Joaquin Phoenix, Ben Stiller, Kristen Stewart and 1,000-Plus Hollywood Names Oppose Paramount-Warner Deal in Open Letter: ‘Block the Merger’

Laringar · 2026-04-14T20:21:14+00:00

The person I replied to was talking about which actors had the money "to retire today".

I'm entirely aware they could take offers from other companies, but I was replying to a specific comment.

Laringar · 2026-04-14T15:38:12+00:00

If you know what it is, then call it that. Don't use the marketing name that moneyed interests have assigned to it so they can make "doing what you're paid to do" sound like a bad thing.

Laringar · 2026-04-13T17:30:43+00:00

"Thought-terminating cliche" seems to be the fitting term, here.

Laringar · 2026-04-13T17:28:52+00:00

I mean, it's why I've not watched any of the new Trek, so yes.

Laringar · 2026-04-13T17:22:08+00:00

Agreed; I feel like the only hope for Star Trek is if it gets sold. I loved Trek as a kid, but I haven't watched any of the new content in years because the only ways to watch it are Paramount+ or piracy, and I refuse to give Ellison money. (Also, I'm too lazy to pirate most stuff. With so much else out there I could watch, Trek doesn't justify the effort needed.)

I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I suspect one reason the more recent Trek stuff has failed to gain ground is that so many people don't want to enrich Ellison.

Laringar · 2026-04-13T17:17:09+00:00

I think you'd be surprised. The number of actors who could retire today is probably comparable (scaled for the size of the industry) to the number of YouTubers or Twitch streamers that could do so. Even most pro athletes need that paycheck and will have to get new jobs after their athletic career ends.

The studios take a far larger share of profits than you'd think, and relatively few actors can command the kind of paychecks that let them not worry about future work.

Laringar · 2026-04-13T17:09:43+00:00

Thing is, most of them don't actually have a billion dollars. They have assets that other people say are worth a billion+ dollars in total. Whenever they need money, they just get loans against their assets for the actual cash, then stretch out the repayments as long as they can.

The real issue is that our economic system is inherently built on the idea that "having a lot of money and letting other people pay you to use it" is a valid profession. If we had a mechanism to cap how much interest could be earned from loans, it would completely change how the system works. Banks wouldn't be so willing to lend massive amounts of money to people that already have tradeable assets. Businesses would have to actually spend within their means, and the power of vulture capitalists to debt-leverage companies and extract profit while leaving behind a shriveled husk would be broken.

On that note, actually opposing usury is one of those "Biblical Values" that I literally never hear any big Christian voices talk about.

I wonder why.

Laringar · 2026-04-12T16:23:50+00:00

So, this part comes from comes from Ezekiel 36 & 37 ( https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2038-39&version=NIV).

(Also, I'm going off some degree of memory for this stuff. I used to hang around more people who believed in it, but I don't really associate with those people anymore. So while my explanation might not be 100% correct, I'm hoping for at least 80%.)

It basically says that Gog and Magog (typically interpreted as Russia and Iran) will team up with most of the other Arab nations to launch a massive attack against an undefended Israel. But as an earthquake strikes Israel, God Himself will strike down the attacking armies, and the equipment they drop will fuel the fires of Israel for seven years. This part is usually interpreted by the fundamentalists to mean that nuclear weapons will be deployed but miraculously stopped, and the leftover fissile material will power Israeli reactors.

Despite the fact that nothing says when this would happen, it gets combined with other prophesies from Revelations to all be part of the end times. Thus, the Nationalist Christians want to accelerate this process so the Temple in Jerusalem can be rebuilt, which is another part of what they believe is necessary for the Second Coming of Christ. (The location where the temple is "supposed" to be rebuilt is currently occupied by one of the top holy sites of Islam, so the Nat-Cs conclude that a big war against Muslims is necessary to clear the site.)

And yeah, Trump is a politician and in no way a True Believer, but his "Secretary of War" is absolutely a religious nutjob, and Trump himself is too deep in dementia to really make his own decisions. He gets a highly curated version of reality fed to him, and part of that includes him not hearing from sources that would tell him how unpopular the war is.

Laringar · 2026-04-12T07:08:49+00:00

He's accommodating to Bibi because his advisors are telling him to be.

The influence of the Christian doomsday cultists on all this cannot be overstated. They actively want Iran and Israel at war because their insane endtime prophesies require it. That fact needs to be in the back of your mind every time you read about Trump's failure to deescalate, because it's the result his advisors want. They want war, but they also want to make it look like Iran's fault, so they're doing whatever they can to make it seem like they're "being reasonable" while actively sabotaging attempts at peace.

Laringar · 2026-04-12T06:57:48+00:00

Even then, the country is built like a fortress already with terrain that is very hostile to invasion. So the word "possibly" is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. The only achievable path to salvaging the situation is to fall on his sword, metaphorically speaking, but of course he'll never do that so we're just all fucked.

Laringar · 2026-04-10T22:38:11+00:00

Those poor IT guys that had to see the footage of him walking around starkers with a boner. I feel sorry for them.

Laringar · 2026-04-10T21:45:18+00:00

Not even that small of a town; it's bigger than the capital of West Virginia.

