I think (my own personal opinion) is that Big Trouble in Little China did something so crazy and wacky that no one actually recognised it at the time.
If you look at the film from a certain perspective, Jack Burton was the sidekick, and Wang was the main character. And they just filmed it from the perspective of the sidekick who thinks he’s the main character, which is a conceit I’ve always adored.
There are no stupid questions.
But there are in fact, some very stupid ones.
Josie and the Pussycats.
Rated 5.7 by people who had no clue what it was saying at the time. I feel like if it was released in today’s pop culture environment it would fare far far better.
It’s far more satirical, clever and funny than an Archie adjacent bubblegum pop movie has any right to be.
Writing: Specifically fiction writing in terms of structure, POV, plotting, etc…
History: Especially early societies and how much everything really stays the same, despite the advance of technology. No matter where or when you go, humans are gonna human.
If you think your Apple phone isn’t listening to you, I have some seaside real estate I’d like to sell you in Montana.
Not really. I find that most “pop culture” still gets talked about, it just doesn’t get pushed into everyone’s face by an algorithm.
If I drift away from my subscribed feed and look at the all feed, it doesn’t take long for something or another about pop culture to pop up. And then if I’m interested, I go to the particular community that’s talking about it and subscribe. The more I do that, the more interests start to show up in my subscribed feed.
For the most part, these communities all exist, there’s just no algorithm saying “hey…you’ll probably like this”. And so you have to find them yourself.
Stop all this Prime Directive nonsense.
There’s no such thing as a culture’s “natural progress” because there’s no such thing as “fate”. We live or die or change or stagnate based on random events and there’s no saying that one specific course of events is the correct one.
I can’t even remember what my phone was like before Niagara, to be honest. It’s simply become the correct way to use a phone (to me).
The notion that “facts matter”.
I’ve spent my entire life believing that facts don’t care about feelings. That scientific truth doesn’t require your belief in it in order to be true. That at the end of the day, reasoning will beat emotion…
By far the most dis-heartening thing about the last few years (to me) has been accepting the idea they “facts” are “whatever is shouted the loudest”.
It, more than anything else, makes me feel helpless. If the enemy isn’t even playing with the same fact-sheet… How do you even begin to fight that?
What if someone decided you were a bad guy and decided to do the same thing to you?
I’d hate it, obviously. But if I’m living my life in such a way to make people believe that my death is necessary, I would be reexamining my life choices.
“Humanity” – Proudly rage-quitting since 1632
Enter a homeless shelter each morning. Do my thing. Walk out a richer man than I was when I walked in.
Not all gain is monetary
The rich don’t stay rich by letting other people join their club
In a perfect world, I would be independently employed from home (a writer, or something similar), living on a small acreage just outside a small city. Not too far away that I can’t go in for supplies or things on a regular basis, but not too close that I’m bothered by the city lights on the horizon. Maybe 10 kilometres or so outside of a medium sized city.
On that acreage, I’d strive to be as self-sufficient as possible. Have a garden, for example. Solar Panels, Geothermal, etc… I’d develop relationships with my local neighbours. purchase a half a side of beef from a rancher to my left. Some eggs and fryers from a farmer to my right. Spend my evenings in my woodworking shop making furniture and other things that strike my fancy.
Zebra F-301
I still game on my desktop. But it’s never been the primary use.
Graphic Design, video editing, 3D modelling, etc… has been the reason for my upgrades over the years. The fact that each of those upgrades allowed my games to perform better was a side-effect instead of being the primary reason.
The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman would be top choice.
An extremely close second would be a mini-series based on the novel Imajica by Clive Barker (second only because I don’t think anything would be able to truly do that book justice on screen so I’d be hesitant to even try.)
A longer miniseries of L.A. Confidential that tells the whole story of the novel rather than having to chop and streamline it for a movie runtime. I love the movie and I think how they chose to cut and edit the story down is actually really brilliant, but I’d be interested in seeing the whole thing play out in a mini-series.
Yeah. I worded that wrong for sure.
The policy of American intervention began in South America going as far back as the early 1900s, followed by the middle east after WW1 and Asia-Pacific after WW2.
“Ramp up” was the wrong choice of words, for sure. “Emboldened” to not try to hide it anymore would be more accurate.
My apologies. Thanks for clarifying.
I’m not going to go into too much detail, as I don’t really have the time for an in depth explanation. But suffice it to say from a sociological perspective, organized religion formed along with more complex societies because complex societies need more rules to manage a higher population that came about because of agriculture and the rise of city states.
it’s not a coincidence that hunter-gatherers worshipped fertility goddesses and totemic gods, and that actual “organized” pantheons came into being alongside the concept of “nations”.
Organized religion was a tool that was invented to exert control and prevent chaos when societies were in their infancy and still figuring out how to live together and share resources. (ie. who are we and who are “others”. Who gets to share our wealth and who doesn’t, etc… etc…)
We don’t need it anymore, and yet it sticks around causing all kinds of trouble.
Because -isms exist in a binary world (sexism, racism, etc…)
Any increase in visibility for whatever minority they happen to hate, is a decrease in visibility for them (in their feeble transactional little minds) and it drives them bonkers.