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[#] Sat Jan 09 2021 00:09:55 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Even Frodo fails. Sam is the hero. Unsung. The books, the movies, both say this. Blatantly. "They'll sing about his faithful gardner."

No. They won't. They'll sing about brave Frodo. Frodo lives. 



[#] Sat Jan 09 2021 13:29:30 EST from Nurb432

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Honestly i dont want it.  With extreme power comes constant attack ..  



[#] Sat Jan 09 2021 13:43:53 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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The whole meta quality of "facing Trumped up charges," is about to go next level.

 

Sat Jan 09 2021 13:29:30 EST from Nurb432

Honestly i dont want it.  With extreme power comes constant attack ..  



 



[#] Tue Jan 12 2021 12:46:20 EST from Nurb432

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I should read those someday. been meaning to since i was a kid. But i'm more of a scifi kind of person.  Wife bought the DVD set years ago, thinking id like that stuff, but i think its like 12 hours.   

Sat Jan 09 2021 00:09:55 EST from ParanoidDelusions

Even Frodo fails. Sam is the hero. Unsung. The books, the movies, both say this. Blatantly. "They'll sing about his faithful gardner."

No. They won't. They'll sing about brave Frodo. Frodo lives. 



 



[#] Tue Jan 12 2021 15:23:28 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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If High Fantasy isn't your thing, don't try and force yourself. But maybe start off with The Hobbit. Jumping right into the Lord of the Rings is a heavy chunk of Fantasy fiction to bite off. 

Honestly - as a genre - most of it misses by a pretty wide margin. LoTR is a classic piece of literature, though.  Also... the movies, you can watch them over a period - you don't have to binge them. But - they're not nearly as good as the books. 

Oddly, the Hobbit is a *terrible* movie franchise. They did all the things wrong with that one. 

 

Tue Jan 12 2021 12:46:20 EST from Nurb432

I should read those someday. been meaning to since i was a kid. But i'm more of a scifi kind of person.  Wife bought the DVD set years ago, thinking id like that stuff, but i think its like 12 hours.   

 


[#] Tue Jan 12 2021 16:16:58 EST from Nurb432

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Problem i have with movies is if it doesn't reach out and grab me in the first 20 mins or so, and i dont binge it, ill never go back and finish the series. has to be a commitment at that time. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 15:23:28 EST from ParanoidDelusions

If High Fantasy isn't your thing, don't try and force yourself. But maybe start off with The Hobbit. Jumping right into the Lord of the Rings is a heavy chunk of Fantasy fiction to bite off. 

Honestly - as a genre - most of it misses by a pretty wide margin. LoTR is a classic piece of literature, though.  Also... the movies, you can watch them over a period - you don't have to binge them. But - they're not nearly as good as the books. 

Oddly, the Hobbit is a *terrible* movie franchise. They did all the things wrong with that one. 

 

Tue Jan 12 2021 12:46:20 EST from Nurb432

I should read those someday. been meaning to since i was a kid. But i'm more of a scifi kind of person.  Wife bought the DVD set years ago, thinking id like that stuff, but i think its like 12 hours.   

 


 



[#] Tue Jan 12 2021 17:17:34 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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So, it is important, though it is boring. Shire folk are fat, happy, simple, white suburban folk. They garden, they have little hobbies. They've gt 1st world problems, like nosy in-laws and competition to keep up with the Tooks... but mostly they like to sit around and drink and eat, and occasionally the riskier ones will hang out with a wizard and blow off fireworks and smoke some pipeweed. They lead an idyllic lifestyle, and Jackson wanted to spend a lot of time on establishing that about them. More than the books do, really. Rather than showing, the book really tells you this about them and their lifestyle. 

The book also kind of assumes you got introduced through the Hobbit, so you know a lot of this already. The Hobbit introduces the Shire lifestyle and culture more fully, with the meeting with the dwarves and Gandalf as kind of a bridge... 

In both cases - once you get out of the Shire... things are far less like a quaint English subdivision of ajoined houses full of comfortable englishmen. Quickly. 

It starts slow, then becomes a page turner. 

 

Tue Jan 12 2021 16:16:58 EST from Nurb432

Problem i have with movies is if it doesn't reach out and grab me in the first 20 mins or so, and i dont binge it, ill never go back and finish the series. has to be a commitment at that time. 

 


 



[#] Tue Jan 12 2021 17:18:10 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Also, there are a lot of characters. Don't try and keep track of all of them. The important ones, you'll come to know. 



