2021 March❮❮prevnext❯❯

March 1, 2021

2021.03.01

Open Photo Gallery


























Deep Nostalgia - We now have the technology to make Harry Potter-verse Photo-like animations from still headshots. Potentially creepy in at least two different ways, but also potentially nostalgic and beautiful.
Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself – a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.
Fran Lebowitz

March 2, 2021

2021.03.02

TEXAS! LAND OF RECKLESS STUPIDITY!
Cash out on freedom now... Pay for it later! (whether from frozen-ass grid or COVID deaths from this premature idiot.)
I really loved the drumline cadences we had at Euclid High School in the early 90s, and I'm always keeping my ears open for similar stuff. The first half of this gets the spirit of it. (So many other drumlines have such boring, technically challenging but funkless stuff... a good cadence is kind of like a melody, it has a larger form a casual listener can really grab onto.)

new music playlist february 2021

2021.03.03
Laid Back
Kirk Joseph's Backyard Groove
Nice laid back NOLA groove
Ordered Kirk Joseph's CD, loved his work from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band



Ruff Ryders' Anthem
DMX
DMX is so visceral.
Referenced in this meme.



I Give Good Parent (feat. Rachel Bloom)
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Cast
Very witty bit if hip hop from her show.
(Think I was looking up "You Can Touch My Boobies")
I Can't Get Started
Kirk Joseph's Backyard Groove
Dr. John joins in.
Baby I Can't Please You
Sam Phillips
A long time ago I read the line "I know you say love when you mean control" and it really stuck with me... not sure if it came from this song or not.
Blackout
Kirk Joseph's Backyard Groove
I sense a bit of Maynard Ferguson in this one too.



Love You Madly
Cake
Haven't heard much Cake in a while!
Intro to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"



Flava In Ya Ear (GTA Remix) - Franklin, Lamar, Michael, Trevor, Niko & Roman
Claude Gnome
Really clever combination of clips from the GTA games to become a kind of parody/homage of a classic hip hop track - amazed at how well it works.



Most Hyped JIG 2 at Pep Rally
Newnan High School Drumline
Great drumline cadence!
I'm always looking out for these, I really miss the ones they had in my high school marching band.
It's Time To Get Laid
Micucci/Macy
Little promotional ditty for an indie movie.
tetris OST cover
MayTree
Decent acappella cover of the classic Russian song.
Friday (Remix) [feat. 3OH!3, Big Freedia & Dorian Electra]
Rebecca Black
Electronic Remix of the old youtube meme-worthy song. Dang I love Big Freedia
Hard Drive
Cassandra Jenkins
Kind of a spoken word piece, reminiscent of the song "Rock Me Now"...
Looked up the artist when I thought about her brilliant cover of "Wild World"
A Bale Ndikuwuzeni
Gasper Nali
via Gasper Nali and His Homemade Bass Guitar



You Move Ya Lose
Extra Crispy Brass Band
Nice, tight cover of a HONK! classic.



I Know the End
Phoebe Bridgers
Modern melancholy pop
Saw it on SNL.



Nicotine
Jane Birkin
French song, nice groove!
from that Netflix Fran Lebowitz thing.
Loco ft. Bad Bunny
SNL
The video for this SNL skit is really well done...

I've always loved "found percussion" but this person takes it to whole new levels...

What is grief, if not love persevering?
Vision on WandaVision, making the rounds

March 4, 2021

2021.03.04
Stockton's Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off - "A new study of the city's program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes."

When I posted this on facebook, a conservative friend pointed out this is a pretty small sample size, like 125 folks, my response:

There are definitely questions on how it would scale. But my dislike of “Go Fund Me” healthcare and similar makes me think it’s worth looking into. since the 80s, productivity has kept going up, but the benefits have been skewing more and more north as well. This is bad for a capitalist economy; the health of an economy is measured by the throughput of spending. 35 people buying a new car does a lot more good for the economy than 1 dude buying a yacht.
My friend Sophie got on Boston.com for She's nearly done with her pandemic project: Walking every single street of Cambridge

"Photo by Kirk Israel" ;-)
Why was Yoda afraid of 7

Because 9 7 8

March 5, 2021

2021.03.05

Gee, ain't it funny that all the things the US warned us about in regards to socialism is happening with capitalism?
"There will be lines for food!"
"They won't be able to keep power on!"
"Medical care will be rationed!"
"You won't have real choices in elections!"
Gosh. Do tell.
Jack'sHouseOfPancakes (@RegimeChangeInc)

If you play multiple instruments you are polyjamorous

March 6, 2021

2021.03.06
There's a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise Really interesting piece- objectively speaking, the current American always-praising, rebuild all family life around a kids PoV is rather unusual.

