AceTKen

AceTKen, 12 hours ago (edited 5 hours ago)

A few recommendations (some known and some less-so):

Romance:

• What Dreams May Come - Robin Williams in a kind of version of Dante’s Inferno. Deals a lot with death and a non-religious afterlife. I’m a stoic 6’4 dude and weep openly every time I watch this.
• Love Never Dies - Did you know there’s a real official sequel to the musical Phantom of the Opera? There is. It’s okay, not great, but pretty fascinating more as a cultural artifact. I think I remember a decent song, but nothing lie the first. It would have been better to make it straight up fucking weird like Starlight Express.
• The Fountain - This is one of the most artistically-sound and crushing love beyond time movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched it about a dozen times and swear there’s at least three movies in here once you understand it. Amazing visuals, and great performances and one of my favourite films of all time period.

Thriller / Horror:

• Dave Made a Maze - So a guy makes a spatially-impossible cardboard structure in his house. It’s… fun. There are minotaurs. Also made of cardboard.
• Cigarette Burns - From the series Masters of Horror. It’s 1 hour long, but is extremely well-done and handles dread amazingly with a great pay off.
• 1408 - The best version of a “haunted room” movie I’ve ever seen, and one of Sam Jackson’s all-time best “MOTHERFUCKER” moments.
• Dog Soldiers - This one is a tad more common, but it’s the best werewolf movie I’ve found and gets the monsters 100% correct. Low-budget, but astounding creature effects for werewolves. A lot of Alien vibes.
• Drag Me To Hell - Another common one, but it’s one of the best things Sam Raimi has done outside the Evil Dead series, and definitely the closest he’s come to Army of Darkness since. If you’re even a casual fan of Evil Dead or horror-comedy, and haven’t seen it, what are you even doing?

Comedy:

• The Birdcage - Was big at the time, but I haven’t seen anyone mention it in ages. One of the great Robin Williams performances for both comedy and drama. He runs a drag club with Nathan Lane.

Action:

• Equilibrium - Came out roughly the same time as The Matrix and got completely buried. Excellent action scenes. Christian Bale does a 1984 / F451.
• Batman: Assault on Arkham - One of the best DC Animated movies ever. Yes I know that Mask of the Phantasm is better, but this is still really good and legitimately funny.

“Bad” Movies That Aren’t At All Bad:

• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - Nick Cage does basically a Pirates of the Caribbean and it’s a shitload of fun.
• Drive Angry - More Nick Cage. It’s needlessly badass in the dumbest way possible and is hilarious.

AceTKen, 5 hours ago

Trailer here.

AceTKen, 3 days ago

Definitely. When I did all of my forestry work, we were warned about brown bears extensively. Don’t get on their territory. If you have to, don’t take chances. Don’t fuck with them.

I don’t know where the idea comes from that these things will just leave you alone. They will not.

AceTKen, 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

No, I do not personally believe this. I believe that this phrase is one of the shortest-form strawman “arguments” that exist and is usually spoken by itself with zero justification or understanding of the issue referenced.

And beside that, it should be obvious that it is very often not true. Most of the time with issues “the point” is cost-saving, stubbornness, cause & effect disagreements, or difference of opinion on how to carry things out. If there is cruelty involved, it is a side-effect, not the point. Even then, the side being accused may feel the cruelty lay on the opposing side because cruelty is a moral argument, and you can not apply morals universally.

The phrase is like saying “the point of drinking water is to touch your genitals while peeing.” It actively avoids the real point in order to make the entire act seem absurd and is a bad faith argument from the jump.

A good way to find out if “cruelty is the point” is to do a thought experiment. “If they could do / remove the crux of the issue and the perceived oppressed group would still be happy some other way, would this still be an issue?”

For example (and I am not passing a value judgment here, I’m simply doing the thought experiment with a real-world example), if a state passed an anti-transitioning law, but found a single pain-free pill to remove all dysphoria from the affected group, would they allow that pill? If yes, then the cruelty didn’t factor into the decision - the issue and how to deal with it did.

To be absurdist, if you feel they wouldn’t allow the “pill fix”, and cruelty is still the point, then why have they not made the suffering worse? They could say “you can have whatever treatment you want, but only if you allow us to torture you for 6 hours per day!”

