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You forgot jaywalking.

I saw the movie. Judged in isolation from the social media furor, which I've been ignoring, it's not a divisive movie unless you're primed to see it that way.

It's just not a very good movie. It's not "Batman and Robin" bad -- five minutes into that one and I wondered if the editors had actually ever *seen* a movie. It's more like "Tommorowland", in which no money or talent was spared, and yet the result came out... OK.

The thing about "Wonder Woman" is that was a passion project for everyone involved -- like Lord of the Rings. Those movies were done with love and care. Nobody was clamoring to make a "Captain Marvel" movie, it doesn't exist for its own sake. It exists to perform a function, to lubricate the great pivot of the massive, 22 film Marvel Cinematic Universe from phase III to phase IV.

This is a film which is so busy doing what it has to do, that it doesn't have time to get its storytelling in order. Key plot elements are delivered in randomly scattered flashbacks (always a bad sign), characters engaged in barely disguised exposition, and confusing battles take place in which the rules aren't clear and the (overpowered) hero isn't genuinely threatened.

The thing is, Wonder Woman hit feminist story beats too. You just didn't notice it because the script was better. The movie *sold* them to you. That made it a great movie. Captain Marvel is merely an OK movie trying to convince you it's a great one.

So, basically we should be happy because if it were anyone else, the list of crimes wouldn't be arson and murder, it'd be arson, murder, and jaywalking? Awesome rational.

It is the investors BEHIND the companies that are calling the shots ...

You know, if you track it all the way through, the Wizard of Oz has a surprise ending.

The Man Behind the Curtain
Big Shadow, Little Creature

Greedy people do shitty things behind closed doors. News at 11.

It is the investors BEHIND the companies that are calling the shots ...

You know, if you track it all the way through, the Wizard of Oz has a surprise ending.

The Man Behind the Curtain
Big Shadow, Little Creature

Greedy people do shitty things behind closed doors. News at 11.

We're talking video rendering, which is almost entirely unrelated to the decoding process that's so fast (and already supported by custom silicon like inside that Roku player you mentioned).

As an AC said:

Once an editor is finished editing a film, they have to render it. This process [stitches] all the edits and effects together into one video file.

Now, note that those edits include computing special effects (like chroma key), compositing layers on top of other layers, as well as arranging different clips into one big video, then the whole result must be encoded. Typically, the video codecs are asymmetric, doing a lot more processing during the encoding step so the decoding can be faster and easier (and therefore supporting higher framerates with cheaper decoding hardware).

4K video, in 24-bit color and uncompressed (which is really necessary to do the full compositing operation) is about 25 megabytes per frame. At 60 FPS, that's 1.5 gigabytes per second, or 12 Gbps, to use typical bandwidth units. In comparison, that will just about fully saturate a PCI-e x16 slot and some of the lower DDR4 specs. That's okay, because you won't be storing that data in memory for very long anyway... 64 GB of RAM will only store 42 seconds of uncompressed video. During the encoding process, you'll want to have that old video accessible, because it's useful for making more efficient compression of future frames.

That's a lot of data, all to get a seamless composition, which is really rather important for having modern CGI effects blend invisibly into the recorded footage. Without the full rendering process, the effect layers may get different handling, so they'll appear noticeably different in the final render. In the effort to produce uncompromising results for you, the viewer, studios just take longer for rendering, spending more money on salaries so you get a better result... or they just cut corners and render at a lower resolution.

Having custom devices (and custom silicon) would mean that Adobe (or another vendor) would be able to take advantage of things like dedicated GDDR5X memory for high-bandwidth (256Gbps per chip, and lots of chips to increase capacity) storage, ARM processors for processing (though not necessarily rendering (in the non-video usually-3D sense)) special effects, and ASICs for the compositing and encoding operations, only relying on the host computer for storing the final product. In theory, a shoebox-sized peripheral could replace a data center render farm, enabling near-real-time rendering of edited film. That means directors and production crews can see their results more quickly, allowing them more time to reshoot or otherwise make a better product.

It's certainly a commercial gamble for Adobe... but like I said, they're one of very few companies with a market position that makes custom hardware sensible.

This question seems to hinge on the (almost certainly false) notion that design, and the perception of design, evolves in some trajectory that's independent of its context.

Things that look old do so in no small part because we can compare them with things that are new. Things that look cutting edge do so in part by rejecting design elements that look familiar.

