So I randomly bumped in to this thread and at first was going to riff one of my favorite little ‘evolutionary scenarios’-- that one day we might see a bear chasing a deer on a shoreline, and nearby in the water, a deer-descendant (like a killer whale) chasing a bear-descendent (like a seal)! @fossilesque
Then I saw my buddy’s comment about WEBP, and am duly curious. AFAIK it’s a much more modern & efficient format than JPG, and I’d be using it myself here if Imgur.com actually accepted it. So yeah, I’m curious as well what its flaws are! @Nacktmull
It’s a bit of a pain if you are doing anything legacy.
I can understand that in terms of simple defaults set up by various software / web packages, but is there some kind of technical format issue about WEBP that’s hurting it…?
When lockdowns were coming to an end, there was an influx of people asking travel related questions on r/france. Something I wish existed at that time was a francophone equivalent to r/VisitingIceland, which is an incredible resource and community when it comes to making your travel plans to Iceland....
I visited Paris some years back, tried to speak in my terrible tourist French whenever possible, and never found a hint of snobbery. I kinda get the impression that visitors with an attitude or who treat the city like an amusement park get the worst of the ‘snobbery.’
The real explanation is a lot of far side strips just suck
Eh, this strip makes plenty of sense when put in to context, which @CaptnNMorgan did above and @FunderPants did below. Let’s also not forget that Larson was in a whole genre by himself back in 1982, and (IMO) was still experimenting and refining his style, with almost zero direct competition at the time. I do think this strip makes perfect sense back in the day in a sort of mild ‘haha, that’s a bit crazy’ way, and it was certainly unique and ‘good enough’ to be published in 1982.
But… what’s interesting to me is that from my reading of his stuff, Larson got a lot sharper and hit a peak of brilliance from roughly the mid-80’s to the end of the decade, then fell off a cliff after that, meaning IMO his stuff really did suck on the whole, in to the nineties. The way I see it, he’d basically exhausted most of his premises of humor, and IIRC new strips began to pop up occupying the same realm, which were arguably funnier and more inventive.
Not trying to put down Larson at all (I love the Far Side), but I can completely understand that after doing thousands of strips, many of them genre-defining, he ran out of gas / inspiration / dedication. So yeah, for sure some of his stuff “sucks.”
Sure, but I meant in the response to the commenter above saying “a lot of Far Side strips just suck” that ‘sometimes that’s true, but not THIS one, really.’
Probably just caused confusion by tagging you and the other bloke; sorry about that, and lesson learned.
Hah! It doesn’t even take that. All you need is a middle-management who doesn’t support the rights of their workforce, is inconvenienced should a customer gin up complaints about OP’s hair-color (whatever it is), and is generally just lazy and indifferent, learning from upper mgmt that growth & profits are 99% the things that count, followed by limiting liability situations. The workers themselves are just an inconvenient expense in the equation.
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.
That reminds me of one of the major keys to the success of the ZAZ movies, which was to hire a cast known for their serious, dramatic roles, a type which Nielsen epitomized. At no point could the actors indicate that the situations going on around them were funny, otherwise the illusion might be punctured.
Perhaps some of the later imitation films, like Scary Movie et al, kind of drifted away from that premise, I don’t know.
Speaking of Blazing Saddles, I recall reading that the musicians and orchestra were told that they were producing music for a classic-style western, and when they ultimately learned that the movie was an intentional farce, they were not amused.
Laate reply, but very interesting comments that do make a lot of sense to me, particularly about the different mechanisms used in the ZAZ and Mel Brooks’ movies.
Judging from more recent movies clearly built on the models above, I feel like in general, modern directors & producers try to broadcast more to the audience as to how and when to react. That is-- in this post-MTV age, it seems like they’re more scared of potential dead air time, and want to avoid indulging too much in the deadpan, pregnant moments common in ZAZ films. Ones that made them so delicious, of course, tending to appeal to the thoughtful person.
By comparison, King of the Hill is maybe a rare case of a cartoon comedy that wasn’t entirely concerned with whether the audience understood the full humor of the situations. Just popped in to my head anyway, so I thought I’d mention it.
It’s clearly not simple conveyor belts. Look at the picture. There are big boxes the food goes into that have to be pushed out and then back.
Yes, there’s one box attached to the conveyor that goes back and forth, and a second , larger box at the carport that has some degree of motion, adjustable by the consumer. The situation is explained in more detail in the article link I posted.
My point stands that there weren’t a lot of complex parts involved there. There was a motor for each unit inside the restaurant which probably received the greatest wear & tear, which wasn’t all that much, considering. Compare that to motors powering assembly line conveyor belts, and even at full capacity, these were operating a few minutes per hour. So, pretty light work.
And then multiply that by the number of cars and you’ve got something that’s going to add too much maintenance costs onto a low margin restaurant.
The whole point of the restaurant was to lower costs all around, not unlike robots & AI replacing labor, and evidently they were successful. The place did great business upon opening and went on for several years. From the article, it seems to be implied that consumers simply got tired of the gimmick after a few years, perhaps preferring the human touch. It did not mention maintenance issues nor associated costs.
Latish reply, but how do you make yours? Do you do the ‘restaurant’ steps of using water & freezing to get the starch out?
Me, I just slice up baking potatoes and pop them in my air fryer for a while, turning and re-basting with oil a few times. Not restaurant grade, but good enough.
For me-- Lemmy is getting dangerously close to pulling me away from Reddit, and I love it, but still, there’s a ways to go in terms of ‘critical features,’ yeah?...
I always used to follow the war on Reddit but I am trying to stay away as much as possible. So how can I follow it without Reddit or Twitter? Does anybody have a good alternative? Thanks in advance....
deleted_by_author
For all your travel questions related to France : VisitingFrance (jlai.lu)
When lockdowns were coming to an end, there was an influx of people asking travel related questions on r/france. Something I wish existed at that time was a francophone equivalent to r/VisitingIceland, which is an incredible resource and community when it comes to making your travel plans to Iceland....
25 November 2023 (sh.itjust.works)
[REPOST] Woman says she started wearing ‘terrible wigs’ after work banned her pink hair (www.thelondoneconomic.com)
cross-posted from: rabbitea.rs/post/280182...
Frank Drebin in Star Wars (www.youtube.com)
Well, this was a whole lot better than I was expecting. Bonus pts for the creator sourcing his green screen reference vid....
'Motormat' drive-in restaurant, Los Angeles, 1949 (lemmy.world)
[META] What about configuring @stripbot@feddit.nl to post images rather than links?
Hey there, @tedvdb!...
Random 8-12-2012 (sh.itjust.works)
Which one are you? (lemmy.world)
What are the features you MOST miss from Reddit? (Bonus pts for tech dudes-- any idea if they're on the dev- hoz?)
For me-- Lemmy is getting dangerously close to pulling me away from Reddit, and I love it, but still, there’s a ways to go in terms of ‘critical features,’ yeah?...
Best way the follow the Ukraine - Russia War without Reddit ?
I always used to follow the war on Reddit but I am trying to stay away as much as possible. So how can I follow it without Reddit or Twitter? Does anybody have a good alternative? Thanks in advance....