If a person eats meat, but is grossed out by factory farming and avoids it, is the point the cruelty or the ease, nutrients, and flavour of a standard omnivorous diet? Rationally, do you really feel that their first thought before biting into a burger is “Fuck this cow, I hope it died screaming.”

No. That would be insane.

Thinking and speaking in this fashion only removes the ability to deal with difficult situations in a meaningful or rational way and simply shows others that you can’t even pretend to fathom other people. It shows that the speaker is not empathetic in the slightest, but sure would like to be perceived as such by their in-group.

AceTKen, 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

I have a shitload of leftist beliefs, but I really hate this phrase and have never seen it used by someone who wasn’t left-leaning. I have corrected my initial statement (which is intended to be completely neutral and non-leading) to specify that this is solely my experience with it.

AceTKen, 8 days ago

I agree that things done for an many reasons including ineptness, nonscientific views, fear, reactionary politics, poor training, or even doing things from a detached perspective can seem cruel, but the cruelty is not the point. The cruelty is a byproduct, not the goal. It’s a bad and oversimplified phrase and in nearly every serves to obfuscates issues.

For example, knocking down a big tree can seem cruel if you’re a squirrel and live there. But if you’re a human, maybe you know that that tree was damaged in a storm and is about to fall over and destroy a few homes and potentially kill someone.

A serial killer torturing a victim? Maybe the power is the goal. Maybe the rush is the goal. The cruelty? It’s a means to an end. Understanding goals is how we stop people. Hand-waving away true reasons behind things doesn’t help us understand and therefore stop them.

You can handily cherry-pick examples throughout history of people being outwardly psychotic, and I’d agree with you. However, when used in modern-day political contexts, most of the time it’s used in reference to the things I mentioned. Ineptness, fear, nonscientific views, etc.

AceTKen, 8 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

That is an accurate example, but I don’t feel it’s true in every case (or even the majority) where the phrase is used.

For example, many right-wing policies (that I dislike very much) have the phrase in question used in discussions below them. More often than not it’s an ineptness, stupidity, lack of knowledge, or something else cause them to feel that the result would be beneficial. Maybe the intended result is power, or something economic, but it’s NOT them just trying to be mean.

I know you know it, but for anyone reading this… Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I’ve spoken to plenty of limited-understanding people all over the world. Many of them are broadly kind and well-meaning and brutally misguided people. Many express regret at any cruelty they “had to” do, but felt their goal justified it.

Dismissing it as just being shitty to be shitty is stopping people from addressing the underlying issues in the same way that some would dismiss a drug addict as “just an addict” without thinking about addressing underlying issues.

“He wants to be high because he likes being high.” Well, maybe? But probably not, or at very least there’s way more to it.

Hopefully I didn’t overstep.

AceTKen, 7 days ago

I don’t and would never label non-cruel policies as leftist or liberal, but the phrase is commonly used by those groups. I feel that nearly every group thinks their policies aren’t cruel, however.

“Cruelty” is not always unwarranted, nor is it the same things to every person.

Remember that German guy that had himself eaten by another years back? That’d seem cruel to me, but it was a fetish for both of them and they didn’t think it was cruel at all. It’s a moral definition and changes for every person.

• Some people would call me cruel for having a cat.
• More would call me cruel for keeping it indoors permanently.
• But many others would yell at me for allowing outside.
• Some would give me hell for drinking a glass of milk.

And all of them can justify their reasons.

People are quite poor at context and misusing and exaggerating words. I absolutely hate it and feel it’s one of our worst traits which is not an exaggeration.

AceTKen, 6 days ago

I’ll probably be using this as next weeks weekly thread, but I would argue that current immigration policies hurt the non-wealthy which would include any white men who aren’t wealthy. It’s one of the few policies where I don’t agree with any political party.

Not to break into my Econ schooling, but also DEI initiatives, social assistance policies, scholarships, grant funding, many hiring initiatives, and almost everything I experienced in many predominantly non-white countries overseas could be framed as “hurting white men” in the same way the policies you listed above. It really depends on the lens you use to view things.

