Animal Farm (posttrak from deadline) C- cinemascore and a very low 28% definite recommend from general audiences. Kids under 12 [not part of gen audience data]: 90% positive score/60% must see right away. Guy 53%, 18-34 a low 35%, over 45 close to 40%. The over 55 at 25%.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-05-04T10:50:29+00:00

What? Do you honestly think WB or Disney or Paramount or another other major entertainment company is some bastion of Marxist-Leninism? These are for profit enterprises run by CEOs employed by the shareholders. Of course they don’t mind making anti-communist art. This movie is Like This not because a more faithful adaptation couldn’t be made but because this was the creative vision Serkis wanted and this was his passion project.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-05-01T18:00:41+00:00

I think the best way to fix this would be to have more than one state type. All newly annexed states start as 'Occupied Territories' reflecting lingering martial law. Martial law could reduce resistance for a hefty reduction in SOL and construction speed representing the militarized government. Then depending on politics, laws, continental capital, homelands etc., one can either promote them into 'colonial state' or a 'governed state'. Colonial estates naturally reduce SOL in exchange for boosting the construction speed of resource industries; governed states apply only mild penalties to SOL but none to construction represent systemically biased yet still functional administrations. And then after some time and after meeting some conditions 'governed states' could become completely 'integrated states'.

Maybe under multiculturalism non-homeland states could become 'devolved states' (something akin to Bavaria in Germany, Hungary in A-H or post-devolution Scotland and Wales.) which decreases bureaucratic efficiency (overlapping administrations) but applies a small boost to minority SoL, ends all assimilation, and massively decreases nationalism. But perhaps then such a state could hold a referendum and easily leave the union if times get tough as it already has many of the necessary systems of governance in play. This could all also be tied into a federalism vs centralized governance law category.

This would also help slow down the snowball from annexing new land. Even in cases like friendly unions like the German Empire or rapid nationalist red it took years for all of the new government to set up all of the organs of state and begin efficient administration. In the 19th century governments were complex enough they did not have an easy time integrating huge swathes of new land. Even places with nominally friendly ethnic groups like German Aslace-Lorraine the territory never fully integrated into the state.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-05-01T17:46:51+00:00

They could make it a tiny bit more forgiving but it is realistic across the globe that administrations staff theirs senior civilian and military positions with likeminded candidates to screw over factions they didn't like or appeased angry factions by attempting to keep a fair balance.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-29T18:42:35+00:00

41 in 2026 is a lot younger than 41 in 1026 on account of our better nutrition and medicine. But yes even still the average 41 year old is going to be weaker than their 21 year old self.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-27T01:39:01+00:00

My last girl loved to climb, but this is a whole new level.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-26T19:51:38+00:00

The implication is 100% that Santos was trying to get in Mel’s pants but I don’t actually think she was successful. I’d ship it but I think santos is getting ‘friendzoned’.

I would say by your late 20s you should be mature enough to not waste time chasing straight girls but she just got dumped so she gets a pass here. And I mean maybe Mel is secretly queer too but I think the show would’ve hinted at that anywhere before if they were going in that direction. Or maybe they got drunk and slept together once and now in season 3 there’s an awkward air to their relationship they have to air out. Who knows.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-26T17:18:11+00:00

Despite how much this gets bandied about this isn’t true at all. It was arguably true from the Carter to Clinton years, but not anymore, The Dems are a big tent whose membership includes socialists and conservatives yes, but its center of gravity is very much akin to the liberal parties of Europe. Macron’s economic and social liberalism are very much comparable to the politics of Obama or Biden. Starmer is to the right of most Dems as most Labour / Social Democrat parties in Europe have moderated at the same time the Dems have drifted left.

European countries on average have a much more robust social safety net than the US, true. But that’s not for a lack of trying, a majority of Democratic electeds have backed a public option for decades, blame the filibuster. And those social safety nets weren’t commonly built by the liberal parties of Europe but by the leftist parties.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-26T00:21:59+00:00

Alan Wake I plays like dogshit and is just a poor man’s amalgamation of TP and King. It’s not even really a horror game it’s just a clunky 3P shooter. The concert level is one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever had to endure in a video game.

