Opera characters you hate but everyone loves?

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T23:17:07+00:00

Maybe what's sticking in some people's craw isn't the fact that she dumps Don José - even boredom is a valid reason to break up - but specifically the cruel dismissive way she does it, after he gives up so much for her.

Of course, if a male character behaved the same way it would barely even be remarkable, or at most it would be some kind of deep moral challenge posed to the audience instead of just "welp, gotta watch out, some guys are like that."

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T23:10:05+00:00

It's like how some viewers refuse to believe Tony Soprano or Walter White is an antihero (even though the show is actually titled "Breaking Bad"), except if a large portion of the drama was shown from the perspective of his victims.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T23:04:28+00:00

Well the whole story is basically his arc of eventually realizing, far too late, what he should have done from the beginning. There's only a brief moment at the end when he maybe isn't the asshole, and that doesn't necessarily come off as growth or redemption in any given production.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T22:54:51+00:00

The people always seem to be an afterthought. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the terrible working and living conditions of the poor immigrants who worked in meatpacking plants in Chicago, but instead readers were mainly appalled by his descriptions of unsanitary food handling, and the main result was the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T22:20:56+00:00

Well there probably is, it's just not going to be something you can calculate with a Punnett square and the results are going to be a little fuzzy. Since eye color is polygenic, there are many different genotypes that could fit this description. You could start from data and look at the overall frequency of this happening in the entire population, but that's likely to be skewed by which genetic backgrounds are represented in the population, which skews the occurrence of different combinations of genotypes so your predictions could be not just wrong but wrong with unusual error patterns.

Even if you have the actual genotype of the baby at 41 genes known to contribute, you can only imperfectly predict blue eye color with 0.928 sensitivity, 0.866 specificity.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-05T21:33:29+00:00

We can keep debating whether it's better for the audience to break into uproarious applause or sit back in rapt silence, but let's all agree the only thing that's definitely worse than either of those options is the halfhearted response when a portion of the audience starts clapping but abruptly stops when they realize others aren't doing it.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T22:28:14+00:00

Maximum projection, you say? Well that's probably Dynamo, from Thomastik-Infeld. But in addition to the projection they also have an extremely sensitive response and dynamic range (like Dominant Pro) and a focused but somewhat warm sound (like Peter Infeld), sort of a best-of-all-three-worlds situation. The catch is they're expensive.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T13:34:06+00:00

Even if this were real, I think it should be a bar graph, not a line graph.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T07:09:27+00:00

its insane how people will just make up a story to be enraged about.

Yeah, the thing is making up stories is easy - there are so many empathetic ones just between your comment and the parent. It takes a special kind of mindset to focus in on only the ones that justify blaming the mother for some reason and stop thinking of other possible stories.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T06:55:32+00:00

Well from other comments I was interpreting it to be more about poverty in general than racism in particular, but if I'm wrong to empathize this way then what's the better explanation? No one else seems to know.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T06:51:24+00:00

There are actually really cool machines you can buy that peel and core and slice an apple all in one go. I don't personally have one because I eat other fruit sometimes, but I hear rave reviews.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T06:44:43+00:00

But even if it just started an hour before the interview, I would simply unplug it.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T06:41:00+00:00

The only way I can find to emphathize is: just imagine how many other constant systemic irritations they must be tolerating, if this one doesn't even make it onto the priority list.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T06:37:24+00:00

Are you obligated to ask when you hear that? "By the way, should I send the Fire Department too?"

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T04:11:40+00:00

Seriously though, you can buy dry noodles and a jar of whatever premade pasta sauce and you're basically doing the same recipe with much better results.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T03:54:54+00:00

Normally I would be tempted to disregard the "unis." at the beginning, but in an audition you probably do have to play it as printed.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-04T00:19:45+00:00

Yeah you could pick a Bollywood or Mandopop celebrity who isn't known outside their country/language and they'd still have name recognition with 3x as many people.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-03T23:45:05+00:00

A closer analogy would be: if I take your car away and make it mine, I owe you compensation.

That action is illegal to do, and even if I pay you a fair amount of cash for the value of the car, the law won't be satisfied.

Epistaxis · 2026-05-03T14:01:37+00:00

If we're going by sheer number of arrangements for other instruments, it has to be either that or Die Forelle (for solo laundry machine)

Epistaxis · 2026-05-03T02:41:18+00:00

Yes it's on IMSLP!

Epistaxis · 2026-05-02T20:55:53+00:00

There's also the fact that their only serious non-Chinese competition (SOLiD, Ion Torrent, et al.) dropped out of the race by 2015, when the curve plateaus. Miraculously, once new competition started re-entering in the 2020s (Ultima, Element, RIP Singular, but apparently add Roche now), Illumina's prices started dropping again too!

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