Even if we assumed a scary good, probably better than human level, bot put to the task of inferring what "2020 thinks 2040 will look like" its output would, immediately, be part of 2020-era design, albeit probably a visually distinct flavor; and what 2040 actually look like would include reactions to, away from, against, with nostalgia for, etc. that "2040" design from 20 years ago.

When humans try this we get zeerust. It's not clear why a bot would do better; or that even an arbitrarily talented bot could beat the fact that the future it predicts will automatically become part of the past that the actual future evolves from(recursion is fun and unproblematic, right?).

There's also the problem, outside of some purely decorative objects or ones that aggressively try to defy the constraints of material culture(either trying to look more futuristic than the tech really is, like sci-fi TV props; or are deliberately throwbacks, like SCA longbows and stuff), that things look the way they do in no small part because of the constraints of technology that no amount of industrial designer resistance can get around.

Ahhh yes, pretend its because of "wamens" and not the fact that its gotten more preachy than a Baptist church on a Sunday...uh huh.

The word you are looking for is NOT misogynist, its Anvilicious which is what the SJW plague has sadly done to much Sci/Fi, See Star Wars and Star Trek for just 2 examples. People want to be entertained, not preached to with all the subtlety of getting hit upside the head with a brick and as we have seen with everything from CBS not being able to get a plug nickel for the rights to ST:D overseas (boy is those initials apropos) to the piles of Last Jedi Blu-ray stinking up the cheap bins in the Wally World people are sick and tired of it and are just walking away.

The majority of the fans didn't give a crap if the Doctor switched genders, hell he's switched personalities every single time he regenerated (and if anything what annoyed me and a lot of others is that they ignored they were dealing with an ALIEN that had spent 8000+ years in one type of body so there should have been more dispassionate examination of the new form, things like lack of reach being a downside while agility being a positive, that sort of thing) but instead it just got more and more preachy and "look at how woke we are!" like the 12th Doctor in the Xmas special constantly saying to the first "You can't say that"...dude you are a fucking ALIEN TIME TRAVELER who has saved the earth countless times, quit prostrating yourself like a fucking cuck! A simple "I was a bit of an arrogant ass when I was a kid" since the first Doctor in the canon is literally an infant compared to the extreme age of the 12th would have sufficed, but...nope, gotta drop them anvils...ugh.

But as others noted luckily we have decades of Doctor Who were they cared about good stories and fun instead of bating you upside the head with their politics so like Star Trek and Star Wars let it die, good riddance.

I mean all the "creative industries" (which is an oxymoron anyway, but whatever) only keep recycling the same old shit again and again. They even made up a bullshit concept for it, called "intellectual property", and act like that's actually a real thing. (Slashdot of the late 90s and early 2000s, when people still had a clue, before the propaganda began, would have laughed them out of the universe for it.)

Nearly all we get is Nazi Übersoldat... err, I mean "superhero" movies, mumble (c)rap, for-profit-manipulative open-world mmorpg mass-murder simulators, and other things built entirely from worn-out tropes.

And research, curiosity and education generally are treated stepmotherly.
Nobody dares anything anymore. Everyone is obsessed with "safety" and "security" over curiosity and openness. Pointing fingers at unknowns and shadows, hiding in fear.

When you drag shit down and ruin things for everyone, you wind up hurting the company more than the value your work provides, and people stop wanting you around. You are not a bunny-ears lawyer. The very few in existence are either learning to grow up or get kicked to the curb they always belonged. You'll be a lot happier if you learn too.

Now you've really done it!

This will be more "we filmed 3 endings", I expect. People's narrative choices tend to follow the 80/20 rule, so 3 endings will get you 99% of the audience. The exception to that is love triagles (or love dodecahedrons) where you can get a more even spread. I suspect romances will be the focus if this takes off, not "choose your own adventure".

Hm. Interesting. I'll have to re-watch the episode (the synopsis is consistent with the scenario being absurd, unlikely to be encountered by typical rocket hobbyists) to see how he is saying "8 MN"—if he's estimating it, it can easily be an optimistic estimate by an enthusiastic experimentalist (oops, slipping into my physics lingo; not sure what the engineering version is). If he actually measured (or claimed to have measured) "8 MN", then it tips more into "critical research failure" uncharacteristic of this particular show.

Had to look it up (I'm a physicist, not an engineer).

