Nothing that I found particularly cinematic. It’s an entertaining story, and moving at times, but it doesn’t really stand out from any generic war/action movie. Would I watch it again? Probably not, but would I recommend watching it at least once? Also no. But do I regret watching it and wish I could have 2 hours of my life back because I resent listening to my friend who recommended it and now think much less of their taste in media for thinking so highly of such a mediocre formulaic slop that could have been shat out by chatGPT? Not me!

Just saw Red Dawn. The idea of WW3 just happening so quick you don’t realize is so real: no one expects war to break out in their back yard, it’s something that happens elsewhere that you’re conscripted into… until it isn’t, and suddenly you’re doing your best to just survive as everyone you know and love dies around you. You weren’t trained for this. Since the 1950s, America has been constantly on the brink of WW3, picking as many fights as they can; it’s incredibly prescient, as much so now as it was then.

But the movie instead relies too much on “BOOO HISSS EVIL, LYING, JOYLESS COMMIES,” only occasionally coming close to getting it: actually, they’re just like us. Like every other American war movie, it’s basically defanged of an accurate portrayal of war so that instead it can be a “YAY Patriotism!” story. Even the ending wraps, after watching all but 2 of the main characters get killed while fighting for their freedom and survival, with the conclusion that they “died so that this nation shall not perish from the Earth.”

And yes, I get the reference… It’s still nationalist propaganda no matter how famous the speech was.

War movies piss me off so much in general. War is an incredibly interesting topic, and we have so much to learn from it… And yet the majority of stories told about it seem to center around superhuman feats of combat and how great We™ are and how evil They™ are, and so few actually seem to really portray it for what it is:

a bunch of pretentious apes brainwashed into thinking the others are soulless monsters, while they have more in common with each other than with the pack leaders who pretend to be on their side (so that they can stay safe and comfortable while the grunts do all the dying for their greed).

1984

Jurassic World. Just give me 90 minutes of dino mutants fighting, I don’t give a shit about Chris Pratt nor some random kids.

You take that back about The Man From Earth. It left nothing wanting in execution.

I don’t want a remake, I want a sequel. I’m glad I’m not the only one who disliked the visuals of the movie, tho.

I think the execution was amazingly well done. It’s one of the best character driven horror-thrillers I’ve ever seen, all the characters are memorable and well-rounded, the premise is explored as much as it needs to be, and it doesn’t really leave any loose ends. 9/10 movie for sure

100% agree. It’s a fine twist on the subgenre, but the twist introduces an idea that begs to be expanded upon as part of a larger, cross-subgenre arc. And yet we only get a sliver and then it’s done.

My hot take is that Joss Whedon’s writing is like JJ Abrams’: perfect premises with bad sense of follow-thru, so all their work gets the Netflix “over before it’s satisfyingly concluded” treatment

What if I’m so propagandized by American technofascist social media that I am incapable of believing Marxists would be able to make and maintain a project of this size? How do I donate to the real devs? (/j)

Real question: assuming I’m basically broke, which is more helpful to y’all: a yearly dono of $100 or a weekly pledge of $2?

Never heard of him, but if he’s like Bernie, I’ll endorse that.

I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate

Nope, just responding to OP. I fit 3 of the items on their list, 5 depending on who you ask, and I take exception to having my issues with the party that’s supposed to represent my interests dismissed as “maga cuckoo infiltration.”

If it is as you say, then that sounds like bad faith actors posing as 3rd party alright. People will do anything to get you sucked into engagement to drain you and keep you from being productive. I guess reminding everyone of that is a public service

Great points! Now that the election is over, let’s focus on revamping the Dem party instead of huffing copium by blaming 3rd party leftists for not being conservative enough to vote for a rightwing party!

No problem, I love when people show curiosity, and I’m happy to help where I can

(Why are there % signs)

Good question, here’s the explanation man sudoers offers:

The definitions of what constitutes a valid alias member follow.

       User_List ::= User |
                     User ',' User_List

       User ::= '!'* user name |
                '!'* #user-ID |
                '!'* %group |
                '!'* %#group-ID |
                '!'* +netgroup |
                '!'* %:nonunix_group |
                '!'* %:#nonunix_gid |
                '!'* User_Alias

       A User_List is made up of one or more user names, user-IDs
       (prefixed with ‘#’), system group names and IDs (prefixed with ‘%’
       and ‘%#’ respectively), netgroups (prefixed with ‘+’), non-Unix
       group names and IDs (prefixed with ‘%:’ and ‘%:#’ respectively),
       and User_Aliases. Each list item may be prefixed with zero or more
       ‘!’ operators.  An odd number of ‘!’ operators negate the value of
       the item; an even number just cancel each other out.  User
       netgroups are matched using the user and domain members only; the
       host member is not used when matching.

TL;DR % lets the system know the following word is a group name, instead of a username

Categorization error. The categories of “gay” and “straight,” as we understand them currently, were invented by a cisheteronormative society that treats everything as an extreme male-masculine/female-feminine dichotomy. Trying to shove Gender Non-Conforming people into this framework will necessarily result in errors, because it denies their existence by its very core tenets.

