Promonk's recent activity
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Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech
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Comment on What's a feeling you sometimes experience that you don't have a name for? in ~talk
Promonk Link ParentI think that word you're looking for is "depression."When I feel like I should be doing something productive but don't have the motivation. So I do an activity that isn't that enjoyable but also isn't that productive.
I think that word you're looking for is "depression."
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Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies
Promonk Link ParentI wasn't making any arguments about mythical dwarfs versus human dwarfism to brush off criticism. I specifically said that the myth doesn't make the characters unproblematic. That's why I wondered...I wasn't making any arguments about mythical dwarfs versus human dwarfism to brush off criticism. I specifically said that the myth doesn't make the characters unproblematic. That's why I wondered about whether averagely proportioned people in forced perspective is any better, or if the issue is in characterization.
From what I know about Dinklage's criticisms about Hollywood's portrayals of little people, he's mostly pissed that no one bothers to write, or else greenlight, projects with little people in any role other than cannibal teddy bears or confectionary slaves, and good point! A fairy tale movie isn't the perfect hill to make a stand on, but keep beating that drum, Pete!
As for authenticity: I have my own ponderings about the line between adaptation and appropriation, but truth be told, I couldn't give any less of a shit about appropriation when it comes to traditional Northern European stories unless I tried. If the culture has decided that Northern European traditions are somehow the default from which other cultures are divergent, then those traditions can be used however someone wants, even in ways that might offend. We can have a conversation about the appropriation of Northern European culture when such a culture doesn't hold cultural hegemony over the Western world. Until then, I'll continue to ignore people in privileged positions who complain they're being oppressed because some shitty multi-billion-dollar conglomerate cast a Latina (and a remarkably fair-skinned and conventionally attractive Latina at that) in a role adapted from a Teutonic fairy tale. We'll call it turnabout for casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan or some shit.
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Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies
Promonk Link ParentI think it would be safe to say that nothing about that production would be stereotypical, at least.I think it would be safe to say that nothing about that production would be stereotypical, at least.
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Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies
Promonk Link ParentI'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Who's arguing that actors with dwarfism wouldn't be authentic? And where does authenticity even come in? I certainly didn't mention it....I think it's hypocritical to say using actors with dwarfism wouldn't be true to the mythology but then brushing off using a very much not German/Norse looking actress.
I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Who's arguing that actors with dwarfism wouldn't be authentic? And where does authenticity even come in? I certainly didn't mention it. Don't really care about it that much, to be honest.
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Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies
Promonk Link ParentSeems to me that only one-and-a-half of them actually hold much merit, and that's if you smoosh them all together. Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers...Seems to me that only one-and-a-half of them actually hold much merit, and that's if you smoosh them all together.
Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers love to kvetch about, and her comments on Palestine and Trump are about as mild as I've seen online. Gadot's pro-Israel rhetoric is troubling, I suppose, but hardly surprising given her personal history.
Peter Dinklage's objection made on WTF is probably the most germaine, but even that is a bit more nuanced than it's made out to be. Are we to take it that the titular Seven Dwarfs are a colony of humans with dwarfism? I've always assumed they were mythical creatures with no real relation to human little people. That alone doesn't make them unproblematic, but the real issue is the linguistic confusion between the fantasy creature and the real-life condition, not their presence in the story. Would it have been better if the fantasy creatures were portrayed by averagely proportioned actors via the use of forced perspective as in the Peter Jackson films? Is Dinklage's objection that the seven small bachelors living by themselves in an isolated forest mining God-knows-what for God-knows-what reason aren't humanized enough?
If blame needs assigning, then it's probably due to Disney for insisting on re-treading the same old stories over and over again and trying to hammer them to fit modern sensibilities. Half of these "controversies" would largely disappear if they just made a new story without trying to sanitize the insensitivities implicit in a nearly hundred-year-old cartoon. The culture wars folk might have to try just a little harder to find things to bitch about if they didn't have that old stand-by of "Disney wrecking their childhood" by casting someone other than a lily-white WASP in the lead (never mind the millions of lily-pale Latin people world over, because apparently they don't count as "white").
