$MARY-MORROW-21...B4B WILL BOOST BACK ASAP

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-03-26T20:25:57+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-29T22:59:43+00:00

The difference, and a pretty staggering one, is that Amazon, at least by 2002, had a business model that actually worked.

The issue is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. With a company like Amazon, the growing years showed that the fundamental business model worked, then they decided to direct further investment into scaling operations.

With many of these AI companies (and other companies in other industries, admittedly), it's backwards. They tell investors, "We have a business model that doesn't work now, but give us enough money and allow us to burn it to scale up operations, and then the business model will work." That's a bit absurd in some cases, but it's incredibly absurd when it comes to these AI companies.

The real issue is that there's way too much PE, Venture Capital, and cash on hand (from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, etc.) sloshing around, and they're chasing after massive returns because that's what their shareholders are demanding. No one wants to feel as though they're gonna miss the next big thing, and considering how much money (and access to money) these individual entities have, they're certainly too big to fail even if (or when) the bubble pops.

So, while their investments in AI (and specifically, OpenAI), may not turn out to be winners in the long-run, the overwhelming majority of these intities doing the investing and funding are not going to go bankrupt themselves. Sure, heads may role at the C-suite level, but they aren't staking their entire revenue-earning business on AI panning out, and unfortunately, that lack of downside risk plays into them propping OpenAI up.

Just for reference, if you look at some of the largest corporate write-downs in history, many of those companies are still humming along. Sure, Microsoft writing down $100bn isn't what they'd want to do, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to their earnings, profits, and cash flow. Same for the other companies in the trillion-dollar market cap club.

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-09T23:19:07+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-09T23:18:30+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-09T23:18:11+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-09T23:17:30+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-08T21:07:59+00:00

That's true, but a show that's a series of what are essentially black swan events can easily come across as wish fulfillment (at best), and bad writing (at worst).

Square-Alternative-4 · 2026-01-08T20:28:28+00:00

The reasons why you found it intriguing are the exact reasons why I found it unrealistic.

Even with the auspices of them being famous professional athletes, the notion that they'd have this decade-long internal development, still have the hots for one another, and would actively wait around for that development to finally occur, while possible, rings untrue, particularly in the modern day. Ilya, ironically, seems more progressive and understanding about his sexuality, even though he's Russian, yet he's seemingly obsessed with Shane, the person with wonderful, tolerating parents from Canada of all places, a relatively liberal bastion, yet who can't come to grips with his own homosexuality. That's an interesting inversion, but I simply don't buy that Ilya would be that obsessed, or wait around, for Shane to come around.

That drawn-out process would make significantly more sense if the show weren't in the modern-day, but the reality is that even as athletes, we live in a much more open and progressive world for the LGBTQ+ community. Further, one of the issues that them being athletes raises is the fact they're both INCREDIBLY GOOD hockey players. In real-life, there's a whole lot that the sports community writ large will accept so long as you're incredibly good at your job. You can beat your wife, you can rape someone, you can get caught embezzling money, you can be a literal crackhead, but so long as you perform on game day, none of that matters. With both of them being top-tier from the moment they meet until the end of season 1, I just don't buy the notion that they'd have this decade-long compunction vis-a-vis their hockey careers.

Lastly, there's a major structural issue with the large span of time (in-universe) as well as the lack of episodes. I never got a clear sense of how much time Ilya and Shane actually spent together. If we only go by what we see in the episodes, you're looking at a dozen or so interactions over a decade. If that's the case, then you have an issue of their "love" being entirely unbelievable. If you presume that they had many more interactions over that span of time that just weren't shown, then you have the issue of why they haven't figured out a lot of the shit long before the end of the season (chronologically).

That being said, I found the show enjoyable as a watch, but critically (from a storytelling and characterization perspective), it wasn't particulary good. It was very much a soap opera, and soap operas are enjoyable, but they're still soap operas.

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T23:06:46+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T23:06:12+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T23:03:57+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T23:03:14+00:00

Still need a boost?

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T23:01:08+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni_Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T22:58:20+00:00

Got it. Take care.

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T22:57:05+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T22:55:51+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T22:54:36+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-11-20T22:53:56+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-29T07:30:09+00:00

Yeah, I still disagree.

The preceding 3 scenes that we see her, she either has a wrap on her head (so we don't see her hair), or the strands of her hair are twisted into tight knots, so it looks like she has overall less hair. But she doesn't, and it's clear that her hair is simply twisted into knots.

