I wouldn't exactly put it that way but I've known a lot of people who take great care of their bodies and I never see them going anywhere near diet soda
I actually have less than zero excuse. I was a 13 year old nerd when it came out - PRIME market.
But I think even then I was allergic to hype. Same reason I've never seen a vast number of well loved movies. Like Titanic. ... just a contrarian LOL.
We didn't have the money to go to movies. So I think the exposure to entire cohort of my fellow nerds having seen it three times over opening weekend, wearing the t-shirt every day, and talking endlessly about it for weeks made it easy for me to just nope out by the time it came out on video. That and I was really hitting the "girls and rock and roll" part of puberty and probably ran as far and as fast as I could from stuff that reminded me of being younger. Enough biography. LOL
I've managed to partially short-circuit my allergy to hype by telling myself that if I wait until after something is established, I successfully avoided the downsides of hype (buying into something site-unseen that might not even be that good) and intelligently waited for something to come out and get properly evaluated. Also I'm being unique and independent by getting into things well after everyone else.
This has given me a license to come back and check out beloved works whenever I realize I was just being contrarian and stubborn, which is a delight. Also still lets me say "I knew it!" when super popular things become less than beloved in retrospect.
Plus old stuff is often cheaper. It's often a fun adventure to go "Ok, let's see what all the fuss is about," even if it doesn't become an instant new favorite. Example: Twilight, while I wouldn't call it "good", is very funny and very fun to watch, especially if you get a mixed crowd of people that loved it at the time but recognize it's dumb, people that were allergic at the time but have since watched it and can acknowledge the fun, and new watchers.
That's all really insightful! I agree. I'm also much better now - not willfully disregarding things because just they're popular. I was a punk and indie rocker in the early 00's, so I was able to get that out of my system. (and boy did we) Now, my tastes are just generally extremely non-mainstream. So I avoid it by default.
It's pretty straightforward really - for example I saw Fruitvale Station as a movie fan. I thought it was great and so Coogler was on my radar. I thought the Rocky franchise was ripe for a reboot, so when I heard he was doing it I was in. And the movie was fine. As was Black Panther (considering Marvel flicks for what they are, no judgment either way). So OF COURSE I was downright excited for Sinners. With no assumption that it had to be the best thing ever - and I had a blast.
Another good example is that I'm currently watching the John Wick series for the first time. I didn't know anything about them, but had heard them positively referenced on Kill James Bond. Well, if you meet it where it is and realize it's just "what if you made a comic book into a movie?" and don't expect more of it, you can appreciate it for whether it does that well or not.
Like others have said, go and watch it. It holds up exceptionally well. It's just a plain good movie. The tension, acting, the special effects, quotable moments, the dinosaurs, everything.
Do it tonight and report back tomorrow please.
I'm not gonna promise that it'll change your life - don't want to over hype it. But I am genuinely curious what an adult's initial reaction to it would be after watching it for the first time.
The special effects on that movie are superb. On the vast majority of big early 90s blockbusters really. Just enough CGI to make the animatronics feel perfect. Nowadays I can't watch any movie, they all look like I'm watching a bunch of PS2 cutscenes spliced together.
I constantly wonder why no one's talking about the fact that almost every movie with cgi visual effects looks awful these days? I was on a plane recently. One person in front of me had Wicked on, another the live-action Snow White, another some recent Marvel movie. Each slid completely into the uncanny valley in their own way. It was really eye opening.
The era you're talking about the balance was spot on. I'd say there was a golden age of effects from Star Wars through to Terminator 2. You're already suspending your disbelief and letting the filmmaker take you on a ride. Who cares if it's hyper-realistic? (or, in the case of contemporary movies, trying to be hyper-realistic and failing to the point that it makes it even more obvious.)
My mid 30s brother in law is obsessed with graphics and framerates in video games. He optimises his games and gaming hardware selections primarily based on graphics fidelity.
He used to get the latest version of the fifa game every year, because the "graphics were so much better in this one", he went into debt for an xbox series X because of the better graphics that it offered, now he's recently built a custom gaming PC, primarily because he could eke better (you guessed it) graphics out of the games he plays.
Every single time I would tell him IDGAF about graphics, and I'll probably keep my XSX until the proverbial wheels come off before I upgrade. For me all I need is acceptable smoothness, decent-ish performance, but most importantly an enjoyable gameplay experience and (primarily for me) a very strong narrative focus.
