Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

Eerily reminiscent of the first "pop" in the Japanese real estate markets in the early 90s.

Not good.

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In case you misunderstood my previous post on excess deaths and Russia, the US looks good merely because its bureaucracy is actually well-organized and functional, one institution in the country still standing tall. But most Americans absolutely hate the government bureaucracy, unfortunately.

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I couldn't be happier with the influx of Korean pop culture into the rest of the world. What makes it different from the Japanese exports in the past is that it is almost entirely live-action. That's significant. Japan struggled to break through that barrier; Even J-pop was appreciated mostly for its plastic, 2D, anti-live-action aspects. K-pop is way more three-dimensional and in-your-face in comparison.

For many, many, MANY years the average Korean movie has been vastly more interesting than the average American one, let alone the British/German/French ones. VASTLY so. Even Japanese nationalists had to resign themselves to that fact years ago. Saudi women locked inside a mansion couldn't get enough of Korean TV drama. It has been that way for many, many, MANY years.

But it was largely viewed through the same old glasses in "the West" (again, I loathe this term, but just for the sake of convenience), and people would make up all kinds of bogus East Asian peculiarities and Orientalist "charm" to explain why it was fun, somehow missing its pure superiority to most stuff out there. It was fun because it was superior presentation, superior entertainment, superior artwork, period.

Salute to Koreans for breaking the "live-action barrier" in that impressive fashion. Only East Asians understand how hard it is.

[miscmisc]

Speaking of Asian pop culture, finally I brought myself to watch the official trailer of live-action Cowboy Bebop, and... I can't say anything yet before I actually watch the actual episodes. I have both good and bad feelings is all I can say.




This pre-teaser thingy was done very creatively, though.

[miscmisc]

I'm someone who moved from Japan to the US, and then to Europe (and back to the US and Japan now). The level of convenience, reliability and general neatness dropped each time.

The level of general flexibility went up in the US, which I absolutely loved, but then it dropped in Europe. Not as low as in Japan, but that's not saying much.

What I'm trying to say is, everything is so goddamn inconvenient and erratic in Europe, and I'm talking about Western Europe, like Belgium, France and even _Germany_. Marvelous social infrastructure, great people, sure, but no one comes on time, no one fixes broken stuff, and everything takes ages compared to Japan and the US. I really had to revise my definition of "customer service" when I moved to Belgium. Then I realized how badly Europe needed the EU in order to protect its businesses from foreign (American and Asian mostly) companies who actually do their goddamn business on time and have some semblance of care for customers.

Texans are more punctual than Germans, I'm telling you. I've never had good experience at a German hotel, ever.

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Hahahaha. This clown is the soon-to-be mayor of NYC.

See? The key to electoral success is to pretend to be a very normie candidate, and then go try to do your own rad thing after winning the election.

Gradually conditioning people with constant messages is important, so I'm not saying that everyone must be a cynical, boring candidate. Loud ideologues are absolutely necessary in politics.

But when something electorally big is at stake, you simply don't ride with "Defund the Police" and White Fragility at the speed of 140km/h in your campaign.

The problem with Democrats is that so many of them do the opposite: pretending to be a progressive candidate, and then do nothing progressive whatsoever after (barely) winning the election.

[K1power]

Nov 2, 2021 13:44:36 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Nov 2, 2021 13:34:52 GMT 1 Fox said:

I'm speculating but I think those type of signs are motivated by anti-mandate sentiments more than they are by anti-vax sentiments. 

You think so because you are a good person. Unfortunately a clear majority of these signs in America are put up by simple anti-vaxxers, or to be more precise, politically anti-vaccine crowd.

To chime in on this, I do think anti-mandate sentiments are more prevalent in certain (minority) communities. Giving a bit of background on my own bubble; Most of my friends share an immigration background and a large group of us grew up in the same bad, low-income neighbourhood (for Dutch standards). Most people from that group share a general distrust in government and see part of the rules and regulations, including the vaccine as an extension of that.