“Identifying as” and “acting in a way that is best described by a certain adjective” are two different things

That origin is apocryphal, and likely based on a misunderstanding of a text that simply used the original phrase

litehtml looks promising, but I can’t vouch for it

>$1500 on an all new parts DIY PC complete with a Windows license. Nowadays everything’s outdated and these same parts would be like $800 max. Even back then I could have saved at least a couple hundred just by swallowing my pride and buying used.

I haven’t bought brand new tech since, and I have not regretted it yet.

What really is going on in the US right now?

Fascism

Is this worse than the first term?

Yes

Why’re legal people being kicked out?

Fascism

When is it time to really consider leave?

November 6th, 2024

So people don’t think I’m just fearmongering, here’s an in-depth explanation: the Republican party learned from their mistakes during Trump’s first term, and not only figured out how to use him, they had a plan for dismantling the government from day one. Unfortunately, their plan was to keep people focused on survival while they took away any public services, leaving only the parts that could be abused to enrich the billionaires.

As usual, they utilized divide and conquer techniques to keep the working class fighting amongst themselves about irrelevant issues like gender and immigration and the price of everyday goods. Now they have to make good on those promises to keep their supporters from turning on each other, but since they cannot control the price of goods through sheer will alone, they have to focus on purging the scapegoated groups.

They achieve this by attacking anyone and everyone who is an immigrant or visitor, documented or not. They are not trying to enforce the law, they are abusing the paramilitaristic forces they have control over (ICE) to see how much they can get their will done through sheer force.

The reason this works is because everyone in ICE “just follows orders” assuming if anything they did was out of line, someone else would stop them/clean up their mess. Our society operates on one big ethic of “that’s Someone Else’s Problem™.” But here’s the thing: you need enforcers willing to enforce the law, the system of checks and balances, at every level. Right now, there is no one arresting Trump for violating court orders, and everyone’s unsure if they even can because the Supreme Court ruled Presidential Immunity (the president can break most laws if he believes it’s “for the good of the country”).

On top of all that, the bureaucrats who would usually stand in the way of such gross misconduct are being purged. The red tape is being burned to the ground. The peons are keeping their heads down, “just following orders” as aforementioned, and the high ranking officials with weight to throw around are either following their duty of office—resigning if they refuse to follow orders—or being replaced with sycophants. The sum total effect is that there’s no one within the hierarchy who will stand up to abuse of authority.

As such, the presidency is free to do whatever he wants.

And he has. The other lesson The Party learned was to just unleash a constant barrage of policy. No matter what doesn’t pass, there’s a flood to hold back, so some is guaranteed to get through—and every bit that does is that much more power centralized in his office… And the dam will break eventually.

Meanwhile the liberal “opposition” will continue to waffle for three reasons: one, they’re still trying to play by the rules which have long since been discarded by the GOP; that only serves to benefit their opponents who use that against them. Two, they are easily manipulated by rhetoric, thinking they can bring GOP over to their side by engaging in the same rhetoric as the fascists (e.g. “so much for the party of ‘Law and Order’”); what they fail to comprehend is that the rhetoric fascists engage in is meaningless to the fascists, it is just a smokescreen: to a fascist, everything is about power, and words are just empty containers that you use to manipulate people into doing what you want (a form of power). Three, ultimately the Democratic Party is also in the pocket of billionaires, their interests are the same as the fascists: concentrate power into the hands of the wealthy, privatize the government.

If you can, leave. It doesn’t get better until after the fascists are violently deposed. They will stop at nothing less. Unfortunately, they have all the people who bekieve in doing that kind of thing on their side, so it’s only going to get worse.

And by worse, I mean that they’re already making plans for camps. They will market them as firstly “work retreats to heal lost souls,” or some similar rhetorical mixture of corpo-jargon and christianity (the 2 major ideologies) to justify rounding up anyome they deem a useless eater. Or maybe it will juat be called “Prison Labor” (which is really just constitutionally allowed slavery) and they will find whatever excuses to criminalize people they don’t like.

First it will be “illegals,” then it will be the homeless, addicts, the mentally ill, terrorists, or anyone else that is labelled a threat to society. And collateral damage will be acceptable (and encouraged) this whole time; so sometimes legal immigrants will get scooped in, or trans people who are clearly mentally ill by virtue of being trans, or anti fascists because antifa is a terrorist organization (because big brother tells me it is), or people who express leftist ideals publicly, or gun owners who haven’t pledged allegiance to The Party, or PoC with non-european names, or autistic people, or disabled people (because their secretary of Health and Human Services has “proven” that that disability is fake) or anyone else they believe they can “fix” by forcing them into labor.

And when those people don’t magically get “fixed” by labor, well… they’re just taking up too much space, aren’t they?

And the public will largely have one of three reactions: 1. “He can’t do that, that’s illegal! Someone (other than me) should really do something about that! I hope they do sooner than later… Anyhoo, better get back to struggling to survive in the worst recession since the Great Depression”; 2. “Well, business as usual, as long as it doesn’t affect me”; 3. “Hahaha FUCK YEAH, FUCK THOSE [bunch of slurs] AND ESPECIALLY THOSE [more slurs].”

If you can, leave. If you can’t… Well, read up on your rights and practice as many as you can.

- sent from the concentration camp I’m now fated to because writing all this will probably labelled an act of treason by The Party.

These better not be another round of “oh fuckin’ sweet, finally some good lesbian anime!” *watches whole series “THAT WAS ‘GAY’?!?!? THEY BARELY EVEN TOUCHED!!!”