Trying to think if there's a lesson for my interactions with my super niece - it feels like the secret is to make kids reliable judges of their own actions and accomplishments- not dependent so much on others praise and feedback. but on the other hand, not completely disregarding the idea that community standards exist. And that other people WILL judge them, and those judgements may affect their circumstance.

(and glad to hear the term "alloparenting", the other people around who do parent like tasks and so play that kind of role for a kid.)

Admittedly, it's a declutter fail (in terms of giving me hope to cling on to hardware for some future project) but I am rather impressed that I my circa-1992 Yamaha PSR-300 computer can go through MIDI-to-USB to USB-to-USB-C into my Mac and Garage Band handles everything without a blink.

March 7, 2021

2021.03.07
consume the art
don't even chew
found prose poem from Jackbox Game Night

March 8, 2021

2021.03.08
Wading through Mcgilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary" about brain lateralization. Of course it starts by having to shake off the 90s pop-psych oversimplifications of "left brained/right brained people" and even then it's tough to know which "just so" stories should have the most weight.

One attempt at summary is: the left hemisphere, besides famously being the seat of language, is rather reductionistic. The right hemisphere tends towards holism.

For a long time I assumed flare ups of outrage (like when stuck in particularly stupid traffic, or at a computer system that JUST CAN'T BE DOING WHAT IT SAYS IT'S DOING) were right-hemisphere. That the right brain is of general feeling, and it's the left brain that applies the rules of society, which are language-based. And the feeling was a burst of right brain before the rules brain left brain could restore order.

But now, I suspect it might be the opposite? The left brain loves is categories and definitions. In those two cases, what's stirring the outrage is the sense that Things Are Not As They Must Be., so maybe that's the part that is provoking the flare. (My aunt mentions how much outrage I'd express when losing a boardgame as a kid...)

Other things:
1. So... is my inner voice, my internal monologue, mostly the product of my left hemisphere? Since it's linguistic? Or is that a misthink, that the left hemisphere is more just the broadcast booth representing a more balanced set of insights?

2. I've witnessed a part of me that just frickin' loves snacks and seems to act like a clever dog - waiting for a moment of inattention or willpower fatigue from the whole to push the organism to going and grabbing that treat. Which hemisphere is doing that? Again previously I would have assumed the mute right hemisphere, transgressing the codified rules understood by the left, but now I don't know.

3. I figure Marie Kondo "joy sparking" - that's GOTTA be a technique to try and engage the right brain-ish holism of getting a feel for what the object really means in our life vs the left brain's reductionistic "well it can still be used for X" or the left brain's sense of "this is a thing I own, that's it's proper category".

I wish I could talk with someone really versed in this stuff. And I'm aware that I might be taking awfully big sips of the Kool Aid, especially since I'm worried Mcgilchrist might end up sounding a bit reactionary to me as he gets into expressing how he thinks society is becoming too left brained, at its own peril.
Decluttering. Why do I feel like I'd be less of a person if I got rid of old video game systems I really don't play much, and are increasingly a bit of a pain to keep going?

And why does that feel less legitimate than feeling diminished if I did another book purge?

It's weirdly an ego thing, books and games are part of my identity. In both cases there's also a semi-legitimate "I might want to reference that book / play that game a bit", and/or show them to someone else. And with both there's a "this is a visible demonstration of my smarts/geek cred".

Like, we aren't our possessions... but we aren't NOT our possessions.
Amazing tweet thread on the history of white supremacy in the USA and how we've treated black people.

kitties i have cohabitated with

2021.03.09


In total, over 40% of the South Bronx was burned or abandoned between 1970 and 1980, with 44 census tracts losing more than 50% and seven more than 97% of their buildings to arson, abandonment, or both.
yikes. I think before this when I heard “NYC in the 70s was rough” I was hearing about Manhattan being seedy and rough, I had no idea about the Bronx being absolutely devastated
Far-right news sources on Facebook more engaging, Unlike other news across the political spectrum, no "misinformation penalty" for far-right pages

This is why a lot of "both sides do it!!!" talk is off. There's propaganda on both sides, but an important asymmetry in the relationship to preferring actually true things.

