Zagorath

Zagorath, 6 months ago

I didn’t even know Nickelodeon was around in '92. I always thought of them as being very much a '00s channel, maybe founded in the mid-to-late '90s.

Amazing that they were not only around, but old enough to feel it made sense to do a time capsule then.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

Did you also recently watch the recent Bright Sun Films video about Nickelodeon Studios?

Zagorath, 6 months ago

So does uBlock Origin, even while logged in.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

I could be wrong, but I believe that I’ve heard there’s more genetic diversity in sub-saharan Africa than pretty much anywhere else. Which kinda makes sense when you think about how that’s where Homo sapiens first evolved.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

I’ve heard it said that the average Englishman and the average Indian are more genetically similar than two random Englishmen, too.

In other words, if that’s true, there are some general trends in genetic differences between “races”, those trends are, overall, far smaller and less significant than the random differences that pop up by chance within a single race.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

The lack of the word “and” in the number there made this parse really weirdly in my brain.

Instead of “I play with 615 giraffes”, I read it as “I play with 600 15-giraffes”. I don’t know what a 15-giraffe is, but it sounds like it might be an unstable isotope or something.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

Yeah, as far as I can tell it’s normal in America to say 615 as “six hundred fifteen”, whereas the rest of the anglosphere would say “six hundred and fifteen”.

The fact that the line break happened to be right where the word “and” was missing probably made it even harder to parse correctly.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

To assist:

• Lesbo: short for lesbian
• Pish: an expression of frustration
• Bangin’: hot
• nd: and
• ye: you
• am no: I’m not
• tae: to
• yer: your
• pal: friend
• shag: have sex with

Zagorath, 6 months ago

Do Scottish people use “fit” like that? I know it’s used in England, particularly the north, but I don’t think I’ve seen it from Scotland. Probably says more about how much exposure I’ve had to Scottish culture though.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

I could be wrong, but I thought the x at the end was just a cutesy sign-off. Like “xoxo” type of thing.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

Vale Andre Braugher.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

There is a 0% chance that AI can accurately determine if someone is 18 or not, even with hypothetical futuristic AI technology. Some 20-year-olds look very young. Some 16-year-olds look shockingly old. And nobody changes very significantly between the day of their 18th birthday and the day they were 17 years, 364 days.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

To be fair, that at least is hypothetically possible. Working out someone’s age exactly purely based on their face is not even possible, so you can argue against it very easily from a purely technical standpoint.

Facial recognition with a database is quite good today, and will only get better. To argue against that you need to start getting into the privacy and ethical arguments.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

As an outside observer, UK politicians (even Conservatives) seem to tend to be a bit better at this sort of thing than American or Australian (“the laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”) politicians. There’s a much stronger tendency for their back benchers to vote against the party line than we have, too, which is great for deliberative democracy.

Zagorath, 6 months ago

humans are better at vision at the moment

Eh, humans are better at certain kinds of vision—particularly on tasks that deal with non-white people where the AI was trained mostly on white people.

But things where the vision is looking at very fine detail, AI is very good at. Like determining if a patient has a disease based on a retinal scan or other medical imagery.

And I think it’s fair to say that, at least superficially, the problem in this thread seems like it might be more similar to those medical cases where an AI could do a really good job. The problem is that actually, no. There’s no known marker that could determine age with the level of accuracy that would be required for this task.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

No need to talk about a background character with a few lines.

Uhh, Jar Jar has a pretty key role in Episode 3…

Zagorath, 7 months ago

Machete order says you should skip 1 because it’s bad and allegedly doesn’t add anything to the story, particularly if you’re looking at 2 and 3 as providing more context around Luke’s story in the OT.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

Responding to your deleted comment, I’m genuinely not sure how Jar Jar’s role in the downfall of the Republic in Episode 3 is the joke being made by this comment. Sorry.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

Because my app shows it to me and I wanted to understand.

