Soccer/Football is the most boring game in history. I can’t see why anyone can stand it. Hockey is just as boring, but icier. In general, I dislike watching team sports of any kind but the idea of anyone wanting to watch soccer is just baffling (yes, I understand the rules).
What a turd of a sport.
Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo was by far the best part of The Last Jedi. She was just great. Not everyone agrees, it appears.
One of the other admirals is a fish. https://t.co/0ocILElVdn
— Bob Chipman (@the_moviebob) June 27, 2018
The military in general (in this or any universe) would greatly benefit from having more diversity of thought and experience.
In a story with few great characters, Holdo is a pretty great one and the only reason I’d ever watch that film again. It helps that Dern plays her completely straight so that she seems like a real person.
Cripes I am glad the only immigration “crisis” we have in the US is people mostly like us culturally and socially arriving from the South (and a trickle from the North), and quite a lot of Asians who tend to assimilate easily.
Europe, however, is well and truly damn screwed as they have mostly North African single men arriving, and said men are going to fuck their shit all up. Much of Europe is going to be unlivable in a few decades.
Trump is bad. But what’s going to happen to much of Europe will be far worse (and no, I am not talking about, nor do I give a crap about, crime or terrorism).
Mars is extremely bright this morning in the sky, blazing like a cinder. I wonder if the dust storms increase its luminosity, and if so by how much?
I don’t work there anymore, and now I don’t care, so I can tell this story.
One day when I was working at my last job, I came in to the office to find the intern I’d been mentoring very upset and near tears. By that point we’d moved our desks beside each other so it’s not like I could miss it. “Caroline*,” I said, “what’s going on? You look upset. More than upset.”
“Can we go somewhere else to talk?” she asked me, looking at all nosy people arrayed around us in the semi-open plan office.
For some privacy, we went to a small conference room where she told me that she found out after being assured otherwise previously that she would not be hired fulltime (or at all) for a role where she was currently interning, something she had very much wanted (hell, I wanted it too — she was a great worker and a friend).
Then she looked at me and asked, “Is it for the reason I think it is? I mean, I feel uncomfortable talking about this, but I want to know, ok?”
I knew where she was going but I wanted her to say it. I said, “Why do you think it is?”
“In my department, I’ve noticed that tons of interns come in, but the prettier ones are treated just the worst and never get hired fulltime. I mean, that’s just what I’ve seen. And I know I’m not ugly. At least I don’t think so.”
“No, you’re right,” I said. “You’re awesome. And the opposite of ugly for sure. I thought that it would be enough, that you’re just damn good at everything and smarter than just about anyone. But that department is run by some very fucking bitter old women who despise anyone young and at all attractive. I don’t know why. But yeah, you figured it out, unfortunately. You’re exactly right.”
She looked down and after a moment said, “Oh shit, Mike, I feel both infuriated and embarrassed at the same time!” She started crying a little and being the very physically demonstrative person she was, she grabbed my hand and held it for a bit. “Can we just sit here a while?” she asked.
Of course we could.
She seemed to feel better after that for the rest of the day. The next day she didn’t show up to work, so I texted her, “Everything ok?”
“Yes,” she responded. “Just couldn’t deal today.” I understood perfectly.
After that, she started looking for other opportunities, as they say, and in just a few months she was hired by Google. So screw those bitter old broads who consistently treated her like trash and made her cry. By the way, one of the reasons she was working with me cross-department is to get away from those women (and that we just hit it off and she was interested in what I did). I honestly have no idea what their problem is or why the vendetta, but it’s not uncommon I’ve noticed.
Sure, pretty people experience life on easy mode, most of the time, but there is no life on that mode all the time.
*Not her real name.
Anyone who voted 3rd party or didn’t vote (especially ppl who claimed Trump & Clinton were the same), look at the last few weeks at the Supreme Court. Excepting Carpenter (which likely would have gone the same way w Garland), it’s been a travesty for civil rights. You did this.
— Robyn Greene (@Robyn_Greene) June 26, 2018
No. But it did have something to do with the fact that the Democratic party, for whatever reason — and knowing this full well in advance — nominated one of the most widely-disliked candidates in history, allowed her to run a terrible campaign (where her campaign promoted Donald Trump’s rise for an “easy win”), and then blamed the voters for voting wrong.
Nominate a terrible candidate, get terrible results. That’s where the blame rests.
When I conquer the planet and bring true enlightenment to all the simpering rabble, this shall be the song that accompanies me.
One of the reasons that I loved Nathan’s character in Ex Machina is that it was a demonstration (that nearly all liberals and at least half of conservatives will deny) of the fact that you can be insightful, intelligent and brave yet still be really really evil and repugnant and terrible.
In the liberal mind, if you are bad, your every feature is therefore repellent and the worst by dint of some view or action (etc) of yours being atrocious.
But that’s just not the way people work.
When Bin Laden was killed, one of the first viral stories about the event was that he’d supposedly used one of his wives as a human shield.
He didn’t. Bin Laden died unarmed, probably facing the man who killed him. The dude just wasn’t a physical coward. There’s a lot of debate over how much actual combat he saw during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, but it was definitely “some.” And more to the point, this was a guy who had the option of being incredibly wealthy his entire life. He gave that up to go fight for a cause he believed in. The cause was horrible, and, y’know, fuck him, but he wasn’t gutless.
This Manichean split people wish to impose by speculative and analogical fiat just isn’t real. I knew soldiers who were objectively pretty terrible that I would’ve much rather gone into combat with than the people I was friends with in the army. Derek might say racist things but I know he’d not flinch when it’s time to get shit done. Some of my friends, I suspect they would’ve been crying on the ground. You get the idea.
Bin Laden was a brave man. That he was also terrible are not at all contradictory statements. That sort of (perceived) dichotomy is more often the case than not.
Again, as with Nathan in Ex Machina. He was a sex slavin’, oppressive and misogynist cockbag. But he was brimming with real insight, wicked intelligence, and understood how people worked nearly completely (so much so that he built a few).
Don’t see that often in the movies, how people can be and really are. We prefer to believe that people are bad all the way through in every single characteristic when it’s just not so.
Just realized that the small IT firm where I’m CTOin’ up a storm will be more than 60% women in a few months as some new hires come onboard.
Now that’s a rarity if there ever was one.
When I bought a beer yesterday at the grocery store, the cashier asked for my ID and I laughed a little and gave it to her. Then she said, “Wait, what? How old are you?” after she looked at the date.
“I’m 42,” I said.
“Huh, wow,” she replied.
Here’s an actual decent selfie taken a couple of months ago, though it doesn’t really matter when it was taken since I’ve looked pretty much the same since I was 22 or so. First one I’ve ever posted on this blog, I believe.
I look kinda like a priest because I’m in my full business goth get-up in that photo. Yep, that’s what I wear to work when it’s cool enough. I do weird abstruse rituals with computers so it makes some sort of sense.