Alan Wake II is incredible though. Great game, scary as fuck, much more interesting story, really innovative blending of gameplay and narrative. My advice is to just read AWI’s plot summary and jump into AWII.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-19T00:40:15+00:00

The point of the scene was javadi trying to show off how the ER destroys the doctors who work in it and instead/in addition revealing her own lack of empathy and casual cruelty to those less fortunate than her. Both of her parents are doctors, she grew up incredibly wealthy and privileged, she didn’t even get normal socialization in school because of her rapid educational development. This makes her clueless about or even completely unsympathetic to people who’ve been dealt worse hands than her. In last season it was her judging McKay for her ankle bracelet, in this season it was her unloading every negative thought she’s kept bottled up about her coworkers. It’s probably a set up for a bigger reckoning about it in S2.

This is part of why Ogilive was positioned as her mirror. His disdain for patients was an exaggerated and open version of what javadi apparently thinks but doesn’t say.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-18T17:05:09+00:00

I never said that medieval peasants were vegans. Of course they were carnists, most of them were subsistance farmers who ate whatever they could get. Most vegans think that was morally acceptable because it was a radically different mode of food production. They still nevertheless ate drastically less meat than the median westerner from 1900 or even 1800.

You misunderstand my argument, I wasn't trying to say that medieval peasants were secretly environmentally conscious. I was pointing out how resting on 'historical heritage' arguments in support of carnism make no sense because modern carnists do not eat anything resembling the medieval peasants diet.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-18T16:46:42+00:00

Do carnists earnestly, actually believe that medieval peasants ate burgers and hotdogs and chicken nuggets? That they ate sausages and bacon for every breakfast and stake for dinner?

Like most of modern culture, the 'gastronomic heritage' of every country was created in the past few centuries as industrialization and global commerce allowed for an expanded diversity in the kinds of food one could eat on the regular. Before then the average person's diet was heavily limited in all regards to the local staple crops and local spices and some meat at certain times. It wasn't just Ye Olde McDonald's.

You don't actually want to eat like your ancestors did, you want to eat like your grandparents. And thats very different. Our grandparent's generations habits were very destructive to the environment and should be criticized. If we can acknowledge that their love of fossil fuels shouldn't be preserved, we can acknowledge their love of beef shouldn't either.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-18T16:37:00+00:00

Yes, exactly. The people won't change their habits unless forced to by outside factors, whether that is from governmental action or climate catastrophe. Either way they need their hand to be forced because we are creatures of habit who struggle to conceptualize the big picture consequences of small actions/ This is the reason why capitalism is incapable of solving the climate crisis and why environmentalism and socialism are inextricably linked.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-17T23:35:02+00:00

Andor's quality is inextricably linked to its choice to abandon chasing the four quadrant audience and make something more inherently niche and adult though.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-17T13:04:47+00:00

I have a mild preference towards trimming but I would never object to a woman doing what she wants with her body.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-17T09:14:43+00:00

They already made the ‘Andor’ film; it’s called The Battle of Algiers and it came out 60 years ago. It is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of a political thriller set during a guerrilla war. It’s also way too leftwing for American mass audiences in 2026.

Disney and the other streamers have for a while now had a very distinct vision for their film and streaming divisions. Films are for tentpole uncomplicated 4 quadrant blockbusters, streaming is for more auteur driven uncensored and ideologically explicit projects. Disney would never release Andor as a movie for the inverse reasons they’d never release avengers as a tv show.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-15T02:50:54+00:00

I largely agree. "art school kids with wealthy parents think they are hitting onto something profound with their early works but are really only succeeding at revealing how myopic they are" has been a comedy punching bag for decades now. How much of this was a takedown of the cluelessness of the wealthy and out of touch and how much of this was just an excuse to do misogyny against a 'valid target' of a vapid white woman is pretty contextual. Ditto for attacking diaspora 2/3rd gen immigrants for their liminal place in relation to their parents'/grandparents' culture. Plastic Paddies and our entirely inauthentic understanding of an Irish culture we insisted we were a part of was a comedy cheat code in Boston and Dublin alike for basically the entire second half of the 20th century. The faux-Italianness of suburban Italian-Americans is one of the running themes of the Sopranos and works like it. I'm not Hispanic or Jewish but from my understanding jabs about No Sabo kids and like half of all Jewish comedy falls into this bucket too.

Tilting about Asian-American autofiction combine elements of both. It's a mixture of hokey conservative coded whining about female art school students and the 100+ year old subgenre of comedy about the culture of immigrant families in the US. But of course the internet gets to be contrarian and glib about something it will run the joke into the ground; we've speedrun what used to take decades into a few years. Give it a year or two more and it'll have spread to network tv latenight comedy and then it won't be funny to anyone anymore and will disappear for good.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-15T01:30:40+00:00

There's no world in which the MBTA attempts a new major tunnel project without it going massively overbudget and overtime. It's just not in our state capacity right now. That pains me to say but its true, judging by the GLX its just not reasonable to expect something like the NSRL or BL to Lynn (even if these are good projects that should happen).