It's right at that edge where you could argue that they were trying to make it absurd but believable (roughly 10 times the largest thrust used by amateurs, assuming 1-second burn time; I don't remember the episode, but you are calling it "super rocket fuel"), not an example of "writers have no sense of scale", where galaxies are claimed to be millions of light-years across.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

If we were having a conversation and you were saying J-P-E-G, and I was saying "jay"-"peg" then we would get along just fine. After a while we might start using each other's pronunciation just to try it out! Ha, I might even stay saying "jay"-"pee"-"egg" just to mix it up a little! :)

At the end of the day it just doesn't mater. There are bi-lingual people who can talk to each other in entirely different languages, simply because that's what they prefer. A bad example.

I would argue the modern trend of "language mashing" actually started with Joss Whedon's style of writing dialog, starting with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm...

https://blog.oxforddictionarie...

Nobody heard Bush talk and thought "I want to sound like that guy". But "Whedonesque" dialog was quirky and cool.

Try working construction for minimum wage and not knowing where your next job will come from. Then have your blood pressure tested.

Ahh the "staving people in Africa" argument your mother made to get you to eat your vegetables. Great example of the fallacy of relative privation. Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean you should be grateful for a possibly better but still bad situation.

I would posit that humans in fact need someone to be worse off than them as a coping mechanism for their own suffering/misfortune/whatever. No matter what you are going through, the knowledge that someone else has it worse than you allows you to claim some sort of superiority or status over them. A child that is neglected or abused at home becomes a bully at school because he can exert power over his victims. A low wage worker in an unskilled menial job supports cutting safety nets because "I'm busting my ass and can barely get by, why should they get by for free?". It's why poverty porn works, part of why we scapegoat. Humans are hierarchical animals and in a hierarchy the worst place to be is on the bottom and, if you can't identify a group below you, you are on the bottom.

Try working construction for minimum wage and not knowing where your next job will come from. Then have your blood pressure tested.

Ahh the "staving people in Africa" argument your mother made to get you to eat your vegetables. Great example of the fallacy of relative privation. Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean you should be grateful for a possibly better but still bad situation.

Granted Intel may not want to be a chip foundry for hire but mobile chip numbers have easily eclipsed desktop/laptop chip numbers so Intel is missing out on a huge market.

You're not even going to try to normalize for silicon area, or number of transistors delivered?

If neither the silicon area nor the number of transistors matters, and it's only about the raw numbers, how about let's just concede the whole show to those tiny little flutter filters (capacitors) that are ten to a small chip ... and more to a large chip.

This also pisses me off when the total economy of China is compared to the total economy of America, as if America would be right back on top again, if only it had an extra 300 million people engaged in subsistence agriculture.

It also pisses me off when South Korea is mooted for the G8 because—if you include its very large dark economy—its economy belongs on that list. The entire premise of a large, industrialized economy is that it's a good proxy for regulatory clout (of the central banking and monetary institutions, among others).

But sure, my hero is bigger than your hero, once you include his superior load.

It doesn't occur to The Load that, being an unathletic Muggle, it really might not be such a good idea for them to rush headlong onto the battlefield along with the heavily armored and super-powered heroes. Said heroes will usually have to spend at least half the battle keeping The Load alive.

On Slashdot, The Load is a commenter who won't invest three seconds to distinguish a feature from a bug, if the most readily available number seemingly supports his cause without requiring the use of fire or a stone axe.

Or perhaps you believe that Reddit is better than Slashdot, because most of the comments are shorter (for me, that's a bug, but YMMV).

Here's one thing: if the cellphone industry wasn't getting away with murder on their artificial 2–3 year obsolescence cycle, their numbers would only be halfway so impressive.

How did they gain that power where Intel didn't? (Hint: and it's not because Intel never tried, either).

I dunno man, I'm not so mad about there being yet another Star Trek series. The format of the show lends itself well to spinoffs. It was an engaging SETTING which fostered a lot of stories. I'm cool with that. I'd honestly be interested in hearing how the most devious Klingon and the most bloodthirsty Romulan managed to team up and keep their sides politically aligned during the ${ST_COLD_WAR_ANALOGY}. And it was cool to see how things played out after the collapse of the Klingon Empire and the war-hawks tried to flare it up. Some of the movies were good. There's room for the stories to continue.

Star Wars on the other hand... Well, honestly, same damn thing. It's an interesting (if less hard) setting. Bounty hunters and rogue squadrons and the Vong. Good stories. Some of them. But NONE of that was picked up by the corporate masters. All that was taken out back and shot. We got ep4, the retelling. A direct path to killing off all the old actors. And filling the gaps. (Personally, Rogue One was probably the best of Disney's effort). And star wars got the same treatment. A "reboot". Fuck your canon. THAT'S not innovative. They're literally retelling the SAME old ideas. They're trying to cash in on the fact that people know the name "spock". tch.