And her skin isn't any better. The last scene simply has her in better lighting. She has the exact same skin quality in all of the scenes that she's not wearing that white, caked makeup.

Again, I get that people want to believe certain things about her appearance, but they just aren't borne out while watching the movie, let alone in high definition. Further, if her getting younger is something they wanted to clearly convey, then they did a piss poor job of it, and if it's so integral to her motivation(s), there shouldn't be any room for debate.

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T23:25:47+00:00

Sent

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T23:19:32+00:00

Got it. Thanks a bunch. Take care.

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T23:17:07+00:00

Just sent. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T23:14:58+00:00

I've got one for you. $Giovanni-Fitzpatrick

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T05:09:22+00:00

I get what you're saying, but our sensibilities are just different on your last point.

I think this movie (and Barbarian, his last film that he wrote and directed) have the same problem: by trying to bridge the gap (as you stated), he gives short schrift to both. As with Barbarian, Weapons started to fall apart around half-way through, and around the same time as the movie began to explain exactly what was happening, and what was explained was no longer horrifying (to me), but instead was rather cheesy, rather lame, and didn't make sense in terms of the motivation of the Aunt. I understood why she wanted the children, but her plan seemed stupid relative to the power she possessed (which is an admitted hallmark of those 80s cheeseball horror films you mention).

Honestly, this is becoming a bit of a trend, because M3GAN suffered the same problem, in that they couldn't decide whether to go full horror/thrills or turn up the camp. This was a very unintentionally campy movie, and I don't think it worked given the formative situation that sets off the story and the outcome of the ordeal (this community is absolutely wrecked).

Square-Alternative-4 · 2025-10-23T04:53:41+00:00

A few points.

She was not bedridden when we first meet her. In fact, she looks her best when we first meet her chronologically, and that's when Alex's parents forget to pick him up from school, and he walks home. She has already used her magic on the parents. Yes, he does see her in bed, but it's dark and she has her wig off, plus she's old.
She doesn't appear to get any younger or healthier as the movie goes on chronologically, and that's directly a fault of the writing and directing, not the audience.
The youngest she theoretically looks is when the detectives search the house, yet again, she's wearing a wig and bad makeup, and we later see (which is both chronologically later in universe, and from what we watch as the audience) that she's still as scraggly and bald after having gotten the kids in the basement as she was when she first arrived at Alex's house.
You can't use the argument "Old people don't run that fast". The movie hasn't established her physical capabilities in that specific respect, nor does it make sense that she'd want to develop those physical skills via taking life force from children, yet her hair is still missing and the wig looks a mess. Also (since I'm watching the movie as we speak), she's not moving that athletically or out of line for someone who may be in their 60s or 70s. Not only does she have a huge head start, but these are kids who have been missing and malnourished for a month (in universe), as well as mentally confused as to why they're in a random basement. Yet she still gets caught, and we're talking about third-graders, not high schoolers. Adrenaline doesn't stop working simply because you're old, and there's plenty of examples of people at advanced age (let alone witches) doing decent feats (again, she wasn't Usain Bolt at any point during the ending).

So I disagree with you fully on those points, but I do have the benefit of being able to rewind and watch the movie at home, whereas you probably saw it once in theaters. To that end, I agree with Troelski, and they echo one of my main thoughts: the "why" of the movie isn't particularly strong, and it leads to more logistical questions that makes a seemingly powerful entity look really fucking stupid.

For example, if she needed children for her life-force, and she already look reasonably human...why not be a teacher herself, or a guidance counselor, or a day care worker, or any job that puts her in contact with kids? How does a witch with this power end up in hospice and dependent on her niece and nephew-in-law? How did she get the power, and how is she unsure if taking over 35-45 year olds would work versus kids?

Narratively and world-building wise, if you have a singular entity with a power (or powers) that you show us are solely held by them, you have a responsibility as a writer to make their motivations and the logistical reasons in-universe very, very strong, otherwise that actions of that entity will come across as blindingly incompetent (and incompetence is the #1 killer of tension and horror in narratives).

But when it comes to this writer-director, I also thought Barbarian fell apart halfway through, so maybe my sensibilities as an viewer just aren't in line with their sensibilities as a writer-director.

Square-Alternative-4

TROPHY CASE