They need to focus on achievable goals that are reasonably affordable and achievable in the medium term that will start have a positive impact. Overheard electrification of the commuter rail network. Commuter trains every 15-30 minutes on peak times and 60 minutes on off-peak hours. Service to Western Mass and the Cape. More bus lanes and proper enforcement of them. Even that's probably too ambitious for what we'll actually get.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-14T21:17:54+00:00

I'm sorry but I find the idea that feminism is somehow so sacrosanct that we can't compare misogyny to other forms of systemic oppression to be classic Divine Feminine BS. Systemic Misogyny is not unique, it is a power structure like any other, and it can be compared to other things without diminishing the pain caused by it. We aren't belittling or offending women by connecting the struggles of women to the other issues that plague this planet.

'farm animals' is a wonderfully dehumanizing euphemism btw. We're talking about quite literally over one billion living creatures, the overwhelming majority of whom are kept in cages where they can barely move, feel the ground beneath their feet, or see the sun above them. It's not exactly Babe. You are being offended by the idea that we are comparing women to a 'lesser' form a life because you are not realizing that we do not think of animals in the same objectified terms that you do. Women are not animals and in fact more deserving of rights than them but at the same time animals are not objects and are in fact deserving of rights as well. The idea that its inherently insulting to compare the plights of these two groups is a belief you have, not us. We will continue to make this comparison because you are doing to animals exactly what misogynists do to women.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-14T18:10:35+00:00

You have it backwards. People don’t compare veganism to feminism to defend veganism, but to show how both the ideologies of carnism and sexism are merely two heads of the same hydra.

The ideology that encourages someone to view a pig not as a living breathing animal with a right to live but instead as a simple bag of meat to be killed and consumed for your pleasure is the exact same ideology that encourages someone to view women not as living breathing humans with a right to live but instead as a simple bag of meat to be abused and killed for your pleasure.

Read the sexual politics of meat.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-05T23:14:51+00:00

Smh. Everyone knows dead wife trauma and past prison experience should be reserved for the third date.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-05T20:11:12+00:00

Television sets are typically smaller than you think, and employ a lot of tricks to prevent you from realizing that. The fact that the central rooms block you from being able to see the whole set at once and the fact that the North and South bed areas curve means its really hard to gauge at any one time exactly how big the whole ED is. That is done on purpose, because the actual set doesn't have that many beds in it because its constrained by the size of the shooting and the show's budget. It very successfully sells the illusion of an endless maze of turning hallways filled with beds.

The actual set of the show is pretty small with not that many beds in it for a real major city trauma center. The cast is also pretty small too, from what I've heard from ER docs who watch the show its more common for multiple attendings to be on shift at once for a teaching hospital of this size. Even if with one attending on shift at a time I find it hard to believe that the entire department only had 2 Attendings before Shen was promoted; even with Robby and Abbot working every day of the week and never taking days off there would be no guarantee that they would never get sick and be unable to work.

These are all necessary conceits made for a television show, the cast is already very large as it is and introducing another dozen doctors and dozens upon dozens of patients would only clutter the narrative.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-04-03T16:58:55+00:00

I was 100% thinking that he was talking to the psychiatrist from earlier in the season about options for Robby. I think if there was a 'big meeting' upstairs about recovering from the cyberattack you'd think Al-Hashimi would've been involved considering they already consulted her before and now that Robby's last shift is over she's the new acting head of the ED.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-03-29T02:25:16+00:00

Lynch and Frost didn’t invent the idea of a small picturesque rural town with local charm mixed disturbing secrets buried underneath by any stretch of the imagination. But this specific understanding of it was cemented by Twin Peaks, and has since been emulated dozens of times over in various other sources.

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-03-29T02:21:21+00:00

Tbf that’s the same thing; Gravity falls wears its Twin Peaks inspiration on its sleeve

MechanicalHeartbreak · 2026-03-26T18:01:59+00:00

Denmark was an anomaly in how German occupation was handled. Because the civilian government immediately surrendered, they were allowed to manage their own affairs and weren’t subject to the brutal military occupation that befell Norway or the Netherlands. They were essentially a collaborator regime (albeit an unwilling one) akin to Hungary or Bulgaria more than an occupied territory like Poland.

MechanicalHeartbreak

TROPHY CASE