Second Martin Scorsese movie is Gangs of New York from 2002.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Besides any thoughts any thoughts on this movie, now that we have done this little comparison between Scorsese and superhero movies, what do you think sets these types of movies apart and are they really as opposites as it is sometimes made out to be?

The schedule for March is:

• 4th: There Will Be Blood
• 11th: Life is beautiful
• 18th: High Noon
• 25th: Saving Private Ryan

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.

Hey y'all! I'm finishing up a work (academic) project, and, to my delight in the near future I will have time to read for fun again! In talking with a friend, I realized that many people have at least one or two favorite books no one's ever heard of before.

Fiction, nonfiction, weird, old, whatever! What're your favorites?

I'll start: Karl Kerenyi's book on Hermes, and Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman. The Kerenyi text is lovely because he dwells in this between-place of pure academic and personal experience, and it reads almost like a memoir of a man who is still very much in the midst of his love affair with his research. The Fadiman book is a lovely (if tiny!) volume of essays that I've come back to time and time again about what books mean to a reader, and how they have shaped her life.

I like that music app algorithms are able to suggest similar songs to add to my playlist, but I wish there were a way to specify bpm for the song suggestions. I get extra motivation from a playlist with a specific and consistent bpm when I'm doing jump rope or using the treadmill.

Is there an easy way to search for songs based on both "vibes" and bpm?

Or alternatively, music playing app that can auto adjust songs in a playlist to all play at the same bpm.

Follow up to this post

I did my first ever platelet donation!

This one was a bit more intimidating than the blood donation. For platelets, the donation takes around two hours not counting the onboarding time. Additionally, during the donation, you can’t move either of your arms, as you have needles in both. The blood draws from one arm, goes into a centrifuge where they separate out the platelets, and then your blood gets returned to you in your other arm.

I was a little worried about how it was going to go leading up to the appointment, but I’m very happy to report that everything went fine! All of the needles went in easily and it was a nearly painless process. After that it was actually kind of boring! They had a screen with Netflix on it, so I watched three episodes of a TV show.

My least favorite part of the whole thing was not being able to scratch an itch when one arose, which is not so much a complaint as it is an endorsement. If the worst I can say is that I couldn’t scratch my nose once or twice during a multi-hour process involving multiple needles and my blood leaving and re-entering my body, then I’d say it went really well!

The staff kept checking in to see if I needed a blanket because most people feel cold when donating platelets, but, weirdly, I actually liked the chilled sensation I got? It wasn’t like a regular “cold” feeling; I found it genuinely pleasant.

Also, the whole experience was an interesting experiment in forced attention. I couldn’t check my phone, so I just watched a show, uninterrupted. I can’t remember the last time I did that? I got home and tried to continue watching it and, sure enough, now that my arms were free I was looking at my email and checking messages and the news instead of paying attention to what I had on. The whole donation session had a genuinely nice, calm, almost meditative quality to it. It was a nice way to start out a Saturday.

You can donate platelets separately from blood, and platelets have a much lower “donation cooldown” (you can donate them every seven days). I don’t think I’ll be keeping to that rapid of a turnaround, but I’m going to start doing it once a month. One thing I learned from this is that, unlike blood which can be stored for up to a year (edit: turns out it’s only 42 days), platelets have to be used within five days, so they’re pretty much constantly in demand because they can’t be stockpiled.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my little mini-milestone with everyone here. The novelty of being able to donate as a gay guy still hasn’t worn off for me. I love the idea of being able to do it regularly and support people over time!

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!

Voting closed

Sorry for the title gore, but since it is the Oscars next month, lets find a Oscar relevant selection of 4 movies, with narrowing it down to Best Picture nominees that didn't win. So if you have a favorite movie where another movie took the award that year, now is a good time to bring that up.

Rules

• Must have been nominated in the Best Picture category for the Oscars
• Must not be the winner of Best Picture
• Not from this years award, since we don't know who will win yet
• Not one we have already done
• Only one nomination per user
• Please only nominate if you intent to participate
• Upvote the post(s) with a nomination you would like to be picked for discussion next month

Wikipedia has a list of all the nominees through the years. Or this list on Letterboxd.

In case of ties in the number of votes, random.org will decide. Voting closes Sunday.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m genuinely not trying to stir the pot. I’m hoping we can discuss this in a civil manner.

The discussion about the I-P conflict has me worried that Tildes is tearing itself apart. In the past few months, I’ve seen (at least) one pro-Palestinian user get banned, another stop posting here, and at least two Jewish Tilderinos quit. I get that Israel and Palestine are really important issues, that affect millions of people. But I’ve seen a degradation in the rhetoric, and I don’t want that to consume this place. We all need to “remember the human” behind the screen, and that folks have a view for a reason. I like this place. I don’t want to see it go away.

I’m sorry if I haven’t articulated myself well. I just had to get this off my chest. It’s been bothering me for a few weeks now.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

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?