I don't even object to retellings as a general thing, like many do. My biggest objection to Disney's method is that they always go about it bass-ackward. They start with "we're going to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and then try to figure out what they want to say with it, instead of having something they want to say and then looking for a plot that can help them say it. Because it turns out that a hundred-year-old cartoon based on a centuries-old traditional fairy tale mostly only has archaic themes in it. Who knew?
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Comment on Popping the bag: What happens when a group, once powerful, is suppressed or disbanded? Where do its members go? in ~society
Promonk LinkThe formatting of this suggests to me that the bulk of it was written by ChatGPT. The heavy use of bullet points, minor thesis statements in bolded font, the lack of a cohesive and flowing...The formatting of this suggests to me that the bulk of it was written by ChatGPT. The heavy use of bullet points, minor thesis statements in bolded font, the lack of a cohesive and flowing structure–really, the piece is missing an overarching logical argument at all from what I can tell.
The whole thing kind of has a shallowness to it that makes me think AI, especially when listing examples. Who just lists examples of things vaguely supporting your thesis in bullet points besides ChatGPT?
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Comment on Canadian provinces’ measures to limit electricity exports to US could strain cross-border ties, experts say in ~society
Promonk Link ParentI read the article, but it talks about provincial government responses as though they were responsible for the situation. It's classic journalistic misattribution of responsibility. "Bullets...I read the article, but it talks about provincial government responses as though they were responsible for the situation. It's classic journalistic misattribution of responsibility. "Bullets struck and killed the child"-type bullshit.
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Comment on Canadian provinces’ measures to limit electricity exports to US could strain cross-border ties, experts say in ~society
Promonk Link ParentIf someone slaps you in the face and you decide that pushing them away is an unacceptable "straining of ties" that will only make matters worse, that's appeasement. The notion that worse outcomes...If someone slaps you in the face and you decide that pushing them away is an unacceptable "straining of ties" that will only make matters worse, that's appeasement. The notion that worse outcomes can be avoided by giving small concessions–such as foregoing retaliatory trade policies in response to unprovoked tariffs–has been tried countless times throughout history, and all it ever does is embolden the aggressor.
In this case, Trump is trying to extract trade concessions by ham-fisted brinksmanship, and every consequence Canadian officials mitigate for him is another feather in his cap. Any damn fool could've told him that starting a trade war with our top trading partner could lead to disastrous outcomes, but he's betting that Canada will flinch in the face of ensuring those outcomes come to pass.
Seeing how this supposedly moderate and reasonable rag is choosing to frame things, that bet might pay off.
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Comment on Canadian provinces’ measures to limit electricity exports to US could strain cross-border ties, experts say in ~society
Promonk (edited )LinkJesus, you guys have NYT headline writers up there too, huh? MFers who always write like it's the black kid's fault for getting in the way of the police gunfire. No, Canadian provinces rightly...Jesus, you guys have NYT headline writers up there too, huh? MFers who always write like it's the black kid's fault for getting in the way of the police gunfire.
No, Canadian provinces rightly telling us to fuck off is not "straining cross-border ties." Our asshole executive branch is handling that just by itself. If the US is intent on being such a shit-poor neighbor and trade partner, it's perfectly reasonable to tell us to kick rocks.
Remember kids: appeasement never works. It didn't work with the Vikings, it didn't work with the Nazis, and it's never going to work with the Trumpists.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
Promonk Link ParentThere's nothing wrong with using refined olive oil for salad dressings and whatnot, it just doesn't have as strong an olive flavor, which is often what someone's going for. It's got a higher smoke...There's nothing wrong with using refined olive oil for salad dressings and whatnot, it just doesn't have as strong an olive flavor, which is often what someone's going for. It's got a higher smoke point as well, which is probably why it's labeled "for cooking." You can deep fry with the pure stuff with decent temperature control.