March 10, 2021

2021.03.10
One of the few videos of "Groove is in the Heart" live that has the hip hop break live... often they just play the recording (at least for that part) and have a cardboard sign with Q-Tip's head. As always Lady Miss Kier's dancing is amazing.

However long I live here I will never come to think that my liberty requires military hobbyists to have unfettered access to high-powered weaponry. If civilian gun ownership is supposed to be a protection against the power of an overmighty state, it's at best symbolic. If it's for protection against other citizens, it doesn't seem to be working. Sentimental fidelity to eighteenth century civic norms doesn't seem like a good trade-off for Sandy Hook.
Hari Kunzru in Harper's, noting how people from other lands who see the levels of shootings here know it's not a difference in the character of the people, it's the guns.

The word "honesty" is used as a kind of weapon in everyday conversation. When someone says "can I be honest with you?" you should always say "No".
David Whyte

March 11, 2021

2021.03.11
Happy (?) Work From Home anniversary to me.

March 12, 2021

2021.03.12
So, Melissa and I have been house hunting this winter, and seem to be on track (knock wood) for closing on a condo in Arlington next Thursday, and so will be moving in April.

Definitely aware of the privilege in being able to buy right now - I'm more lucky than good to have the resources to do this. (A possible downpayment kind of fell into my lap from my last company, and stumbling onto techie stuff as a career path in general - the 90s right before the first dot com thing - was also crazy good luck.)

But yeah, househunting is dedicating your weekends to an enormously stressful new hobby. It's a crazy contradiction - to do it well you have to deeply imagine yourself inhabiting a new place, cultivate an empathy for this future possible you. But you also shouldn't become too emotionally attached to that life in any one place, because if it's good chances are a dozen other folks are hankering for it too, and you probably won't get it.

I'm sort of proud of how I played the bidding (and getting a preinspection done so we could join this no-contingencies wild west) and Melissa was great at being a lot more detail oriented about the pluses and minuses of each place, I tended to hang back and just get the general feel.
Someone Totally Ruined the Memory of PalmOS By Putting Twitter on It... heh.
Sisyphus 2600! Now in physical form.

March 13, 2021

2021.03.13
Making the rounds:



Wonder what's real and fake in it... I think the sound must be ginned up, don't actual drones have a ton of rotor whine?

March 14, 2021

2021.03.14
Man shouldn't be able to see his own face – there's nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (1982)


It's so weird being raised by christians and spending your entire childhood being told to care about others then one day they're just like you're not actually supposed to care about others you stupid socialist

March 15, 2021

2021.03.15
Cat 3 Shows their Stuff. Made me laugh.

March 16, 2021

2021.03.16
Yesterday I made a devblog entry the joy of trivial webapps in php - calorie tracker with graph. I really do love being able to easily stand up my own bespoke web services!
whut

The problem isn't that robots are taking over our jobs, the problem is that we've created a world where that's somehow a bad thing.
heythisispaul, /r/showerthoughts

March 17, 2021

2021.03.17

Ran into this a while back:  Automating my job by using GPT-3 to generate database-ready SQL to answer business questions. "Natural language programming" has been a long sought-after goal and this is impressive but I think it will be a while before we trust the results!

March 18, 2021

2021.03.18
What has 4 thumbs, starts with 2 letter M's, and will be moving into our new Arlington condo next month? Me and Melissa !!!

free will and zeno's arrow

2021.03.19
Listening to Sam Harris' final thoughts on free will. I agree most of us have an illusory sense of "self", but the idea that there's no free will... I mean he talks about "involuntarily action or a reflex" vs doing things "voluntarily". But how do we have a sense of "voluntarily" or "choice" without free will?

The arguments against free will feels both Inarguably True yet Absolutely Incorrect in the same way Zeno's paradox of the arrow (The arrow can never hit a target because it must travel halfway to its destination, then the next halfway again, then again, ad infinitum) feels technically true yet wrong. And for similar reasons - if every "choice" is made for us by this long chain of things outside of us - either a series of dominoes falling (like Newton) or dice rolling (like Quantum mechanics) stretching back to the origin of the Universe... like the arrow's flight, each step back to the past becomes incrementally less significant. If you understand infinitudes, you have a clear understanding of Zeno's paradox, you know that summing 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 [...] = 2. I think a similar conceptual leap is needed to reconcile a facile "so free will does not exist!" with our intuition that we have will power we can apply or not to the situations we find ourselves in.

