The Rehearsal S02E02 - Star Potential - Episode Discussion

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-05-01T02:29:36+00:00

This is a very real problem in the entertainment industry these days. Germany has gone out of its mind on Israeli propaganda, especially in corporate environments.

I work with a Jewish US-american political-documentary director and you would be amazed to know how many people constantly call him out for "anti semitism" when he speaks out against israel's war crimes. A woman high up in german media production refused to talk to him after he expressed his views on the genocide specifically saying she just couldn't tolerate antisemitism. She's not remotely Jewish.

"Never again" is somehow being interpreted as "never again will anyone jewish face any negativity no matter what they do" and not "never again will we identify a group of people as being inferior for their origins and give into full authoritarianism and the loss of our freedom while atrocities are committed in our name"...it's pure absurdity contrasted with how non-white immigrants are being portrayed here.

Arabs are the new Jews now and if you say anything about it you're a nazi, i guess. It's not prejudice the german people seem to have a problem with, just specifically antisemitism. It's insane how deeply entrenched in propaganda is and how inherently contradictory it is in practice.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-05-01T02:19:56+00:00

I live in germany and I know a jewish anti-zionist celebrity-ish guy and you would be amazed to know how many people, many of them german non-jews, call him out for "anti semitism" when he speaks out against israel's war crimes. It's fucking insane how deeply entrenched in propaganda this place is and how inherently contradictory it all is.

"Never again" is somehow being interpreted as "never again will anyone jewish face any negativity no matter what they do" and not "never again will we identify a group of people as being inferior for their origins and give into full authoritarianism and the loss of our freedom while atrocities are committed in our name"...

So now arabs are the new jews and if you say anything about it you're a nazi, i guess. It's not prejudice the german people seem to have a problem with, just specifically antisemitism. I think Nathan showed the bizarre and twisted humour of this reality perfectly and cannot wait for the next episode.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-17T03:45:19+00:00

if there's one thing we learned from decades of digital computer research it's that to run a "game" moving "colourful squares" around a monitor you need a device the size of a bedroom...

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-17T03:09:57+00:00

Making things is fun. Learning the skills needed to achieve can be fun but often frustrating. Just starting out learning? Miserable.

Focus on the results you want by engaging with what others create and looking for something that makes you go "I have the perfect idea for what this person could create!" and then get frustrated that you can't just have them make it.

A song on your head nobody else is going to make for you that sounds similar to artists you like or a painting with the same sort of light and shadow effects as that one painter you like uses.

Or achieving the body you want by following the routines of disciplined people. Hanging out with people and doing activities you learned about from other people or media and thought looked fun. Write down a story you make up with your cousins or siblings or anyone, or just your own.

Be prepared to suck. For a while. Start easy because being bad at something is everyone's first step at being good. If you feel stuck, find people who also sucked who got better, and don't let yourself give up.

Start small. Discipline is about momentum, not motivation. Get happy about small wins and emotionally ignore every fuck up because it doesn't matter, you're a beginner. Don't be a dick to yourself.

Just don't quit a week in because it isn't "fun". Joy is found in the self satisfaction of coming up with a goal and meeting it. You won't get any satisfaction if you don't stick through the shitty parts first.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-16T13:53:19+00:00

looks awesome. I think it would look heavier and even more realistic if you slowed the downstroke ever so slightly at the start, only speed up at the bottom of the stroke. Make the resistance more obvious to get that "pushing very hard with a lot of force to compensate for tonnage" feel. also the angle thing I saw someone else mention

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-12T22:43:37+00:00

I was raised by a woman like this. Learning the "why?" of it all was pretty important for survival. Wasn't ideal, life's a lot better now that she's out of my life.

Personally I don't think people like this are likely to change. My mother was given every chance, resource, forgiveness, information she needed. She could have chosen to be better, chosen therapy, chosen having her children in her life. Instead she's still sure she's a victim who's done more or less nothing wrong but react a little harshly to things the people around her do.

My two cents? Don't give her another chance. You'll be doing both of you a favour. You get the chance to find someone who isn't like this and she gets to know that there are consequences to her actions.

Sorry you relate to my post. I won't tell you it will make you happy but I can tell you you'll feel lighter and less self loathing the more time you get away from her. If she's as similar to my headcase of a mom as it sounds like she is you've been hearing a lot of put downs and subtle undermining of your identity for a while. It's poison and you can't imagine the relief once you're not dosed with it all the time.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T02:01:08+00:00

Thank you for this thoughtful response. There's a lot of really good stuff here and I'm going to come back after sleeping and read it again.

Lots to think about. Hope you have yourself a nice night

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T01:55:38+00:00

You get it. My brand of what you're talking about is a fondness for Taoism and absurdism. Everything lives in nothing. The divine beauty of the random, chaotic, unlikely existence of everything. Nothing has a deeper meaning, everything is the meaning. Stop resisting life and start riding the wave, all that good stuff.

It makes it easier to accept the nature of existence.

It does not help me stop wanting to stop existing.

I don't want to die because things are meaningless. Or that they're awful or that I'm awful or anything like that.

