-
2 votes
-
In the oppression olympics, don’t go for the gold
13 votes -
Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread
General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...
General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.
Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:
Here is my schema: ```sql CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse ( article_id INTEGER , warehouse_id INTEGER ) ; ``` How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
3 votes -
TV Tuesdays Free Talk
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here. Please just try to provide fair warning of...
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
5 votes -
Danish parliament urges lawmakers and employees to remove TikTok on work phones as a cybersecurity measure, saying “there is a risk of espionage”
4 votes -
Party patellas: The knee makeup fad of the '20s and '60s
10 votes -
Käärijä – Cha Cha Cha (2023)
4 votes -
Request: Alternatives to the Raspberry Pi?
I will shortly have need for a small, low power (power as in watts, not compute power) system for always-on Home Assistant use. However, Raspberry Pis are out of stock everywhere and while they...
I will shortly have need for a small, low power (power as in watts, not compute power) system for always-on Home Assistant use. However, Raspberry Pis are out of stock everywhere and while they can be had for extortionate prices on various auction/marketplace sites, I'm not sure I want to spend a load of money on something which might not even be what it claims to be.
Home Assistant suggest Odroid which I'd probably go for the C4 edition but it's relatively expensive (I need to add an MMC and a psu and various other things to the listed main board price)
Any suggestions? The Asus Tinkerboard looks overkill and is very expensive. It needs to be capable of running a standard Linux distro, ideally Home Assistant's own OS. Low power consumption is a definite, 2-3W at idle is probably the maximum I'd be happy with. Wifi is a bonus although not required right now - but the ability to add it if needed is essential. Some amount of expansion capability would be good if I want to add hardware sensors or bluetooth or a Zigbee transceiver or whatever. It needs some reasonably amount of compute grunt I assume but I don't think HA is all that hungry for number crunching power. The machine will more than likely be headless at first but a little bit of GPU and graphical IO would be handy if I want to stick a display on it in the future, which I might want to.
Any ideas? Oh, and also must be easily available in/to the UK.
15 votes -
Isolation combined with an inhospitable environment can be a cause of stress on Greenland – but locals have found a way to deal with it: tuning into nature
3 votes -
Ted Lasso | Season 3 official trailer
5 votes -
Black holes are accelerating the expansion of the Universe, say cosmologists
9 votes -
You can make handmade holograms just by etching lines into a shiny surface. All you need is a compass with two points (a divider). And to be able to get your head around the mind bending geometry.
10 votes -
Why aren't more sports in 4K?
8 votes -
Fine-tuning to enable Stable Diffusion to generate very dark or light images easily
4 votes -
Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - February 23
This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic,...
This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.
12 votes -
Sir Curse - Babooshka x Rasputin (2023)
7 votes -
Inside Denmark's opioid crisis – more teens are abusing opioids because they take the pills both to get high and to cope with anxiety
3 votes -
Old, but Interesting programs
7 votes -
What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
4 votes -
Activists block Norway's energy ministry, protesting against wind turbines built on land traditionally used by the Sámi indigenous people
4 votes -
Emeril's Sitcom | Forgotten Failures
3 votes -
SAG Awards: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ wins top film prize; Michelle Yeoh and Brendan Fraser take lead acting honors
7 votes -
‘Dilbert’ author Scott Adams tells White people to get away from Black people, gets dropped from US newspaper
19 votes -
Alone and exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the US
11 votes -
The internet is already over
7 votes -
Barrett .50 Cal.
8 votes -
Tennessee becomes the first state to pass a ban on drag shows. The bill is so vaguely worded it could also target trans people and Pride celebrations generally.
12 votes -
SolidGoldMagikarp and other words that cause buggy behavior with ChatGPT
18 votes -
The Boy With Green Hair - a review
I just watched an old movie on television: The Boy With Green Hair. It’s a boring afternoon, with nothing to do, and I thought this old 1948 movie would be a pleasant way to kill an hour or two. I...
I just watched an old movie on television: The Boy With Green Hair. It’s a boring afternoon, with nothing to do, and I thought this old 1948 movie would be a pleasant way to kill an hour or two.
I was wrong.
It moved me to tears.
It stars Dean Stockwell, whose name I recognised from ‘Battlestar Galactica’, as a child actor, which is one reason I decided to watch it. He gives a great performance. Doing a bit of research, it looks like he was dragged into acting by his performer parents. His Wikipedia page quotes him as saying he didn’t enjoy acting. Despite that, he was great in this movie.
It also has ‘Nature Boy’ as its theme song, which I know from ‘Moulin Rouge’.
The movie itself is a powerful anti-war message. The central character is Peter, a war orphan (the aforementioned Stockwell). After being placed with a number of different relatives, he ends up with a kindly old ex-Vaudeville performer he calls “Gramp” (who he’s not actually related to). Gramp’s a sweet old man, played very sympathetically by an actor called Pat O’Brien.
Peter doesn’t know he’s a war orphan. He thinks his parents are still on a trip. (A very long trip!) His school holds a charity drive to collect clothes for war orphans, and one of Peter’s classmates tells him, quite matter-of-factly, that Peter is a war orphan: their teacher said so. Peter rejects this, and they get into a fight. Gramp is there, and he confirms the news.
