-
9 votes
-
Making carbonated water by burning diamonds
10 votes -
I sold microwave meals on Deliveroo
10 votes -
The year in tiny video game text, 2019
10 votes -
2019: A year in The Verge illustrations
6 votes -
SpaceX set for record-breaking 2020 manifest
5 votes -
Flash crashes and dark pools; High-frequency trading explained
6 votes -
We're Britain's first female rock band. This is why you don't know us. | 'Almost Famous' by Op-Docs
8 votes -
What is fiction? A quest to find a believable universe.
6 votes -
Steam's highest grossing games of 2019
14 votes -
How this abandoned mining town in Greenland helped win World War II
5 votes -
The smallest possible valid (X)HTML documents
5 votes -
Wars of the Roses 1455-1487 - English Civil Wars
4 votes -
Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands
35 votes -
Andy learns how to cook northern Indian food
8 votes -
Diving and driving on icy moons: One strategy for exploring Enceladus and Europa
3 votes -
Can We Build Trustable Hardware?
8 votes -
How NIST tested facial recognition algorithms for racial bias
5 votes -
Ninety-five percent of American schools now conduct school-shooting drills. We spoke to more than twenty students to learn what they see, hear, and feel during what has become a routine experience
14 votes -
Another Thai Navy SEAL diver from Tham Luang cave rescue dies
11 votes -
What are you doing this weekend?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend. If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't...
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
7 votes -
Pandhora - Siwa (2019)
4 votes -
New York’s Penn Station shows how progressives have made it too hard for the government to do big things
10 votes -
F*** me
1:45 A M Two divided Lonely bed, lonely couch Emotional drainage leaks Seeps into sub floors Foul and sickly Sticky and putrid Fuck me
13 votes -
Steven Pinker: What can we expect from the 2020s?
10 votes -
Not every movie must be a melodrama
start rant First, my personal definition of the term: melodrama is a narrative that appeals to our stronger emotions in a lengthy, recurrent, unjustified and exaggerated fashion. Unlike drama,...
start rant
First, my personal definition of the term: melodrama is a narrative that appeals to our stronger emotions in a lengthy, recurrent, unjustified and exaggerated fashion. Unlike drama, which plays to your sentiments in a more contained and psychologically realistic manner, melodrama overwhelms us with every trick in the book to elicit a powerful emotional reaction by any means necessary.
You can tell from my phrasing that I'm not a fan of the genre, but that's beside the point. Melodrama has its place: operas and soap-operas wouldn't exist without it, and, in moderation, it's a practical way to inject emotion in plots that would be otherwise hermetic and dry.
But even sweetness in excess will make you vomit, and many interesting productions exaggerate it to the point of nausea. Arrival is awesome, but did Amy Adams character (which was basically one the smartest persons on Earth) really need to spend so much time as a freaking wife? We had the coolest movie aliens in the last 20 years, did she really need to marry a boring physicist? And what about the whole parenting conundrum in Interstellar? You're in fucking space, I couldn't care less about your failings as a father! No one could save 1998s Armageddon, but the struggle to explode the giant asteroid heading towards the Earth was way more interesting than Liv Tyler saying goodbye to Bruce Willis over some corny Aerosmith song. The TV show The Killing was particularly annoying... what would prefer, awesome investigation scenes with constant new developments or 30 versions of "look how the same family is grieving in a slightly different way"?
But credit where credit is due: some moviemakers know a thing or two about concision. So my props to Fernando Meirelles (City of God), José Padilha (Elite Squad), Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese, Chad Stahelski (from John Wick!!!!) and many others. Thank you for not wasting my time!
EDIT1: And just make things perfectly clear: my issue is not with the presence of drama or melodrama, but with its amount...
EDIT2: to be even more clear: this does not mean that I wish for all movies to be sterile, dry or devoid of emotional content...
EDIT3: a lot of answers seem to ignore the differences between drama and melodrama, the previous edits and the nuance of the post. Ahh... what can I do? :Pend rant
9 votes -
Paul Krugman on climate, robots, single-payer
5 votes -
New studies help to explain how microbes in the gut can shape a host’s fear responses
7 votes -
The internet made trans people visible. It also left them more vulnerable.
11 votes -
Why don't you comment on poetry?
I post a fair amount of poetry to Tildes, with the hope of getting feedback or starting discussion. Yet, as you can see from looking at the poem tag, there generally isn't any kind of discussion...
I post a fair amount of poetry to Tildes, with the hope of getting feedback or starting discussion.
Yet, as you can see from looking at the poem tag, there generally isn't any kind of discussion on poetry posts. Even Bishop's departure post only received six comments.
So, why is this? What stops you commenting on poems? I would like to have discussions about what I write with the people here. I don't know if there's something I can do to make it easier to engage with me regarding my work, or if there's something else preventing the discussion.
37 votes -
The lost colony of Roanoke
9 votes -
Why ‘nature’ has no place in environmental philosophy
4 votes -
Best wishes to all of you
I hope the new year will be better, and bring you happiness. Z.
24 votes -
Gay, Christian and a former preacher, I'm coming out to help anyone hurt by Folau
10 votes -
People in Canada’s remote Arctic capital are obsessed with Amazon Prime
6 votes -
The origins of American gun culture
12 votes -
Rhode Island lawsuit: Students sue for the right to learn civics
16 votes -
Brazilian comedy group hit by Molotov cocktails after film on 'gay Jesus'
11 votes -
Anyone has some good recommendations on economics and geopolitics channels?
So far I know of Economics explained for economics and CaspianReport for geopolitics but neither has really convinced me of their credibility and these 2 subjects seem to be the dark sheep of...
So far I know of Economics explained for economics and CaspianReport for geopolitics but neither has really convinced me of their credibility and these 2 subjects seem to be the dark sheep of educational content, due to being primarily speculative and subjective in nature and being quite niche for being such general topics.
7 votes -
Two titles, 210 straight starts, one Eli: How Manning conquered New York
4 votes -
What programming/technical projects have you been working on?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
13 votes -
California solar mandate, gas bans take effect in 2020: what you need to know
8 votes -
How to track President Trump (tracking of government employees using cell phones)
23 votes -
Fotografiska breathes life into historic New York landmark – Swedish photography museum's first global outpost is taking shape in the former Church Missions House
5 votes -
Martin Ødegaard poised for Real Madrid return in June 2020 – Norwegian has been one of the stand-out players in the first half of the 2019-20 LaLiga season
4 votes -
What skill were you once good at that is now completely irrelevant?
E.g. changing a typewriter ribbon, changing the oil in your car.
27 votes -
Japan's births decline to lowest number on record
11 votes -
Les Rallizes Dénudés (裸のラリーズ) - Enter the Mirror (1987)
7 votes -
Sweden in global spotlight with interest rate move – Riksbank has ended a period of negative rates but will other central banks around the world now follow suit?
3 votes -
Author and Norway princess's ex-husband Ari Behn dies aged 47
5 votes