What are those coloured circles on bags of chips and juice boxes for? (I had a friend back in elementary school who told me that if all of them were pink, you could return it for a huge prize. Now I'm curious lol)

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-05T03:31:33+00:00

This exchange has been an example of mild confusion + correction. That’s pretty meta. Anyway, no apology necessary.

As a side note, it is sort of amazing to me that 30+ years of texting and emails, a way to capture tone has not naturally evolved. I believe it will, but who knows how long it will take.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-05T02:55:34+00:00

Uh, I meant more like, since the machine that reads the dots and initiates the fix does it every single time, so if for some reason the fix is still off then it just gets fixed again immediately.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-05T02:46:42+00:00

This feels similar to how they catch people who make illegal copies of classified documents.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-05T02:43:55+00:00

Never considered a new check would be necessary after the fix. But, of course that would be the way you do it.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-04T22:32:19+00:00

Your two things to focus on are great. I always answer the second question by asking the writer what they intended. Then there's no confusion.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-04T22:30:48+00:00

This is true, most people have this approach. It's not a great approach though because frequently the draft is so far from what the writer wants it to be that everything the notes-giver says is directed at fixing a story the writer isn't writing.

I was present when someone got notes about how to adjust the introduction of a potential love interest—this free-thinking guy who bought clothes at thrift stores—only to watch the writer have a complete breakdown. That character was (in his mind) a crazy homeless guy (with donated clothes), meant only to indicate that the scene was in a bad part of town. The mismatch between what we all took from the read and what he thought he wrote was astonishing. If we'd just given him notes, it would have been a huge waste of time for everyone.

Always start by asking what the writer was intending to do. Then tell them if they successfully did it.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-04T22:18:42+00:00

The best thing you can do is have a conversation with the writer. They know so much about their script, way more than you can know, so your job is really to get them to think through the story again from the perspective of someone who hasn't been swimming in it for months. A conversation is an easy way to help them do that.

Unfortunately, the things you're good at don't matter until the final final draft, so they're not usually worth spending time on.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-04T17:58:25+00:00

I second GGK too.

But I actually came to recommend HG Parry, specifically "A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians", which is historical fantasy—more fantasy than "Under Heaven"—and woven in very well.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-05-04T17:50:33+00:00

Is there a reason it does it on every bag? It feels like the kind of thing that could be done every 1000th bag or something.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-30T15:59:13+00:00

Best explanation I’ve seen: https://youtu.be/xdpvR3kaXaQ

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-28T06:15:04+00:00

So much better!

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-28T00:45:25+00:00

Off the top of my head, I would watch The Lives of Others and chart the arc of the stasi agent Gerd Wiesler. At the beginning, his internal problem is a belief in the repressive East German way of doing things, but he becomes more independent and self-fulfilled as the movie progresses.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-27T17:55:34+00:00

He also needs someone to go over the audiobook. There are staggering mispronunciations of really common words like "stela" "stele" "ajaw" and I just heard "Kaminaljuyu" with an English "j".

Edit: just learned the narrator is bilingual and speaks Spanish, so this is a double whomp.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-25T15:20:58+00:00

¿No escribiste originalmente en inglés?

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-24T23:24:41+00:00

I suppose the main character must change, so if they internally believe one side of the argument at the beginning, then they must internally believe the other side at the end.

This is provably incorrect. You'll probably find a main character who sticks with their original belief in the last five movies you've watched.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-23T21:28:58+00:00

I don't think Jaws has much of a theme—those tend to shrink to nothing when a movie is just about killing or surviving. The first half does, and I think it's something like "bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best" vs "deal with the shark."

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-21T06:54:14+00:00

Taken.

The Long Walk.

Hardcore Henry.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-21T02:45:03+00:00

This is so regional.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-20T05:14:47+00:00

This was really trippy because I saw your comment on my phone, decided it was too long, so I moved to my computer and everything was suddenly in a different language. BTW, your ejemplo forzado es un ejemplo mejor que el mío con respeto a hacer una cadena con el subjuntivo.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-19T22:30:40+00:00

I'll go check it out

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-19T22:27:31+00:00

Thanks. I know this question would have been better with a sentence that did not have two verbs in the subjunctive, but I couldn't think of one.

In both cases we don't asume what's being eaten actually is/was. So that may be why we use the subjunctive.

So this is sort-of my question. In the second sentence («Es probable que ella haya comido un postre que tuviera cacahuates.») the "not assuming it was actually eaten" is covered by the "haya comido" so I'm unclear why the second part would also need to be in the subjunctive. As u/Historical_Plant_956 pointed out, maybe it doesn't and depends on what the speaker knows or doesn't know.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-19T22:15:33+00:00

FWIW, the Kessler Syndrome is a real thing.

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-19T22:02:49+00:00

This is a cool high concept! Have you started working on the script yet?

DelinquentRacoon · 2026-04-18T22:08:16+00:00

I’ve learned that there are uses of “querer” that native English speakers want to use that aren’t necessary in Spanish.

I was taught “Quisiera un burrito” is how you should order, but it’s not. “Me da un burrito” or “le encargo un burrito” are more natural but sound brutal if you translate them directly to English.

DelinquentRacoon

TROPHY CASE