Learning that Brad Dourif is the voice of Chucky the killer doll did something to my brain and now I keep sneaking up behind people and saying "My lord, Gandalf the Grey is here. He's a herald of woe" in a bad Jersey accent
"I fuckin TOLD ya to take the wizahd's staff!"
i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken
His ghost is setting those cars on fire actually
I hadn’t really considered “the agnostic demigod of electromagnetism is the reason Musk’s companies fail” before, but I like the concept.
Let’s help him out. Likes charge, reblogs cast
Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?
They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.
Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?
So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.
And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.
And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.
If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.
I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.
Thing is, Radio Shack didn't go to phones and remote control cars because they sold better.
Radio Shack went to those things because to turn a profit they had to sell me a baggie with four yellow LEDs for $5.
I can get 50 for $8.50 on Amazon right now.
Radio Shack had them for $1.25 each. Amazon has them for $0.17 each.
I'm all for being all "Rar capitalizm bad! Amazon evil! Booga booga booga!" but at the end of the day I don't have infinity money and if something is cheaper over there, I have a financially backed urge to go over there.
which is relevant to the extended metaphor because if that core audience isn't paying enough to keep the venue lights on, either the venue starts also selling something that brings in money or the venue closes.
or both in that order. a process sped up if it's "instead" rather than "also", which was Radio Shack's real mistake.
idk if this is youtube being cheeky but damn if I'm not gonna watch it, I have a weird nostalgia for this movie
This film is amazing in the dumbest way.
“Yeah we could focus on life-and-death escapes from enemy territory, running gun battles through populated towns, and the political implications of the cold war turning hot...or, y’know, we could just kinda mention that stuff offhand so we have more time for long, sweeping shots of naval recovery ships and models of deep-sea research submersibles.”
It can’t be stressed enough that this film is adapted from one book in a whole spy thriller series.
Imagine if instead of a whole movie series, someone back in the 70s grabbed a random James Bond book that revolved around racing the Soviets to find and raise a long lost shipwreck because it was carrying an uber-rare mineral we can use to power a nuke-proof shield, but now half the story’s been retooled so people can lovingly talk about the ship itself and the night it sank, and explore the logistics of finding and raising it, and James Bond is some guy who has a beard.
It has Alec Guinness in it!
I had forgotten about his appearance, but this movie does indeed have a short but sweet role played by Sir Alec Guinness, star of Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and appearing in a number of other notable films.
He’s ostensibly here to inform the main plot, namely telling the main character about the secret agent who went down on the ship, but just like the rest of the film his role quickly shoots off into him talking about the beauty of the Titanic and showing the Bond equivalent his character’s White Star Line memorabilia.
One of the submersibles exceeds its crush depth and implodes because the crew just straight up wasn’t paying attention.
Another sub gets pinned and needs to be rescued because the first of the inflatable mechanisms dropped down to be attached to the Titanic’s hull actually struck the wreck and needed to be pulled away whereupon it fell on the sub.
The Russian secret agent leaking info about the expedition did not cause either of these events to happen
Conceptually speaking this is no longer the dumbest thing to have happened to submersibles in the vicinity of the Titanic wreck.
I'm reblogging this only for the amazing
Sir Alec Guinness, star of Bridge over river Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and other notable films
I wonder if James Cameron, director of Aliens and True Lies, and creator of other notable films, watched this and got inspired to make The Abyss (1986)
Raul Julia as Gomez Addams
THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)
- dir.
Barry Sonnenfeld
I can’t find it, but Andrew Bergman’s notes in the script are a delight.
I’m paraphrasing, but he says “I want to make it as clear as possible that these two fuck, at all times. If you don’t want to play it that way, I quit, but fair warning, I already spent the money”
somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
I don't think we talk enough about what happened with Anita Sarkeesian tbh.
Like this woman went around making the most bland but also usually correct partially because of how bland it was criticism of video games of all time. She politely and calmly stood in front of the camera and said "I like this video game but it treats it's women as eye candy" and "this is an example of the damsel in distress trope" and everyone lost their fucking minds. She would get clipped out of context, every time she wore lipstick some incel would crawl out of the woodwork to say "isn't it interesting how you dress sexy and then say videogame characters can't dress sexy"
Like how did she become the boogie man? She prefaced every fuckin video with "it's good to enjoy things while also being critical of their more pernicious aspects." I feel like if we had just listened to even that part of what she was saying and literally nothing else the internet discourse would be better off. instead now if you care about social justice you have to think Steven Universe is irredeemable media and if you don't you have to tear anyone who ever says anything less than favorable about whatever it is you've decided to publically like to shreds even if they have a point. It all comes back to how the gamergate chuds treated this one female game critic. This is the origin story.
the thing about anti-kink people ive found is that they would rather cut off their tongues than discuss subs who get off on being slapped around and degraded. literally they are incapable of discussing kink without making the entire thing about evil doms hurting their subs so they can get off. idk maybe it's related to how they can't make an argument that doesn't deprive subs/women of autonomy over their own desires & the ability to knowingly consent to kink. because that is their one fucking argument
^ example of "their only argument is that women shouldn't have autonomy over their sex lives and can't consent"
The Enlightened Radfems have deemed all kinky sex you have as abuse. And since they have decided that this is a fact of your reality, you are incapable of consenting. You may think you can consent, but you can't- you're too stupid indoctrinated by the patriarchy to actually think for yourself. You can't actually know what is hurting you, you need someone else to decide what is right for your body and mind for you. The Enlightened Radfems just want to help you, so you need to ignore everything you think and feel and trust that they know best, they know better than you because they are Educated In Feminism. You need to learn to distrust everything you think and feel, and seek out the advice of Enlightened Radfems to tell you which thoughts are Wrong and which thoughts are Right.