We are part of the mechanism that is taking input and making output, even if we are sometimes fooled by how deliberate we are on it. Even if it's a subconscious reckoning that our narrative self claims credit for - will retroactively slap a logical framework on - it's not entirely wrong to do so, because that subconsciousness is a part of our selves as much as conscious part. (Like my coworker Scott Albertine said: "Consciousness is what running the algorithm feels like from the inside.")
Love the retrofuture/Zeerust! Especially the animation at the beginning section.

(via McGST)

March 20, 2021

2021.03.20
My friend Sophie got a lot of politicians to celebrate her walking every Cambridge street quarantine project



Unpopular Opinion: I feel like Americans are using "whilst" way too much.

March 21, 2021

2021.03.21
I've been geeking away at a somewhat esoteric project, an editor for 48 pixel wide atari 2600 graphics (harder than it sounds, good for title screens) and added color yesterday:

"somebooks"on Atari Age made that absolutely charming image with it. Definitely is excellent to see someone make something cool with a tool you provided.

March 22, 2021

2021.03.22
On his canonical birthday, a nice piece on the many personas of Captain Kirk.
What if "data" were also a verb? I data you; you data me. They data us; we data them.

In case that seems too outlandish, consider two synonymic neighbors of "data": "record" and "measure." Both of these words exist as nouns (I made a record), as verbs (We measured the temperature of the room), and indeed as verbal nouns (They found a list of measurements and recordings). The verbal forms of "record" and "measurement" make communication about the act of making records or taking measurements much easier. If we made "data" a verb, rather than having to say the National Security Agency was collecting data on our every interaction, movement, and metabolic function, we could simply say "They data us."

Data is not inert, yet its perceived passivity is one of its most dangerous properties. This is why when citizens are warned that a government or corporation is collecting data about them, so many are underwhelmed. The act of collection seems so harmless, so indifferent, so objective. But of course data is not collected and then left alone: it is used as a substrate for decision-making and as an instrument for differentiation, discrimination, and damage. The systems of data collection and use are humming with the capacity for bias, influence, action, and violence.
Jer Thorp, from "Living in Data", via Harper's Magazine.
I'm less privacy concerned than many; for a while I thought it was a weird form of "not minding attention" but also, I'm fortunate in being on the "good" side of a lot of the lines that data collection draws. (My music/activism not withstanding.)

March 23, 2021

2021.03.23
Through the history of mankind, this question has been asked: "Why are we here, and what makes us act as we do?" Religion after religion has been formed in a fruitless attempt to find some answer. The proton, neutron, and electron come closer to an answer to the question of life than any other offered. Science is broad, not narrow, as so many persons smugly believe. When I first fell in love with you, one electron hit another in my head, causing a chemical reaction, billions of electrons hitting billions of other electrons. These electrons flowed through a conductor, a nerve, all over the body, causing further reactions wherever they flowed, Valves opened and closed; new chemicals were pitted into my bloodstream. I put my arm around you, kissed you, told you I loved you. That one electron liked you better than anybody else.
Kurt Vonnegut (to his girlfriend Jane)

March 24, 2021

2021.03.24

March 25, 2021

2021.03.25
Melissa and I are moving in just under 3 weeks, I'm already leaning hard into "sorry future self, I'm just throwing all this stuff in a box, you sort it out, I'm on a deadline."

I'm (again) wanting to embrace a mild minimalism, or at least reject some of my present packrat tendencies. Trying to think about my trouble spots:
* books - they let me feel like I'm projecting smartness, and I do sometimes want to refer to the odd volume.
* old games - another self-image issue ("I am deeply versed in the history of video games") combined with "every once in a while I might want to get back to play that one thing" - even though sitting down to play is uncommon for me. Our new space is great, but compact enough that I won't be making too much of a separate gaming den; I'm even on the fence about "old CRT with an Atari" corner.
* movies (DVD/BlueRay) have elements of that, but are only a few shelves worth of stuff, and fairly orderly looking.
* electronic doodads
* toys and interesting items - decorative but enjoyable to fiddle with (like random percussion instruments etc)

I think those last two are where I need to work the hardest. I've shoved most of that stuff in boxes, and I don't think I'm going to miss much of it in the weeks 'til I move... and so I'm trying to really breathe in how much nice having JUST the stuff I use regularly at hand is - that the absence of piles of crap is a nice framing for the stuff that matters.

