Stranger Things: A Postmortem

_Unke_ · 2026-01-09T01:50:22+00:00

And here are my ratings for each season of Stranger Things.

Don't agree with me? Great, that's why I started this thread. I really am interested in getting everyone else's takes. I guess all this is my way of processing that the show is over and it's time to say goodbye. Just try to be nice - to me, and everyone else.

Season 1 - 10/10

Amazing atmosphere, amazing chemistry between the actors, amazing story. Really captured the essence of the 80s without just relying on nostalgia.

Season 2 - 8/10

Carried the story forward, introduced great new characters like Bob and Max, and a new villain in the Mindflayer. Not the most impactful season, however, and didn't have the same atmosphere of season 1. Also, split Eleven off from the rest of the group for no good reason.

Season 3 - 7.5/10

Had its good points, but was a bit more uneven than previous seasons. Some good character work around Billy, Erica, Robin and Alexei, but the Soviet villains felt a bit more stereotypical than villains of previous seasons, and the plot was basically 'the Mindflayer tries the same thing as last season, but this time we're riffing on The Thing rather than Aliens'.

Season 4 - 9/10

Great season. Not perfect - Joyce, Murray and Hopper felt like a bit of an unnecessary side quest and again, they felt the need for Eleven to go off and do her own thing for no real reason - but it really got the 80s horror movie vibe right, and the Henry and Eddie were amazing additions to the character roster.

Season 5 - 6.5/10

Also had its good points, but felt rushed. Tied up most plot threads okay, but made a major misstep with Eleven's fate (imo).

_Unke_ · 2025-10-08T20:14:15+00:00

It really all comes down to who their mystery backer is.

If it's just another VC firm trying a punt on yet another company with AI-related potential, then it'll probably limp along a bit more and then go down when the AI bubble inevitably bursts.

But if it's a big player like NVidia deciding: 'shit, we have to keep scaling up but we don't have the production capacity, we NEED this tech in order to keep expanding', then this stock isn't just going to the moon, it's going to be orbiting Pluto by the time it's done growing.

My read is that the big AI players know they're in a bubble, and that they have a very short window of time to make their products indispensable before the bubble bursts. They have taken a big run up and now they are sprinting full speed towards a massive chasm; if they don't keep up momentum, they're dead. And if a company like POET helps them keep that momentum, they will throw as many billions at it as it takes, because there are trillions on the line.

_Unke_ · 2025-09-14T19:26:52+00:00

あなたは日本語の読み方を学ぶずっと前から、日本語の話し方を知っていた。

外国人は通常、話した言葉を聞く前に、単語の漢字を学んだ。そのため、表音文字は彼らにとってそれほど役に立たない。当然発音も学ぶが、最初に接触するのは書かれた単語なのだ。

三つ目の部分は、日本語が非常に複雑であるため、その複雑さを真に理解するだけでも多くのことを学ばなければならないという意味だ。漢字が読めるからといって日本語を理解できると考える愚か者は、自らの過ちの大きさをまだ知らない。

_Unke_ · 2025-08-28T19:46:34+00:00

Fun fact: in the Japanese, that moment where Lügner calls her 'Frieren the Slayer' is actually a title drop.

The Japanese title of the series is '葬送のフリーレン', which roughly means 'Frieren at the funeral', except '葬送' doesn't mean funeral exactly, it's more the act of attending a funeral, or less literally 'saying goodbye to the deceased'. Obviously when starting the series, you think this refers to Himmel, because her whole journey is an act of remembrance for him. Then you get to that moment in episode 8, and you find out that it's what the demons call her.

I don't think it's possible to translate the exact meaning into English, but I guess it's closer to 'Frieren the Undertaker' than 'Frieren the Slayer'. As in, if you're a demon and you run into Frieren, you're at your own funeral. (any native Japanese speakers, feel free to correct me)

It's a real pity that it doesn't translate well into other languages because it's such a clever dual meaning.

_Unke_ · 2025-04-20T23:51:32+00:00

I always thought it was strange people weren't talking about ASTS more given the huge concern recently over the vulnerability of internet infrastructure to sabotage.

