thrawn

@thrawn@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨On a lighter note: Why do people still buy fast food?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep. I love high quality food and spend a lot of time learning to copy from chefs I like. I’m very selective about ingredients (e.g. fish, only so much is flown in daily and accessible to normies), often make my own sauces, and have a pretty large collection of dinnerware and lacquerware for accurate plating.

  Yet like clockwork, several times a year I will eat multiple McRib patties in a single sitting. That shit has presumably the worst ingredients, the same sauce as every other year slathered inconsistently, and is presented in a cardboard box that has definitely gotten thinner. It is in no way worth anywhere near the price but I do it anyway.

  Sometimes slop hits the spot. Plus I can’t make my own heavily processed slabs of… whatever those things contain.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Star Wars’: Simon Kinberg to Write, Produce New Trilogy for Lucasfilm⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  He wrote Fant4stic, XXX: State of the Union, and Dark Phoenix. I think there’s a higher chance of him getting this trilogy than we think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How exactly does one eat 1500 calories a day?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Glad to hear! It really is a struggle but it’ll be worth it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How exactly does one eat 1500 calories a day?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Hi op, how has the journey been going? Are you still trying to lose weight?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon takes the pink pill⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to hang out on the dph subreddit and it was one of my favorite drug subs. A little bit depressing because of the side effects and how many of them had already suffered significant brain damage though.

  I miss the drug subs like /dph or /heroin. I read them for years since these very much interest me— there’s so much of the human experience I will never try— but I fear permanent side effects and am not much of the drug type anymore. If only I could try it and rewind time with the memories intact.

  Plus the dph memes are great.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How is Lemmy better than Reddit?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Mobile apps, no ads, and no widespread astroturfing. I still use Reddit for product recommendations, but even that has become mostly advertising (oftentimes the link will redirect several times so they get their money).

  I don’t like contributing ad revenue or engagement to a company I dislike. I find Reddit leadership morally reprehensible, and for the free market to work, I must avoid giving them money. Searching up products on ad-free RDX Reddit viewer contributes a view, but no engagement or ad revenue while coming at a very small cost to the company which I’ll accept.

  And honestly, as a person who finds some of Lemmy’s community to be a bit much, it’s still way better than the bottom of the barrel half AI trash Reddit is now. Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit, occasional insufferable behavior and all, and that’s way better than new Reddit. You miss a lot of the personal stories, but in turn you also read less made up or AI generated garbage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Worked For MrBeast, He's A Sociopath⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, extremely saddening. I watch his father’s videos sometimes and they can be difficult.

  Techno’s death was a lot harder to hear about than I expected. I heard about it from a friend that I’d shared a video with and felt genuinely sad. I didn’t even know the guy or watch that many of his videos. I’ve watched dozens of them in the time since when I have nothing else to do and honestly, it’s the celebrity death I’ve cared about most.

  He was so young too. Probably younger than 90+% of this site. Such a tragic death.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Worked For MrBeast, He's A Sociopath⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a YouTube guy; I only follow one channel I found during the Covid lockdowns, this kid called Technoblade who was low key while being really good at the game Minecraft. They worked together sometimes. Didn’t make Mr Beast seem very cool.

  From what I’ve seen, he just inserts his loud personality into things by throwing money at people. It was never “hanging out with Mr Beast”, but “Mr Beast is giving out money”. Those guys are generally bad people, I cannot think of an exception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Boxing⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think if my opponent removed the head of their last challenger and still had an arm left, I’d back out of that fight. I imagine next in line would too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to say I am too. She’s had a few incidents of odd speech patterns; if not this, the poor soundbites like weirdly explaining things (“Russia is a country” or “do not come”). Trump’s word salad is so normalized that he won’t be scrutinized for it. There will probably be sexist comments on it as well.

  I hope she gets new speechwriters and a bit of training on what to say instead. It’s probably a lot to hope that she can quickly override this pattern, given it’s likely something she’s done all her life, but her duties as VP are relatively minimal and the campaign can afford speech training. She’s better than Trump either way, but being consistently on point would be useful

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have long trusted, alongside polls, Professor Allan Lichtman’s system of keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen true/false questions and asserts that American voters vote for president based on the governing performance of the incumbent party. It has been right 11 times in a row, if you believe that the Supreme Court allowed Bush to win even if recounts were going to turn it in Gore’s favor. It correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 victory along a number of other upsets.

