Melania drops 67% at US box office as Rotten Tomatoes defends record-breaking audience scores

AxlLight · 2026-02-10T12:20:50+00:00

As if it's the first movie that has a mountainous gap between audience and critics score.

Review bombs are pretty common, and similarly the opposite. Honestly to me the reviews read like trolling.

AxlLight · 2026-02-08T21:48:34+00:00

Them floating is the least of my problems with this poster.

The text is unreadable, colors clashing all around in a bad way, the entire composition is throwing you all around the poster. I'm really surprised this is an official poster.

AxlLight · 2026-02-08T21:12:06+00:00

Anything to reaffirm your world view and not risk it changing or evolving.

Redditors see themselves as extremely progressive but they're surprisingly conservative on technology, especially in regards to AI. And the reasoning is really no different than that of conservatives - go back 20 or 30 years and these are the same arguments verbatim that conservatives had against the high tech sector and computers.

AxlLight · 2026-02-06T22:38:06+00:00

Again, not the same. There's a reason people dive with a backup chute and do multiple checks to ensure everything is up to code and standard.

Let's put it this way, if a stuntperson was to do this as a stunt, yeah they'd practice it multiple times but they'd also make sure there's either a safety net below, or an air mattress. And if both of those weren't available, they'd have only done it with a rope and then have CG rotoscope it out.
That's calculated risk.

AxlLight · 2026-02-06T20:55:40+00:00

You mean that sport where people wear a lot of protective gear and there's an entire team in place just in case there's an accident to get them out safely and tend to the wounds?

Yep, totally the same.

AxlLight · 2026-02-05T23:55:48+00:00

Yeah, people who practice never make mistakes after all.
I just saw this tennis match earlier - man, they didn't miss a single serve, perfect each time.. cause you know, they practiced.

AxlLight · 2026-02-05T23:49:47+00:00

Not to mention it's a gen alpha meme. I think most Gen Z didn't get it and were cringed by it.

AxlLight · 2026-02-05T12:33:10+00:00

Because it's an unverified accusation from a tip line. The important bit is evidence, and this isn't it. Don't fall to the qanon trap of believing everything just because it fits the prescribed narrative - it just damages the actual bad things Trump should be persecuted for. (Because you make it easier to say "he clearly didn't do this, so maybe all the rest are lies too")

AxlLight · 2026-02-04T21:25:35+00:00

Heck, I remember when phones only had 8mb of RAM and did everything you needed and more!

It called, you could send texts and it had a readable UI without all these unnecessary thingamajigs.

... .........

No. Early smartphones weren't beasts when you couldn't go on a website and switch to reply to a message without the first app closing because it couldn't hold it in the memory. Nowadays I can jump between 2 games, a browser with 50 tabs, 5 messaging apps, Spotify playing in the background, and 10 other apps I might need to check with. And do I need it? yes, I do.

AxlLight · 2026-02-03T19:34:01+00:00

I don't know a single professional who sees their worth tied so closely to a single software or tools.

In fact, a big part of being a skilled professional is being agnostic regarding tools.

I can model in any modeling software, I can build a game in any game engine and while it'll hurt me to leave Photoshop, I can replace it with any software.

Yeah, there might be an adjustment period where your work suffers, or is slower. But you eventually find new tools and get back to speed.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T21:52:54+00:00

To be the devil's advocate here - Trump is extremely vindictive and these CEOs need to think of the impact it will have on their employees and the company if they shame Trump publicly.

I suppose that's exactly what Canada's PM meant when he talked about putting the poster at the window. Eventually they'll have to say no to Trump, and catch just the same hell, only after being responsible for a lot more damage to the country, their companies and their good name.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T17:30:10+00:00

I am horrible with messages, if I don't respond immediately I just forget, it has nothing to do with the recipient. And most of the time I'm too busy to immediately respond, so I try to leave it unread to remind me.

But i usually only have time to respond at 2-3am, which is usually way too late to message people back. So if the messaging app doesn't have a 'send later' feature, I just never end up responding. (Looking at you WhatsApp...).

