going as Putin’s underlings all vied for influence without anyone being the clear heir apparent.

Looks like it may have backfired spectacularly if so, because Prigozhin had to have known it would have meant his end if he’d accepted Shoigu’s control, and, as Sun-Tzu warns, a cornered animal (or army) with no way out will fight to the death.

I’m on the fence about it. On the one hand, the memes (at least the ones I’ve seen) were heavily influenced by the article in The Atlantic a week ago about orcas attacking yachts, tapping into the justified vein of resentment against out-of-touch billionaires - a label which can apply to three of those on board the Titan. The fact that these people paid $250,000 each to go down and sit near a shipwreck that they couldn’t see (portholes would be a dangerous pressure-point) instead of using that money to actually benefit humanity in a time of widespread hardship is questionable at best - and what does the company they gave this money to spend those millions of dollars on? Obviously not quality-controlled safety tests.

On the other hand, there is the human dimension of the teenage son who was terrified about the trip and only went as a Father’s Day bonding experience with his rich dad, or the French naval expert who was genuinely knowledgeable about the Titanic and had recovered many artifacts from the wreck over his life, which represents a genuine loss of expertise.

So I smile when I see the pic of orcas banging pans and saying “billionaires, it’s safe to dive now!” But I don’t go out of my way to find those memes or exult over the deaths.

Paul Ekman demonstrated back in the 1960s that, when showing photos of expressions to previously-uncontacted tribes in Papua New Guinea, these people who had no access to other media recognised and could name the feelings described. Also, blind children who have not been told what “a smile” is, will display the facial expression automatically. This research finding was one of the nails in the coffin of the Behaviourist school of psychology (with rats pulling levers) that said everything was learned by rewards/punishments.

Ekman identified 6 “basic” emotions: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, scared, and surprised (which, except for the last one, were the characters in Pixar’s “Inside Out”). Later researchers have proposed a seventh emotion of “pride”, which has the posture of puffed-out chest and smug half-smile, which again is displayed by blind athletes on winning competitions.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is chronologically the first movie of Segrio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy even though it was the last one released.

True - it might be argued that he’s not responsible if he didn’t know exactly what the crystalline entity would do, but it’s pretty obvious that he had a good idea what would happen, so yeah, he’s the key causal factor.

Technically Lore didn’t do it himself, he summoned the crystalline entity which killed everyone.