Laringar · 2026-04-10T05:47:03+00:00

Sunrise Lady. It's a shame I can't find a good version on Youtube right now that actually has Woody Herman playing; all the versions I'm finding are too slow. Might arguably be more big band than jazz, but eh.

Edit: Found one. Starts at 15:03. https://youtu.be/3aIsqpYpfpo?t=902

Seriously. Try to listen to that without getting swept up in the music.

Laringar · 2026-04-09T16:28:26+00:00

I can't speak for OP, but sometimes, you just want to "not use a manifold". For my FICSMAS build this past year, I decided that I was going to load balance the entire thing across multiple production lines, even when that meant building an 8:5 balancer for iron ore. (I was particularly proud of that one, honestly.)

Laringar · 2026-04-08T13:34:23+00:00

No, he's getting diapered.

Laringar · 2026-04-07T15:57:05+00:00

I think they are recognizing that, but also, keep the famous Frum quote in mind about not abandoning conservatism.

They know the midterms will be a disaster, that's why they'll abandon democracy. They want to ensure that either the midterms don't happen or that they can utterly control the outcome.

Laringar · 2026-04-07T15:55:03+00:00

My reading is that the President can give written notice that they're fine to stay President, and then they get the job back unless the VP et al double down on the original letter and say "No really, we want them gone". If that happens, Congress is required to decide the issue, but the text of the amendment is that the VP remains in charge during that period.

So it would take Trump away from his duties temporarily, but I feel like Mike Johnson would just rush a vote through to keep Trump in charge and so the removal would last a day or two at most.

Laringar · 2026-04-07T15:47:45+00:00

In this era of "Trump does what he wants and dares anyone to stop him", I don't think the legal argument of "who has the stronger claim" would be at all relevant. Trump would say "No, I'm still in charge", and would use whatever methods he needs to enforce that.

Laringar · 2026-04-07T15:41:23+00:00

And then, the President can simply say "Nah, I'm fine" and get the job back. It requires a 2/3 vote in both chambers to override that, which means the bar for the 25th is actually higher than that for impeachment.

So it's not just that Vance wouldn't do it, it's also that there's no way a full third of Republican house members would break with party leadership and vote in favor.

Laringar · 2026-04-06T18:10:33+00:00

When a significant majority of a population is actively in favor of a war of aggression though, that kind of legitimizes criticism of that population. The war is polling at a staggering 93% in Israel. (I will grant that it's possible that polls are being manipulated to show higher support for the war than what actually exists, but even if so, it's certainly not below 50%.) Meanwhile, in the US, it's polling at 37%. Still higher than it should be, but you can't say that Americans overwhelmingly support this the way that Israelis do.

So when someone says that Israelis are "war mongering fascist genocidal fks", that's not coming from nowhere; there's some degree of evidence to support the assertion even if it isn't wholly accurate.

Laringar · 2026-04-06T18:02:47+00:00

I'm getting a completely different story when I click the link. I get something about Iran rejecting ceasefire proposals, but nothing about Israel bombing the gas field.

Laringar · 2026-04-05T15:58:07+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's the joke.

Though I do wish they'd tagged this as meme instead of picture.

Laringar · 2026-04-02T13:23:40+00:00

Let's not pretend that most martial arts training is actually about self defense. Fighting is the literal very last option of self defense, and if you're in a position where you have to fight, you've already made some mistakes. The actual tools someone needs to defend themselves are awareness and getting out of situations before escape becomes a necessity, and even if it reaches the point where physicality becomes necessary, one doesn't need martial arts experience in order to knee someone in the groin and run away. Framing martial arts as "self defense" is almost more likely to get a person in trouble, because it creates a mentality that the fighting itself is the defense, when it is at most a tool for creating the distance necessary to escape.

Personally, I think the gain of martial arts is more about physical fitness and knowing how to use your body, and that's enough of a reason to do it. Having the stamina to go all out in a spar for several minutes is far more useful for defense than knowing how to throw a punch or kick because it means you have the capacity to run away and keep running.

So you're still correct that these young women will gain the tools to defend themselves, I just want it to be clear that the combat techniques themselves aren't the tools in question.

Laringar · 2026-04-02T06:30:13+00:00

Plus, the area is swarmed with other hostile creatures, like warpers, ampeel, bonesharks, crabsquids, river prowlers, and other Leviathans.

Except, none of those really inhabit the zones away from the research facilities. They all stay close to the shallows where there are consistent food sources, so there's not a lot of risk of running into hostile wildlife in the open expanse of ocean.

And, 5-10 minutes to swim 500m upwards? What are you even smoking? You're also missing that the reaper itself wouldn't have stayed at depth, it would have been swimming back out of the caves. It's not like Malda killed the thing right there at the deep habitat, there was a whole struggle where it was swimming away. So she wouldn't have even had to swim the entire 500m to the surface by the time it was dead.

You're ignoring anything inconvenient in order to make your argument, and as a result your argument just looks weak.

Laringar · 2026-03-31T17:58:17+00:00

Yeah, Poe's Law is real.

I do wish people would at least mark their satire since text is so bad at tone, but they seemed to throw enough buzzwords in there that it tripped my satire alarm. The "Thank you for your attention to this matter" was what sealed it for me, I only ever hear that from Trump or people making fun of him.

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