I only mention it because cooking and to a lesser extent gastronomy are interests of mine, and I fairly often see people online talking about how olive oil isn't good for this or that, when really they mean EVOO isn't well-suited to those applications. There are other types of olive oil (which is my second favorite fat to cook with after butter, Glorious Butter) that will work in most culinary applications. The only thing it's not generally well-suited for is confections, in my opinion.
Since the topic is food oils, I thought I'd mention it.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
Promonk Link ParentMinor point: the "olive oil" you're talking about here is EVOO, which is processed specifically to maintain that olive-y character. The "extra virgin" means it's unfiltered and unpurified in order...Minor point: the "olive oil" you're talking about here is EVOO, which is processed specifically to maintain that olive-y character. The "extra virgin" means it's unfiltered and unpurified in order to retain that characteristic olive oil flavor. It also means that the smoke point is lower, as the compounds that give that flavor are more prone to oxidation, which in turn means that a fat lot of the olive oil we in North America eat would be considered rancid in the Mediterranean, where EVOO tends to be sharper and more astringent.
Olive oils marked "pure" and "filtered" are much closer to neutral than EVOO, which traditionally has been used more as a seasoning than a cooking fat. Traditionally, EVOO is intended to be used in salad dressings and to be drizzled over pasta and suchlike. But "extra virgin" is a hell of a marketing gimmick, so that particular processing grade has kind of taken over the market in North America (at least, I know it has in the US. I would guess Canada and maybe Mexico too.)
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Comment on Digg is relaunching under Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian in ~tech
Promonk Link ParentIt's like 20 years old at this point. This is archeomemeology.It's like 20 years old at this point. This is archeomemeology.
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Comment on Digg is relaunching under Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian in ~tech
Promonk Link Parenthttps://youtu.be/KQoJo81lujk It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
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Comment on Digg is relaunching under Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian in ~tech
Promonk Link ParentOr as I put it in another comment, "Reddit and Digg can just poop back and forth forever."Or as I put it in another comment, "Reddit and Digg can just poop back and forth forever."
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Comment on Digg is relaunching under Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian in ~tech
Promonk Link ParentPerhaps we should reconsider our unspoken assumption that a social media site should remain good forever. Maybe if we just accepted that good sites are ephemeral, we'd be more amenable to pulling...Perhaps we should reconsider our unspoken assumption that a social media site should remain good forever. Maybe if we just accepted that good sites are ephemeral, we'd be more amenable to pulling up stakes when the enshittification begins in earnest and there'd actually be market forces opposing the process.
Those of us who've been bouncing around various fora and aggregators for decades have just kind of accepted this implicitly, but in my experience, we wait far too long to flee the ship as a general thing. The Network Effect is a big part of this of course, but I don't think our unexamined desire for permanence is helping much.
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Comment on Digg is relaunching under Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian in ~tech
Promonk LinkRose could just say "we want to make Digg into Reddit back when Reddit was the good Digg again," and then Reddit and Digg can just poop back and forth forever. Wait, did I just reinvent the...Rose could just say "we want to make Digg into Reddit back when Reddit was the good Digg again," and then Reddit and Digg can just poop back and forth forever.
Wait, did I just reinvent the concept of market competition?
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Comment on What exists behind us? - A reminder to actually spend time with content from the past, not just cherish it in ~talk
Promonk (edited )Link ParentThe context absolutely makes the difference both in pleasantries and in art. That's exactly why I don't think art is truly fungible. Suppose two scenarios: in one, it's the morning after you've...Even more than routine, "good morning" becomes convenience. What makes one day's "good morning" better than the other? Maybe one morning you were saying "good morning" while watching Ben 10 and another morning "good morning" you were signing up to start your own Minute Burger franchise? It's the context that makes the "good morning".
The context absolutely makes the difference both in pleasantries and in art. That's exactly why I don't think art is truly fungible.
Suppose two scenarios: in one, it's the morning after you've had a fight with your significant other over something trivial that got out of hand. "Good morning" then signifies a return to normalcy, that whatever was said in the heat of the moment, you don't intend for the petty animosity to continue. In another, it's the morning after a day of significant loss, say of the family pet. "Good morning" then is an affirmation that we're here and enduring together.
