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exasperation

@ exasperation @lemmy.dbzer0.com

Posts
2
Comments
637
Joined
9 mo. ago

  • It really did

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  • The line has blurred enough for make it difficult to draw a clean line between true practical effects and special effects. Visual effects studios can and do merge real photography with digital rendering or retouching. Over 20 years ago, Andy Serkis had to don a special motion capture suit to play Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, but the advances since then now allow for more subtle (or less subtle) transformation of characters. The Mandalorian made extensive use of digitally rendered scenes actually projected on set so that the reflections and actor interactions feel more real in a computer-generated environment.

    And of course, actual movie editing tricks have always been around, where cuts and multiple takes can create real footage presented in a fictional sequence: a single actor playing twins/doppelgangers by simply filming each side's lines separately, and then editing them together. Plus things like costume design and wardrobe, set design, props, etc.

    The effectiveness of all these tricks do depend a lot on the skill and effort of the people involved, and that often means budget (including time). Rush jobs, or farming the work out to cheaper/less skilled workers, on any of these mean that corners will be cut and the end result will be less convincing, regardless of actual method.

  • The sunscreen scandal shocking Australia - the world's skin cancer capital

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  • This particular scandal, though, is that these companies are overstating the SPF rating on their sunscreens, and it looks like the mineral sunscreens are worse on that front.

  • tolken

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  • There's a book I read, Range by David Epstein, that really reinforces the idea that lots of experiences that don't cleanly fit into a CV are still very valuable. The core idea is that late specialization makes for better specialists, because very few fields stand alone. Having contextual background makes it so that you can better mix and match cross disciplinary skills, with your own experience and knowledge of yourself, to be better at whatever it is you're doing.

    The examples used in the book are Roger Federer (played many sports and didn't specialize in tennis until much later than the typical pro), Django Reinhardt (never formally schooled in music but an amazing jazz guitarist even after he lost 3 fingers), Van Gogh (many failed careers before finding success as a painter), and a bunch of others.

    But the core principle is the same: the real world is messy and doesn't boil down to simple factors, so having breadth is important when the system you come up in changes underneath your feet. The book also uses the counterexamples of Tiger Woods and the Polgar sisters who were dominant chess players, to describe how the fields of golf and chess give immediate, true, and objective feedback in a way that most of the world doesn't.

  • tolken

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  • He was constructing his own languages and scripts in his teens, after having learned Anglo Saxon and Latin (and seeing how those fed into modern English), plus Esperanto.

    He traveled all over Europe in the summers between university semesters, taking in the different landscapes, cultures, and languages.

    He was a British Army Officer for World War I, leading units consisting of men from different backgrounds (class, education, trade) from his own. He devised a code system to bypass Army censors to keep his wife updated on his location and movements. And he experienced the horrors of being in the front lines of one of the most horrific wars in history.

    Then after the war he became an accomplished academic, worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, specialized in Middle English and Old English translations, and translated several major works (including the definitive translation of Gawain and the Green Knight).

    So by the time he started formally working on Lord of the Rings, he had built up such a rich set of experiences, skillsets, and knowledge that everything he knew was going into that world building.

    No way a 25-year-old could have written Lord of the Rings. He needed 20+ years of adult experience to get to the point where he could write it.

  • Highly Advanced Culture

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  • "Boy" in English has a ton of potential connotations. As one of many examples, during the Civil Rights Movement there was a famous protest sign that said I AM A MAN to counter the way white men addressed black men as "boy."

  • If you argue for a cause like affordable housing for everyone, is it necessarily hypocritical if you also own investment properties?

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  • I believe in a baseline level of food, shelter, healthcare, and education being provided to all regardless of means. Plus things like parks, infrastructure, physical safety and security, etc.

    But just because I believe that everyone should have enough to eat doesn't mean that I don't believe there is a qualitative difference between that baseline level of sustenance and all sorts of enjoyment I can get from food above that level. A person has a right to food, but that doesn't change the fact I might be able to farm for profit. Or go up the value/luxury chain and run an ice cream parlor, or produce expensive meals, or buy and sell expensive food ingredients. I want schools to provide universal free lunch but I also know that there will always be a market for other types of food, including by for-profit producers (from farmers/ranchers to grocers to butchers to restaurateurs).

    The existence of public parks shouldn't threaten the existence of profitable private spaces like theme parks, wedding venues, other private spaces.

    So where do real estate investors sit in all this? I'm all for developers turning a profit in creating new housing. And don't mind if profit incentives provide liquidity so that people can freely buy and sell homes based on their own needs.

