Yeah if it were about security they’d check the version of HTTPS, SSL, TLS and all that stuff.

I saw an article about them attacking Lebanon now.

Hezbollah, not Lebanon. Please don’t legitimize terrorist groups by considering them to be the government of the country they operate in. Lebanon has elections, please support democracy and it’s not consider Hezbollah as Lebanon’s government, even if those psychopaths have control over a significant portion of the country.

That being said, Nasrallah is probably under significant pressure to do something to help Hamas in some way. Last week he put out some threats against Israel. Israel put out counter threats. In all likelihood that’s where things will stay, neither side wants a war with the other.

The media is always saying a war is imminent. Remember when they were claiming China was going to invade Taiwan any minute? There’s probably some outlets that’re still are saying that sometimes. It gets clicks, views, and ratings.

Who knows they might be right this time (a stopped clock is right twice a day) but it seems doubtful.

So, where will it stop?

In terms of Gaza, Hamas is still holding Israeli hostages. It’s not going to stop as long as Hamas is holding Israelis hostage.

Hamas is likely making a lot of money from the suffering of Palestinians. So they don’t have much incentive to release the hostage and put an end to the conflict.

So it will continue on as the IDF goes house to house trying to find the people that Hamas took on October 7.

Eventually either the IDF will find all of the hostages or Hamas will release them. Then it will end.

Wow you went in deep down the rabbit hole there.

Nine has many layers to it. It’s the most interesting of all of the Star Wars movies, just isn’t appreciated by hot take internet culture that fixates on the nitpicks.

In one of the layers, it has a good message for children that are learning in school that their ancestors did terrible things. You don’t have to identify with your ancestors, you can and should identify with the good people in the past. Even those that opposed your ancestors.

Probably don’t need to go so far as changing your name because your ancestors did some bad shit, but it’s Star Wars, people are always changing their names to signal their alignment.

Raiders uses an artifact to great effect, are the amulet is necessary irreplaceable and uniquely expressed through the power of the sun on a particular day turning into a laser beam.

And Indy happened to be there on that day? Odds are he’d have to wait months before things were in alignment. Also why did someone ever come up with this convoluted mechanism to show which building the Ark was in? Like were they planning on their civilization someday ending and there would someday be a scenario where it needed to be kept a secret… but not that secret, so that a hero could find it while bad people wouldn’t.

Also who is even maintaining the various booby traps in the places Indy goes? Why design a building to collapse if someone takes an artifiact?

There are so many things in an action adventure movie that exist simply for there to be fun action scenes. You’re thinking Raiders is fine (which it is) maybe because you didn’t watch it looking for flaws. Maybe because you were a kid when watching it, or maybe because the internet wasn’t telling you that you were supposed to hate the movie.

RoS is simply consistent with movies from a different era. An era when people just enjoyed movies for what they were instead of going to movies pretending to be a bitter internet critic. All of the Star Wars Episodes are like movies from another era, it’s kinda it’s thing, the whole Episode thing is from 1930s Flash Gordon movies after all.

A real criticism of the knife thing could be that’s it’s unoriginal, since it is the same thing as the amulet from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In fact the early part of the movie is basically an Indiana Jones movie but in Star Wars. But since I like both Indiana Jones and Star Wars, and I don’t think action adventure movies need to be 100% original, it was enjoyable for me.

Aging boomers are costing the healthcare system a lot of money. So there’s a need to increase tax revenue to cover the cost. When an immigrant comes to the country they immediately start working and therefore immediately starts paying taxes.

A lot of it is down to how lopsided the demographics are with an overly high percentage of retired population.

In economics you can’t solve one problem without creating others. But the problems solved are bigger than the problems created. And housing problems are a temporary problem. As boomers start dying off, the situation will correct itself, housing will be freed up and healthcare costs will decrease.

The Prequels were more world ruining movies than world building movies.

Both had a magical artifact that told the hero where to go. The functionality and even the reason for the existence of the artifacts in both don’t make a lot of sense. But for some you’re fixated on this minor flaw in RoS while imagining it’s not a flaw at all in Raiders. It’s the same minor flaw, and in neither they aren’t worth worrying about.

It’s mostly that movies like Raiders doesn’t get the same level of scrutiny because nostalgia protects it from the negative internet culture of nitpicking new movies to prove they’re bad. When you play that game the prize you win is that you can’t enjoy new movies.

I’m not the guy you replied to, but MS fonts are kinda free to download. Not free enough they can just put them into a package but there’s a defined method for downloading them. Most distros have a package that will automatically do this. On Debian it’s ttf-mscorefonts-installer which will download the fonts and install them when it gets to the configuration part of the package install. You can probably search for a similar package for your distro.

I’m not upset by neither Raiders of the Lost Ark nor RoS. They have pretty much the same flaws. But whatever, they’re action adventure movies.

