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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Trying to come up with a few that aren’t on the list:

    Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) - Just a beautifully touching film, with a unique style and a great cameo of Peter Falk as himself. Much better than the English Language remake (City of Angels)

    Come and See (Idi i smotri) - Hard to watch, but an incredible portrayal of the horrors of war. Not a feel-good film at all. But an amazing feat of filmmaking.

    My Dinner With Andre - It’s ironic that the movie that Roger Ebert referred to as “entirely devoid of clichés” has become a cliché. I’m not sure how well it’s aged for modern audiences, but I first saw it in the 80’s, have seen it at least a dozen times since, and it still really gets to me. I empathize heavily with both characters in the way that they search for meaning in life, and I could listen to Andre Gregory tell stories all day.

    Stop Making Sense - A stellar concert documentary. The first time I saw it was a midnight screening where the audience got up and danced through the whole movie. David Byrne is hypnotic.

    The Decline of Western Civilization - Amazing look at the Los Angeles punk rock scene of the early 80’s

    Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - A classic stage-to-screen adaptation. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton chew the scenery for a few hours while their guests Sandy Dennis and George Segal try to make sense of it all. Amazing acting, great cinematography that really leverages the closeup. A must-see.

    The Lion in Winter - Sort of a medieval version of the above with Peter O’ Toole and Katherine Hepburn. Also see a young Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton put on stellar performances. Like Virginia Woolf above, this is acting with a capital A.

    The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville) - A unique animation style and a unique story. A really fun watch.







  • My pet conspiracy theory is that it was already known within the political campaigns that these misinformation campaigns were happening and they chose to at that point publicize them and use that as their scapegoat. Same with the Russian spies they publicly outed that trump spoke with.

    Your framing is off. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s true that it was already known. The FBI investigation of Russian interference began before the election, not after. The investigation was being publicized before the election.

    If you want to nurse a conspiracy theory about it, whatever. But you’re going to appear ignorant when you advance a conspiracy theory without doing the bare minimum of research into the known facts. You’re just creating a fictional narrative based on your “suspicions.” You’re not being “real.” You’re being ignorant.


  • I’ll never understand why people attribute to the Russian government what was in the obvious best-interests of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

    Maybe because there was a demonstrated and provable coordinated effort by the Russian government in the 2016 election to get Trump elected? Look up project lakhta. Russian election interference and the efforts of the domestic conservative movement can (and do) exist simultaneously.

    What do you have against attributing to the Russian government actions that are demonstrably attributable to the Russian government?




  • Keep a stock message on your phone to cut and paste whenever an iPhone user sends you a potato-quality video. This is mine:

    Please don’t send video to me via iMessage from your iPhone. In fact, you really shouldn’t send video via iMessage at all. Video sent by Apple looks terrible on non-iOS phones. This is not a shortcoming of other phones, this is entirely Apple’s fault and is their explicit intention. If you want to send a video from your iPhone, you can open the Photos app, tap the share button, and select “share as an iCloud link”. That will enable All users to view your glorious video of your cat/kids/dinner/vacation/rant/whatever in the high resolution that your overpriced phone is capable of. Another option is to send the video using a messaging app such as Signal or WhatsApp. Alternate messaging apps are what most of the world use in lieu of sms/mms text messaging.

    This is a form letter response and you will get it every time you send me video from your iPhone via iMessage.

    P.S. I love you