Zagorath, 7 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

From the perspective of someone just wanting an awesome time, I agree completely. Or from the perspective of a Star Wars fan who wants all the lore and extended material. And personally, I would never want to skip it, myself.

But the goal of the Machete cut is to take a look at the Original Trilogy and ask: how can we get the best narrative experience out of this? It’s ultimately about telling Luke Skywalker’s story, and providing context to enhance the experience of his narrative. You put 2 and 3 after 4 and 5 to avoid spoiling the reveal at the end of Empire. You use the extended 2-movie flashback as a way to explain who that ghost that appears at the end of 6 is, as well as to enhance the parallels between Luke’s and Anakin’s characters; namely Luke’s use of force choke on Jabba’s guards, and him telling Jabba “you underestimate my power”—the same line Anakin uses on Obi Wan in Revenge.

Essentially, we see Anakin’s story as a way to provide further context to Luke’s. Phantom doesn’t aid this at all. Neither Qui-Gon nor Maul appear in any later core film. Phantom only provides further context to Anakin’s story, without aiding in Luke’s. In the words of the Machete order’s original creator:

Some people claim that Episode I isn’t that bad, and shouldn’t be removed (again, it’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s not relevant to Luke’s journey in the way that Episode II and III are). Lots of people like the pod race or Darth Maul or Qui-Gon or they were born in 1992. Whatever your reason, if you want to watch Episode I I’d recommend doing so separately, sort of like an “Anthology” film. After all, Machete Order doesn’t interfere with canon, everything is canonically compatible with Episode I (or any later ones) because we’re not watching fan edits.

The original creation came along with a lengthy essay explaining why, pointing to some possible disadvantages, and addressing those. It then briefly went over their experience trying it with someone new to the franchise. Even if, like me, you actually ultimately disagree with the idea of Machete order, it is well worth the read, because the logic behind it is very well put together. Here’s a link.

(Incidentally, I always thought the name machete order came from how you’re chopping up the timeline. In fact, it’s because the former name of the author’s blog was “Absolutely No Machete Juggling”.)

Zagorath, 7 months ago

I’ve spent most of the ~45 minutes since writing that last comment reading the machete order creator’s update post and the comments underneath it. And I just really wanted to highlight one particularly excellent comment from a user going by “amusingmurff”.

I didn’t know the “right” way was to skip TPM, and while I find a lot of your points valid for skipping it, I find it to be helpful to demonstrate how the Jedi Order failed. There are references to the Jedi prohibition against strong emotion in II and III, but it is in terms of how Anakin is failing to be a “proper” Jedi by his inability to let go of his emotions and attachments. Ep I shows that perhaps it is the Jedi Council, who only say “don’t feel anything, that way leads to the Dark Side!” that are mistaken. Is Anakin’s inability to let go of emotion/attachment at the core of his Fall? Yeah. But Luke succeeds in VI because he also fails to let go of attachment and sentiment - Vader is only redeemed and defeats Palapatine because Luke can’t let go of the affection he has for a family tie and the idea that his father still has some good. […] I find it a more compelling story if you see that it’s not really a tale of the beleaguered good guys (Jedi) who are outwitted by the evil, all powerful Emperor, but that they contributed to their own downfall and doomed the rest of the galaxy. That way, the OT heroes have to not only do away with the Empire, but probably do away with a lot of the forms of the old order, including the Jedi Code as it was

There’s some other good discussion in those comments, including a reply to that one, and I definitely recommend reading through it if this line of discussion is interesting to you.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

Is the Greek question mark a legal identifier for variable names?

Zagorath, 7 months ago

Comments explain why, not what. Any comments that explain what a section of code is doing would probably be better off as separated methods.

Apart from basic documentation comments, like JavaDoc or C#'s XML documentation comments.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

There’s nothing limiting what a comment should be as far as I know.

Nothing technical, sure. Just good coding practices.

Zagorath, 7 months ago

In thoroughly confused. They’re not even similar.