Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

I just wanted to make something crystal clear again; It's mostly vaccine hesitancy that caused the latest round. That's the rational way to see it given all the data unless you are a hopeless contrarian who disproportionately value anomalistic instances for no objectively good reason at all and all of a sudden demand perfection from theories and measures.

Don't fucking play with public health issues. It's not a perfect science at all, but don't you ever fucking underestimate or disrespect the Occam's razor that we rely on in science when things aren't very clear.

Delta and its relatives/offsprings are a different beast. Their R0 is somewhere around 7. That's super efficient. They walk around among us like they own our place. To use The Walking Dead terminology, you think you are safe in this house, it might seem peaceful now, but the walkers are out there, and they will find you. So you need protection.

Yes, some people simply won't make it no matter what, but we've already lost so many people who could've been saved, easily.

[miscmisc]

I was for a long time one of the people who refused to call whatever MAGA represent "fascism," and also found the whole debate absolutely stupid to begin with.

I mean, they simply lack some key factors that made Mussolini's movement "fascism," and some of the characteristics even go against the original big time. And no, they are very different from the old Redshirts in the South too.

And the whole thing is indeed a remarkably stupid debate, a waste of time.

But you know what, that's just not how most people understand the term. They don't care about those historical details, academic nuances.

I have a Republican friend who started receiving death threats after crossing the MAGA crowd. And he's still receiving a few every week. And most of them are very vulgar threats, more violent than the usual "You will go down, and I will enjoy that!" stuff.

So, yeah, go ahead and call them fash. Because they are according to the popularized meaning of the term. I won't do that, but I wouldn't mind you doing it.

[miscmisc]

Gosh, you look at these losers and realize what the poorly-defined concept of "West" and "Western" has done to us. These "white" people seriously think they are part of it.

[miscmisc]

BTW, I've seen Season 1 of Black Summer, and I was... not impressed. It's a good show. Very artistic too. But it's one of those things from which you can just move on as soon as you get the point, the bleakness of all.

I have one large beef personally; A foreigner who doesn't speak the language does not act that way, especially if said language is English. That's something native-born Americans tend not to understand. The show went for Real, but that woman was a huge Fake.

[K1power]

Nov 5, 2021 3:49:02 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

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.

I've seen a bunch of people post things about this on social media that they think is cleverly tongue in cheek when it's actually obnoxiously obvious and doesn't really contain anything smart. It's just people bitching and trying to be smart about it.

[K1power]

Nov 9, 2021 12:04:08 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

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.

I'd say pretty much any show that goes beyond 5-6 seasons is bound to become repetitive. Especially network shows that go 20+ episodes a season. They quickly start threading that 'problem-of-the-week' territory where only a few minutes actually deal with the season's main storyline. And there are very few shows that handle that well. One of the rare ones that does it well IMO is The Blacklist. It's very formulaic, but very well-executed. They made problem-of-the-week their strength and all of it ties in to the overall storyline. They've sort of written themselves in a corner with the main secret getting overly complex, but aside from that it's very solid. James Spader as a highly intelligent crime boss is fantastic.

As far as Dragonballization goes I don't think any franchise handles endless escalation as well as, well, DragonBall. The franchises more recent content is under a lot more scrutiny than Toriyama's original run, which to a degree happens with any franchise revival, but despite having some gripes with it I still thoroughly enjoy all of it.

[K1power]

Nov 11, 2021 3:42:58 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

BTW, I've seen Season 1 of Black Summer, and I was... not impressed. It's a good show. Very artistic too. But it's one of those things from which you can just move on as soon as you get the point, the bleakness of all.

I have one large beef personally; A foreigner who doesn't speak the language does not act that way, especially if said language is English. That's something native-born Americans tend not to understand. The show went for Real, but that woman was a huge Fake.

I always considered myself not a big fan of zombies, but thinking back I've actually consumed quite a bit of zombie related material which I liked for the most part. From the early Resident Evil games to Dawn of the Dead to most recently Army of the Dead (both happen to be Zack Snyder films).

As far as foreign representation goes, exceptions aside I think creators all around the world do a pretty bad job. From unconvincing language; 'German' in most Hollywood productions, the lazy foreigners-speaking-English-with-an-accent to each other in their own country, to bad characterisation; I thought Squid Game was great, but the Korean version of 'obnoxious wealthy Westerners' was very cliché. A little bit of research goes a long way.

[miscmisc]

Nov 11, 2021 21:53:44 GMT 1 K1power said:

Nov 11, 2021 3:42:58 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

BTW, I've seen Season 1 of Black Summer, and I was... not impressed. It's a good show. Very artistic too. But it's one of those things from which you can just move on as soon as you get the point, the bleakness of all.

I have one large beef personally; A foreigner who doesn't speak the language does not act that way, especially if said language is English. That's something native-born Americans tend not to understand. The show went for Real, but that woman was a huge Fake.

I always considered myself not a big fan of zombies, but thinking back I've actually consumed quite a bit of zombie related material which I liked for the most part. From the early Resident Evil games to Dawn of the Dead to most recently Army of the Dead (both happen to be Zack Snyder films).

As far as foreign representation goes, exceptions aside I think creators all around the world do a pretty bad job. From unconvincing language; 'German' in most Hollywood productions, the lazy foreigners-speaking-English-with-an-accent to each other in their own country, to bad characterisation; I thought Squid Game was great, but the Korean version of 'obnoxious wealthy Westerners' was very cliché. A little bit of research goes a long way.