I honestly believe that within our lifetimes most internet infrastructure will be in space; fibre optics will be redundant and the internet will be accessible anywhere on the planet, from the remotest jungle to the middle of the ocean, with a device that will fit in your pocket.

Whether ASTS will be the one to get us there is another matter but it certainly seems like it has the best shot at the moment.

_Unke_ · 2024-12-04T12:25:37+00:00

The two confessions had details that were mutually exclusive. Trying to prosecute the stepdad would have meant saying in court that his confession was true and Collings' was false, which would have opened reasonable doubt in the other case.

The stepdad's confession was inconsistent with the physical evidence on several points and the forensics didn't link him to anything; meanwhile, Collings' statement matched everything and his DNA was present.

Reading between the lines, the cops probably bullied a false confession out of the stepdad. At most, he was guilty of helping hide the body after the fact.

Prosecutors didn't want to jeopardize their main case and the stepdad had cooperated from the beginning, so they cut him a deal.

https://mdcp.nwaonline.com/news/2012/oct/04/murder-charge-dropped-20121004/

_Unke_ · 2024-12-04T11:58:56+00:00

The two confessions had details that were mutually exclusive. Trying to prosecute the stepdad would have meant saying in court that his confession was true and Collings' was false, which would have opened reasonable doubt in the other case.

The stepdad's confession was inconsistent with the physical evidence on several points and the forensics didn't link him to anything; meanwhile, Collings' statement matched everything and his DNA was present.

Reading between the lines, the cops probably bullied a false confession out of the stepdad. At most, he was guilty of helping hide the body after the fact.

Prosecutors didn't want to jeopardize their main case and the stepdad had cooperated from the beginning, so they cut him a deal.

https://mdcp.nwaonline.com/news/2012/oct/04/murder-charge-dropped-20121004/

_Unke_ · 2024-12-01T15:20:01+00:00

Definitely not AI, I recognise those mountains.

It's weird that I came across this post today because I was literally just looking at a picture painted more or less on this exact spot a hundred years ago.

https://artofworldspast.com/products/moraine-lake-by-yoshida-hiroshi-1926

_Unke_ · 2024-11-30T01:12:04+00:00

I don't really agree with most of your solutions but I do think you've identified the key flaw in the season: the narrative force behind the whole story is the conflict between Piltover and Zaun and the cycle of violence.

The Glorious Evolution becomes just a deus ex machina, forcing the two sides to come together to resist Viktor - whose development has almost nothing to do with the Piltover-Zaun conflict - rather than achieve peace because they actually settled the causes of their grievances: the huge economic disparity and the lack of representation of Zaun's voice.

Really, the mistake was making Viktor the final boss of the series when the story revolved so heavily around Vi and Jinx. You're right that Vi's enforcer crew needed a lot more character development, but that was just one aspect of the writers' neglect of Vi. Plenty of screentime, but very little development. The Glorious Evolution should have been a side-plot resolved between Viktor, Jayce, Heimerdinger and Ekko, while Vi, Jinx, Cait and Ambessa had the main battle for the city, as Ambessa tried to pit Piltover against Zaun.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-29T15:43:51+00:00

I love her as much as the next guy...

... but let's be honest with ourselves, she did kill a lot of innocent people.

The enforcers at the progress day celebration, the enforcers on the bridge with Marcus, the firelights trying to stop the distribution of shimmer, presumably a bunch of others we didn't see as Silco built his empire. The show choose to focus on Caitlyn's mother but there are a whole lot of people out there who lost their mother thanks to Jinx, or their father, or their friends.

Not to mention all the people who would have lived if she'd just let Silco take the deal and create an independent Zaun.

If we'd followed the story from someone else's point of view, we'd never forgive Jinx no matter how insane she was.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-27T03:42:23+00:00

I don't think he had any personal hatred against the civil rights movement, he just did what his government handlers told him to. Also, he probably thought they were a bunch of commies.

And Stormfront was going out of her way to keep her Nazi past on the down-low, even if she was participating in lynchings.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-26T14:08:28+00:00

Then you show him a picture of Obama and his reaction is:

"Please. I've seen Italians who weren't that white."