I stopped trying to dunk on his enthusiasm (I was like that when I was 15), and now I'm just happy he's happy. Although he probably won't be happy, because the next-gen gpus are already just over the horizon, and by the time he's built his next gaming PC the next-next-gen GPUs will be just over the horizon...
Maybe some people are like that with movies? Maybe they select based on flashiness and special effects, and when the effects are obviously visible then it's bad by default? Maybe comments like "wow, this movie is certainly visually striking" in a focus group is seen as a Good Thing which makes the producers optimise for that when they make movies?
The use of color is atrocious in new movies. It's the era of high contrast and contrasting colors. They depend on it to make something look 'expensive' and 'premium' even though to me it looks really bad. And played out. Give me washed out greens like My Neighbor Totoro or yes, Jurassic Park, anyday.
It's a self-reinforcing thing. New movies want to look 'new', no matter if 'new' is bad.
It’s true for Germany. There recently was a case of a podcaster whose acquaintances were tapped and was apprehended while walking with his 1yo for posting memes. An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics. A man had his house searched for sharing a meme of calling a politician something along the lines of „idiot“. There’s also the 60 minutes interview where prosecutors brag about confiscating devices for posting memes.
From what I hear from acquaintances and social media, the UK is even worse.
> An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics.
No, she was not fined for posting crime statistics [0].
> Kaiser published a tile on her social media accounts with the text "Afghanistan refugees; Hamburg SPD mayor for 'unbureaucratic' admission; Welcome culture for gang rapes?"
> [media posts] reinforce the "negatively abbreviated representation" and fuels an atmosphere of fear and rejection. In explaining the verdict, Halbfas also made it clear: "Those who attack human dignity cannot invoke freedom of speech."
She was found guilty of reinforcing negative stereotypes and by doing so she "violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees".
Where is the line between having anti-immigration politics and harming refugees? If free speech means anything it should at least protect political opinions, and that includes politics many of us find distasteful or racist.
Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme. If her post was deserving of a €6000 fine what kind of commentary will get you fined €1000? Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to? Who decides where the line is between acceptable political opinion and unacceptable hate speech? How are regular people supposed to tell the difference? Or are regular people just expected not talk about controversial subjects at all if they can't afford to pay a €6000 fine?
> Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme
Simple cute social media post where she equates afghan refugees to gang rapists.
> Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to?
Racist ones that leads to violence. Argument started from "going to jail in europe for posting memes" to "posting statistics" to blatant racist xenophobic stereotyping punished via financial penalty. Free speech crusade came all the way to this goal post.
Free speech must include unpopular and even grotesque speech. That's not moving the goal post that's the entire point.
It's no coincidence that the laws used to punish people for speech are exceptionally vague. There is no clearly defined benchmark of harm. In fact harm does not need to be demonstrated at all. Simply asserting without evidence that a blog "leads to violence" is sufficient for those who don't believe in free speech.
Calling such posts grotesque and unpopular is quite euphemistic. They are aggressive and dehumanizing. And the determination on what should or shouldn't be protected as free speech doesn't happen in a vacuum: these attacks were targetted at a minority which is already regularly assaulted violently just for going about their day, because of violence-inciting shitposts like that. Of course you can't usually prove that post A led to violent crime B, but simply pretending like telling people over and over again that some group is criminal scum isn't going to lead to more violence against them also can't be the solution.
I also think that such laws almost have to be kind of vague by necessity, because the agitators will just try and be clever for plausible deniability. The idea is that a judge will rule on it, and the accused gets legal representation to defend their case. Of course you can always find some case where you may think the ruling was too harsh (or too lenient), but overall, the system seems to work pretty well. You really have to dig deep to find one or two iffy cases.
"the Rotenburg District Court concluded that Kaiser had taken the quoted information out of context in the post text and knowingly risked that the tile would be perceived as incitement to hatred by an objective observer. Additionally, the rhetorical question violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees."
I am. She got a court date and she got legal representation. She got the chance to convince the court that she did not intend his post as an incitement to violence, and she failed to do so.
I strongly believe that inciting hate and violence against others should have consequences. And I'm glad to live in a place where society decided that there is no place for such things. We're not talking about political opinions here, but hate speech with clear intention to cause harm.
ok but I was asking for some reliable sources, not a paragraph of anecdotes. I could go google each one myself, but I don't even want to imagine in what kind of hellhole websites I will end up in if I do that.