[#] Wed Jan 13 2021 18:06:47 EST from darknetuser

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Oddly, the Hobbit is a *terrible* movie franchise. They did all the

things wrong with that one. 


Agreed.

High Fantasy, as a book genre, as plenty of good stuff in it, but also plenty of bad stuff. You need to know which pieces are the good ones or else you risk running into Scott Bakker and having your brain ooze from your ears.


The Hobbit was a nice tale for what it was. A tool for sparkling the imagination of kids with cool heroes, a daunting threat on the land etc etc etc. They turned the movie franchise into a multi-hour-long joke. "Mercenary goblins. No more than a hundred. We can manage." Seriously?

[#] Wed Jan 13 2021 20:31:04 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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I'm surprised they didn't figure out a way to fit Samuel L Jackson in as a motherfuckin' Ranger. 

And maybe have Legolas invent breakdancing. 

The problem with high fantasy as a genre, is there are a lot of tropes and cliches, and a lot of it doesn't hold up well through time. Some of it gets too weird. 

And... it has kind of gotten to the point where metal got, as far as arguing about what genre a piece is in. Is Game of Thrones "high fantasy"? 

It is tied in with the fortunes of AD&D - which has been incredibly diluted because of the 5th edition's popularity with the SJW crowd. Now they're getting so granular they're talking about... 

"Low Fantasy/Low Magic" to "High Fantasy/High Magic"... and even that is twisted from what I'd consider high fantasy... 

By their definition, I think Game of Thrones would be "Low Fantasy/Low Magic". Outside of dragons and wights, there aren't a lot of monsters, adventures, FANTASY. The dwarfs are actual dwarfs - genetic defects, not a distinct race. It is mostly about human politics in a middle-ages type setting. There is one priestess, and one cult of assassins that can assume the face of those they murder. It seems so almost technological, along with other hints throughout the series - that one starts to wonder if it isn't actually a post-apocalyptic story after the collapse of a very advance society on Earth.   

And High Fantasy/High Magic is a cartoon. It is Adventure Time. 

 

Wed Jan 13 2021 18:06:47 EST from darknetuser
Oddly, the Hobbit is a *terrible* movie franchise. They did all the

things wrong with that one. 


Agreed.

High Fantasy, as a book genre, as plenty of good stuff in it, but also plenty of bad stuff. You need to know which pieces are the good ones or else you risk running into Scott Bakker and having your brain ooze from your ears.


The Hobbit was a nice tale for what it was. A tool for sparkling the imagination of kids with cool heroes, a daunting threat on the land etc etc etc. They turned the movie franchise into a multi-hour-long joke. "Mercenary goblins. No more than a hundred. We can manage." Seriously?

 



[#] Thu Jan 14 2021 09:56:34 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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There are more than a few authors/writers who deliberately blur the line between sci-fi and fantasy using exactly that rationale, that an age of magic rose up after an age of science collapsed the society.

Game of Thrones was neither.  That was more like a soft porn soap opera with dress-up costumes.



[#] Thu Jan 14 2021 10:35:03 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Game of Thrones is Dallas in Middle Earth - for sure. 

Which is an interesting take on the genre. Far more focus on the daily routine lives of the characters - who are mostly entitled folks trying to navigate power in their society during a time of social upset and conflict. 

They are a society in social and technical decline. They have memories of their society being not unlike it is, but more powerful, with greater technology - and legends of greater magic. They can't explain how the older society did things they are no longer capable of doing, especially in construction engineering. Those feats of construction happened before their history. There is evidence of some sort of cataclysmic event - vast barren wastelands and a cracked moon. The maps of Westeros and Erros are huge - I think they're the Americas and what is left of Africa and Asia - and it is possible that the Earth has tilted on its axis and its orbit has changed, accounting for deep winters that only happen a decade apart or so. 

And it was pretty good, until the last season - and pretty much avoided SJW signaling the entire time. Then the producers thought they got a gig on Star Wars, and decided to wrap it up in 3 shows when it probably had 3 seasons left. 

It was gratuitous about sex. 

But it stuck to the genre reality so well it outraged Cultural Marxists. 

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/06/there-are-no-black-people-on-game-of-thrones-why-is-fantasy-tv-so-white

 

Thu Jan 14 2021 09:56:34 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

There are more than a few authors/writers who deliberately blur the line between sci-fi and fantasy using exactly that rationale, that an age of magic rose up after an age of science collapsed the society.