“A wizard did it” rules apply in both of these movies since magic is real in both of these worlds. And when we’re talking about a knife that’s canonically made by someone with magic powers… yeah, a wizard did it.

Well the Jedi were kinda evil. They indoctrinate children to fight in their holy wars. Basically the same thing the First Order was up to and they were the bad guys.

And the reason for this is because Anakin in Episode I was the biggest Mary Sue in all of fiction. Lucas felt like a child leaving his mother was more impactful than a young man leaving his mother so therefore Jedi now take children and train them. Also they couldn’t go back and check on Anakin’s mother later, because there needed to be a scene where she dies to start Anakin’s turn to the dark side. So apparently the Jedi don’t allow the children they’re indoctrinating to ever see their families?

The Mary Sue nature of Anakin resulted in the PT having terrible world building. Things are the way they are only because everything was warped to suit a single character.

He became a villain at a drop of a hat because it was lazy writing. It’s just a movie so whatever, but what bothers me is the fact that he jammed Columbine (a real life human tragedy) into a movie obviously meant to sell toys to children. It’s really fucked up.

There’s nothing wrong with fried chicken. There’s nothing wrong with watermelon.

But if you’re trying to think of menu options for an event associated with black history and you just shrug and think “I dunno, black people like fried chicken and watermelon, so lets do that” you’re being so lazy you’d be better off doing nothing at all. I literally typed “black history food” into a search and got many pages with lists of options. So by serving fried chicken and watermelon it’s a statement “I don’t give a fuck about black people but since I’m obligated to serve some kind of food option I’m just going to stick with lazy stereotypes.”

It wold be preferable to do nothing and be honest about not caring than it is to offer a stereotype and then cry crocodile tears because people aren’t recognizing the token effort that was made.

Raiders is fine. You’re not supposed think to hard about why an artifact exists and why it works even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense in an action adventure movie. Ideally everything would make perfect sense, but when it doesn’t it’s no reason to get your panties in a bunch.

They could’ve accomplished things in Raisers a lot more smarter too. Indy could’ve just waited until that Nazis dug up the Ark and then stole the truck once it was loaded. Which is exactly what he ended up doing. Would’ve cut out a lot of the action and adventure by doing it that way. And that’s what we want, right? Efficient plot lines which minimizes the action and adventure.

Characters using scanners or fictional magic constantly is boring. And besides, why couldn’t a knife that was made by a sorcerer (that had the ability to see the future) have magical properties? Seems you’re upset they used one kind of magic instead of a different kind of magic. Odd thing to be upset about when watching a popcorn action adventure movie.

Sure there are a few minor flaws in RoS. But it feels like you went into the movie looking for something wrong with it and it gave you what you wanted. I went into it wanting a fun action adventure movie, and it gave me what wanted. So the movie delivered for both of us, didn’t it?

Daenerys had to always be talked out of solving problems with Dragonfire. If she didn’t die, it wouldn’t be an ending because we’d be left with a question about whether or not she might someday go Mad Queen.

The point of the show is that it’s fairly arbitrary who sits on the throne. Robert Baratheon because he won a rebellion, Joffrey because he was supposedly the son of the King (but really wasn’t) his brother because Joffrey was poisoned, then their mother because… well she was an important person that was in the capital. Big army diplomacy, claims based on blood relations to dead people who were previously the monarch, fast army diplomacy… that’s basically a monarchy in a nutshell. It’s really the advisors that run everything so why does it matter who sits on a fancy throne?

So it’s fitting that it ends with someone on the throne being arbitrary, it’s ultimately what a monarchy is, just some arbitrary person that people agree is the person that site on the throne. And it was the point of the story. It’s all just a silly game the powerful play while the peasants die for because of it.

None of the decisions were bad, it was just rushed and clumsy. Just people didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fact that Daenerys was using dragonfire to solve her problems more and more. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that who’s on the throne doesn’t much matter, the most important thing is that people agree on whoever it is. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that the prophecy was just some bullshit that made Stanis do horrible things (like burning people alive) and didn’t notice Daenerys was going down the same path I guess they thought she was the real chosen one. People just didn’t pay attention to what the point of the story was, and were disappointed that there was never a real Prince of Light, just a bunch of assholes getting a lot of people killed for their petty game of thrones.

Destroying a planet is a comic book kind of evil. Massacring some school children is real life evil.

Luke’s aunt and uncle were killed by Stormtroopers… guys you’re not supposed to sympathize with. Are we not supposed to be sympathetic towards Anakin? Is he supposed to be a generic bad guy with very little depth like a Stormtrooper or Jabba?

Yeah there were some animal rights people that ran out onto the field at a ballgame I was at. The fine for running onto the field is $5000. There were two of them, so that was $10,000.

