maegul

maegul, 22 hours ago

I am also struck by what this movement says about the state of universities. It reveals a deep rift between students and administrations. The latter have grown hugely over the past decades and become massive bureaucracies, also generating their own corporate interests. The voices of students and faculty have been gradually marginalised in the process, making productive dialogue often difficult.

Yet we must also be vigilant about the academic culture: when we say that universities must be a “safe space”, this is not only true in terms of physical and emotional integrity (which are paramount) but also in terms of intellectual integrity: a university is a space in which one can be, and should be, safely challenged, rather than confirmed in their convictions.

I’ve been saying for a while that western civilisation, whether you’re a fan or not, has been dying in the universities and that this will leak out to the rest of the culture. The corporatisation, commodification and production-line-ification have been rampant from the educational to the research aspects of the institutions … all without dismantling the underlying feudal structures which are quite good at corrupting higher values in the name of succeeding at the KPI games of the commodification etc.

Unfortunately it’s a boiling frog situation and many academics idealise detatchment from the real world however problematic their institution is. That the for-profit journal system could be built entirely around academics’ labour simply by offering “prestige credits” is astonishing for an allegedly intelligent demographic but tells you all you need to know about how corrupted by libertarian values and behaviours a bunch of clever people trying to attain prestige by proving how clever they are … can get.

maegul, 20 hours ago

Yep.

And it’s why I bring up the journal system in every one of these conversations. That happened right under academics’ noses and they all bought into it. They were manipulated and fell right into it without caring or even thinking about the wider implications let alone having the culture to act on any issues. Like the Boomer generation and the climate, previous generations of academics let the rest of us down and we’ve not got a tertiary education system in real trouble but also tied up in so many parts of the broader social institutions that it’s gonna be hard to undo. I’m no lover of tech-bro “disruptions”, but tertiary education and high level research is actually an area where the (western) world could to with a good dose of that.

maegul, 21 hours ago

yep, it truly is a classic.

As for getting another film like it, obviously it’s really a sub-genre of its own, so anything too close is just a copy/clone.

But as for what generally makes it a classic, I’d venture (off of the top of my head) that what Ridley Scott himself says is pretty on the mark: B grade horror done like A grade film. More generally, it’s the rendering of something that’s remained “under-produced” and exclusive to a sub-culture into a higher-production and dramatically serious and high-caliber form.

If that’s part of it, then it’s interesting to ask what other films have done that. Suggestions, off the top of my head:

• The Matrix comes immediately to mind (anime, cyberpunk, hong-kong martial arts films done as a Hollywood blockbuster).
• 2001 A Space Odyssey probably counts (I’m not really sure how Sci-Fi was viewed before 1968).
• Lord of the Rings (high fantasy, though I wonder if Star Wars is the real predecessor of this?)
• Comic book movies probably count to some extent here (Burton’s Batman, Nolan’s Batman and the first Iron Man?), but I’m loathe to include them because I think they’re all kinda derivative of the above, with Burton’s Batman probably being an exception but also not so much of a perfection of content and form that Alien and the above were.
• Pulp Fiction?

maegul, 17 hours ago

And the Space Jockey, Alien design and chestburster aren’t part of it? Cuz we are certainly shown the chestburster and definitely see the Alien!

In suggesting “modern films” for the idea of “films making niche things dramatic, serious and mainstream” … they were just the suggestions off of the top my head.

maegul, 1 day ago

I’m an annoying broken record on this ATM (genuinely sorry, but I’m happy to die on this hill for now) …

but maybe being amateur VFX critics is not the best thing we could be doing with a movie going experiences?! How was the story, writing, directing and the acting?!!

I’ve recently started watching Babylon 5, a 90s Sci-Fi show. The props are cheap, and all of the space scenes are done with TV 90s CGI that basically looks like a video game … from '94. And so far (about half way through season 1), I’m all in. I got used to the VFX and have even come to appreciate their “charm” (seriously, they look kinda alien and comic book like) … but mostly I like the story, directing and characters … focusing on the CGI would be a waste of my time … they tell the space elements of the story perfectly well.

Now I haven’t seen Furiosa, and I’m open to it and its VFX being poorly deployed … but maybe this whole “the CGI took me out of it because I could tell it wasn’t practical … is just missing the point”??

maegul, 2 days ago

Found it kinda underwhelming TBH.

maegul, 2 days ago

You heard Electric Callboy stuff before? Their two tracks last year “Pump It” and “We got the moves”(?) were huuuge bangers IMO. This kinda pales in comparison IMO.

maegul, 2 days ago

Ummm … ok.

I was just sharing here. I don’t know you well enough to know one way or the other. And babymetal are big enough that one could be in this thread without knowing anything about EC.

maegul, 2 days ago

Ah … is that still a thing!? I mean, metal fans can just kinda suck I guess.

No gatekeeping here … just sharing more EC in case you hadn’t heard them before (so long as more hear and see “we’ve got the moves” my work is done).

maegul, 3 days ago

Nah. I agree with Hello Future Me (on youtube: www.youtube.com/) about Korra.