And part of it is understanding is that it's a 80/20, 90/10 kind of thing. For all the stuff I might get rid of, its almost a certainty that I will say "oh I wish I had that" for at least one thing (or worse, futilely hunt for it, forgetting it was disposed of)/ But that's ok. Life is full of small imperfections (like lacking an item you used to have but don't now) but feeling hemmed in by clutter is a LARGE imperfection.
The day I got my execution date, I learned something that's never left me. You have to be right here, in this moment. Like a child. They're not thinking about tomorrow or last week. They're just here. Now. Seeing a smile on someone's face, the light in their eyes, is enough. That's perfect contentment. That's joy. It's taken me a lifetime to learn that life's deepest meaning isn't found in accomplishments, but in relationships. All there ever is is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love. And that ... That's a whole lifetime.
Death Row Inmate, collected by Lyden harris in "Right Here, Right Now".


Sage Sohier, Bruce and Don, Washington, D.C., 1987 via “In the Summer of 1986, photographer Sage Sohier set out to document the lives of gay Americans in their homes. It was the peak of AIDS hysteria, and her intimate photos stood (and continue to stand) in humanizing defiance to the horrible rumours and fears circulating about the gay community in mainstream society”
I wonder how many religious conservatives who say that student debt forgiveness is an immoral slap in the face to people who have paid up know about Jubilee years?
"According to the Book of Leviticus, Hebrew slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of Yahweh would be particularly manifest."
William Shatner Celebrates His 90th Birthday by Being Turned Into an AI. Huh.

March 26, 2021

2021.03.26
RIP Beverly Cleary! May we all be a little Ramona the Brave today.
As predicted by RBG, Georgia is becoming a cesspool of voter suppression. Closing polling places, especially focused on Black neighborhoods, and then making it illegal to pass out food and water? Really, you fuckheads, if you can't win elections honestly than change your god damn policies.

"Actually it's about election integrity" is the new "Actually it's about ethics in gaming journalism". These fuckers have power, they're worried about losing it, and so they change the rules of the game.

March 27, 2021

2021.03.27
The Sky isn't black at night. It becomes transparent. Outer space is black.
Ginghis, /r/showerthoughts

I'm wrestling with an idea that is either one of the most striking summations I've come up with, or a half-baked sophomoric glob of just-so-story pseudo-science:

We are of two mind systems (probably correlated with the hemispheres, but that's not absolutely critical to this model): one mind (the right hemisphere - the non-linguistic, holistic side) accepts the world as it is. The other (the left hemisphere - reductionist and grasping/tool-manipulating - the most notable of those tools being language) considers the world as it wishes it to be.

(I'm about 1/3 of the way through "The Master and the Emissary" and it probably shows- but it's a book I take with a massive grain of salt.)

For me there's some weird contradictions implied by that, and my compulsion to subjugate subjective preferences and knowledge to the best guess about the objectively true and best - like it's the right hemisphere striving for the holistic view, but it has to do it with language, where the left holds more sway.

Heh, was thinking of the H.G. Wells quote "The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.'" except I thought he was talking about language not mind.

$2,000,000 50x Cashword solver/checker

2021.03.28
Melissa's folks sometimes give scatchers (scratch-off lottery tickets) on holidays... (Christmas actually, unearthed during moving preperations...)

In part she got two sheets of "$2,000,000 50x Cashword" which combines the thrill of gambling with the excitement of crosswords (or maybe more like wordhunts) - they give you 20 letters (generally missing a critical vowel or two :-D ) and then two completed crosswords of words, and if you spell 2 or more words in either of the crosswords (separately), you win! 2 words wins your money back, up to 11 words that gets you a million.

But, it's sort of annoying/anxiety producing to check the damn crosswords, and in the words of Douglas Adams who said he was "rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.”. I decided to make a "solver"...enter your letters at the top, all the 3+ letter words from the grids, and it will show you all the letters you're missing, or if you win!

Your Letters:

Words from Grid: (horiz+vert, 3+ letters)

Results:


He lends at interest and takes a profit. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head.
Ezekiel 18:13.

