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Darren (1153)
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Not as good as the original, but I enjoyed it
The Obsolete Man
I always found it funny that David's parents didn't come to London.
Has anybody here read a real book about vampires...
Post-apocalypse people shouldn't have needed dogs to spot terminators
So how did St. Olaf massacre the trolls?
Possibly the most definitively American movie ever made
What is your favorite episode?
An interesting omission from the movie
Steve's '80s fashion scenes.
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Boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964. Walsh was born in 1987. He's not even Gen X (1965-1980), he's a millennial. You are off by two entire generations. The rest of your objections are no more accurate.
10/07 was a false flag operation huh? And I'm one of "them."
Wow.
Okay, you are a tinfoil hat-wearing nutjob if you think this. I'm not wasting my time with lunatics. You're one for the ignore list.
Okay, so observing historical reality, that has applied in literally every war ever fought is "rationalizing." I am not aware of a <i>single</i> exception to this reality in all of recorded history, but that's "rationalizing."
Okay, yeah, whatever. You are not a serious, reasonable person. You have latched onto a statistic, like a dog with a bone that it won't let go, and everything else, every other fact, every other consideration of morality, of right and wrong, and malicious intent, etc. just rolls off you like water off a duck's back, as you say "muh twenty percent!"
You have taken an unreasonable and immoral position, and you are siding with <i>terrorists</i> who would cut your throat as joyfully as they did the throats of the 10/07 victims.
Okay, so dispute any of the facts I've cited. Dispute the percentage of Gazan supporters of Hamas. Dispute the atrocity, the barbarity, or the veracity of the war crimes committed by Hamas on 10/07. Dispute that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that has hidden munitions, supplies, fighters, etc. in civilian sites. Dispute that Hamas broke a pre-existing ceasefire to start this conflict, or that it has rejected offers of a two state solution if it will abandon demands for the eradication of Israel. Dispute that Hamas has the destruction of Israel built into its charter. Dispute it, if you can.
I won't hold my breath, because you can't.
There's no both sides-ism here. One side is Nazi-level evil, the other, while flawed and human, is merely flawed and human. Pity you can't seem to see it. Looks like you have succumbed to the argument to moderation fallacy -- i.e. the Golden Mean fallacy: the fallacy that the truth is always in the middle of two opposites. Most of the time, perhaps, it is. Not always. Not all claims are morally equal. Sometimes, there really is a clear-cut bad guy. This is one of those times.
I'm not rationalizing anything. YOU'RE apologizing for terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers. Savage barbarians who have committed some of the most despicable crimes anyone has ever heard of. Take your own advice and look in the mirror. <i>These</i> are the people whose side you are taking? Stop drinking the leftist Kool Aid -- just because the Palestinians are the underdog, does <i>not</i> mean they are the good guys. And the Israelis aren't "settler colonialists" either.
If 20% of the population of the Gaza strip is dead, it is because <i>they brought it on <b>themselves.</b></i> People keep chanting "ceasefire now!" Well sorry, Hamas already had a ceasefire. Hamas broke it on October 7th, 2023. Their actions that day are pure, unadulterated evil. Gang rape, murder, infanticide, kidnapping, all targeting civilians, not soldiers. And then they retreat back into the Gaza strip to use the population there as human shields. And the Gazans themselves have willingly allowed themselves to be so used. This is the same people who have children's programs extolling the virtues of growing up to be a "suicide warrior." These are people who have marinated their children in hatred for generations now. On on 10/07/23, they launched an unprovoked attack, deliberately targeting civilians, women, children. And polls show an overwhelming majority of the citizens of Gaza support this unspeakable savagery.
So fuck 'em. They're evil. As evil as the Nazis were, and anyone with a working moral compass can see it. They get what they get. No sympathy for them. Not. One. Jot.
When we defeated Nazism and Japanese militarism in the 1940s, it took bombing Axis cities off the map and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians to accomplish it. That was regrettable, but necessary, and the collateral damage was unavoidable. The Israelis are currently being orders of magnitude more surgical than we were capable of being back then, but there is still inevitable collateral damage, because war, as William T. Sherman observed, is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Israel's cause is just, Hamas is evil, and your apologizing for them is despicable.
Really? <i>That</i> is supposed to be some kind of proof? A statement loaded with conditional and qualifying words?
<blockquote><b>Although it didn't harm the box office,</b> when asked, male participants said most often that they <b>thought</b> it would <b>probably</b> have been better if it was a guy. <b>Even though their impact was minimal,</b> those opinions and feelings were common, when asked.</blockquote>
Sorry, you got nothing. I have no way of knowing how rigorous or scientific this survey was, what specific questions were asked, what population was sampled, what the sample size was, what the method of obtaining the interviews was, the percentages on which the conclusions were based, etc. All that matters in assessing the validity of the poll. And even if I <i>did</i> know all of those things, that statement was so loaded with qualifiers and conditionals as to be almost self-contradictory.