Later that evening, Gramp is reminiscing to Peter about his old flame Eileen, who loved having “a spot o’ green” around the place (a plant) to remind her of Spring and hope. To cheer Peter up, he promises him a surprise in the morning.
The next morning, after taking a bath, Peter’s hair has turned green. He assumes this is Gramp’s surprise, and it cheers him up. It’s not. Gramp knows nothing about it. In fact, the cause of the green hair is never revealed.
When Peter finds out the green hair is not from Gramp, he hates it and wants to get rid of it. However, they’re unable to figure out a cause, and Peter’s unwilling to “paint” his hair (dye it) or cut it off, so he’s stuck with it.
It’s hard to explain why this movie moved me, without giving away certain important plot points. If you don’t want too many spoilers, watch this trailer and stop reading now, until you’ve watched the movie for yourself.
If, like me, you’re not fussed about spoilers, read on. (Spoiler alert: spoilers make you enjoy stories more)
Here be spoilers!
Peter runs away after the other boys try to cut off his green hair, and he meets the war orphans from the posters at his school. It’s not clear whether this is a vision and the war orphans are actually speaking to Peter, or whether it’s just Peter’s dream, but it’s real enough to Peter. The orphans tell Peter that his hair is green because it represents Spring and hope. They further tell Peter that he should use his noticeable hair to spread the message that war is bad for children.
Interestingly, the girl who says this to Peter tells him that he should spread the message to all the countries, and then names five countries – who just happen to be the five permanent members of the recently formed United Nations Security Council.
Peter goes home to tell Gramp. When Peter says he wants to keep his hair green, it brought a tear to my eye. He then goes around town, telling everyone that war is bad for children.
But things turn bad. The other kids don’t like his green hair; he’s different, and the kids make fun of him. The adults don’t like his anti-war message; he’s different, and must conform.
This leads to the scene that moved me to tears. I never thought that watching someone getting his hair cut could make me cry. But seeing Peter give in and agree to have his green hair shaved off brought tears to my eyes. For some reason, half the town turns up at the barber shop to watch. Halfway through the process, Gramp realises his error in advising Peter to do this, and he turns away in shame. Meanwhile, I couldn’t take my eyes off Peter as his green curls fall to the floor.
I have to say there were some plotholes in this movie. It’s far from perfect.
Reading the backstory, it’s based on a short story which doesn’t mention war: it’s originally an allegory for racism, which is reflected in one scene in the movie where Peter’s teacher takes a roll call of students by hair colour. The adaptations to make it an anti-war message were inserted by the director, which makes it a bit clunky and obvious.
And, supposedly, the progressive movie studio executive who signed off on the movie was replaced by a conservative executive during production, who tried to change it into a pro-war movie. The movie is therefore a bit patchy and disconnected at points.
But it has heart. The two central actors, playing Peter and Gramp, carry most of the movie. The actor playing the teacher is also sympathetic and warm.
It's not a great movie, but the central performances are strong and the messages are powerful.
Some sources I found tell of Stockwell talking back to the conservative executive when the executive lectured him in favour of war, so Stockwell supported the message of the movie, even as a 12-year-old boy.
This was just supposed to be an old movie to distract me for an hour and a half on a boring afternoon. Instead, it grabbed my attention for the whole 90 minutes, and moved me deeply. So deeply that I just had to share it with someone. I considered putting this in @kfwyre’s Tildes Pop-Up Movie Event thread, but the 1940s slot is already taken. Not that I’m upset by that. I’m very glad I watched this movie, for its own sake.
4 votes -
PGA Awards: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ takes Best Picture
4 votes -
Armand Duplantis set a new pole vault world record, clearing 6.22m in winning the All Star Perche 2023 event in France
3 votes -
What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do...
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
4 votes -
The blast furnace - 800 years of technology improvement
5 votes -
Computer dating 1960s style (1966)
5 votes -
Snow aged wagyu beef experience
2 votes -
Berlin Film Festival winners: French documentary ‘On The Adamant’ by Nicolas Philibert wins Golden Bear
2 votes -
‘Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’ faces the worst second weekend drop for an MCU film
2 votes -
Blind Channel – Flatline (2023)
1 vote -
Hayes command set history: The tech that dialed in a million modems
5 votes -
The fediverse is already dead
13 votes -
Monumental mirror to the sky is to be created in a wildly beautiful but little visited stretch of coastline – Olafur Eliasson's first permanent outdoor artwork in the UK
3 votes -
Marilyn Manson accuser went public with horrific claims of abuse. Now she says they were made up.
9 votes -
Megathread for news/updates/discussion of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots
There's a lot of discussion out there and it doesn't seem to be dying down, so it seems like we should have a place for minor updates.
16 votes -
The jock/nerd/prep/goth test
28 votes -
Google lawyer warns internet will be “a horror show” if it loses landmark US Supreme Court case
13 votes -
‘Succession’ ending with season four on HBO
6 votes -
Welcome to the oldest part of the metaverse - Ultima Online, which just turned 25, offers a lesson in the challenges of building virtual worlds
12 votes -
A Thousand and One | Official trailer
2 votes -
The great LA dumpling drama
5 votes -
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive
14 votes