  Per this system, Harris has a less lenient board but is still probably favored at this point. She has lost incumbency and unfortunately does not bring charisma (defined as broad appeal past their party). Nonetheless, if the remaining undecided keys fall as they stand now, she would win in October.

  In my opinion, her candidacy could be better than Biden’s if this allows Biden to focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza instead of campaigning. This would allow a foreign military success, making up for the loss of incumbency. She may also hurt RFK’s campaign if there are a good deal of protest voters who are simply tired of two elderly men (and thus picked a slightly younger elderly man).

  Because of this system, I was very very worried about Harris replacing Biden. Professor Lichtman’s streak is unparalleled and he has little skin in the game since he is not a pollster doing this for a living. Thus it’s difficult to see it as pure luck. Lichtman himself believes it’s still winnable though, and that has been relieving to hear.

  Outside of the system, I can see how Harris could win. She polls better. She’s younger and can be a reasonably decent speaker. She’s certainly more exciting than Biden, and has more energy and time to campaign. With the media focused on her now, she could get her message out quickly and powerfully. I can see her winning by a significant margin.

  If I’m honest, I’m not totally optimistic, but there are many factors in her favor. I would’ve felt better if she had the charismatic appeal of Kelly or Whitmer. It’s fine though. Her strengths of being a coherent non-fascist that has never been found legally liable for rape should help separate her from her opponent, and she’ll demolish him in a debate if he develops the courage to show up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Ballerina': Disastrous Screening for ‘John Wick' Spinoff⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Genuinely great scene. So is the phone call with Aurelio (“I heard you hit my son”), another excellent setup and play on expectations. And Perkins’ death which is one of the most memorable ways to kill off a powerful antagonist.

  The concept worked best when we as the audience expected the world to function familiarly, and it could playfully subvert those expectations in small ways.

  This is exactly it. By 4, the world is so nonsensical that it barely resembles the first. I view the first in a vacuum because the others actually harm it— why did the police even bother showing up in the circus world of the sequels where shootouts happen in the open? They also stopped with the playful subversions and I think tried to rely on the nonsense world to keep it light. I hadn’t actually seen the playfulness put to words, but you nailed it.

  I’m glad the filmmakers probably had fun but the sequels can’t capture the almost believable action, genuinely decent plot, and emotional payoff. That and the general tone was totally discarded. I still watch 2 and 3 sometimes for the choreography, but damn if they don’t pale compared to the first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Ballerina': Disastrous Screening for ‘John Wick' Spinoff⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to rant a little, this will add nothing to your day and you should skip it. John Wick is one of my favorite movies ever, but every expansion pokes holes into the universe, and reduces the realism of the choreography. I love the first, and the character, but I think it’s past time the series end.

  And look, I’m not saying it needs to be or ever was realistic. But the armor is so comical that it feels like a bad video game. In the fourth, enemies would visibly be staggered, act out a flailing animation, then recover right when it was time for them to be hit with a flashy execution move. I’m not a movie snob— I can even enjoy Transformers 2— but I kept getting distracted by background enemies doing nothing but biding time until their cue to die. Not unlike the Praetorians in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The choreography was still masterful in that the stuntmen were immaculate, but the predictable dizziness animations made me feel some sense of real sadness remembering JW1 and even 2.

  The story also got offensively stupid. The Osaka Continental staff felt like vaguely racist caricatures, bringing swords to a gunfight. The manager forcing Donnie Yen to kill him (effectively suicide by duel) purely for “honor” and making his daughter watch was particularly unimpressive. Really, every region felt like they took the most marketable bits with nearly no real culture; even the assassin society solely portrays the cool bits. I’m not the type to usually care about cultural respect in movies but it felt like distasteful stereotype. These plus the extremely disappointing choice to keep working with sexual predator Taran Butler make me wish it ended at the second.