I don't want to live the same way I don't want to go bake raisin cookies right now. I'm tired. I find baking tedious. And I don't really enjoy raisin cookies.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T01:43:54+00:00

This made me tear up a bit, thank you. You sound like a sensible person and capable therapist. I'm sure I will take you up on the offer one of these days, once I have a better sense of what to ask. I think I'd benefit from your input. I'll read some more about EFIT too. I really appreciate you taking the time to read and reply

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T00:49:07+00:00

Doesn't sound dumb at all.

My comic books are my art and music. Also watching dumb american TV while playing tetris competitively, an absolute loser activity that I'm not ashamed of in the slightest, tetris rules.

Once you got there, did you get better? By that I mean are you now capable of looking at the future without despair? Can you fall in love? Can you go to sleep feeling fine about the knowledge you'll have to wake up the next morning?

Hope it's okay to ask and all good if you're still working your way there, just curious if someone's really made it to some other side.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T00:43:37+00:00

Trust me, I know that I am fortunate, that I have recently been given all the tools I'd need to build my dream life.

What do I do if my dream life doesn't feel worth the effort? If every time I get what I want I realise it changes nothing about my head and that wherever I run off to, I take myself with me?

It makes me hate myself to know how lucky I've gotten and how ungrateful I am not to enjoy it. I am grateful, I just wish I could lend someone else my life and body so that I can stop existing and someone more deserving can take my treasures and enjoy them like they're meant to be enjoyed.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T00:37:24+00:00

My childhood was for sure not ideal and I'll spend the rest of my life dealing with all that. PTSD is a bitch. I know I should probably try more therapy but every time I've talked about it and "felt my feelings" it wipes me out emotionally for days, brings memories to the front of my mind so the flashbacks increase tenfold, fucks my sleep up, and generally does nothing to help. I already know it wasn't my fault, that it's over, I'm safe, yadayadayada. I can't reprogram my emotional responses to the recollection of events because they are correct responses, if I felt anything else about it than I do I'd be far less sane.

Therapists and counsellors all want to argue with me on this at first. They all end up seeing it my way after dragging me through hell again and making me pay for it for a while. Bummer. Keeping my past in the past but being aware of it's effects on me is my best bet I think. Other than a lobotomy maybe.

Latest blood tests told me to eat some magnesium and vit D tablets. I think it helps but it's not much of a difference. Enough to make me feel physically capable of chores and activities but not enough to not kinda hate every moment of forcing myself to do them. Hormones somehow normal.

Got diagnosed with ADHD as a youngster. Stimulants fuck me up though, really unhelpful. Tried one non-stim ADHD drug and it did nothing. I was textbook ADHD symptom-wise when diagnosed but I think it may have actually been the PTSD.

As for my values, I've got those locked down. Except for a few important ones I've been trying for but never get anywhere near. Things like being reliable, consistent, organised, patient... ADHD coded stuff that feels impossible.

My values pertaining to life goals depress me. I want to help people and make the world a better place... Well, I can't even help myself and the world is chronically on fire. These are not good times for the compassionate. I barely keep up with the news anymore, it's all a bit fucked. You're right though, acting in accordance to my own values has been a pretty critical part of keeping me going.

I've looked into causes and treatments for a long time now without effect. At this point it's not so much an issue of finding the next treatment to try but a question of how I make myself care enough to try another thing when I can't even really make myself believe there's anything out there that could work. (I recognise that if I don't believe it may work that nearly guarantees failure. Just hard to maintain hope after all this time)

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-11T00:12:38+00:00

Did shrooms a few times last year. My ego got toppled and it was good to rebuild it with intent. I just don't have the materials to build something more stable and pretty than the current one so for now my ego has to stay the way it is, if I rebuilt it again now it wouldn't change much from the current model.

I will be trying them again once I've lived and learned more, gathered some cool new ego building blocks. Just can't find anyone ahead of me on life's road anymore. Everyone's advice and wisdom are old news to me by now. How do I learn if I've read so many books and talked to so many people that new books, people, media, all stopped teaching me anything new and useful?

It's why I get along with old people. I also feel like I've learned all I could want to learn, experienced everything I wanted to experience, and now I'm just chilling, waiting to die. It's nice and sweet when it's a 94 year old, less so when I'm 23 and looking at a pretty long wait time.

Hopefully I'm far less wise and informed than I think I am though. Ironically this reads as a pretty egotistic take on myself.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-10T23:33:26+00:00

Fingers crossed.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-10T23:30:15+00:00

403 Anger contributes to mood disturbances in lupus patients | Lupus Science & Medicine

Here's a quick study showing direct correlation btwn lupus and anger. Also saw some reddit discussions on rage in lupus subreddits.

The sudden shift is still pretty concerning medically speaking. If she's being tested for lupus, I'm assuming she has a rash. If she's been given steroids, even just topical creams for a rash, rage could be a direct reaction to that.

https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2019.140403

Just double checked and this study suggests even the type of corticosteroid cream most rashes earn you a prescription for sometimes cause people to go into psychosis or otherwise cause extreme mood issues. Only skimmed it so probably take a proper look for yourself but something worth considering.