No, my point stands. Female protagonists are fine, when they are interesting, relatable, well-written characters. There are lots of examples of female characters who are. The problem with too many modern female protagonists, is that they are poorly written Mary Sues who, because they exist to advance a narrative, are not allowed to have any flaws or character defects that would not only make them relatable, but give them a character arc as they work to overcome said flaws.
This works for male characters too: Han Solo was always a more popular character than Luke Skywalker in the SW OT, because he has a more interesting character arc as he goes from selfish rogue to selfless hero. Batman is consistently more popular than Superman, because as a mere human, he's more relatable, and easier to write interesting stories for than a godlike invulnerable alien. John Carter, from ERB's novel "A Princess of Mars" is not relatable because he's a <i>textbook</i> example of a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu), created decades before the term even existed.
Well, 75¢ was significantly more money in the early 60s than it was in the 80s -- U.S. money inflated a lot during the 70s. In 1983, it took $3.25 to buy what $1 would have bought in 1963, and by 1990, that was up to $4.27. I was born in 1968, so as a kid in the 70s, I could buy comic books for 25¢ each, and a large Slurpee at 7 Eleven for even less. Prices on the show didn't seem strange to me.
Mayberry was a quiet, small town with very little crime; there really were places with no round-the-clock law enforcement, but a sheriff, who would be on call for serious incidents.
Mayberry might have just been in a dry county. There are still some around today, and ironically, the Jack Daniel's distillery is located in one of them -- their product can't be legally sold in the place where it's made.
I played cowboys and Indians lots as a kid, or cops and robbers. Kids of my generation and earlier spent more time outside growing up, and I think we were much better off for it.
I saw lot of kids riding bikes on the sidewalk too. Nobody minded if it was small children, but by the time you were getting into your teens, you weren't supposed to, and most of us didn't. I also think there was more respect for rules in general when I was growing up than there is today, even the small ones.
Then you are proving the truth of the old saying "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics." It also proves you're a shallow, superficial thinker who is uncritically regurgitating the talking points of a left-captured mainstream media.
Military operations in urban territory are always going to produce civilian casualties. Those in Gaza are no worse, per capita, than those in Mosul, Fallujah, Aleppo, Grozny, and other recent examples, and are better than most. And there wasn't a <i>tenth</i> as much bitching and moaning about any of those examples as we are hearing nonstop about Gaza. This is all the more remarkable when you remember that Israel is fighting an enemy that deliberately and determinedly hides behind civilians as part of its war strategy.
Israel is being held to a different, and higher standard than anyone else ever is.
So enough. They're <i>not</i> engaging in ethnic cleansing, and claims that they are are simply dishonest. I'm also tired of hearing that Israel's response is "disproportionate." Of course it is. It should be. You don't win wars and defeat enemies by being "proportionate." You win by crushing your enemy and destroying either his will or his ability to keep fighting you. You don't have to fight like barbarians to do that either, and Israel isn't.
Hamas certainly is though. The best answer I've heard to the accusation that Israel is "disproportionate" is that, well, Israel tried to be proportionate, but they couldn't find enough IDF soldiers willing to gang rape Palestinian women until their pelvises broke, cut off the heads of infants or set them on fire, or murder whole families and then call their parents to brag about it, so we have to settle for the Israelis being disproportionate.
I know. Halloran's and Danny's ESP. The Grady Twins seen by Danny. Delbert Grady, Lloyd, and the ballroom ghosts all seen by Jack. The room 237 woman, seen by Jack and Danny both. The ghosts and apparitions Wendy sees in the movie's final act. Grady conversing with Jack just before Jack was let out of the storeroom. There are all kinds of things that make it clear that this is <i>not</i> all just psychosis on Jack's part.
As I've said before, I'm just exasperated by people coming up with theories like this, because A) they're <i>really</i> overthinking things, B) they're flat out ignoring the things that don't fit their pet theory, and C) they have to do some pretty extreme mental gymnastics to justify the theory with the on screen evidence they've decided they will accept instead of ignoring.
I've always had little patience with that sort of thing, because it's intellectually sloppy, or even dishonest. A theory has to account for <i>all</i> the facts, if it doesn't, it's a bad theory, and it's stupid to defend it. The smart thing, the intellectually honest thing is to come up with a better theory.
Honestly, theories like this, and like "Bruce was really dead at the end of 'The Dark Knight Rises' and Alfred was just daydreaming," or "John Mason from 'The Rock' is actually James Bond," just make me roll my eyes. They are a testament to the fact that some people just overthink the <i>shit</i> out of some things. And it wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that for all these theories to be valid, the holder of said theory has to studiously cherry pick the evidence on screen he'll accept, and ignore anything (and there always are things) that flat out negate that interpretation of things.
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