I find it interesting that the first replies i got were about racists, nazi sympathizers, afd people and so on (who it turns out never got jailed, but fined, and not for "posting a meme" but for going against well known laws against inciting violence).
Yours is the only reply (yet) that talks about Palestine, that I find much more interesting in this context. It should be noted that pro palestinian protesters have been arrested in the US too, so I don't know if it's really a good point when comparing "freedom of speech" between the US and Germany.
Unless what you meant was "freedom of speech" is an illusions and Americans are deluded into thinking they have more of it.
Both US and Germany are rapidly criminalizing vocal support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. Canada is, too - they've escalated a protest crime (painting a message against IDF recruitment on private property... the owner of a large bookstore chain here pays Canadians to go join the IDF) into a hate crime by calling it antisemitic so they can prosecute it more harshly.
The articles are about a handful of cases. You ignored all the others which were non violent and picked the irrelevant detail to share deceitfully as representative of the rest.
That seems to be a common tactic for authoritarians trying to control others by taking away their speech rights.
Notice also that the poster was only accused, not found liable or convicted. That means almost nothing - you can accuse anyone of anything.
Notice also the guilt by association, where the possibility of the poster committing violence (which isn't impossible) is used to try to invalidate their right to speech.
I'm not the parent, but one reference they made but didn't link was this 60 Minutes clip "Policing the internet in Germany, where hate speech, insults are a crime". It was a bit of a meme in Germany.
Still, the author of the original article has some pretty polarising and crude views, and I think it's valuable to keep that context in mind. The key is not to be lazy and just dismiss everything that doesn't come from the smoothest PR media personality.
For me, it felt like reading a frustrated author arguing against over-reliance on the service sector as an economy, given the dependencies it creates. There is certainly nationalism, realism/geopolitical views and a somewhat raw criticism of the current monetary system in the mix. The author sprinkles a lot of cultural references all over it and concludes with a tongue-in-cheek hint at an accelerationist strategy.
.. based on that random blogpost I probably still wouldn't buy any gold just yet.
The only people who are in jail for political reasons in the UK are fossil fuel company protestors, who were jailed for planning a protest during a Zoom meeting. Others have been jailed for relatively minor but high profile actions, such as throwing paint at paintings (protected behind glass).
People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots, but not many people in the UK see that as a bad thing.
The climate change prisoners are getting a lot more support.
The US imprisons countless black people every year for the flimsiest reasons with questionable due process, in for-profit prisons, some of which have been caught operating with kickbacks for judges.
> People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots
This is a factually false. The recent UK riots were largely about protesting violence (stabbings, killings, rape (which increased by a factor of 4.3 over 13 years, closely correlated to migration) and unchecked immigration (which is unpopular and opposed by a large fraction of the population, from someone who lived there).
These are, factually, not issues of racism - they are humans rights (in the case of the violence) and extremely reasonable political positions (in the case of cutting down immigration), and it's intentionally and maliciously deceptive to claim that they're "racism".
Yes, it's likely that some number of people at the riots were there because they were racist. No, the majority of the protestors were not there for that reason, and claiming that that small fraction makes the riots "racist" (not that that's even a coherent statement to make in the first place) is a lie.
Additionally, it's also a lie to
claim that only people participating in or planning the riots were jailed - "A judge has warned that anybody present at a riot will be remanded in custody, even if they were only a “curious observer”"[1], which was actually implemented, with documented video evidence of people getting arrested for merely filming the protests and police, with no participation[2].
It's deeply evil to defend the UK government's behavior here.
> The idea that the US
This is the tu quoque fallacy, in addition to being irrelevant - the topic is the UK and EU on free speech, not the UK.
This whole comment is just a tangle of lies, fallacies, and emotional manipulation.
I have an account I exclusively use to follow users of a certain topic. I don’t really get political content, even when using the for you tab. That being said I’d love for there to be an option to ditch political content on my main account.
I love the fat nano. I was said when its battery died. I love my iPhone Mini (besides iOS being a bit too dumbed down still). Apple should make more hardware for niches.
I’m increasingly bearish on Apple. I have the impression that they basically make toys for adult these days (no, not that kind of toys). My initial amazement for the Vision was immediately dampened by the fact that it was released by Apple and realizing they get to decide what I’m allowed to run on it (you know, like on a kids device). I’m sure their AI will follow the same pattern: locked down and neutered to the effect of being a gimmick.