Most of these (including things you mentioned) are put into place by the wealthy to maintain things as they are, and yes, some white men are wealthy. I’d remove race and sex from things though and draw the battle lines elsewhere, say “gross and abusive amassing of wealth.”

AceTKen, 6 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

I know it does, and that’s a massive pet peeve of mine (if you couldn’t tell from other threads). To be clear pre mini-rant, this isn’t aimed at you, it’s just something that bothers me and I wanted to get it out.

I think clarity and unity of terms use is one of the major issues that need to be addressed, especially now. It’s also one of the reasons I often will add the definition of a term being used in our weekly threads, because I don’t like people claiming to be correct because their “personal definition” obscures the truth. We have words. They are effective, powerful, and can be wielded to great effect. Changing what they mean in order to shock with a worse term is a horrible thing to do and is a dumbing-down that serves to undermine the original definition. It makes communication worse.

I despise forced political movement of words and don’t like turning words into the personal equivalent of morality.

AceTKen, 6 days ago

I could very much see how, by not being able to understand certain situations, someone might assume that cruelty was the point, but it dismisses the reasons a person or group might attempt something. Cruelty is rarely the point.

The only way we can stop abuses is by doing away with simplistic “chant”-like phrasing and finding the real issues behind things.

To use your example, policing. It’s a complex one, but I can assure you that in no police training ever tells the trainees to be massive dicks and injure every minority they see. The point can be power. The point can be maintaining the letter of the law, and at their sole discretion. The point can be self-preservation out of fear for themselves. We can’t know all of them, and they change in the moment depending on the situation.

If cruelty was the point, then we could just appoint non-cruel people to be officers and the problem is solved, but that isn’t the case. We have to address the underlying issues which are different for every officer. That’s why it’s complex. We can start with systemic corrections such as de-escalation policies being the default, choosing different response teams for different issues, removal of lethal weapons, and harsher punishments for missteps. Those have been found to be effective. But simply hand-waving away things as “cruelty is the point” doesn’t help fix the situation, it dismisses it. We must come at bad situations with ways to stop them, not simply be angry at them.

AceTKen, 6 days ago

Why were they acquitted? I have no idea as I was too young at the time to be following trials, but it doesn’t mean anything about my previous statement was incorrect.

People can be cruel, but the goal is not often cruelty. In this instance, the goal for the officers was most likely to regain a feeling of power in my best estimation - a “how dare you not do what I say” attitude and they used cruelty to get it.

Again, their motivation doesn’t explain why they got off, however. I disagree with that decision wholeheartedly.

AceTKen, 3 days ago

I wanted to make sure I came back to this when I had the time in real life. For what I state, you should know that I was an extremely meek child and hardly a troublemaker.

• When I lived in Saudi Arabia as a white 14-year old male. I was held at assault rifle point multiple times and robbed.
• When I lived in Thailand at 15, I was sexually assaulted by a trans-woman.
• When I lived in Cincinnati at 16, I was beaten by a group of African American kids I went to school with.
• When I lived near Edmonton at 17, I was beaten by a teacher for missing my homework.
• When I lived in Medicine Hat at 10, I was punched in the face by a teacher for sitting in the wrong spot.

None of these are made up or exaggerated experiences. Cruelty wasn’t the point of any of these. The point was (in order) robbery, sexual gratification, power, power, and power.

Misassigning motive is harmful because it stops you from addressing the issues presented and assumes that people are “lost causes.” I don’t believe that to be the case. You can’t fix something where the point is cruelty, because people can’t get a fix of cruelty in other ways. You can try to repair other issues however.

We want the same outcome, but I want to find out how to get there without pushing people out of the solution.

AceTKen, 3 days ago

I… Am kinda taken aback here and legit don’t know what you’re referring to. I could delete my posts if it would help?

I’m sorry if I pushed buttons I should not have, but I genuinely do not grasp the friction here and would very much like to. I was enjoying the discussion and was happy that a thread actually took off for us for once.

If this is a touchy subject that you would rather move on from, then we will.

AceTKen, 8 days ago

I can’t believe that you have just convinced me to watch fucking Rampage.

AceTKen, 1 day ago

Full Report: Acquired the movie right after we messaged.