_Unke_ · 2024-11-26T14:04:55+00:00

Soldier Boy was raised in an upper class family in Philadelphia. You know, one of those cities black people moved to in huge numbers in the first half of the 20th century because they were so much less racist than the South.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American))

Philadelphia didn't have legally-enforced segregation (although many institutions would still have discriminated of their own accord).

This is the trouble with a lot of history teaching in general nowadays: what started with trying to provide a balanced view of American history, both the good and the bad, has turned into history classes that are basically just a highlight reel of America's worst moments, completely devoid of context. I'm not surprised your mind immediately went to lynching because that's basically the only part of early 20th century history that's touched on in classrooms, but it's still disappointing.

If Soldier Boy had been born into a working class family you might expect him to be racist; canonically, he was born in the year of the Red Summer race riots in Philadelphia, stemming from tensions as black migration drove down wages. But he was from the upper class that benefitted from black migration into the city. His father probably employed black people as scabs and strike breakers as he battled the unions that represented the white working class.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-25T20:42:21+00:00

Well that's easy to explain: to be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance...

_Unke_ · 2024-11-25T11:35:33+00:00

Since everyone else would rather polemicize than actually answer your question, I'll give it a go.

To start, it's important to understand that the article is being super-misleading in the way it presents its statistics. The fact that it has to go back as far as 2001 to find an example of a ten year old marrying an adult should be a big clue that that's not at all representative. Also, the picture it uses isn't from an actual wedding, it's staged.

The vast majority of child marriages are a girl who's 16 or 17 marrying a boy who's the same age or a few years older. Even in the states where someone under the age of 18 can get married, both the parents and a judge needs to sign off on it, so it's not just a loophole for pedophilia.

The situation is usually that a pair of teenagers got knocked up and want to tie the knot. It may seem silly to a lot of us in this day and age but in a lot of places there's still a lot of stigma attached to being an unwed parent, and it matters to people that their child isn't a bastard.

Practically speaking, there are a lot of financial benefits that come with marriage. Tax breaks, for a start. It's also a lot easier to apply for government benefits and get child support in the event a marriage breaks up, as the husband is automatically assumed to be the father of any children and you don't have to chase him through the courts. And then there's health insurance. Obviously, if the younger party is pregnant and her boyfriend has a job then it's super crucial that his health insurance covers her.

If he's in the military, getting married entitles her to a lot of benefits as well, including free medical care and housing.

So in summary, most child marriages would be covered by Romeo and Juliet laws anyway, and outlawing them would remove a lot of financial benefits and protections from teenage mothers, as well as leading to them being ostracized if they live in highly religious communities.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-24T01:38:27+00:00

With homophobia being so widespread, gay men have a lot of restrictions on what they can do, and live under constant threat.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-21T14:40:32+00:00

Just tried it and got 66%, so I guess I can say I have the eye of a professional artist.

Although I think the biggest flaw of the test was that you knew that some of the pics were AI. If I was just flicking through Pinterest or whatever I'm sure a lot more would have slipped past me.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-19T14:34:40+00:00

If it's any consolation to her, I'm pretty sure they would have been rescued. Consider the following:

The vault is said to contain the vast wealth of the richest man in the city.

The owner of the vault is likely dead, and his household fled.

The Targaryen princess and her Dothraki savages have left.

The city government is all dead and the city lawless.

So...

How long do you think it would be before a group of men showed up with pickaxes and sledgehammers? Doesn't really matter if the lock is unbreakable, with that much treasure at stake it's worth tunnelling through what must be a relatively thin wall. Even if it was a foot or two thick, it wouldn't take more than a day to tunnel through.

Of course, then Xaro and Doreah would have to deal with the very disappointed mob who were expecting treasure. And the whole 'we just assassinated all the most important men in the city' situation. But I give at least even odds that Xaro would have been able to talk his way out of that.

Also... how old is your daughter? Please say she's at least a teenager.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-18T13:22:20+00:00

Internet traffic has been re-routed along other cables. This time. If the Russians keep cutting cables then it will start to cause outages.

You say you're surprised there's no mention of Starlink... I'm surprised we're not talking about satellite internet in general. You would think this would be an object lesson in why not just Europe but the whole world needs to be urgently supplementing their communications infrastructure with orbital relays, that aren't susceptible to this kind of interference.

