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wjrii

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Is there an artist so horrible that no matter how hard you try that you cannot separate their art from them?

Similar to the recent question about artists where you can successfully separate them from their art. Are there any artists who did something so horrible, so despicable, that it has instantly invalidated all art that they have had any part in?

wjrii,
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if we assume the historical records are true

This is actually a pretty big assumption for some of the more outlandish claims. When you dig in a bit, you find many of them are kind of repetitive tropes and generally come from Senatorial-class writers about emperors whose policies were less friendly to that class.

Not to say they couldn't have happened, and even in those days better to exaggerate than to invent from whole cloth, but it seems like an unusually large number of "bad" emperors had the same kinks as each other or the same traits that the literature had always considered "unmanly."

wjrii,
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Maybe how angsty you were feeling when the internet arrived in your town? I dunno. It feels very appropriate though, that the forgotten gen X would spawn its own even more liminal sub/pseudo group.

wjrii,
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Seems like what a lot of people want is a hybrid of Usenet and Reddit, but what we have is more like a bunch of reddits that are willing to talk to each other. Certainly better for governance and redundancy and as a kind of organic load balancing in a cash-poor ecosystem, but the "killer app" would be (optional?) persistence of communities outside of instances.

wjrii,
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Calibre and a paperwhite works way better than I'd have thought a locked down device would.

wjrii, (edited )
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True, but there is an almost childlike literalism to the small amount that is unique about Mormon theology, plus it all arose in the era of the printing press and governmental archives, so there are fewer excuses. It's also culturally very top down and high pressure, as you are keenly aware. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the mainline LDS church a cult, but it's definitely closer than, say, the Episcopalians.

wjrii,
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At a minimum, it’s an unhealthy degree of authoritarian control.

You're not wrong.

wjrii,
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Before then, I imagine there was not a trace of doubt in your mind.

wjrii,
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Well hello fellow exmo. I gave it up in my late teens. Found myself playing "devil's advocate" too much in discussions with my friends. Tried to pray about it all Joseph Smith style, but just got absolutely nothing. Realized that I had never enjoyed Church, never felt at peace there, and just generally came to the conclusion that the essential problem of free will and comparative religion and the extremely specific truth claims that Mormonism requires weren't holding up. I was also completely eeshed out by the thought of a patriarchal blessing, and I felt no calling whatsoever to go on a mission. I wasn't as traumatized as some, growing up in the Mormon hinterlands of the American south (NE Florida) meant the LDS were a little less high and mighty and I had a circle outside of the church, but the pressure to conform and stay is very real.

I only resigned formally when my mom sicced the missionaries on my never-Mo wife and me after I moved to Texas.

Ultimately, even as religions go, its theology is very silly and its most ardent adherents are real jerks.

Which items/products were you once able to get from local shops on a whim that you now more or less have to order online?

Sometimes I find myself shopping for things that I’d prefer to go out and get within the same day, but now I’d have to order and wait a few days to get…So I’m wondering what some of those things may be for you?

wjrii, (edited )
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On the flip side, the variety and market segments that are open to fountain pen people are as good as they've ever been (since ballpoints became a mature technology), both for ink and pens. Sure, the Sheaffer School pens and Waterman Phileases and Cross Whatevers aren't hiding in Office Depot anymore, but you can still find a Varsity or a wick-feed Zebra pretty easily, and the Internet is so much faster than it used to be. I guess I'll never pop into the cigar shop by the office to pick up a spare Lamy Safari though.

wjrii,
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Eleven. Kinda felt like that was too many though.

What inconsequential or surprisingly good thing can I get from Aliexpress?

Im curious as I usually use the site very occasionally to get certain electronic parts or order from PCBway like I just picked up some cheap but infinitely better than stock gps antennas for my LoRa T beams and im about to get a set of also still cheap but much better than stock 915mhz antennas but i kinda wanna throw some other...

wjrii,
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A pretty large portion of the kits, components, and pre-built boards are from "obscure" Chinese companies already, so much of what you'd want is just sort of... there. As a single example, get a GMK67 for $35, 70 Milky Yellow switches (if you're into linears. I am not.) for $20, and maybe a YMDK set of keycaps for $30-$50, and you've got a very presentable budget build under a hundred bucks. If you go hunting, you can probably find stuff you'd like just as much for even cheaper.

wjrii,
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In the right mood, I like setting things up and tweaking them, but I don't find it "chill". If I fire up Minecraft to chill, I usually think of it almost like a model railroad or something, occasionally it literally is a virtual model railroad if I want to build nether transit or something. I also find it satisfying to fill in that last patch of a map and put a copy of it on a wall next to its mates. It is very satisfying to get that auto smelter or adjustable enchanting room just right, though, and I can easily see that stuff being a goal in its own right.

