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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#241

Post by HDThoreaun »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #170
HDThoreaun wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no money in unbiased news. If news organizations want subscribers they need to present a clear voice that is distinct from what other organizations offer, otherwise people will just click the first link on google or facebook and never pay. Unbiased can also mean undiferentiated, so NYT has leaned into technoskepticism, the journal into Karl Rove conservatism(and now just plain old republican or bust), and on…

There's no money in unbiased news. I have to believe that's not true. When Bill Gates or Warren Buffett sit down at their breakfast table, do they get fed the same diet of pablum that I do, as an Apple News subscriber? I doubt it. They presumably pay a ton of money for access to unfiltered, unbiased global intelligence. But I have no idea how to get the newsfeed that people like that must have access to, regardless o…

I think they are reading the same stuff you have access too. Maybe they have a FT subscription and a Bloomberg one where you don't, but I don't think there's some team of billionaire journalists. Business stuff is different, theyll have employees trying to get insider info, but politics, largely the same.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#242

Post by CamperBob2 »

hef19898 wrote: post #228
CamperBob2 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal or not, it's defamatory if untrue. I assume that Bloomberg would sue for libel if the quote from their reporter were fabricated. (Read the quote from the reporter carefully: the market isn't what's being manipulated. The news is... and by extension, the reader. The reader is who does the market-moving.)

So, a plain statement of fact then? Your initial claim was that Bloberg rwporters are paid to manipulate / move the market. Said quote doesn't support that.

I said they were paid to move the market, which is the case according to their own reporters. They are not allowed to do that directly, but they have both the right and the ability to choose their subjects and slant their stories to achieve an identical effect.

What is your interest in carrying water for a company whose representatives admit to market-harming journalism practices? More important, what does such a company have to do with my expressed wish for an unbiased news source?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#243

Post by munificent »

fshr wrote: post #165
munificent wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I get it. It just feels so awkward to me to watch actual real human actors behave in such a weird artificial way.

You have to find a way to not think of it as behaving, but acting like the characters they’re meant to portray. If they weren’t comic book characters, literally two dimensional :), then it’d be different. Maybe live action superhero films just aren’t your jam?

I do like superhero movies—i.e. films about characters with supernatural powers—just not the MCU flavor of them.

I enjoyed Unbreakable, Chronicle, Birdman, Fast Color, Freaks, etc.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#244

Post by guidoism »

Xcelerate wrote: post #26
clarada wrote: post #11

This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet everyone still seemed happy to trust the acc…

> I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. Same. A few years ago, I worked at a large tech company that a certain well-known news organization likes to cover. After a few articles were published relating to work I was involved in, I found myself thinking…

It was Amazon and The NY Times for me. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember specifics but man, it really changed my perception of journalism.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#245

Post by aidenn0 »

munificent wrote: post #96
ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Marvel movies are the worst about this for me. The adult characters use adult mannerisms and delivery, but the actual dialog and what they're saying is so cartoonishly simple and childlike that I can't suspend my disbelief when watching grown adults talk and act that way. It's easier for me to believe in superpowers than to believe in people that have the psychological complexity of houseplants.

> It's easier for me to believe in superpowers than to believe in people that have the psychological complexity of houseplants.

You must not get out much then?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#247

Post by sbierwagen »

tshaddox wrote: post #192
thatguy0900 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothered me the most about this was Thanos destroying the stones after. He should realize that the snap is something that will need to be done regularly if he wants to actually keep population down. Halving the galaxy once accomplishes nothing

Are we not supposed to think that Thanos is deranged? I thought it was pretty obvious that his goal is comically evil (no pun intended) and his motivation so singular that it’s pointless to even think of him as an individual with a personality who could be persuaded or even influenced by emotion. He’s literally just a force of nature that’s going to kill half of the life forms.

>Are we not supposed to think that Thanos is deranged?

A perennial problem in writing villains is characterizing them as insane and stupid (to explain why they do evil) but then in order to present a real threat to the hero they execute those evil and stupid plans with patience and intelligence.

Thanos has an army! An entire naval fleet assembled from centuries of constant war. He's a space Napoleon. That required skill, intelligence and considerable effort, as several characters tell us. And then after achieving the goal he spent so many years thinking about, he makes a dumb mistake, apparently without realizing it?

Same thing with the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008). Other characters say he's crazy. He himself says he's "just a dog chasing a car" with no plan or goals beyond causing chaos. Yet he is always executing complex plans which require precise timing? Not the behavior of a raving madman.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#248

Post by sbierwagen »

saberience wrote: post #219
wyclif wrote: post #138

I used to be a land surveyor, so when I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones computes the distance from the floor of the Map Room and then is shown finding the burial place of the Ark of the Covenant using a theodolite on a tripod, I just couldn't believe Spielberg didn't have a guy to whisper in his ear and tell him no, that actually can't be done accurately from ancient Egyptian measurements.

As a layperson, can you explain why it's impossible? I remember when I saw this movie the scene seemed at least somewhat plausible as long as the map-room was built accurately and to scale, right?

The sun describes a different arc through the sky depending on the time of year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma

It could have been done... if Indy knew the hour and minute the map room had been laid out, and it would only work twice a year. (Or once a year, if they had picked one of the solstices) Not exactly compatible with sneaking into the dig site under the noses of the Nazis.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#249

Post by wyclif »

sbierwagen wrote: post #248
saberience wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a layperson, can you explain why it's impossible? I remember when I saw this movie the scene seemed at least somewhat plausible as long as the map-room was built accurately and to scale, right?

The sun describes a different arc through the sky depending on the time of year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma It could have been done... if Indy knew the hour and minute the map room had been laid out, and it would only work twice a year. (Or once a year, if they had picked one of the solstices) Not exactly compatible with sneaking into the dig site under the noses of the Nazis.

Good answer, because there's no way Indy could have known the precise month or year the Map Room was built. The sun's angle changes throughout the day, making this a very time-sensitive operation. If Indy were off by even a few minutes, his calculations would be inaccurate.

Also: lack of scale would come into play. One would need much more precise dimensions of the staff, the height of the structure, and the angle of the sun's rays with much greater accuracy. Indy eyeballing it, as he does in the movie, wouldn't get him close to the location of the chamber. Indy and Sallah and crew would have needed to do a lot more digging and exploration to locate the Ark chamber (but of course, that wouldn't have made for a good movie, which is why such events are time-compressed).

Re: The Plumber Problem

#250

Post by pavel_lishin »

fragmede wrote: post #150
pavel_lishin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only an obvious choice if you're a psychopath or a sociopath. The machines are definitively - and canonically! - not.

that's one opinion of a world driven by machine. But where machines are currently unable to feel compassion or show mercy, an energy optimization algorithm could easily be seen as sociopathic as it separates mother from child for efficiency reasons because an algorithm said it wound be a more optimal arrangement.

We're still talking about The Matrix, right?
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