Dislike this? Think its patronizing and eerily similar to how the patriarchy acts towards you? Well, you would think that, because you haven't been Enlightened. Its in your own best interest for them to ignore all those silly little thoughts about what you "want," since if you only listened to them you'd realize you don't actually want the things you want! What do you mean this sounds abusive and extremely controlling! We're Feminist Females so we're automatically better and safer!!!!!
[pouring myself a drink from a fancy pitcher] so like it’s simplifying to the point of uselessness to say ‘reading comprehension’ is why people say shit like ‘lolita is problematic!’ because clearly the salient points to consider what aren’t they comprehending and why? and i think it probably lies in an unwillingness to approach critically the cultural understanding of ‘the child predator’ as someone that exists wholly outside society, someone who is an obviously deviant Other that enters from the fringes in order to commit terrible crimes–and so when nabokov puts those crimes into the person of a well-spoken, well-read, ‘respectable’ family man, they respond by saying ’well, this must be a favorable portrayal of child abuse, putting its justifications in the mouth of someone so authoritative and respectable is obviously apologetics’–because they’re unable or unwilling to critically confront the actual idea presented here, that ‘the child predator’ exists within society and is in fact often enabled and abetted by society.
humbert anchoring his attraction to children in the mythology and literature of the Western Canon says, ‘this is embedded in our culture, these are not the acts of an Otherized interloper’–but if you cannot put yourself at a critical distance and dispel the myth of that interloper of course you will read that and say ‘well since all these things are self-evidently good and cannot be the sites of violence, tying humbert to them is nabokov inviting this deviant external evil into the fold of what’s good and accepted’. when of course the call has been coming from inside the house! the entire time!
[i take a sip of my drink–fruity, airy, with hints of earth] so yeah ig to talk seriously about the dynamics of abuse we need to divorce ourselves entirely from the discursive fiction of the ‘child abuser’ as a marginal figure so that we can honestly assess how abuse can be reproduced in the key pillars of our culture and society. but that’s hard so let’s all keep arguing about a vague notion of ‘reading comprehension’ until the earth explodes amen brother [i pour you a drikn from my pitcher and it’s just room temperature coca cola]
revenge of the sith is still so fucking funny, because, like, the separatists invade coruscant, and kidnap the head of state. that’s a war-winning action. at that point, they just motherfucking won the war, unless a miracle happens. and then you have half the jedi council and a bunch of other jedi just chilling in the jedi temple, on their fucking doomsday, feet propped up and relaxing, and the council still chooses to call anakin and obi-wan from the other ass-end of the galaxy in the “outer rim sieges” to come fix this shit, like yoda wasn’t right motherfucking there. yoda was sitting on the fucking couch! and they STILL called obi-wan and anakin from the OTHER END OF THE GALAXY. in no ways was anakin spiritually prepared to be a jedi master, but motherfucker i kind of get why he was pissed. i kind of understand that. if i got called into work to save the day and i walked in and the rest of the staff was just sitting, and i still saved the day, and then they denied me a promotion, i’d have fucking quit. he’s not spiritually ready by any means and in fact he’s deeply turbofucked, but i understand where he was coming from. i understand, man.
#i really strongly think that 90% of the philosophical contention between star wars fans#exists because star wars was not designed for deep reads#and people do it anyway without seeming to understand this in anyway#and this is exactly the kind of thing that proves that point#because YES#this is wild behavior#and it doesn’t excuse anakin#but also#yeah#for real yeah
It’s even funnier, right, because Anakin only gets roped in by default of Obi-Wan literally being the Baddest of Asses the Jedi has to offer. Like, his combination of turbofucked luck, Nat20 charisma and neigh-unbeatable dignified samurai-football hooligan combination fighting style make him basically unstoppable. Almost the entire front-line war effort rested on Obi-Wan and Cody’s shoulders, with Anakin as one of his sub-unit generals.
[Star Wars army units are kinda bizarre, so I’ll lay it out quickly. Obi was the High Jedi general of the 3rd Systems Army with Cody as his Marshall Commander (primary clone logistics officer). The SAs are the 10 major divisions of the GAR. Each sub-unit of the 3SA needed their own generals, who then reported to Obi so he can coordinate their movements and keep track of what’s needed where. Obi and Cody also have direct control over the 212th Attack Battalion, one of the battalions within 3SA. The 501st Legion, under Anakin’s direct command, is part of the 3SA and thus reports to Obi (and Cody).]
