• 0 Posts
  • 455 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle
  • Having worked in the car industry (I got out after selling for a year, evil business), they don’t care about cash offers. Cash is less good to them, they WANT you to finance, if not through them (most preferred) then through another bank. Cash deals make the seller no extra money, and you’ve already advertised that you’re not willing to ‘play the game’ about the price. We were told to give people with cash deals less of our time and effort. You buying a car at a fair price is still a win to the dealer’s bottom line, and you might catch a salesman who has a quota to meet so he’s desperate for any sell, but most I met didn’t give two fucks if you walked away from a cash deal


  • I like to think of it as this super huge structure, with all these mysterious facets and faces cut into it. We found it, have no idea how to properly measure or capture it. We started as blind men, groping their eay through the dark, and now we’ve found ways to light a flame and to see the surface before us, but it’s so huge and there’s so many patterns layered over patterns that it’s uncomprehendingly beautiful and we have to continue to invent new tools and methods of processing what’s before us.




  • Full warning, I like that movie.

    I don’t think it celebrates abuse so much as it does point to the nature of abuse and self abuse between artists and their art, both from those that hold the keys to the kingdom of your success and from within as you bend yourself to meet those needs entirely of your own free choosing and obsession.

    The protagonist gets everything going for him. His family does love him, but can’t connect with his musical obsession even though they’re proud of him. He meets a girl he really likes, wants to get serious about, but to do that would mean to choose between her and his obsession. J. K. Simmons character has churned out success by holding himself, and by extension his band, to an extreme standard that requires that obsession to keep up with. He sees the potential in the protagonist, pushes him to reach those heights but also demands in very plain language that he be subservient to the craft. And every time the movie makes it clear that the protagonist is given a choice between regular, healthy life and the rigors imposed by his dedication, he chooses art every time.

    The reason I don’t think it celebrates abuse is because he isn’t ‘winning’ at the end of the story. He’s doggedly pursuing his dream and giving his all to the band, the music. He’s sweating profusely, his relationship with his parents is estranged, the girl of his dreams left him, and he’s just told his idol of an instructor that he’ll cue the instructor in and with that he gives in and gives the ultimate solo. It cost him everything, but it did pay into incredible music and the culmination of his efforts. Give it your all and you can have what you sought but if you give it your all and you’ll have nothing left.


  • Loops…kind of sucks. I get the point of it, but I tried using it like 15 minutes a day for a couple weeks to get used to it, but the features are lacking and the content is…well it’s filled with people who would abandon tiktok and other apps, so, it’s kind of boring.

    Not in a ‘there’s no brainrot’ way, in a ‘this is the third video in a row of just random AI slop and then it’s just some dude filming a tree for 20 seconds’.




  • You formulated a question where your answer means you don’t have ANY culpability even though you can clearly see the murders coming and mitigate it’s damage.

    Yes, outside of this decision, campaign to have Alice executed or jailed or whatever, but that won’t stop Alice from killing 5 people, she’s just GOING TO WIN if you don’t stop her. You CAN reduce the number of deaths and continue to fight, hopefully with 3 more people to stand up to that kind of tyranny.



  • The people who voted for the guy directly endorsed by nazis and hate groups, who has an agenda drafted by a prominent hate-monger, are indeed the problem.

    Yes, the other choice was a genocide apologist who ALSO sucks corporate dick, but has the decency to throw the average populous a bone now and again and doesn’t fuck up (as many) foreign trade deals and alliances.

    Yes, the SOLUTION is to change our election system. But the PROBLEM is fascism, and a shit ton of people voted for more fascism.





  • I disagree on such a wholehearted level.

    ‘He’s had serious pull in the democratic party for almost a decade’ - do you mean 8 years ago when the DNC yanked his spot and went full force behind Hillary, and then relegated him to a ‘radical leftist’ camp away from the core groups like Schumer and Pelosi?

    He’s been on the fringe of the party for as long as he’s been in the party. Consistently standing up for issues that are later accepted. He’s CONSTANTLY fighting for human rights and taking stances too far left to be mainstream, making all of the pushes seemingly moot because he can’t get bills to the floor in a republican congress because SOCIALISM and he can’t get bills to the floor in a Democrat congress because we never get to have one, and when we do, they say they’re not ‘bi-partisan enough to pass across the aisle’.

    Is he effective at getting laws passed, no. Is he a solitary and stalwart voice of reason almost every. single. time? Yes.





  • Oh fantastic, no one else posted this concept yet

    So, I think there’s an important connection there you’re touching on. Samurai and cowboys occupy the same space in media, and I’ll give you some examples.

    Someone else mentioned the movie, but Seven Samurai, a HIGHLY influential and well received film from japan in the 50s, helped inspire The Magnificent Seven, a key cowboy film from the early 60s.

    The film Yojimbo (please watch it if you haven’t, it’s just very well done, really funny, have to get over the ‘movies had NO real soundtrack back then’ problem if you’re not used to old films) is like watching The Matrix AFTER you’ve already seen the slow-mo and ‘i know Kung fu’ tropes in movies. The man rolls up into town, two sides opposed and neither really ‘good’ but innocents in the middle.

    What were called ‘spaghetti westerns’ in the past due to the Italian directors at the time, a majority chunk of those movies utilized similar filmography techniques and plots. The kids who watched those westerns also watched samurai films (cheap movie is a cheap movie on a weekend night) and the concept sort of melded over time to where the Ronin of Japan and the Lone Ranger of America are two flavors of the same steel-wielding hero.

    The way samurai in movies revere their swords, talking about the efficiency of a weapon, the artfulness or it, all VERY similar to how revolvers took/take a center stage for western fantasies. Add to that the individualism of the west, the rugged nature of a traveler with a weapon, the tie-in of ‘honor’ in both cultures, the ‘only lawmen can have a weapon in city limits’ laws that were featured in the America AND Japan at that time.

    Super neat