wednesday
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by Crown_of_Ice in anti-Americanism is racism by wednesday
as if these versions are twisted forms of cuisine gnarled by imperialism and that is what they mean by toxic
even if this is true (and i'm dubious about that), i disagree. if Chinese people cook food in a particular way, and then they migrate to another country and the way they cook food changes as a result of that, that doesn't make the new way of cooking food is wrong, or "twisted", it's just a different way of cooking food.
perhaps you could argue it's "caused by" imperialism, but even if so, does that mean all US Black culture is somehow bad or wrong because it only exists as a result of the transatlantic slave trade?
people adapt to all kinds of external influences, including imperialism, forced migration, etc. even if something only exists as a result of imperialism, that doesn't mean the thing itself is inherently bad.
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in what are you watching this month? by wednesday
no, i watched it on my iPad (12.1" screen).
but i had enough problems with the movie that, even if i had watch it at the cinema, i don't think i would have enjoyed it any more.
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in what are you watching this month? by wednesday
okay, i think i understand what you mean in principle: what you call a 'mood movie' is, i think, what i call a 'visual movie': a film that is interesting in itself, because of the visual medium, without having a story or plot or whatever.
i personally can't include The Batman in that category though, because visually, i found it quite boring: the only aesthetic was 'dark' and it didn't seem to explore any visual aesthetic that previous Batman movies hadn't already done.
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in what are you watching this month? by wednesday
honestly this doesn't make sense to me. if there was any mood i got from it, it was "this movie doesn't make any sense". was i watching it wrong?
wednesday OP wrote (edited )
Reply to comment by asterism in Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill - Live set by wednesday
this is a nice set with Dennis: https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=7yg-ANvukFo - he starts off doing a basic 1-5 then it gets more interesting, but never overwhelming the melody.
and i've posted this one in f/irishtrad before, but John Doyle is another great Irish guitarist: https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=XFDtF-78rQ0
edit: why i like Doyle here: firstly, keeping in time with an air in free time on the guitar is impressive by itself (although these two no doubt practice together a lot), and secondly, his choice of chords is sublime: he's often choosing chords that are really not implied by the melody, yet they fit perfectly as a harmony, without turning the tune into a blues or something like a bad guitarist might do.
i feel like the guitar gets overlooked in Irish music because, frankly, a lot of people play it badly, but when it's played well it really works.
wednesday wrote
what does that mean? how does a person create a future?
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by asterism in Altan - Tommy Peoples / The Windmill / Fintan McManus's by wednesday
if you like the rhythm, you will love the Martin Hayes set i posted just after this :-)
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill - Live set by wednesday
kind of a shame you can't hear Dennis more in this one, he's an amazing guitar player.
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by asterism in what are you watching this month? by wednesday
also, since you have kids (and presumably know about this) and i feel like watching a light movie: out of Toy Story, Shrek, or Frozen II, which do you think is worth watching? or maybe something else?
wednesday OP wrote (edited )
Reply to comment by asterism in what are you watching this month? by wednesday
Tenet
oh my god, i fucking hated this movie, and it completely killed any lingering respect i might have had for Nolan. it was trying so hard to be clever and "make-u-think" like Memento (still an excellent movie), but it just completely failed: the story was nonsensical, the characters were boring, the action sequences were tedious. it felt like Nolan was playing a trick on me by getting me to watch this crap.
i will say that the torture scene at the beginning was really well done, but that was basically the only scene in the movie that was remotely interesting.
edit: it reminded me of Southland Tales, and not in a good way. in fact, i think Southland Tales was the better film of the two.
wednesday OP wrote (edited )
Reply to what are you watching this month? by wednesday
- John Wick
i didn't particularly love this film, but i found it extremely interesting because of the "video game" vibe in the action sequences. i don't watch that many action films, so perhaps this is more common nowadays, but i don't think i've ever seen a film where i could almost imagine controlling the protagonist with the mouse as he shot people. is this something the director was specifically aiming for?
the film as a whole was overshadowed for me by the dog murder scene at the start. i understand the point was to shock the viewer (which was certainly successful) but it disturbed me enough that i couldn't really enjoy the rest of the film.