TV broadcasts don’t show people that run out onto the field since they don’t want to encourage it. So the only people that saw their banner were people at the ballpark. Someone shouted “get off the field you hippies” and the whole section laughed.

They probably should’ve just donated the $10,000 to an animal shelter.

It’s just how internet activist groups work. Most people aren’t motivated to improve things for their cause, they’re motivated to prove to others in their group how zealous they are. The more outlandish and untrue the things they say are, the more they prove their loyalty to the cause and the more points they’ll get from others in the group.

It’s the same pattern of behavior for every internet activist group. Whether it’s a vegan group, a socialist group, a MAGA group, an antivax group, Qanon, whatever. Promoting the cause doesn’t really matter, it’s about promoting yourself to others within the cause. Which is why you see insane lies about every kind of contentious issue. They aren’t trying to convince you, they’re trying to convince the others in the group how dedicated they are to the cause. “I’m willing to lie to help the cause!” gets a lot of points from the people already supporting the cause.

And the ST is about Vladimir Putin working in the background before revealing that fascism has been there this whole time, we just didn’t notice. Somehow fascism returned! An authoritarian with thousands of super weapons capable of destroying entire cities suddenly attacks out of nowhere and everyone in the world has to band together to help the resistance.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine didn’t happen yet, but JJ Abrams predicted it! The JJ Abrams Star Wars movies were about high-minded philosophy and politics.

Your comment rests on the assumption that JJ Abrams movies are mindless entertainment that never comments on the real world, but that’s always been false.

Really though, the JJ Abrams movies have quite a lot to say about the emotional paths to fascism. From indoctrination to bad relationships with a father figure, the relationship to our ancestors, our need to restore a past empire. It’s all there. The prequels are very dated, just immature shots being fired at a W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. The JJ Abrams movies explore the emotions that lead fascism, which will always be relevant.

Ever see the statue of a confederate general being removed? If you did, you’d see a reproduction of an evil guy that died a long time ago being moved around with a crane. What do you see at the beginning of RoS again? You might see it as mindless entertainment but there’s a message there, it’s just that JJ Abrams isn’t spoon-feeding it to you.

Yeah maybe I’m just bitter because they advertised TLJ as “being about strong women” and it made me think we were going to see Leia do some bad ass shit with a light saber. I was so down for that. Instead she Mary Poppinsed her way across the screen and was in a coma for most of the movie.

Having older people do action is always a challenge, check the scene where Liam Neeson is climbing over a fence and there’s like 20 cuts before he makes it. But Star Wars is the kind of thing where that isn’t much of an issue. Carrie Fisher could wave around a s stick and throw out her hand and with some CGI she’s be deflecting blaster shots and throwing around Stormtroopers using the force.

Instead we don’t see Leia with a lightsaber until RoS and it’s CGI. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate them finally showing Leia with a lightsaber. I will always defend RoS because of this… and Palpatine blasting X-Wings with lightning bolts, because fuck it, it’s Star Wars have some fun people.

Ok, we have so, so much established canon to work with, what parts of it can we focus on or interweave and tweak a bit to tell precisely the kind if story we want?

Yeah but you gotta consider what Star Wars is about at it’s core: some kids going on an adventure to save the galaxy. A lot of the EU wouldn’t work because the actors that portray the characters are too old to do those stories in the same way. Still they should’ve had Leia with a lightsaber and bring in Thrawn, who could have some younger underlings himself. And yeah Mara Jade could make an appearance too, but it wouldn’t be a starring role. But at least have the older characters doing things to help and maybe have the good old “I’ll deal with this” thing happen so the kids can get away.

TFA was the best of the three because Han Solo did stuff. Luke and Leia just didn’t feel all that relevant in the other movies. I give RoS a pass because Luke Skywalker was dead in the story and Carrie Fisher was dead in real life. Not much could be done at that point. TLJ was where things needed to go down, but it just didn’t.

It’s all just Meta wankery to me. Like the writer is thinking “how do I portray this character has reached mythological levels in our culture? I know I’ll make the movie about that! I’m so brilliant!” Fap fap fap

It’s a “sir, this is a Wendy’s” kind of thing. This is a Star Wars. Fun action adventure movie. Kind of movie kids wear costumes when they go see it. It’s not that I don’t understand the “Star Wars movies are an illusion, but if that illusion inspires children, that’s what really matters!” message to it. And it’s not that the message is wrong. It’s just that it’s obvious and boring.

It’s fine to have this kind of wankery in a Knives Out kind of movie or whatever, but it’s a Star Wars FFS. Pew pew pew voom voom. The challenge is to have a message in the subtext of a fun action adventure, not to spew out an obvious and shallow message overlayed on top of the action that’s constantly telling the audience the movie isn’t real. We know it’s not real, but make a movie that lets us turn off our phones and pretend it’s real for a few hours.