utopologist [any]

This might be a good opportunity to do some self-reflecting on your beliefs about the DPRK! When you observe that objective facts don’t line up with your perception of this country, the correct thing to do is not to say “how can I twist what I’m observing into an explanation that will leave my perception unchallenged”; it’s to say “perhaps my perception of this country is flawed” and re-evaluate

Both film versions of Solaris, though for vastly different reasons. Lem’s original novel is super dry and hard sci fi, like most of Lem’s work, which isn’t my favorite kind of sci fi. Both films really delve into the fascinating psychological questions of the situation Kelvin finds himself in. The Tarkovsky version is the best, unsurprisingly, since Tarkovsky is the GOAT, but I also really enjoy the Soderbergh version with George Clooney. The latter is hollywoodized compared to the Soviet version, but still is a really interesting and gorgeous movie

There’s the annoying stereotype you sometimes see where people are like “Oh, Stalin wasn’t smart, he was a brute who only rose to power through violence and coercion” b/c when you read anything he wrote, he shows a clear understanding of his subject by making very careful, easy to follow arguments that explain the concepts he talks about concisely. Obviously you gotta hand it to the kind Vladimir Ilyich but for me Stalin might actually be more enjoyable to read

The secret to making things better in the world is that you can’t rely on people making good choices, you have to remove the bad choices.

I also would love to know about this. Sometimes I’ll get lucky with scripts being on libgen or annas-archive but usually anything newer than like 2000 is a challenge to find