Good show but with problems and Raava and Vaatu are probably the biggest one. The female v male and good v evil that they wrought out of the spirit world to explain the origins of the avatar were just … meh. The female/male divide is a trope and doesn’t really add anything IMO. If anything I think I always found their voices kinda weird in how human sounding they were. So if anything it is a distraction (masked by, IMO, the bigger problems with that whole story).

maegul, 2 days ago

Yep. Spirit world went from an alien mysterious and dangerous place to another good v evil battle. I appreciated the attempt at an origin story that had been lost to time. And the world building was nice and well done. But the essential story and its premises were underwhelming.

maegul, 4 days ago

How have you found the season so far? I can’t watch it so I haven’t seen anything since the specials/christmas ep. I got the feeling from our first glimpse that I could really like this Doctor but I’m not entirely sure I’d be up for more Davis writing.

maegul, 4 days ago

I saw a review that said the film looks a lot like Fury Road but has a distinct core. I haven’t seen the film … does this fit?

maegul, 4 days ago

Yep. I haven’t watched any of Disco S5 (I’m one of those that have struggled with Disco and I just don’t think I can do s5) …

… But I am dropping whatever I need to for SNW S3.

I just hope they ease up on the TOS prequel stuff (which I’ve ranted about elsewhere), but still, I AM READY.

maegul, 4 days ago

Oh I’m with you.

It’s just that the TOS prequel angle is exactly the way that Paramount can force some BS … because it’s the path to a TOS reboot.

We know paramount would want to do this (they’ve stated openly that familiar faces and franchises will be their future focus). And they’ve already played with the timeline. The episode with young Kahn establishes that we’re in a different canon timeline now, which means they’re probably feeling ambitious here about rebooting TOS in their own way. It need not cancel TOS, but just delay the timeline so that they can squeeze in their own pre-TOS TOS reboot.

From Lower Decks and Disco being cancelled, to Matalas heading the new Marvel Vision TV series (which means “Legacy” ain’t happening any time soon) … everything is lining up with the execs focusing on a SNW -> TOS reboot arc (for the cash).

From all of the reactions I’ve seen to the TOS characters in SNW (which I personally haven’t enjoyed because I like SNW and its own characters) … I think people would either eat it up or Paramount would be reasonable in expecting people to eat it up.

Even if the TOS prequel stuff eases, they’ve already laid the groundwork with Kirk now being an established secondary character and everyone apart from Sulu and Bones and of course Chekhov having been introduced (but they all come kinda later don’t they?)

I hope I’m wrong. But like I said, the moment Kirk appeared in the finale of SNW S1, however much I liked the episode, that was the door way for paramount forcing BS.

And just in case anyone thinks I just hate TOS … it’s not about that, it’s about moving on from TOS and doing new things, and also, frankly, avoiding the pretty under-diverse set of characters TOS had compared to what we’d expect today. It really would be something if all of the women in SNW were to be pushed out for the men of TOS, which, in my opinion has already happened in the episodes that featured TOS characters (notice how La’an and especially Ortegas have been underdeveloped here and there?)

maegul, 4 days ago

I’m with you as a fanboy, just worried (and also enough of a fan that I want the the TOS characters to get out of the way of the SNW characters).

maegul, 4 days ago

Yea I suspect that this is where things will go actually. But I’m not sure execs can resist the idea of a TOS reboot.

I’m not enough of a TOS fan to know how viable it is, but if they can get a writer keen to write stories that don’t break canon but simply add to the original stories, I think the execs will green light the shit out of that.

maegul, 5 days ago

I’ve been saying it to everyone who’ll listen …

the journals should be run by universities as non-profits with close ties to the local research community (ie, editors from local faculty and as much of the staff from the student/PhD/Postdoc body as possible). It’s really an obvious idea. In legal research, there’s a long tradition of having students run journals (Barrack Obama, if you recall, was editor of the Harvard Law Journal … that was as a student). I personally did it too … it’s a great experience for a student to see how the sausage is made.

maegul, 4 days ago

You don’t need one in each University, that wouldn’t scale. There’s be natural specialisations. And journals could even move from University to university as academic personnel change over time.

The main point is that they’re non-profit and run by researchers for researchers.

maegul, 5 days ago

So I’ve been ranting lately (as have others) about how big tech is moving on from the open user-driven internet and aiming to build its own new thing as an AI interface to all the hoovered data (rather than conventional search engines) …

which makes this (and the underlying Bing going down) feel rather eerie.

How far away (in time or probability) is a complete collapse of the big search-engines … as in they just aren’t there any more?

maegul, 5 days ago

in line with map_enthusiasts: !dataisbeautiful (and also !dataisbeautiful , which is smaller IIRC)

maegul, 5 days ago

🤷

maegul, 5 days ago

yep! I didn’t pick up on any explicit link … but the coupling AI and recall is not coincidence. It’s serfdom.