    I don't personally invest in real estate because I think it's a bad category of investment, but I don't think those who do are necessarily ideologically opposed to universal affordable housing. It's so far removed from the problems in affordable housing that you can't solve the problems simply by eliminating the profit.

  • Humorous four-panel graphics

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  • Say hello to Bary

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  • Isn't that canceled out by the pushing you do when you start to jump?

  • Unsettling

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  • The humor mainly comes from overly elaborate execution of fundamentally simple ideas, so it's usually pretty easy to summarize, even if the sheer amount of effort involved is so far outside the realm of plausible (or cost effective).

    The amount of effort that went into the Dumb Starbucks store, or the Michael Richards impersonator leaving a $10,000 tip, were mind bogglingly intricate ways to execute fundamentally simple big picture plans.

    His current show, The Rehearsal, really leans into that dynamic, too.

  • Unsettling

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  • In an episode of Nathan Fielder's Nathan for You, he once convinced a haunted house to try a gimmick that it starts off normal, but halfway in the staff and management freak out that one of the staff accidentally touched a guest, pulls them aside out of the haunted house into normal lighting, and a whole biohazard suit team and ambulance has to quarantine the guest for a bit in a series of escalating interactions that they've contracted some highly contagious and deadly disease, before they reveal that it was all part of the haunted house.

    Then a real lawyer is waiting at the end asking if they want to sue for emotional distress, because Nathan Fielder wants the haunted house to drum up publicity that it was so scary that they've been sued for it.

  • 02 September 1988

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  • You're telling me that an implied threat of violence is the only reason why a married man chooses not to say something bad about his wife, to their kid, when she's in the room?

  • 02 September 1988

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  • Is the domestic violence in this comic?

  • old shows with important lesbian/bisexual women?

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  • He is aware of the effect he has on women.

  • I need a healthy alternative to egg and bacon(nitrates) sandwiches. whats your daily lunch?

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  • I prefer king oyster mushrooms, sliced and marinated, roasted till crispy. A little bit of soy sauce and a little bit of liquid smoke in the marinade makes it pretty bacony.

  • I need a healthy alternative to egg and bacon(nitrates) sandwiches. whats your daily lunch?

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  • The word tacos implies Mexican food, and Mexican preparations of beans traditionally use lard as the cooking fat.

  • I need a healthy alternative to egg and bacon(nitrates) sandwiches. whats your daily lunch?

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  • Yeah, that's how food processors cure meat without using curing salts: they just replace it with celery juice or celery powder that contains natural nitrates, which cause the same effect but allow for different labeling rules.

  • A jeweler friend of mine banned from /r/somethingimade because he recreate a ring found in a viking burial site with inscription "for allah" citing it promotes terrorism.

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  • Yeah, "Allah" is what Lebanese, Syrian, and other Arab Christians have called their Christian God as well.

  • I pay $15k a year health insurance for my family, it only kicks in after I spend $5k, and a doctor can say I require one thing and the insurance can reject it

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  • That's basically what an HSA is.

    You sign up for a high deductible plan where you pay for your own medical expenses, but document them, up until you hit your out of pocket maximum ($8300 for individuals or $16600 for families), at which point your insurance kicks in to cover the catastrophic bills you typically won't have in a typical year.

    Meanwhile, you are eligible to contribute $4300 per year for individuals or $8750 for families into an HSA, which has very favorable tax treatment (pretax money deposited, not taxed when taken out for health expenses, even after growing a lot), and allows you to invest everything above the minimum cash balance (varies by provider, usually something like $1000 or $2000).

    That way in a year you happen to hit a $1 million illness or injury you're still covered against catastrophic financial loss, but you generally pay your own way with tax-deductible funds that you're allowed to invest for growth.

  • Inspiring. Innovating.

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  • Forests cannot grow faster than trees decay forever.

    Maybe not forever as in the heat death of the universe, but I don't see why timber can't be a carbon sink for timelines longer than humanity.

    There are structures made of wood that have been standing for over 1000 years. There are lots of structures made of wood that have been standing for over 500 years.

    Hominid-harvested wood still exists in archaeological sites dating back from before homo sapiens emerged as a species

    And coal is basically timber and other plant matter that has been sequestered underground and subjected to pressure, heat, and time.

    Plants can provide a carbon sink that lasts long enough to remove atmospheric carbon indefinitely, especially with modern engineering (making carbon-rich soil with charcoal dust, manufacturing cross laminated timber as a building material that should last centuries, if not millennia, etc.).