  So it doesn’t terribly surprise me that the spinoff is bad too. I can’t see any movie in this universe of barely-inhibitive juggernaut armor and nonsense worldbuilding being good again. I’d expect less than respectful portrayals of ballet, poorly thought out heavy handed commentary on female assassins, and bullet sponges conveniently dying because they were hit in a place that made them flounder. Every Wick installment has only made worse the problem, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that here too. Hopefully I’m wrong and will eat these words, but ehhhhhhh. Probably not.

  No hate to those who liked JW4, I understand the video game aesthetic can be appealing. I don’t even think the series should end purely because I didn’t like it, it’s great that there’s an audience walking away satisfied. Just wasn’t for me and I miss the older movies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon bakes some cookies⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am a bit surprised to hear that’s how you feel about those things. I’m not completely neurotypical but I present that way, and I’m missing a lot of knowledge about most divergences. If you don’t mind my prying in turn: do you mean you feel shame when you score higher on an exam than someone else?

  Anyway yes, the other commenter nailed the primal urge to assert some form of dominance. Whether through instinct to better one’s tribal standing or society raising people to constantly beat other people in something, I think a lot of people feel some reflex to shit on 4chan’s OP even though he was just being honest and vulnerable. There should be little to no tribal advantage in a “higher standing” person acting that way. Nonetheless we still see children distancing themselves from bullied peers, or joining in on it to prove they’re part of the winning side so to speak. I strongly believe it’s due to base instincts from a time where being near the bottom was a large threat to one’s ability to reproduce.

  I said to the other guy that his negativity would benefit no one. In a progressive society where a person thinks about human progress instead of temporary satisfaction from “beating” someone else, this is completely true. The forward-thinking know that 4chan’s OP (and other downtrodden) can help move humanity forward, and Lemmy’s culture is progressive enough to not reward the primal desire. Without the approval of other self-minded individuals, he actually lost social standing, leading to a rare situation where truly no positives existed.

  Mostly unrelated and unwanted speculation, but when you say your life is so consistently in the shitter, I wonder if believing so is part of the neurodivergence since you’re definitely doing better than people who are proud. Being neurotypical isn’t objectively right— it’s just most common, and thus typical. I don’t know your life and I won’t make assumptions, but I wonder if you lack the self-minded instinct and thus don’t feel the need to be prideful. Taken to an extreme that could lead to a hurtful opinion of oneself. It’s just, I know you have value and I bet I’d find stuff to be proud of in your shoes.

  Sorry for waxing philosophical. I hope that was slightly useful anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon bakes some cookies⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I googled girlfriend asmr and honestly it’s pretty cringe, the primal part of me really does wanna bully this dude. But I set that part aside because I try not to be an asshole for no reason, as it does not benefit anyone including myself. Even if we reflexively think these thoughts due to society and upbringing, we don’t have to give into them, much less spend real time introducing more negativity into the world by voicing them.

  I grew up in Texas with very traditional masculine bs. Some part of me would read what I just said and think “what a pussy”. But I promise you I’m much happier now that I’ve learned to set the negativity aside, and I like to think I make fewer people feel bad regularly. There is no downside to this because, well, there’s no real benefit to shitting on people who aren’t hurting anybody.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steroids Are Awesome⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At least it’s at the end and not in the middle, those are just gratuitous

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is lemmy now what reddit used to be 10+ years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, I was there for the others but I wasn’t aware of an upskirt trend. If it’s what it sounds like, seems like a crime

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨double slit⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a really high quality edit, I’m genuinely impressed. Probably not too much work mechanically but the attention to detail is great and someone who’s never seen it would probably think it was original. If I were a meme edit rater it would rank very high on my list. I don’t know how to make this comment not sound sarcastic or boomer-y but I actually really love this edit and will send it to people. They won’t understand it but that’s fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon learns to love the bath bomb⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oops, it would’ve been top tier playing along though

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon learns to love the bath bomb⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Jk I was super wrong!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon learns to love the bath bomb⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Think he was just playing along

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obi-Wan has PTSD⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It wasn’t that bad.