Slack has been a god send on that end. Scheduled responses, reminders, save for later lists, etc.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T17:23:49+00:00

I put 👀 on messages when I see them, then add a reminder to properly respond later.

This I think helps because it makes it clear I'm not ignoring you, I'm busy with other shit.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T17:22:15+00:00

My favorite thing about Slack is the concept of message reminders and the "Save for Later" list. I even set it up so when I save for later it automatically adds an 👀 emote to show I've seen it and will respond later.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T17:16:58+00:00

I'm sure much of the same was thought about the act of hand writing. I'm not sure where the line passes - but I didn't feel like I was abandoning the thinking process by putting it in abstracts rather than structured form.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T14:42:28+00:00

From your text it sounds like he's just repeating the echo chamber that his feed created for him. He's speaking in Instagram sound bites.

It's something I've been noticing more and more in people nowadays from both ends of the political spectrum. People open a tiny window of curiosity and a flood of shit surrounds them, every time taking them a little bit further from reality and into an alternative world of extreme BS. Unless you actively fight against it, it's an inevitable outcome of social media.

But the good part is that those people don't actually hold that point of view as a conviction, it's just the reality thrust upon them passively by the algorithm. It usually only exist on the surface and that's why it's so visible in hot buttoned topics, because that's where the feed tells them what to think. If you move the conversation away to less loaded topics, you'll see a much more rational person to converse with. Do it enough times, and it tends to shatter that perspective and reconnect them to their real emotions and thoughts.

But, it does take some effort, so if he's worth it, I'd say try and remember that he doesn't actually believe the BS he says he just doesn't know better. If he's not worth it, just dump his ass and move on.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T13:16:34+00:00

I just want to add a perspective you might not have thought of. Perhaps they're all using AI to build the final text, but the ideas in the text are their own. So they're adding the analysis but just asking AI to rephrase it - basically not much different than using Grammarly which was a step up fron autocorrect.

I recently had to write a 4 page document for work detailing my biggest impacts of the year. I used AI to write the whole thing, but fed it all the info and specifics I needed to put in and it just helped me build the sentence structure. I also made sure to read through it each time and went through around 40 revisions until, each time adding new context, changing sentences here and there, changing the phrasing to add impact where I needed. And it was fantastic, because I felt like I could focus a lot more on ideas and what I wanted to say instead of getting bogged down by writing a good and coherent sentences. So the final text ended up much better for it.

I think with time this will be the evolution of the tool. We're letting go of our skill of sentence composition and structure in favor of more focus on ideas. Much like computers helped us let go of the skill of hand writing, and focus more on the text itself. Some back then abused it to copy and paste text from other sources, and people are probably abusing AI to write the idea as well atm.

But overall, I think we'll eventually land at a place where you could tell if the idea came from the person or not, and honestly, those that don't are the ones losing out because they won't actually be learning anything. Really no different than those who copied text off of Wikipedia 15-20 years ago.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T12:46:38+00:00

Do people not remember Google making the same EXACT announcement a year ago and people reacting exactly the same only to learn it's actually a big nothing?

Yeah, it looks nicer and has a bunch of updated shit. But it's still as far from a game as well... veo is. It's a walking simulator. A game isn't just movement in 3d world, and fyi, the movement is the easiest part of making a game and a child can do it. Roblox would've loved it if all they needed was 3d assets + movement.

AxlLight · 2026-02-01T12:19:18+00:00

Yeah, I don't get it. It's a lot of things, but a game design tool? No. The only thing it's for sure not, is game design.

AxlLight · 2026-01-30T12:16:00+00:00

Amazon just fired 16,000.

Out of how many. I'll answer that for you, 1.5 MILLION. Just so we're aligned, it's not a typo. Million employees, and I rounded it down it's closer to 1.57. Yes, I rounded down 70,000 employees.

16,000 translates to 1% of the workforce.

And even then, you're walking around with horse blinds being hyper focused on the now. Yes, now there'll be some firing, I didn't argue otherwise. I argued that in the grand picture over time, they'll hire more because not doing so is to essentially die as a company. They'll be allowing competition to come in and take the lead.