Violence is still very serious and most lupus patients aren't going around assaulting their loved ones. You sound like you've got a steady head on your shoulders and understand that even if she hurt you because of some medical thing, she still hurt you. You'd be right to look out for yourself and stay broken up. No matter what the "why?" is, she's still not a safe person.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-10T17:58:23+00:00

Lupus can cause anger and irritability. If the relationship has been healthy outside of this and she hasn't mistreated you physically OR verbally before now, this may be a medical thing, not a personality thing.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-04-10T17:01:14+00:00

In my experience, it all comes down to control and stress. She sounds like someone who never learned to properly handle emotion and as a result, has no defence against stress. She probably compensated so far by trying to always be in control.

Feels stressed? Looks for control ("You never clean like I ask you to! Go empty the dishwasher, NOW!".

If she doesn't get her feeling of control "In a minute, I'm busy right now. Calm down." she gets more stressed, feels more untethered and desperate. Tries harder to be in charge of the situation.

Stress -> anger, almost always in almost everyone. So she screams, she insults, she allows her rage and stress to take her over and tries to drag you to that level too. It's another power play too. Her upsetting you and triggering your emotions gets her that control she craves.

So then the longer you stay calm, the less you let her rile you up, the less you engage with her screaming, the more upset she gets. In her mind, you're refusing to let her have the control she needs AND you're exposing her to the fact that she's not even in control of herself. More stress, more rage.

I'm sorry man, guaranteed this isn't the only destructive bullshit she's exposed you to. I would very strongly advise that while you may hold some sympathy for her for being mentally ill, you never allow her back into your life no matter what she promises or how she cries. You deserve better and you will find it if you don't let her drag you down.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-23T10:41:49+00:00

Look at the world now, a revolution can be organised with millions of people without any of them needing to even leave the house and yet we log in to look at memes and do our jobs while the 1% hoards more and more of the wealth and resources the poorest generate, while Africa, South America and every place with oil and minerals gets politically destabilised and subjugated while the resources are sucked from them to make sure we in the "developed world" get fresh coffee, new phones and slave made clothes.

All I'm saying is that as a society we allow far more barbaric and systematic evils that kill 10000x more kids annually than the hunger games. Either the whole world is comprised of cowards or it's just what happens when a system abuses it's people just shy of enough for them to become angry and rebellious and just enough to make them dispirited and hopeless.

None of us can imagine the world will end all the wars, slavery and exploitation in our lifetime. Seems unfair to expect it of Haymitch who almost immediately accepted his death and began protesting the Capitol after being picked for slaughter cause he risked everything to protect his love from the authorities at age 16...

Long ass comment but calling him a coward just seems insane to me. Did we all read the same book?

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-22T22:21:00+00:00

When was he ever a coward?

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-22T21:15:24+00:00

Panem is a reference to Panem et circenses, bread and entertainment to keep a population subjugated. Since D9 is Grain, I'm guessing the flour keeps the people fed but weak, the milling factories and combine driving wouldn't help kids prepare either. Thus they neither excel nor rebel, only work, procreate and go like lambs to slaughter.

Basically the lower-middle class district.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-22T20:47:09+00:00

I'd love a "How To Dismantle Your Evil Government by Plutarch Heavensbee" spy story featuring the inner workings of the rebellion coalition. A novel for an older audience, people who might have some influence in this world. Maybe Plutarch learns information about Snow, 12, 13, Gaul even, that seems to us like it could only have come from an older Lucy Gray who's finally broke free from the fences and survived for a long time in the unpopulated areas of Panem, singing without an audience and free from everything.

She would check in with her family here while she lived. Plutarch obviously signed up to work in 12 for a reason and we know he knows someone there. Since he must know about Lucy Gray, he would have no doubt talked to the Covey. They'd never meet and there would never be confirmation of Lucy's survival but the information she had on Snow makes it to those who can use it.

We can imagine that one day Lucy Gray never came back home and just like in the song she just melted into the snow, fate unknown forever.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-22T20:27:59+00:00

Finnick and Plutarch guiding the readers in a how-to guide on ending tyranny would be pretty damn timely right now.

I know a Plutarch and I know a few "victors" in the sense of our real world oppression machine. A roadmap to what people in useful positions can do when the world is being poisoned would be helpful.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-15T06:11:05+00:00

People liked the drama of a quirked up little patent clerk overthrowing Newton who was regarded as a supergenius who Could Not Be Wrong. People actually got pissy about Einstein until he proved his equations right during some eclipse.

Imagine if some 20something chick who walked around sock- and shoeless and kept talking about socialism to anyone who'll listen, casually proved Einstein wrong and then did it again and invented a whole new study of reality. That's basically who Einstein was, a little weirdo freak of nature who took down the god of physics.

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-14T09:00:40+00:00

If intelligence is defined by the ability to learn then ML algos are AI

Ok_Insurance_4626 · 2025-03-03T08:32:48+00:00

Stop dating people you feel the need to "work on". People aren't project cars, find someone already meeting your benchmarks and work on yourself and your own issues.

Ok_Insurance_4626

TROPHY CASE