My wife was working on our book and about ten minutes in wound up putting it down and watching it with me. This is notable because I haven’t been able to convince her to watch known great movies with me. She will not watch Lord of the Rings and hasn’t found the time to watch Edge of Tomorrow with me since release. She gives no fucks about any Godzilla or King Kong movies. This? Well… the moment the gorilla flipped off The Rock, we were in.

She had a hard out at 11 PM due to work, but requested I stop and watch the rest with her tomorrow. What the fuck kind of magic shit is this?

I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe it’s a bad movie very well told and sold by everyone involved? Everyone was likeable and seemed to be having fun. There were a bunch of solid actors in it we both knew from other things, and (most surprising of all) the comedy actually worked. I’d actually say it was probably one of the best 3 video game movies ever, and I’ve seen all but 2. I know that may not seem like a lot, but… 14 year old me loved Mortal Kombat at the time, so it’s some kind of praise.

The Nick Cage movie “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (and maybe also Drive Angry) is one of the only other movies in my collection that I consider in this camp. It’s not great cinema, but it’s a really awesome ride.

You sold it 100% accurately, and I really appreciate it!

AceTKen, 17 hours ago

Just as an FYI, I’m a mod of the sub !actual_discussion

Based on our interaction, I’ve made our new Weekly Thread. You may be able to snag a few more converts… Your post was great and you could always repost it in the thread if you’d care to!

lemmy.ca/post/20869108

AceTKen, 8 days ago

As I’ve said since the beginning, I’d like to see more diversification of opinion in the userbase. There are a LOT of people here that are the kind of activist you’d see get banned on Reddit for being hyper-aggressive and it really turns neutral- or otherwise-thinking users off. They don’t discuss, they immediately attack and flame and it’s not good for building communities around except hyper-focused ones based on those issues specifically.

I want people who know the reason they think something and don’t just have an emotional response and stick with it, then strawman everyone else in the vicinity who deviates.

As we say in the main Rules for our Community ( !actual_discussion ), “Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone even slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.”

I also want MUCH better Community controls such as the ability to decorate, and disable downvotes.

AceTKen, 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

Played the OG version with all the DLC and not the Spacer’s Choice version, so take my comments with that in mind:

PROS:

• The music was completely appropriate and fit the world. It was nothing I’d listen to independently though.
• It ran very well the entire time I played it. Very little in the way of hitching, and very quick load times.
• Achievements!
• From beginning to end I was having a darn good time. It’s a “smooth” game experience that I stayed up way too late a few nights in a row to get through because I couldn’t wait to see what came next.
• Many ways to solve issues; you didn’t feel forced to end nearly anything in a certain way. The only exception was one main DLC quest I couldn’t finish the way I wanted due to the level cap being too low and not having enough points.
• Zero bugs experienced.
• Plenty to explore and loads of side stories to discover. Some stories weren’t wonderfully told and were hard to track, but many more than that were awesome.

NEUTRAL:

• It felt like it ended too soon. A game like this with two expansions should have offered more. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing in that it didn’t overstay its welcome either.

CONS:

• Some of the achievements are deeply annoying to the point that I gave up on completing the set. You’d have to waste dozens of hours to grind all of them and play in some pretty odd ways that wouldn’t match normal gameplay.
• There are no romance options for the player, and only thing even remotely like it in game is a gay asexual romance quest for a side character. You get some G-rated come-ons thrown your way, but nothing can come of it. It’s extremely puzzling in it’s puritanicality in both how the colony operates, and how everything is treated. Not that this has to be a porn game or anything, mind you, but some options to do SOMETHING romance-related (or characters that operate like they have genitals) like Mass Effect or Fallout would be nice. Heck, there aren’t even any kids in the world to show that someone had bred ever.
• Some of the environments and buildings are not terribly visibly distinct and it hurt pathfinding. It would tell me to go somewhere specific and I wasn’t sure what it was referring to, and this was after playing for hours. This has something to do with the “corporate jargon” style language they use as well. It fits stylistically, but can be confusing.
• The sidekicks stories felt exceptionally rushed and some of the outcomes were a little nonsensical.
• I beat the game and both DLCs close to 100% in under 37 hours.
• The level cap even with the DLCs is set to 36 which I hit about halfway through the game, and I felt like it needed far more. It really made that feeling of progression you love in these games stop dead. There was nothing to find for new item upgrades or interesting loot past that point. This was my largest gripe with the game by far as it disincentivized exploration because there was nothing to gain by doing so at that stage. UPDATE: The new version of the game supposedly upgrades the level cap to something a little less horrible. I wish this were available during my playthrough as the game isn’t worth going through a second time. If you’re interested, I HIGHLY recommend waiting for the newer edition.