But while they may be anti COVID vaccines, they still get their kids vaccinated for measles, mumps etc. I guess sort of a selective anti-vaxxer subculture. And there are a bunch of those over here: statistics say most of the unvaccinated are from bad/low-income/low-education areas. While it's still wrong and fucking stupid, I guess I can at least somewhat sympathize with anti-government sentiments from underprivileged minorities.

That's not to say some of my friends don't come with their own set of religion and culture induced bigotries, but that's a different conversation altogether.

[K1power]

Nov 4, 2021 13:29:41 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

I couldn't be happier with the influx of Korean pop culture into the rest of the world. What makes it different from the Japanese exports in the past is that it is almost entirely live-action. That's significant. Japan struggled to break through that barrier; Even J-pop was appreciated mostly for its plastic, 2D, anti-live-action aspects. K-pop is way more three-dimensional and in-your-face in comparison.

For many, many, MANY years the average Korean movie has been vastly more interesting than the average American one, let alone the British/German/French ones. VASTLY so. Even Japanese nationalists had to resign themselves to that fact years ago. Saudi women locked inside a mansion couldn't get enough of Korean TV drama. It has been that way for many, many, MANY years.

But it was largely viewed through the same old glasses in "the West" (again, I loathe this term, but just for the sake of convenience), and people would make up all kinds of bogus East Asian peculiarities and Orientalist "charm" to explain why it was fun, somehow missing its pure superiority to most stuff out there. It was fun because it was superior presentation, superior entertainment, superior artwork, period.

Salute to Koreans for breaking the "live-action barrier" in that impressive fashion. Only East Asians understand how hard it is.

The Koreans have definitely gained a lot of ground these past few years. While my first foray into Korean Live Action content was probably Oldboy and its 'Vengeance Trilogy' over a decade ago, I'd say Korea's first mainstream cultural victory over here (aside from TaeKwonDo) was Gangnam Style of all things. After that K-Pop has been gaining some attention, but I'd say it's still at niche levels of popularity. When it comes to video/live action content it took a good bit longer for Korean content to get noticed by the average consumer over here. I've heard from a handful of people they saw and liked Parasite and of course that's thanks to it winning at the Oscars which, in turn made it more readily available on streaming services.

Of course now with Squid Game taking over Netflix the floodgates are open and deservedly so.

[miscmisc]

Nov 4, 2021 21:47:44 GMT 1 K1power said:

Nov 4, 2021 13:29:41 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

I couldn't be happier with the influx of Korean pop culture into the rest of the world. What makes it different from the Japanese exports in the past is that it is almost entirely live-action. That's significant. Japan struggled to break through that barrier; Even J-pop was appreciated mostly for its plastic, 2D, anti-live-action aspects. K-pop is way more three-dimensional and in-your-face in comparison.

For many, many, MANY years the average Korean movie has been vastly more interesting than the average American one, let alone the British/German/French ones. VASTLY so. Even Japanese nationalists had to resign themselves to that fact years ago. Saudi women locked inside a mansion couldn't get enough of Korean TV drama. It has been that way for many, many, MANY years.

But it was largely viewed through the same old glasses in "the West" (again, I loathe this term, but just for the sake of convenience), and people would make up all kinds of bogus East Asian peculiarities and Orientalist "charm" to explain why it was fun, somehow missing its pure superiority to most stuff out there. It was fun because it was superior presentation, superior entertainment, superior artwork, period.

Salute to Koreans for breaking the "live-action barrier" in that impressive fashion. Only East Asians understand how hard it is.

The Koreans have definitely gained a lot of ground these past few years. While my first foray into Korean Live Action content was probably Oldboy and its 'Vengeance Trilogy' over a decade ago, I'd say Korea's first mainstream cultural victory over here (aside from TaeKwonDo) was Gangnam Style of all things. After that K-Pop has been gaining some attention, but I'd say it's still at niche levels of popularity. When it comes to video/live action content it took a good bit longer for Korean content to get noticed by the average consumer over here. I've heard from a handful of people they saw and liked Parasite and of course that's thanks to it winning at the Oscars which, in turn made it more readily available on streaming services.