God isn't such a big capitalist, huh?
(and yeah, that's OT, but y'know, Jesus was throwing over moneychanger tables. And hanging out with the tax collector.)
Best semi-technical description of what happened with the Big Boat stuck in the Suez I've seen

March 29, 2021

2021.03.29

empire strikes back strike back

2021.03.30
Lower your blast shields, kids, cuz Uncle Hunty's been drinkin' Two Buck Chuck and doing the dishes, and now he has the hottest take in the galaxy: Empire Strikes back is the Batman of Star Wars movies: something you think is really cool when you're an adolescent, but which seems exponentially dumber the more you think about it.

ISSUE #1! The Force. In the first Star Wars, "the Force" was mostly about intuition and "trusting your feelings". If you were REALLY strong with the Force, you could put a whammy on weak-minded people, like "these aren't the droids you're looking for" or when Obi Wan made some other stormtroopers think they heard a noise behind them. Darth Vader was strong enough in the Force that he made a dude think he was choking to death, and he had, like, a weird feeling when his old mentor Obi Wan was nearby, but it was so weak he dismissed it.

Then in Empire Strikes Back, the Force is suddenly full-on telekinesis in the first 10 minutes with Luke TKing his lightsaber to his hand, Yoda levitating an entire X-Wing out of a swamp, Vader TK-throwing stuff around during a fight, and Luke doing a wire-fu super jump. AND there's Force ghosts! Whereas Luke hearing Obi Wan saying "use the Force, Luke!" at the end of the first movie could've been a memory or at most Obi Wan's will reaching out through the Force to deliver one final message, in Empire he's right there walkin' around, sitting on logs and having conversations like this is all totally normal. AAAAAND then at the very end Luke and Darth have a telepathic conversation across probably thousands of miles of space, so that's part of the Force now, too. Which brings us to...

ISSUE #2! A big important message of the first movie was that even if you're just some rando farmboy from Planet Nowheresville, you could learn the mystical arts and use your farmboy pluck and skills you developed bullseying womprats out of sheer boredom to save the galaxy! This was very inspirational to all the Nowheresville farmboys of the world, of which there are quite a few, who had otherwise mostly been told that heroism was for princes and knights and stuff. Sure, Luke's neighbor happened to have been the sensei of Darth Vader, and Luke's dad had been a knight, but from the sound of it Luke's dad was just another of the countless dudes Darth Vader smushed on his way to supremacy.

Then in Empire Strikes back, we learn that Darth Vader IS Luke's dad! Oh wow! I guess he's actually only "strong with the Force" and capable of saving the galaxy because he's the son of the galaxy's most powerful wizard-knight, and it's all birthright, just like all the other heroes. Sorry, Nowheresville! Well, at least he's in the running for boyfriend to that princess, and that's a step up even from space wizard's son, right?

ISSUE #3 was gonna be about how it feels like the Empire "strikes back" way too fast after having their super-weapon destroyed, but the more I think about it that actually seems pretty reasonable, with them sending probes all over the place looking for those pesky rebels, and then dumping ALL of their remaining resources into smushing them when they find them on Hoth. And then they continue to spend their remaining resources chasing the Millenium Falcon all over for the rest of the movie, and are spread so thin that they have to hire bounty hunters to help them, and end up having to make a leveraged deal with a washed-out gambler for their final move. So that's actually just fine.

So there you go! In retrospect, all the changes in The Force Awakens that everyone complains about don't hold a candle to what Empire Strikes Back pulled on the first Star Wars.
R Hunter Gough on Facebook
He's right! especially Point Two. And the start of making a galaxy that was way too small (oh btw Darth MADE that shiny gold protocol droid) and way too big (just no limits to anything, really going for that "Encyclopedia Galactica" scale) at the same time.

And the skepticism shown about the force is so much more in tune with the "subtle mind tricks". Like when Darth says the line about "this battle station is no match for the power of the dark side" etc, he sounds rightfully defensive of a subtle mystical art, along with Han's blase and dismissive lines about it ("Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid [...] Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.")
ᴇᴄʜᴏ ᴄʜᴀᴍʙᴇʀꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴʙʀᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴏꜰ ᴋɴᴏᴡʟᴇᴅɢᴇ
Larmack, /r/showerthoughts

March 31, 2021

2021.03.31

...time for a visit from the ol' birthday skull... maybe not an xbox tho.



2021 March❮❮prevnext❯❯