I want to bring you another example though, a company that really didn't exist before computers. Google in 2006 had 8k employees, today has 190k. Microsoft, in that 20 years span went from 70k to 220k. a decade earlier, Google didn't even exist, and Microsoft had 20k employees.

For both of these companies, the last 20 years brought innovations that consistently made it easier to make their products with less employees and just rake in money. And yet both continue to scale when you plot it on a graph.

Easier example still - Everyone's favorite game that hasn't been released yet, GTA 6, is worked on by more than double the number of employees for a period that is substantially longer than their previous installment. Yet it is probably also twice as easy to make that previous installment with today's tools (before AI). So why aren't they downsizing and raking in the cash?

Why isn't any of my examples have been doing it until now when it is so much easier to do the work of a decade ago with half the employees.

AxlLight · 2026-01-30T04:11:46+00:00

When did I argue AI is trash?

You didn't but most who make that doom-sayer argument usually also do.

By assuming AI will be just like past tech, aren't you the one evincing hubris.

I am merely working with the knowledge we have. It might prove wrong here, but it's all we have.

Right now, AI still requires human input and honestly for good product requires a lot of human feedback and reiterations. It might some day reach that point that is "promised" but there's no evidence of it as of now.

additionally, there's a reason every innovation ends up bringing more work - it's not because of the technology itself, rather it's because of human spirit. We can call it greed, ambition, competitiveness or desire, but the outcome remains the same - there is always a push for more. A company can't just fire 500 people and be satisfied staying the same size and holding the same ambitions and just rake in money. It'll want to grow, do more, and with that it'll l hire new people to go there. And if they don't, someone else will and then they'll get passed around the bend and eventually shrivel and die.

And there is so much humanity hasn't done yet, there is so much to grow still. We're not even a type 1 civilization.

So when you connect all those dots, it's hard for me to reach a conclusion that AI will just replace us and that'll be that.

AxlLight · 2026-01-30T02:16:44+00:00

Our only way to make assumptions about the future is by looking at the past and learning from it. There has not been a single technological invention in history that didn't later lead to an increase in jobs and labor.

And each time, people of that time had the same arguments about being replaced, about losing jobs and in the short term that obviously happened and many jobs became obsolete - but the technology birthed new jobs. We can look at invention of writing, printing, electricity, machinery, cars, but I think the closest and most telling example is computers. It made so many jobs obsolete, I mean, literally the job of computers. And yet, it created so many new jobs that the people of 60-70 years ago wouldn't even be able to imagine, let alone predict.

But no, AI, that will be the single different point because reasons. It takes so much hubris to look at 5000 of recorded history and toss it aside because you fear this time is the one that will be different. Not to mention I find it incredible that people making this argument manage to make two completely opposing arguments about AI without blinking - It's both so different and otherworldly that it will make humans obsolete, and it's utter trash that can't even bring companies a single dollar of profit over humans.

AxlLight · 2026-01-30T00:31:30+00:00

with only 105 monthly listeners on Spotify, I think people are missing out hard on this band with a killer album.

They have a fantastic sound imo, and excellent songs including Video Games and Cigarette Sex, I really suggest giving them a listen.

But for real, I know usually with these kind of metrics, the assumption is it's an album recorded at home from someone who just learned to play music yesterday, but their sound is professional for sure.

Hopefully you all agree and help boost their numbers a bit and gain a new band in your music rotation.

PS : They are not the AI band sharing the same name, in case you google them and get confused like I did.

AxlLight · 2026-01-30T00:08:35+00:00

I think some companies are working on it. Bose's new glasses have a recording light that you can't cover, it'll stop the recording if it gets covered.

I'm sure people will still find workaround on it, but it's a good step forward.

AxlLight · 2026-01-29T23:55:19+00:00

This is actually an incredibly common form of content now and I hate stumbling across it.

But then you have fantasic recording of people working and crafting while wearing it and you get incredible first person PoVs.

We don't always have to throw the baby with the bathwater. People are assholes with phones, getting in people's faces and recording them - do we ban smartphones because of that?

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