Zagorath

Zagorath, 8 months ago

Everything And Fast Castle?

Zagorath, 8 months ago

That’s less than 2 years.

Zagorath, 8 months ago

Why is a mortar round on a stick though? Wouldn’t a mortar round normally just be the “head” of this hammer?

Zagorath, 8 months ago

What actually is this?

Zagorath, 8 months ago

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

Zagorath, 8 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, 9 months ago

So does uBlock Origin, even while logged in.

Zagorath, 9 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, 9 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, 9 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, 9 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, 9 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, 9 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, 9 months ago (edited 9 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, 10 months ago

Riker would be so good at Transition 1 if he did a triathlon.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

I raise you the Mongol Empire.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

My favourite living composer is probably Elena Kats-Chernin.

Favourite dead composer is definitely Beethoven, but I’ve been getting very into Shostakovich lately.

Zagorath, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I agree with the goal of this, but don’t necessarily agree with its specific assertions.

Like yes, 100% we would be way better off if companies would actively support emulation by selling super-cheap any games that they otherwise have no interest in anymore.

But actually, yes, I do enjoy paying $40 for the remake of an old classic, if it’s done well.

The Spyro remaster from a few years ago was extremely well-done and I loved being able to play a favourite from my childhood on my computer. It was exactly the same game, only with modernised graphics. Well worth it.

Even better, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. It upgraded the graphics, but also added an enormous amount of new content and (most importantly) quality of life features, all done in consultation with the community that had been playing the original game for 20 years at the time DE came out. It would be best if you could still buy the original 1999 version for five bucks, but frankly I doubt many people would if you could, because the Definitive Edition was done so well.

It’s obviously different when there’s a remake that’s nothing but a cheap cash grab. Or when there hasn’t been any type of modern update. I wish, for example, it was easier for me to get my hands on a copy of Battle for Middle-Earth 2 to play with my friends. But the company that made it isn’t even allowed to continue selling it, for complicated licensing reasons. Because copyright law sucks.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

No disagreement from me whatsoever.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

Uhh, no, not for me. Was that a problem quite a few people were reporting?

Zagorath, 10 months ago

Yeah for sure. That’s actually another reason that old abandonware should be kept available for people to play. If they come up with a replacement that’s good enough to displace the original, that’s awesome. But if they come up with a replacement that isn’t worth it, they shouldn’t be able to artificially prop up that version by making the original unavailable.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

The irony is that the only Lemmy instances blocked in China are the tanky ones.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

Tankies on Lemmy like to pretend China isn’t committing genocide against Uyghurs.

Zagorath, 10 months ago

You can pretend all you want that you’re “just asking questions”, but that doesn’t change facts. The Uyghur genocide has been very well-established for a long time now.

The Chinese propaganda trying to deny their genocide has the same vibes as that time a Chinese official went on a western political current affairs show and said “you have a voting democracy, we have a working democracy”. The fact that Chinese state censorship is so strong (while western media is not censored) means there is very good reason to distrust the reports from Chinese media when they are in disagreement with the majority of reporting from everywhere else. So yeah, I’m going to trust reports from high quality journalistic organisations like the ABC, rather than anything that’s allowed to be reported on publicly within China.

The irony here, of course, is that even if you take the Chinese party line at its word. That its actions are nothing more than heavily policing an area where there are dangerous terrorists and separatist. That’s pretty much exactly the same as the Israeli line. It boggles my mind that people can call out one but not the other. It’s not surprising for me that the right does it. There’s an element of racism there, and chauvinism for defending their political allies. And I’ll be honest, I’ve always associated the right with a denial of facts. But the fact that people who have the gall to call themselves leftists will pretend there’s nothing wrong is

Zagorath, 10 months ago

Eh, the British “countries” are countries in name only. They don’t really fit any of the usual things people would think of as constituting a country.

In reality, they’re constituted like less than the state of a federation like the US, Germany, or Australia. A state has a constitutional right to its governance, and cedes some power to the federal government. The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are rights granted by Westminster, and could be taken away at will. Nothing Biden, or Trump, or Mike Johnson wanted could ever take away Maine’s right to its own governance like that.