In both scenarios, the words and tone might be identical, but their expressions communicate entirely different things. The semantic meaning is almost totally irrelevant; what matters is the act of communication, because that act carries a meta-meaning that no two words can denote.
I should probably take a moment to speak on the concept of fungibility, because reading over your response, I think we might have differing interpretations on its meaning. "Fungible" is a term of law and economics that denotes that something is fundamentally replaceable by another item of its type. So, one sheet of paper towel from a roll is fungible with the next sheet, because until one is used, they each have identical utility. Likewise, two dollar bills of similar condition are fungible with each other, because each is worth one dollar. It's not a tenable legal argument for a creditor to decline one bill in favor of another identical one, because dollar bills are fungible, provided they are in serviceable condition (determined by statute).
In a sense, you might say "good morning" is fungible, in that it doesn't exactly matter what two words you say, but I think this misses a couple of key aspects.
First, words themselves are non-fungible. We have synonyms and translations, but "good" isn't perfectly interchangeable with "beneficial," or "agreeable." Each of those words have different connotations and contextual applicability.
Second–and this is most relevant–the semantic meaning of "good morning" is almost totally irrelevant; it's the act of communication itself that is doing the work, and every act of communication is contextual. The "good morning" said to your spouse is fundamentally different than the one said to the grocery clerk precisely because the context is different, which changes the meaning of what is actually said. Art is itself communication (which premise we'll probably have to take as axiomatic if we want to avoid re-litigating several hundred years of art theory), so the same is true. No one piece of art is truly interchangeable with another for many reasons–in fact, no piece of art is itself truly interchangeable with itself at different times, even to the same person. Read a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" at 15 years old and again at 35 to see my point there.
But what, I hear you ask, of all eleventy bajillion extant copies of "Harry Potter and the Dildo of Destiny"? (I tried out using actual titles, but couldn't settle on one, so just roll with it.) Aren't they all fungible? Well, yes and no. The copies themselves are fungible, provided they are in sufficient condition to be read, but the copies are commodities distinct from the art they contain. The art is the communication contained therein, not the physical book itself. You intuitively understand this if you consider it: "Harry Potter and the Dildo of Destiny" is the same piece of art if you carefully cut out all the pages of two copies and lay them side by side in order, just as it's nearly the same if read in e-book form or via audiobook (with provisos, of course).
In this sense, you could say that the inefficiency of art is a matter of the distribution of the media that carries it, in which case I would absolutely agree. More public libraries now, por favor! We likely have enough copies of Dildo of Destiny to last us a couple of generations at least, and JK is probably too busy policing other people's genitals to mind the reduced income overmuch.
That's the objection I have to your initial thoughts: you've confused the commodity medium that carries the art with the art itself. We can never have enough art because art is particular to the person creating it, and changes with every person who consumes it. Each piece of art is unique to the context of its creation and to the context of its consumption, and thus carries different meanings, communicates different things, at each experience. We're both rich in media and destitute in art because there are around seven billion of us and counting, continually experiencing new moments, and each of those moments experienced is an opportunity to both create and consume art.
As an aside, in regards to this:
Given what you say about Shakespeare's unoriginality it may be the case that the act of consolidating, reproducing, and thus preserving folk stories from his time is the bulk of his value as an artist. But I agree that there is also value in making inaccessible media more accessible. Either by making the story more relatable or by "unlocking" the highbrow-only locked metaphorical closets. But maybe this is just another aspect of preservation and not really adding much.
I chose to mention Shakespeare in part because his genius wasn't in simply repackaging stories, but because he was masterful at precisely the sort of "unlocking" of "metaphorical closets" you speak of.
Modern audiences get tripped up by the archaic grammar and vocabulary, but it should be understood that in their time, Shakespeare's works were just as often low-brow and popular as high-brow and refined. His greatest strength was the ability to shift registers like that, sometimes even speaking to the groundlings and the boxes in different registers at once. The blood and guts of "King Lear" had mass appeal, and the incisive meditation on the hereditary transfer of power and its consequences spoke to the aristocrats in the audience whose minds were deeply troubled by the recent death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I, and what it might mean for them and the nation. Old Will was able to weave these layers of meaning together using both structure and style, and it's this multifaceted nature that's kept many of his works evergreen.