  I mean, I’d give it like a 3/10, but it wasn’t memorable enough to be fetid to me. Neither was Ahsoka, which despite (in my eyes) character assassinating Thrawn, just didn’t interest enough to have staying power. And I really like Thrawn so I should be more upset at the complete disrespect Filoni showed Zahn.

  Hm, the more I think about it, the more fetid it does feel. What a waste of McGregor. Disney could really use some fresh blood.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The full source code for GTA 5 has been publicly leaked⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry for late response, one of the other commenters got it but if you didn’t look it up after you probably don’t know the scale of the search. There are a ton of Easter eggs and a few UFOs hanging around in the game, leading many to think there is a large scale mystery that can be solved. Also hard to describe the Easter eggs— there was a mural on a mountain, an ingame serial killer, a ghost and her daughter, a cult, ingame rumors of UFOs, an alien frozen in ice, three UFOs hovering and one crashed, and a lot more that I probably can’t remember.

  So for years people scoured through the game and decompiled code hoping to find it. The search is actually vaguely still ongoing apparently, even after the leak since it takes time to parse through.

  While there is still stuff undiscovered, it’s most likely that this was part of the cancelled single player DLCs. Which does suck because it was a genuinely interesting idea and it would’ve been cool if R* had managed to hide a real massive subplot in the game.

  Not the best summary cause it’s been a while and I was never that invested, but it was pretty interesting in the first few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The full source code for GTA 5 has been publicly leaked⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe we can finally end all the hopes for that UFO thing. The people who spent years on it deserve closure, even if it was just hints towards a cancelled DLC

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jason Momoa Says the Future of ‘Aquaman’ Films Is “Not Looking Too Good”⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean Aquaman 1 made a shit ton of money, it’s the highest grossing DC movie with nearly $1.15bil. It’s currently the 28th highest grossing movie of all time, made more than Spider-Man: Far From Home, Joker, and Oppenheimer. So it really did turn out way better than expected.

  The second, which they did make and is about to come out, is looking to flop pretty hard though. He’s saying that there’s not likely to be a third because of this.

  Which is fine by me really. Aquaman may have been a massive success and turned the character into a thirst trap instead of a joke, but I did think it was just mid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats the difference between cheap and expensive modern TVs?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is actually pretty crazy to me, I watch <1hr of TV a week but can immediately tell OLED from LCD. It’s the perfect absence of light on black screens, though I’ll admit I don’t see a lot of LCD and may just be encountering only mid ones.

  I’m ex-tech so I don’t use my devices, barring my phone, a lot these days but I can’t unsee the difference. I always get OLED when available; had a “next best thing” miniLED iPad that was unbearable in the dark. But I’d rather not care like you do: objectively speaking you miss out on nearly nothing and don’t have to frown at remaining non-OLED devices like car screens or laptops. Even going weeks without computer usage I’ll still notice, and honestly after typing all this I’m kind of jealous.

  And y’know, perfect black aside, I don’t think I’d notice otherwise. Really unfortunate thing that my brain notices without thinking about and it’s cost me thousands + fear of static screens causing burn in

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of Star Wars’ best FPS games is getting remastered in February | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  1 just needs a graphics remaster while 2 does need some more work. Even TSLRCM isn’t enough, but it probably wouldn’t need too much time to really integrate the content a little more coherently.

  But yeah, K1 is basically perfect as is and K2 would be with a bit more development time. The remake looked good visually in the five seconds we saw but I have a weird feeling that the actual game would’ve been worse.

  Strangely tho I’d prioritize remastering K1 and 2 over making a 3. It would be good to get new generations of players on it before beginning a third

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨really makes you think⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  No yeah he got a six pack. Specifically six. It was weird, and kind of hard to tell they were meant to be abs. Even weirder, that was the sole change, he was otherwise visually identical.

  I mentioned he got a full redesign for the fourth movie. For that one, he got huge pecs and a bodybuilder physique.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨really makes you think⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  07 yeah. He got a different design every single movie now that I think about it, whereas Prime only got abs in the third then a total change in the fourth