Of course now with Squid Game taking over Netflix the floodgates are open and deservedly so.

Gangnam style, yeah. I almost forgot about that one.

Back then the nationalist types in Japan were laughing at the Koreans as they were saying, "So that's their finest cultural export now, that stereotypically East Asian circus monkey shit, embarrassing even for us, while our first modern pop-cultural export was Mizoguchi and Kurosawa! How impressive, lol." We've come a long way since then.

Well, not that long actually because certain things haven't quite changed, but you know what I mean.

[miscmisc]

If I sound increasingly grumpy and even conservative these days, well, I'm just deeply frustrated with the people who found leftism online and use it for the personal rehabilitation from whatever problems they had. I've dumbed it down just now, but I've seen their shouting slogans without finesse damage the work done by the actual activists and organizers on the ground level.

I did appreciate their joining the broad camp, because the more people the better obviously, but I just couldn't shake this feeling that it was merely a fad for most of them. I suspected that they will just move on when they realize that what satisfies them emotionally, such as shouting slogans that do turn off a lot of people without painstaking ground work, cannot win much in actual politics, and that there's actually little catharsis in politics in general.

[miscmisc]

Sure, most of the anti-woke stuff is right-wingers absolutely scare-mongering to score points. They have been super good at that kind of stuff since the 80s.

But it is true that quite a few parents are afraid of or even spooked by the "woke" directions that many schools have taken. Most people who are very active online don't know, because they are not parents.

Well, neither am I, but broadly "woke" sentiments are tangibly ruining education to a noticeable degree in a lot of places in the name of a very immature idea of equality.

This stuff is not just an illusion. It's there. Roughly speaking, the general trend is going in the direction where SAT, GRE and even GPAs are abolished. That will ruin the US education. Americans will become dumber. I'm broadly in favor of "woke" but if the actual political manifestation of that ethos is the abolishment of SAT and GRE, I'll have to get off that particular train.

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There is no such thing as a society without some kinds of public coercion. That would be an oxymoronic idea.

So if you think some public measure is bad, give me something more than the abstract all-purpose "Because that violates personal freedom." Tell me how concretely damaging it would be to individuals and also the society at large in aggregate.

If you can't, just shut up, or at least be consistent and become a full-fledged hardcore conservative libertarian.

Too many people just mouth off and end up saying zero meaningful things. So lazy.

[miscmisc]

I was binge-watching The Walking Dead since my girlfriend accidentally played the first episode of Season 1, and it cracked me up that they did wear masks when there was an outbreak of an infectious disease at the prison! This wasn't my first viewing, but I didn't remember that.

We didn't watch it through to the latest season, though. A long-run show like that inevitably gets *Dragonballized at some point as it goes on and on. The same formula, the same development, and in this one's case, it inevitably becomes a typical (violent) medieval European (or Japanese) story with a different setting. I know it's a very good European medieval story in the later seasons, as it is in the comic books, but I stopped it at Season 5 as I did last time.

*I guess a typical Japanese person would call it Fist-of-the-North-Star-ization rather than Dragonballization in the case of The Walking Dead. Not just because both are post-apocalyptic stories but also because they share the identical formula. But guess what, that's almost inevitable, and no fault of the creators. Believe me, no one ever even vaguely pictures the entire story arc of a long, long saga when they aren't even sure that the editor/publisher would even let them finish Chapter 1 as they started writing it. You really gotta make stuff up as you go and as your creation becomes popular, and in that process plot options are more limited than you think.

[miscmisc]

Basically my definition of "simpleton" is the kind of people who watch The Walking Dead and conclude that what one should do if the society is to break down soon is to stockpile weapons and ammo and whatnot.

Points really fly right over the heads of people like that. The world must be incredibly simple and wonderful to them.

[miscmisc]

Is Netflix's Black Summer good? Kinda feel like doing another zombie-thon.