Will wrote with a combination of depth and accessibility that's almost totally unmatched in my experience. The closest writers in terms of depth are usually impenetrable to read (vide: James Joyce), and the closest in accessibility are usually dull and shallow (anything on American CBS's primetime lineup).
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Comment on What exists behind us? - A reminder to actually spend time with content from the past, not just cherish it in ~talk
Promonk Link ParentStrangely, I think you're actually making the same mistake with this point that a lot of "content producers" do: you've reduced the meaning of art to a fungible commodity, when that's not at all...If we were an efficient species and only moderately vain... we really have enough content already. We don't actually need to make any more films or books. There are far more films made than can be watched in one lifetime. There are more pages printed than eyeballs that can read them. There is more music than can ever be heard. We don't really need to create more.
Strangely, I think you're actually making the same mistake with this point that a lot of "content producers" do: you've reduced the meaning of art to a fungible commodity, when that's not at all what it really is.
You have probably wished a loved one a good morning hundreds, if not thousands of times, but you wouldn't say that "there are enough 'good mornings' already, when you think about it." You've probably exchanged small talk with a grocery clerk thousands of times as well, but you'll probably do so again, despite the fact that you aren't really saying much of anything that hasn't been said billions of times before.
Why? I assert it's because the act of communication is itself meaningful, even if the content of that communication might be cliche or unnecessary. You may have said a cursory 'good morning' to a spouse a thousand times before, but not at this moment in time. You've commiserated about the weather with grocery checkers scores of times, but never at this moment, about this particular string of weather. You aren't really bestowing the blessing of a good morning to anyone by greeting them thusly, nor are you drilling down into climatic verities with the stranger at the register. What you're doing is acknowledging their existence and affirming their value to you. Similarly, art is fundamentally communicative, and as we know, sometimes–perhaps maybe usually–what is being said is subsidiary to the act of actually saying it.
Because of this, art isn't really fungible either, by which I mean that one piece of art from the past doesn't serve the exact same function as a new production might. Yes, Aldous Huxley and Sinclair Lewis had some salient things to say about our current social reality, but they weren't really writing about or to us. Their productions were communications in and of their own times and milieus, and had a different value to the audience they wrote to.
This is why retellings aren't always worthless, lazy slop. Ovid retold the same stories that had been floating around the Mediterranean for nearly a thousand years before he wrote his Metamorphosis, but as he was born right at the advent of the Roman Empire, his take on those stories was unique, and represented something new–said something new. Similarly, Shakespeare only ever wrote at most two or three original stories that weren't retellings of older stories or culled from history (not counting his sonnets, of course). Say what you will about the Bard, I don't think you can claim his effort was a waste.
If you approach art in the same way you would an actual fungible commodity, like a toilet plunger or a sheet of paper towel, you're bound to come to the conclusion that there's really just enough of it around already. You might take Solomon at his word when he says "there's nothing new under the sun." With all due respect to long-dead Solomon, he was flat out fuckin' wrong. You are new, and more than that, the you that you are right now is new, and never to be seen again. Art is an expression of that, and communicates to the other new little apelings running around that both you and they exist and have value.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us. MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease. in ~health
Promonk Link ParentI think it just comes down to autism being a present thing that people can encounter, while measles and polio have been virtually eliminated from public consciousness. Humans are instinctually...I think it just comes down to autism being a present thing that people can encounter, while measles and polio have been virtually eliminated from public consciousness. Humans are instinctually more attuned to visible, present threats than abstract notional ones. It takes conscious deliberate effort to weigh risks that aren't directly in your line of sight, and if there's one thing I know about the sorts of people liable to vaccine skepticism, it's that conscious deliberate effort to think is not their strongest suit.
I present this merely as an explanation, not an excuse.
I'll give it a shot! I was thinking just today how DDG has kinda slid in quality lately, which sucks, because at their best they weren't as good as Google at their peak.