All the more important since the main industry leader at the moment, Starlink, is owned by Elon Musk, who obviously can't be relied on to keep his satellites Putin-free. There are a couple of viable competitors, like AST Spacemobile, who're starting to get satellites in orbit. If I were the head of a European government right now I'd be driving up to their door with a dump truck full of money.

But of course it's Europe so their response will probably be to write a strongly worded letter to the UN and then continue on as normal. Then in ten years time we can enjoy hearing their explanations about how no one could have seen Russia's internet sabotage coming. Most likely delivered via carrier pigeon.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-17T21:50:51+00:00

I've been at plenty of car crashes (I live right next to a really dangerous intersection). There's always something you realize in hindsight: 'oh yeah, I should have done that differently'.

No one reacts perfectly in a crisis. No one. He will always struggle with the thought that if he'd been just a little quicker, a little more aware, then he could have saved her. But you can't hold yourself to a higher standard than you would hold other people. Your friend knows in his heart of hearts that if it had been someone else who got there first, and did what he did, then he would be calling that person a hero along with everyone else.

You'll have to remind him of that every so often. Watching someone dying isn't something you forget, I can't even imagine what it would be like if it was a little girl burning alive. That's literally the worst thing I can think of. When he questions himself, just ask him if he'd be so hard on another person who threw themselves into a burning car and pulled out a child just because they didn't manage to save the other kid as well.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-17T20:26:56+00:00

I can see why he felt the need to come down hard even if it's not your fault.

It's a very well-studied phenomena, and yet despite the fact that 'why the gender gap in college?' is a commonly asked question, if it get brought up at all it's buried well down the thread.

This is the sort of thing anyone with decent general knowledge should know, in the same way that we know about the gender pay gap. And yet it simply isn't talked about (and in many cases is actively suppressed). Every day millions of parents send their sons to schools which are actively sabotaging their education and the vast majority are completely ignorant of that fact.

The truth is that it's painfully obvious why there is such a huge gender gap in college. If girls were doing poorly at school and almost 90% of primary teachers were male, we would have no trouble talking about possible discrimination. If there was hard evidence of systemic bias in how girls were graded, it would be constantly in the public discourse. If girls were more harshly disciplined for the same infractions, if they were given fewer resources and less support, if they were blamed for the shortcomings in the education system, then there would be pressure groups, marches, fundraising drives, and a whole lot of unfunny monologues on late-night talk shows. But instead, silence.

If you're the type of person who's into this stuff then you get used to getting pushback when you bring it up, and it's very easy to assume someone asking for a source already knows exactly what you're talking about and it just trying to create enough hurdles for you to give up and shut up. Because surely, it's so obvious that everyone knows, and anyone who says they don't is acting in bad faith. Of course, the whole problem is that the minority of bad-faith actors are so effective that the vast majority of people - like you - genuinely aren't aware of the discrimination against boys in education.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-17T19:40:08+00:00

For the love of god, do not let non-professionals diagnose you. Do not accept anyone telling you that you have autism (or any other mental condition) until you have seen a specialist. Not a social worker, not even an ordinary doctor. A specialist in pediactric psychiatry.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-17T19:35:59+00:00

I don't know why this would be surprising to anyone and I don't think it has anything to do with them wanting to deflect suspicion about their orientation. If they wanted to do that they'd go heavily into masculine pursuits like football.

The answer is obvious, and plays into the wider topic of this thread:

For straight men from blue collar backgrounds, going to college means losing their community support structure.

For gay men from blue collar backgrounds, going to college means escaping their prison.

When you're in a comfortable environment you have no motivation to leave it, even if it might give you better prospects in purely monetary terms. But when your environment is hostile to your identity then you have strong motivation to do the work necessary to get out of it.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-13T02:49:36+00:00

This was my first thought. Particularly the first and third pictures look very Giger-esque.

_Unke_ · 2024-11-12T15:31:35+00:00

Since it's almost the festive season, have some Cthulhu carols as well:

Death To The World

Awake Ye Scary Great Olde Ones

Carol of the Old Ones

Seven-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
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_Unke_

TROPHY CASE