Although, it IS kinda cosmic justice if Picard got a ridiculously bad animated series. Something like the stiff flash graphics from Archer, but with Tribbles?

It's basically arguing that the technology is undergoing path dependence, which is no big surprise as it happens all the time in lots of areas.

Want an interesting path dependence?

Science, as an industry, is so busy defending themselves from climate science denialism (in the extreme case: even that it could, in principle, be right) that science tends to hold up peer review as an exalted process of cognitive righteousness (which it is, over a time base of 50-year internal feedback cycles).

However, at the same time, peer review is also a political mechanism to enforce path dependence, which systematically biases trivial incrementalism (insignificant career fodder is fine, so long as it knows its tiny, tiny place), over profound and potentially game-changing speculation (the proper onus here should be that any definite, predictive theory which can not be presently disproved is by default considered publishable, but that's not how it works—not if it runs against the grain of the endowed, old-timer consensus worldview). To some degree this is a budgetary bun fight, because without publication, no grants; so the gate-keepers of publication are implicitly also the gate keepers of funding opportunity.

Society pays a steep price for the 50-year bullshit-rejection convergence window of peer review (though it sure beats languishing in 3000-year traditions of metaphysical naval gazing).

To some degree, science kind of likes being marginalized by the climate science deniers, because it distracts from asking legitimate questions about just how broken some of these internal political processes really are (who can patiently pose these questions when you're shouting down accusations 24/7 that you're ten or a hundred times less competent than you actually are?)

———

Did I mention p-hacking? What an ultimate crock. Easily predictable 50-years ago, and now we're just getting to it.

Why the Joy of Cooking is going after Cornell's Brian Wansink — 28 February 2018

Preregistration of study designs: This is a huge safeguard against p-hacking. Preregistration means that scientists publicly commit to experimental design before they start collecting data. This makes it much harder to cherry-pick results.

What an amazing innovation. Someone hand the guy or gal who proposed that idea the Fields Medal.

———

Yes, all those virtuous climate scientists vigorously defending the ultimate truth machine of peer review sat around for decades barely lifting a finger to institute pre-registation of study design.

And these are the people who are going to save the planet from the greenhouse gas godzilla? Good luck with that. (My most cynical internal voice assigns a p_success_STP_G3_1v0 somewhere in the vicinity of Reagan's nakedly preposterous space laser (Strategic Defense Initiative).

"But boss, the stakes! But boss, the stakes!" cries the white-tuxedoed midget from Fantasy Island.

This is naked appeal to the Theory of Narrative Causality. If it must happen, it will happen.

This is what Terry Pratchett calls narrativium: the iron law that a million-to-one long shot happens nine time out of ten (precondition: all the stakes having arrived just in the nick of time at a synchronous planetary-alignment cross-road of dire urgency).

Narrative Causality was also the stock in trade enabling Reagan to float the SDI concept to the receipt of Educated Snickers Only: the stakes were sufficiently sky high to trigger narrativium normalization of million-to-one odds. (Education, by some magic power, is a potent form of narrativium kryptonite.)

we are 'online' 24x7

Pshaw, amateurs. Try 4x24x7, and that's on the devices I can see right now, NM the server farm in the background. And let's not talk about the open tabs in the background (or the saved bookmarks -- oh, the HUMANITY! My eyes! The goggles do nothing!)

"I Can't Look!" Gesture

During the infamous transporter room scene of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Chief Rand mutters a horrified "Oh, no, they're forming!" and turns away when the two doomed crew members start to materialize on Enterprise's transporter pad. Everyone else in the room is frozen in stunned horror at what they just witnessed.

Starfleet Transporter Tech: Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long ... Fortunately.

Voice of God internal monologue

(Just for the record, Don LaFontaine always left me writhing in my seat.)

If I were into this kind of thing, I might upload a certain iconic scene from Clockwork Orange with Beethoven's symphony replaced by a gravely Don LaFontaine voice-over narration: in a world ruled by mediocrity, one man dares ...

No, wait, I'm conflating Amadeus with Dr Ludovico Faustus.

alt.fido.die.die.die

Err, sure you aren't thinking of 5ghz wifi there, champ?

Yes, I'm sure. Because while 5G will use some low frequency bands, 70MHz of bandwidth across 600-700 MHz is not going to be faster than LTE in the existing 700MHz blocks without a channel width increase, which does not increase overall network speed/capacity, just speed and capacity available to individual clients at the cost of increased congestion.

