Zagorath

Zagorath, 1 year ago

For what it’s worth, though I don’t think I’ve ever had them in any form, I’ve heard that the poor reputation of Brussels sprouts is due to the popular way of cooking them in the '30s through '80s being to boil the shit out of them. They’re supposed to be quite good if you cook them the right way.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

Damn. I didn’t understand the joke the above user was making and was hoping that by understanding why it’s a switcheroo I could understand the original joke. But now I’m no closer than where I started.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

No I’m familiar with the ol’ Reddit switcheroo. I don’t understand what exactly is being switched in this case.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

Oh that’s a good one!

Zagorath, 1 year ago

your left hand is always the left one. It’s relative to you, not to your direction

Right. That’s my point. That’s why I proposed using terminology that relates only to you, as opposed to the necessarily external language of the parent comment which used “facing”.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

facing left

On your left side. Whether that’s “facing left” or “facing right” depends on whether you’re comparing it to being on your front or on your back. Personally, I instinctively compared it to front, which would mean being on your left is facing to the right.

So the way to be clear and unambiguous is to say which side of your body you’re referring to.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJ-q2PNuTA

Zagorath, 1 year ago

Non, cela est une « barre verticale ». Un façon dont on peut l’utiliser est comme un pipe, mais on peut aussi l’utiliser dans beaucoup d’autres manières.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

The video itself is really good. I didn’t agree with everything he said (the Triple Union, while not good, is still just so obviously way better than putting the Aboriginal flag in the canton), but certainly with most of it. The Great Southern Flag is a noble effort, but it just feels too…fidgety…to me. Too much going on. Too many small pieces. The use of 5 separate colours, the very small kangaroo, 3 different kinds of stars (5-pointed Epsilon star, four 8-pointed main Southern Cross stars, and the 7-pointed Federation Star), and the solid cross connecting the stars.

Honestly, I genuinely like the Golden Wattle. I like that it keeps the Federation Star within the negative space. I think wattles are a great symbol that we should reach for more often.

The video briefly touched on the shades of colours (in the blue of the Unity Flag), but didn’t touch on what I think makes them a significant design feature for Australian flags to play with. If you do a tour of Parliament House, there’s a good chance the tour guide will explain why the two chambers are the colours they are. Red for the Senate, after the UK’s House of Lords, and green for the House of Representatives/Commons. But unlike the very vibrant shades Westminster uses, Australia’s colours are chosen to suggest natural earthy tones of the outback. The green of a eucalyptus, and the ochre red of the dirt. I don’t know if that’s a design choice our flag should copy or not. But it’s worth thinking about.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

Everything And Fast Castle?

Zagorath, 1 year ago

That’s less than 2 years.

Zagorath, 1 year ago

What actually is this?

Zagorath, 1 year ago

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

Zagorath, 1 year 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, 1 year 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, 1 year 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, 1 year 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, 1 year 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, 1 year ago (edited 1 year 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, 1 year 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, 1 year ago

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

Zagorath, 1 year 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, 1 year ago

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

Zagorath, 1 year ago

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

Zagorath, 1 year ago

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