So because Obi and the 3SA are the primary offensive force of the GAR, that means they do all the crazy shit like win battles and break blockades. But bc Obi has the permanent debuff Turbofucked By The Force Always, no good deed goes unpunished and he becomes the fixer for every issue, from being sent to Geonosis a second (and third) time to saving the Chancellor (again). This, in turn, means Anakin gets dragged along for the ride - partly bc Obi’s too fucking nuts for anyone outside the 212th to keep up with and partly bc he likes the action.
Obi’s wildly broken stats are what got him a seat on the Council, but Anakin’s stats are just OP and his trouble is that he can’t tell the difference. Obi accidentally no-clipped his way into authority he didn’t want where Anakin is level-grinding.
To top it off, if Ani had been with literally any other Master other than this depressed-ass ginger Jesus, he probably would have been fine. Obi became the star employee of the GAR and the Jedi and as star employees so often are, he only got more fucking work out of it.
it is really funny that you went off on a rant about obi-wan nat20 stats and how overpowered and badass he is when ROTS opens with a scene where he goes “i can kick your ass!” and then gets immediately knocked unconscious and has to be carried around like a sack of potatoes for the rest of the bit. i don’t even disagree with anything here really. i just think obi-wan is a really goofy character.
[Image Description: A series of sixteen tweets by John Rogers @jonrog1 that say:
1) A moment at the Teamsters/UPS rally this morning clarified our current struggle with the studio CEO's (among other bosses). Teamsters got a lot of wins, but one of the main sticking points is the pay for the 65% of local UPS workers who are part-time …
2) If you read the SAG-AFTRA demands, a truly STUNNING amount of their points involve protecting background actors, and trying to improve conditions for the 87% of their union who makes less than $26,000 a year.
3) As WGA members know, this is not a strike for the showrunners. We're trying to fix the fact the the current younger generation of writers can't even afford housing and their pathway to advancement has been cut off.
4) Like … folks, I'm fine. There are maybe two proposals in there that affect me. I'm walking in 90% weather and losing over 50% of my income for the year because I want the younger writers to get what I got at this stage of their careers.
5) Our unions and the CEO's and various negotiators have a fundamental cognitive disconnect. Because CEO's types only succeed by FUCKING THEIR PEERS.
6) Zaslav, Iger , those types of execs, etc have never gone without so a fellow exec or a junior exec could thrive. A fellow exec failing is the moment to use your own leverage to advance past them, if not destroy them.
7) Part of it is the money but part of this, I think, is a genuine inability to grasp even the concepts of any labor action. Because it is always other-directed.
8) So many people treat capitalism as part of nature red in tooth and claw, but it's not. It's a human construct. There are different rules you can play by -- but not if you want to win.
9) The greatest gift capitalism ever granted was the ability to validate selfish behavior as a virtue because that's "just what's necessary, I don't make the rules!" (Look ma, it's reification!)
10) This is where I usually point out that Adam Smith wrote that you have to overpay workers to keep your labor force up, and you need to take into account the psychic damage of capitalism to the workers, and that admiring the rich is the greatest source of moral corruption …
11) But I'll stave off that diversion to just land with … this is a discontinuity of attitudes which I think was once breached by the fact that management USED to come from people who loved building their company or their trade, even if they eventually did management shit.
12) Now, even that thin thread of SYMPATHY (Adam Smith joke, get it? People?) is gone. The CEO's are working off a different scorecard, practically and morally. We're not just playing by wildly divergent rules, our lives and careers are DEFINED by those wildly divergent rules.
13) To them, we are IN FACT being "unreasonable", as our behavior does not make sense in their moral framework. They don't think they're being evil, they think they're playing by the actual rules, and we're nuts.
14) There's not great conclusion to this, other than to note that the bit about making writers homeless was described as "cruel but necessary" because they genuinely don't understand the meaning of cruel, because they are always on the other side of the power dynamic.
15) And if they're ever NOT on the top of the power dynamic, they're not suffering, they're dead. They are un-people in their own eyes.
16) These men are not irrational, but they are deranged. This isn't about money, it's about identity. And in a fight about identity … they will set billions on fire.
Because they can always get more money. But they'll never shed the stink of losing to their lessers."
end of image description]
> a wild therapist has to go to work but…
All this? But power is an addiction. They’ve done studies on what happens to the brain. And the thing about power is that to get the power high? You have to get something in a hierarchical way - a win, more of something, control.
So when you ask why remember that power can be a literal drug. And community is an antidote to addiction. Then remember that the wealthy encourage disconnection.
ruffboijuliaburnsides
eater-of-hopes-and-dreams
Tumblr is unique bc like. It's collaborative shitposting and you can't opt in or out. You can just say something about your day then an evil wizard shows up to turn your post into something humorous
Every other site is just one and done, but here a post is a welcome mat to be funnier than you
yeah or sometimes you’ll see a post that hacks into your brain and forever rewrites your instinctual reaction to seeing a pineapple explode
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
26/26