- The Final Girls
not a particularly deep film, but as an affectionate tribute to 80s horror movies, i found it quite enjoyable. hard to say more about it because, well, it is what it is. worth a watch if you like that kind of thing.
- Repo! The Genetic Opera
this felt like it was trying a little bit too hard to be "The Rocky Horror Picture Show 2"; the story wasn't really long enough to justify the length, and the songs weren't quite good enough to make up the time. but i didn't hate it; it felt like it achieved mostly what it set out to do.
if nothing else, it deserves credit for being a movie starring both Tony Head and Paris Hilton, which must be the most unlikely casting decision in the history of filmmaking.
- Logan
this is one of the best films i've seen in a long time. most superhero movies are incredibly boring (and often, borderline fashy), but this managed to do something interesting and different: it took existing characters the audience knows, and put them in a new situation that made us look at them differently. i actually cared about what happened to the people in the film, and i was very surprised by the ending, both of which are unusual for superhero movies.
the film was obviously inspired at least in part by Unforgiven, but it wasn't a remake; it did its own thing and felt like it had its own voice. comparing this film to something like the MCU or DCEU really highlights how terrible those franchises are.
- The Batman
based on the (good) reviews this film got, i was hoping for something like Logan. instead, it was... well, i don't even know. it wasn't a "detective" film because all the clues just fell into the heroes' laps via deus ex machina. it wasn't an action film because there was no interesting action. it wasn't a character study because it said nothing at all about Batman as a character beyond "tortured and angsty". the romantic B-story was so laughably bad, it could have come straight from the MCU.
why was this film even made? why did anyone, especially film critics, enjoy it? i find this absolutely perplexing. this is one of the worst films i have seen for a long time.
wednesday wrote
Reply to comment by capsaicin in What kind of ethical frameworks and/or meta-ethical theories do you adhere to? by capsaicin
What does 'morality' mean to you?
a system of decision-making whereby some actions are considered more correct and some are considered less correct based on a pre-defined set of acceptability criteria.
that's a bit of a vague definition, but i think it more or less covers how i approach morality. i think this definition also covers both "morality" and "ethics" as they're usually discussed. (i'm not interested in a nitpicking a definition, but i will engage in interesting discussion about that definition.)
I was motivated towards ethics because I'm precisely uncomfortable basing my decisions on just how I 'feel that day.'
i understand that position... however, i feel like having a moral (or ethical) framework is the worse option of the two because that predisposes you to particular outcomes regardless of the specific context that applies today. my suspicion is that nearly all morality decisions are in any case based on "how i feel that day" and are post-hoc justified by twisting those feelings to fit into a moral framework, a process which is hidden by confirmation bias.
wednesday wrote
Reply to comment by katalepsis in My love confession to Raddle by Circe
i don't even remember posting in this thread but if you're going to reply to me about voting for Biden, please don't :-)
wednesday wrote
Reply to What kind of ethical frameworks and/or meta-ethical theories do you adhere to? by capsaicin
i don't find ethics useful, because i'm not at all convinced it can be usefully separated from morality. as to meta-ethics, i suppose that depends on how broadly you define that term, but when it comes to deciding my own actions i generally rely on empathy rather than any sort of ethics.
wednesday wrote
i haven't even read this article but i find the entire idea of "What Happened to David Graeber? | Los Angeles Review of Books" hilarious, so thanks.
wednesday OP wrote
Reply to comment by !deleted50965 in radical leftist Cory Doctorow by wednesday
guys please vote we need the blue steamroller to crush us to death
Submitted by wednesday in Liberalism
wednesday wrote
Reply to If you're a psych student you're not allowed to headcanon characters as autistic and shit cuz that violates the Goldwater rule sorry not sorry I don't make the rules by Nitrodark_LaKnabo4
pretty sure this is not true since the Goldwater rule only applies to real people.
wednesday wrote
can't take this seriously at all. a CFP for an anarchist discussion topic? academics need to deconstruct themselves and stop doing this nonsense.
wednesday wrote
Reply to mods on a power trip by grub
why is this in f/meta? are you referring to a specific incident?