The same thing goes for the mid-bands.

High speed 5G requires millimeter wavelengths, which are even more easily absorbed than 5 GHz WiFi signals.

If the millimeter wavelength speeds of 5G are not rolled out widely, what is the motivation for the consumer to buy an all new phone to access it? Less network congestion (initially)? Has 4G LTE data congestion really been a consumer issue except in serving as an excuse for data limits -- as if those will change with 5G service?

In a world (meaning the US)

I'm pretty sure the world consists of other places too

Woosh. Also, I'm pretty sure that I don't live in those places, so I'm pretty sure I can't make informed statements concerning the state of new telecommunications infrastructure rollout, such as fiber to the home, there. Yet the US is a part of the world, I can make informed statements about that.

So, you get to sit in judgment of the Chinamen. Your hood is over there, Grand Wizard. "But I'm not racist!" And yet, you're saying the same things that they do. Not so different.

I found this completely decentralized social media system recently. As far as I can tell, everyone is on it (although you can't always easily search for them), and no one single entity controls it. It's called RealLife (TM).

The Nightmare Fuel (in Spirited Away) is pretty weird too.

Maybe Hayao Miyazaki was on drugs at the time. Who knows? Either way, pretty crazy shit and I'm saying that as a fan. Beautiful movie.

Somehow, i think this applies: Arson, Murder, and http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...

Share and Enjoy!
IMarv

Amusingly enough, Star Wars is one of the examples given on the Wikipedia and TV Tropes pages for Space Opera. I do agree that it is science fantasy, again according to the definitions on Wikipedia and TV tropes, but I don't think they are mutually exclusive categorizations but rather space opera defines the type of story, and science fantasy describe the world (or universe) the story is set in.

Amusingly enough, Star Wars is one of the examples given on the Wikipedia and TV Tropes pages for Space Opera. I do agree that it is science fantasy, again according to the definitions on Wikipedia and TV tropes, but I don't think they are mutually exclusive categorizations but rather space opera defines the type of story, and science fantasy describe the world (or universe) the story is set in.

The gun katas were fucking retarded though.

As with many movies that stray into the "guilty pleasure" category, you have to excuse things like that under the umbrella of the Rule of Cool

It's like the Transporter movies, or the Fast and the Furious (especially the *later* films in the franchise), or pretty much any scene from Pacific Rim.

In the end you have to ask two questions: Is it fucking retarded? Yes. Is it least equally fucking awesome? Yes. So it gets a pass.

Do you know about penisland?

We Come in Peace -- Shoot to Kill

My favourite book of all time: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, a Victorian time travel mystery and farce. I think it would work well as an anime, with Ned's internal imaginings being played out by chibi characters, and shojo sparkles when people have time-lag (which, among other things, makes people overly sentimental.)

My second favourite by Willis is Passage, which would be good as a TV series/mini-series. Our heroine is researching induced near-death experiences. (Being near death is not required.)

Although I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about it as I was as a teenager, Anne MacCaffery's Pern series has all the requirements of a high profile big budget pay TV SF/fantasy megaseries. In particular, lots of dragons. There is some flexibility on how much sex and violence is in there, down to kid-friendly at the low end, although they wouldn't stretch to GoT levels at the high end.

My favourite book of all time: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, a Victorian time travel mystery and farce. I think it would work well as an anime, with Ned's internal imaginings being played out by chibi characters, and shojo sparkles when people have time-lag (which, among other things, makes people overly sentimental.)

My second favourite by Willis is Passage, which would be good as a TV series/mini-series. Our heroine is researching induced near-death experiences. (Being near death is not required.)

Although I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about it as I was as a teenager, Anne MacCaffery's Pern series has all the requirements of a high profile big budget pay TV SF/fantasy megaseries. In particular, lots of dragons. There is some flexibility on how much sex and violence is in there, down to kid-friendly at the low end, although they wouldn't stretch to GoT levels at the high end.

You have to watch the even numbered Sandler movies (like Punch-drunk Love)! The odd ones are mostly junk, for some reason.

This is a big deal, in the longer term, but not because it stirs up a hornet's nest of kompromat as usual.

When every rumour is true, no rumour is true.

Slowly, but surely, this will ultimately devalue prurience.

Still, it will be pretty embarrassing to be caught doing your homework, not with Natalie Portman 2.0 (hey, dude, bump my phone), but the sweet young thing who sits beside you in English class baring her soul implausibly, while perfecting her special calligraphy.

The other directions this could go is society bans possession of prurient imagery of actual human beings altogether.