DID YOU FINISH THE GAME?: Yup! And the DLC. Though if you’re playing now, just get the new edition since it fixes the XP progression block that I mention above.

CONCLUSION: While it won’t stick with me for years, it was great while it lasted and I would 100% play more in the series. If you enjoy story and exploration, play this. The only things stopping it from being Fallout-level good was the awful level cap and the lack of content.

AceTKen, 12 days ago

You are correct. I was dumb. I’ve fixed it now! Thanks for letting me know.

AceTKen, 14 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I’ve done some some protesting in high school, but it was mostly dumb school decisions and most of the seniors joined in. It’s easy to protest when that basically means a ditch day. Hell, people that didn’t care at all joined in just to bail on class, so I don’t really think it counts.

Other than that, I’ve just done some for local politics which are often more effective than business or federal protests because the local people need to live near you and pissing off your neighbours is a lot more stupid than pissing off a nebulous “them” located elsewhere.

That being said, I feel most modern protesting is done poorly and doesn’t do much currently beyond being a 30-second blip on the 24 / 7 media machine.

I’ve spoken about it before, but the currently popular street- or bridge-blocking protests I feel are among some of the most misguided - mostly because they don’t target. Please note that I’m not talking about things like French protests where they happen to organize and there’s so many people present that they have to block off streets in front of government buildings. Not at all. Those people know how to fucking protest.

For example, if you’re protesting a war (like several recent ones), why wouldn’t you, say, protest the factories where the weapons are made or buildings where executives meet? I don’t mean they should just hold up some signs outside, but blockade those businesses in. Stop the parkades from functioning.

Maybe find out who their major shareholders are and publicly shame them. Dig up dirt on them. Harangue them online. Hacktivism. Do anything you can to stop them. Hell, find the neighbourhoods that those shareholders live in and blockade those. If it’s a war protest, protest at the schools that their children go to letting them know their rich parents are murdering people overseas.

You have to stay pissed off, and not let them wear you out because protesting like this is fucking hard and isn’t just a fun afternoon outside with friends like some of these other ones.

And, again, the targets are wrong because there is no target.

A street- or bridge-blocking protest is like protesting the food in a prison cafeteria by beating the shit out of your cellmate, and then calling them complicit because they ate food yesterday. What the hell are they supposed to do about it? And do you think a recently beaten cellmate will be more or less receptive to your cause after?

Bridge / street blocks are not creative, don’t get people present on your side (quite literally the opposite), presents safety risks, may delay emergency vehicles, wastes natural resources, and don’t change minds of those who hear about it on the news. Same with the stupid “pour soup / oil on a piece of art” shit I saw repeatedly. A throw-away headline seems to be the goal, but it accomplishes next to nothing.

… which just means you have to get creative. Target. Those. In. Power. Make life fucking hard for them.

Protest threads on Lemmy often reek of this attitude I see frequently of “It’s a deeply stupid and astoundingly flawed thing to do, but I’ll defend it to the death because it agrees with my politics!” Great. You support them. In some cases, I do too.

But how about we actually do something?

AceTKen, 13 days ago

I didn’t mention it in my post, but you mentioned it. I’m not quite settled on the violence aspect. For the most part, no, violence isn’t needed.

But… what else do you do when the government won’t stop putting your future in danger? I truly don’t know how else to affect environmental policy because right now they’re backsliding on their goals and promises. I dunno. I’m definitely okay with any group who mass-sabotages big polluters.

AceTKen, 8 days ago

!casualconversation

Nice! Link updated in the sidebar. How has it affected the Community so far?