What I find brilliant about the concept of Minecraft is the way it hits a sweet spot of being just complex enough to be immersive, but abstract and simplified enough that the open world is actually open and rewards a hundred different play styles.

wjrii,
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The two big boss fights are the closest thing to a "goal," but yeah, even in survival mode I guess it's as much lego as it is video game. In your case, maybe a Bethesda game but focusing on side and companion quests until you're so overpowered that wrapping up the main plot will feel like one more.

wjrii, (edited )
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REY DAX has no time for this nonsense.
https://i.ibb.co/FK1MgrQ/reydax.png

wjrii, (edited )
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Neutral Zone Line. I'm not really into Robro Space Country though. More of an Alt-Space-Country/Federana guy.

wjrii, (edited )
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I left it absolutely invigorated and optimistic for the franchise. I saw it had some flaws, with one sizeable one being that it should have ignored the cliffhanger in TFA and caught up 6-12 months later*; the OT (and less successfully, the PT) got to handwave a LOT of character development by simply letting life happen offscreen. Still, TLJ took a needlessly derivative setup from TFA and set the stage for a much more interesting Episode Nine than we got, and I utterly disagree that he didn't get or like Star Wars. Shit, Rian Johnson is the only one who was willing to SAY the words "Darth Sidious."

I thought he gave a thoughtful fan's perspective on what Star Wars needs to be to remain relevant, the theme of growing from failure being particularly well done for a big popcorn franchise. The scene with Rose's sister, the Yoda scene, the acting from Adam Driver after the throne room scene? All peak Star Wars IMHO. Then of course TROS came along and was so clumsy and petty in how it blew up Rian Johnson's new directions, and so generally messy, that it didn't even please the people who hated TLJ.

TFA was useful as a palate cleanser for the generation who rejected the PT, and it gave us a compelling new batch of heroes and villains (Snoke honestly being the least interesting as a character), but it didn't really DO much, and its worldbuilding was absolutely retrograde. TLJ was a needed course correction, but Disney not only recoiled from the backlash, but took all the wrong lessons from it even if it did need to affect the direction of Ep9. JJ was, in the end, very wrong for Star Wars, though if TFA was his only one, it might not have been so obvious.

*-Two others being the framing device of the "slow speed chase" and Finn's arc being such a minor step forward . A few tweaks to the technobabble or moving them to Crait earlier and having it be a bit more of a formidable facility could have helped the first one, and having Finn more explicitly trying to save Rey and Poe at the cost of the Resistance might have better highlighted the additional layer of growth RJ was thought he still needed.

wjrii,
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Between Kai Winn and Nurse Ratched, Louise Fletcher was "gentle menace" personified and a national treasure.

wjrii,
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The ZAZ movies had a very specific style that relied on that. Every single character was the "straight man" and the bonkers shit was the universe. Mel Brooks was much more side-eye and poking at the fourth wall. In either case, I wanted Nick Rivers and Lone Starr and Sheriff Bart to succeed though. It wasn't complete anarchy or loosely connected sketches, and the juxtaposition of the absurd being hung on a pretty generic narrative structure makes it funnier, I think.

wjrii,
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I do kinda wonder how many modern SW fans remember the hilarious Naked Gun movies. I guess this might look pretty ridiculous if not.

I hope we're not to that point yet. The spoof genre reached its apotheosis in that period from '74 to '94, with Python doing Holy Grail and Life of Brian, Mel Brooks going from Blazing Saddles to Robin Hood Men in Tights, and the ZAZ run from Airplane! to The Naked Gun and Hot Shots movies. For ZAZ, Top Secret! is even better than Airplane! or TNG, IMHO.

Their successors forgot that however thin, the underlying movie has to be watchable, or you lose something. Maybe it's just generational (always have to allow for that at my age), but I kind of think that Scary Movie et al is stuff that is not nearly as timeless.

wjrii,
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Yeah, well those folks can go to hell. They're the worst, I assume.

wjrii,
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Good luck, if thin drainage is troubling you, that might help even if you're not the mucus faucet that I turn into. Mostly it's just treat the most annoying symptoms and let your body heal.

wjrii,
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A lot of the very few surviving samples do of course look really primitive, but at the high end, cobblers in the Roman world were not fuckin' around.

UC28327 here is a pretty ornate sole with a very modern shape.

The upper on this one must have been super nice when new.

Then, there's no reason to suppose that Marcus Aurelius' (and/or Hadrian's) sandals on their statues were idealized past the point of plausibility, though I'm sure once one government contracted statue with approved Imperial sandals gets made, there's a temptation to stick with the motif regardless of the current Emperor's footwear preferences.

wjrii,
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It would be unfortunate if Dame Judi Dench had to leave a garrison lien here.

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