Facebook already has a pretty good algorithm for sniffing out actual human likeness.

Besides, you can just upload all the IRL chicks that hit your buttons, have an advanced ML algorithm map out your dark side, then synthesize your ultimate dark fantasy, which/who pushes all your buttons simultaneously.

Recently, I had to brush up on all this Jungian crap because Jordan Peterson. It's both interesting and creepy.

How to Contact, Get to Know, and Integrate Your Dark Side

If you're paying close attention, you can train yourself to notice your shadow when you witness strong negative emotional responses to others.

As Jung is often quoted saying:

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

But we rarely have time to work with those emotions on the spot.

Never fear, soon there will be a handy app for our budding Andy Capp.

Nah, the AmiMojo Team is very much like the other A-Team, they may fire a lot (of posts), but pretty much all of them don't hit anything important.

Here's the thing about plotting a story: time matters.

That's the reason for the whole ticking time bomb device. Time pressure creates the possibility of failure.

You're not wrong. That doesn't make the usage much better, though.

Other than "unclassified" is part of the point. Information has to undergo the classification process (is classified) before it can be known that it's unclassified information, ironically. While the article clearly states that "unclassified" is not strictly speaking a classification level, information still has to be classified as "unclassified" in order to be shared.

The other part of the point is that once information is "classified", it really, really, really becomes important what its classification level is. Without that, you can't know who can access it. So "classified" on it's own is practically a useless term outside of this one scenario here of somebody talking to the press.

Still, it exists as a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...

British currency went decimal in 1971 (100 pence to the pound.) Before that, there were 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound.

And there were other quirky amounts:

2 farthings = 1 ha'penny
2 ha'pennies = 1 penny
3 pennies = 1 thrupenny bit (or thrupence)
2 thrupences = 1 sixpence
2 sixpences = 1 shilling (or bob)
2 bob = 1 florin
1 florin + 1 sixpence = half a crown
4 half crowns = 1 ten-bob note
2 ten-bob notes = 1 pound (or 240 pennies)
1 pound + 1 shilling = 1 guinea

Star Wars was about selling "franchise crap" from day one. I'm old enough to have seen the first Star Wars movies in a theater in 1977. Star Wars was all about moving merchandise right out of the gate.

It amazes me that this even needs to be stated. It's accepted cannon in the film industry that Star Wars (with a boost from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) changed the financing landscape in Hollywood for all time.

The entire commentary track of Scorsese's After Hours is pretty much devoted to how he was forced to make this oddball film on the cheap, or quit making films altogether. None of his larger proposals had viable merchandise. Scorsese's Taxi Driver came out just a year before Star Wars and didn't move a lot of disaffected perpetrator Yellow Cab action figures (not for all of its eternal social relevance).

Pleasing a critical audience is a hard way to make a living. What you're after is sustained consumption, without taking any large risks exploring new territory.

It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's DOPAMINE!

* A-list adoration (e.g. Silence of the Lambs)
* merchandise / (mostly) ghastly sequel movie loop
* shippers
* man-panties escape fantasy (Marvel universe)
* actual panties release fantasy

Shipping Tropes

These tropes are about people getting involved in characters' romantic relationships. Since real-life people are infinitely more into pairing fictional people than fictional people are, most of these are Audience Reactions.

Film is an odd genre, because a film works so hard to introduce new and unusual characters, convince the audience to identify with those characters, bang a few pots, then resolve. The formula doesn't really leave time for Friends to explore the entire viable space of choose(6,3)-1 Audience Reaction love triangles (three men in one triangle would be considered unmanly, even today).

Way down the list of viable audience attractors are the motivated cineastes with a chiselled six-pack risk appetite (such a person surely knows that an action sequel predominantly pumping a giant bust line on the promotional poster would require two thumbs up from God himself to even begin to consider; plus we've all seen Phantom and Crystal Skull and Hobbit to reinforce that breast size is but an early, shallow layer in the fully cynical deep-discretion network).

Personally I never attend a movie with supernatural themes without reading the spoilers first, because if you're not extra careful, halfway through the movie you find yourself gagging on Uri Geller's contorted cock (the one thing he could actually bend like Beckham as a younger man).

See? That just took a hard turn to a bad image, because you didn't check the spoilers first.

puncture the fourth wall

Reference for anyone who doesn't know what this is.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...
https://vndb.org/g580
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...

puncture the fourth wall

Reference for anyone who doesn't know what this is.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...
https://vndb.org/g580
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...