Romero's original Dawn of the Dead is one of my top 10 films of all time. That film actually made a large part of me, and you see the problem right there, lol. So, even though I didn't pay much attention to the zombie fad in the industry, I am a bit of a zombie-head, or a Romero-head maybe.

Anyway, there used to be a lot of lazy ethnic/racial stereotypes that they relied on, and obviously that didn't help either in terms of actual realism. Like, you simply spoke English with the German accent if you were an evil white man, period. And if you were not supposed to be German at all, well, still it was all the same; You were supposed to speak with the German-ish-sounding flow and accentuations. There was almost no other option. Everyone, be it "Chinese" or "Indian" or "Mexicans" or "Asians" or "Arabs," was assigned a specific role in that parochial make-believe world.

They are largely gone now mostly thanks to the rise of the hated "wokeness," but yeah, it can cut both ways, and many are still just too lazy to get it right. Or they don't care. It's sometimes okay not to care, though. Just sometimes.

This one particularly annoyed me because the show makes a big deal out of its being Real while breaking that promise almost right off the bat. Spoiler Alert... actually it's not a spoiler at all. There's this Korean female character, and she can't speak English. And she keeps speaking Korean throughout the show - she spoke English only on a few occasions - while the other people seemingly sorta kinda get what she means as if they were psychics. OK, I can live with that psychic part. You do get some of what they mean when they are trying to tell you something. I get that.

However, no modern Korean person on earth would ever be like that in reality, is the problem. You try to speak as much English as possible unless you know absolutely zero about the language, which obviously cannot be the case in the 21st century. Yes, the situation is tense, zombie-tense, apocalypse-tense, but in reality the more nervous you are, the harder you try to speak the language, or desperately throw at the wall every word that you know. That's how I acted when I was in trouble in Bolivia too.

But that Korean girl even kept saying 네 instead of Yes/That's right/etc. How am I supposed to believe the authenticity of that world?

[miscmisc]

But the people who have been spoiled by the fact that their first language happens to be the linga franca of this particular time just don't seem to understand that - that survival instinct that kicks in for those of us whose native tongue is unfortunately an internationally minor one, which Korean certainly is. Koreans, just like the Japanese, absolutely suck at English in general, but that's not the point. In all likelihood a Dutchman speaks English fluently while he discusses with you what to do with the zombies ahead, but that's NOT only because he can. He would try even if he couldn't.

[K1power]

Finally got to see Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and it has to be one of Marvel's best to date. It doesn't just work as a comic book movie, but as a film, period. Such a delightful amalgamation of Asian mythology. Great DragonBall-esque, Wuxia inspired fight scenes. And no whitewashing! I hope it works for Asian/Chinese communities as well as Black Panther did for the black community.

[miscmisc]

I've heard some good things about the movie. The snippets that I saw looked pretty cool.

It's sociologically interesting too, because I very much doubt that it will do for Asian Americans what Black Panther did for African Americans. In fact I'm 120% sure it won't no matter what the media might tell you. It's too messy a topic for a mere rant to cover, but let's put it this way: Even Glenn from The Walking Dead will have done more for Asian Americans than Shang-Chi ever will, and that's not Shang-Chi's or his creators' fault at all.

The psychology of native-born Asian-American men is a topic that I have been obsessed with since I moved to the US. And that's not because I could easily relate to them as a fellow ethnic East Asian, but because I couldn't. It was largely alien to me, and it took a while for me to understand the complexity behind it. It's so depressing, intriguing and enlightening at the same time.

And even in this age of woke, few even try to understand it.

[miscmisc]

The rates of young people who can't get laid seem staggering these days, and now it seems that women's has overtaken men's.

It's a global (i.e. the developed world) phenomenon, but seems particularly bad in some countries, like the US.

You can make socio-economic arguments based on the shifting life style/path and demographics, but it really is a significant increase. Perhaps too significant for those arguments alone to explain away.

It might be a case of every argument actually being a factor, even including the dubious theory that young people are less athletic (which seems true in terms of the median/average person), and therefore less physically attractive (which is rather dubious, but generally speaking girls do tend to be more overweight today than before). Whatever the causes are, if you take a look at the charts, it's really, really striking.

[miscmisc]

You know, Russiagate is collapsing.

I'm pretty sure they are trying to shift responsibility by singling out and dunking on the most egregious case that is the Steele dossier as a sacrificial lamb, but doubt that it will work. Anyone who has hopped on that stupid wagon will have a lot of explaining to do.

And as always, I will demand apologies from a lot of people.

[miscmisc]

Sure, they are stupid fucking dumbasses, but are vaxxed now. That's what we wanted, and we succeeded. We should move on instead of dunking on the dumbasses and hurting their fee-fees for no good reason. Let's leave the dumbasses alone.

[miscmisc]

As you can guess, I've been randomly watching zombie/apocalypse shows/flicks lately, and the CDC is absolutely ubiquitous in those shows. I mean, it fails most of the times, and therefore the continued chaos, therefore the entertainment, but it is depicted as this highly advanced, highly capable super-tech agency.

Its uniquitousness actually reduces enjoyment as you watch the shows because, you know, now we all know how capable the CDC is in reality.

I mean, you see Rick Grimes and his friends in The Walking Dead go through so much trouble as they try to visit the CDC headquarter "for the cure," and you just KNOW that they are wasting an enormous amount of energy and sweat and blood for absolutely nothing.