Game of Thrones was neither.  That was more like a soft porn soap opera with dress-up costumes.



 



[#] Sat Feb 06 2021 10:44:23 EST from nonservator

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https://spectator.org/google-justice-department-renata-hesse/

 

"We stayed quiet when reporters uncovered that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt started pushing the Biden administration to appoint Google’s allies to top federal government positions. We stayed quiet when the then-president-elect named a swath of Big Tech alumni to his transition team, including a former Facebook director as his transition’s general counsel. We even stayed quiet when he named Ron Klain, a former executive council member to Silicon Valley’s Washington, D.C., trade group, as his chief of staff.

"But with former Google lawyer Renata B. Hesse now the reported front-runner to head the Biden Justice Department’s antitrust division, we can afford to be silent no more."



[#] Sat Feb 06 2021 10:52:05 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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f-them 

Wow. When did Google appoint itself the Grand Poohbah of Open Source Oversight?

If they want more supervision of open source code that they make use of in their own systems, then they need to provide that review as it enters their doors. They don't get to boss around upstream unless they're paying us.

By the way, I realized something fun over the last couple of weeks. You know how 20 years ago we avoided ZDnet because they were Microsoft shills?
Nowadays their site is actually readable.

[#] Sat Feb 06 2021 14:09:14 EST from Nurb432

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Ya, i remember that. And have never been back since :) 

 

And i agree, if they want to 'mega audit' code they bring in and refuse to incorporate anything they dont like, great, But dont tell ME what i can do with MY code unless i work for you and its code i created on your dime.

Sat Feb 06 2021 10:52:05 EST from IGnatius T Foobar
f-them 

Wow. When did Google appoint itself the Grand Poohbah of Open Source Oversight?

If they want more supervision of open source code that they make use of in their own systems, then they need to provide that review as it enters their doors. They don't get to boss around upstream unless they're paying us.

By the way, I realized something fun over the last couple of weeks. You know how 20 years ago we avoided ZDnet because they were Microsoft shills?
Nowadays their site is actually readable.

 



[#] Wed Feb 10 2021 10:11:36 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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I eventually made The Register my daily read, because they were Linux-friendly but not Linux-focused, and the snarky tone of their writing was fun. But lately the Reg has become intolerable -- way too much social commentary. I suspect they may have promoted Kieren McCarthy to an editor or something because it's jam packed with San Franciso values instead of technology reporting.

ZDnet is, ironically, readable now that the Microsoft monoculture is over.
It would be fun to go back in time 25 years and tell myself "in 2021, ZDnet is readable, Slashdot is still around but they are a pathetic joke"

[#] Wed Feb 10 2021 14:56:25 EST from Nurb432

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Ya, i had forgot about the register. I used to read it too, but lost interest.  I'm sure it was the same reason, just wasn't as 'obvious' to me at the time other than 'this sux now'.

 

I agree with slashdot. The mighty has fallen.

Wed Feb 10 2021 10:11:36 EST from IGnatius T Foobar
I eventually made The Register my daily read, because they were Linux-friendly but not Linux-focused, and the snarky tone of their writing was fun. But lately the Reg has become intolerable -- way too much social commentary. I suspect they may have promoted Kieren McCarthy to an editor or something because it's jam packed with San Franciso values instead of technology reporting.

ZDnet is, ironically, readable now that the Microsoft monoculture is over.
It would be fun to go back in time 25 years and tell myself "in 2021, ZDnet is readable, Slashdot is still around but they are a pathetic joke"

 



[#] Wed Feb 10 2021 15:03:37 EST from Nurb432

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"and dont lose that bitcoin, it really does become something, eventually.. Just be patient "

 

I still kick myself over that.  "it will never make it out of the darkweb for buying drugs" as i deleted my wallet and password with several full coins in it.     Or "that internet thing will never catch on with average people"  when my mother offered to help fund a small dial-up ISP .. 

Wed Feb 10 2021 10:11:36 EST from IGnatius T Foobar
It would be fun to go back in time 25 years and tell myself "in 2021, ZDnet is readable, Slashdot is still around but they are a pathetic joke"

 



[#] Wed Feb 10 2021 20:23:18 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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You agree *with* Slashdot, or you agree with me *about* Slashdot? It's amazing that the site is still around and there are still people having the same lame-o conversations there that they were having 20 years ago, over topics that no longer matter. They haven't just jumped the shark, they've launched into space and jumped forward in time to a future where sharks are extinct.

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