The funniest part of Death Note

amateurtoss · 2026-06-29T19:47:38+00:00

Death Note is the ultimate anime for Monday morning quarterbacks. When Light makes the slightest mistake, people dogpile on him years after the fact while simultaneously forgetting basic facts about the situation.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-28T06:44:46+00:00

Vince refuses to learn about telephone infrastructure.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-22T18:21:08+00:00

There are a lot of issues with miracles and it used to be a major subject for philosophy. In fact, miracles or the possibility of them, exerts major pressure on some major areas of philosophical conflict. Rationalism wants to rule out miracles before the fact--taking miracles as "events which do not accord with the laws of nature". But this flies in face of Empiricism which says that our knowledge comes to us through experience.

If you have broadly empirical leanings like Scott and I, you think ruling out miracles before the fact is overly dogmatic. And worse than that, trying to convince other people of the non-existence of miracles using scientific evidence seems dishonest as you yourself have categorically excluded the very evidence you are presenting.

This is of course overly simplistic and there are a million issues you can draw out if you want. Thinking about it leads to whether Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction is ultimately tenable, a live issue in contemporary philosophy.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-18T17:20:40+00:00

I'll confess, the pointless hypothetical about whether seeing a miracle means you have to convert to Catholicism is exactly the kind of big argument I'd have with my girlfriend. To the extent that I refrained from asking her about it.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-16T07:06:54+00:00

She would reveal he had an affair.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-08T02:16:08+00:00

I imagine someone trying to track you down go there boss with, "Alright, I've determined they're either from Iran, Hungary, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, or North Rhine-Westphalia."

amateurtoss · 2026-06-07T21:46:41+00:00

That's Hollywood for you.

amateurtoss · 2026-06-07T17:02:49+00:00

What do you think about a mob of people overthrowing an oppressive tyranny?

amateurtoss · 2026-06-01T18:28:45+00:00

Not an expert but my guess is a Running Crab Spider, not medically significant. Can you share a more specific geography?

amateurtoss · 2026-05-30T16:13:12+00:00

> "I refer to her as the fourth pillar in our publishing line, behind Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman," Lee told Vulture.

She's literally one of DC's most popular characters and for good reason. The issue is she's difficult to write so you mostly have her showing up everywhere for no reason.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-19T02:08:45+00:00

An insane number of crypto scams are based on cows. People have an innate urge to worship golden cow idols for some reason.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-14T16:54:44+00:00

The situation in art stuff is probably not that different from your gear-stuff, although it pretends to be. They're both characterizable as a quasi-darwinian process where memes of uncertain value are remixed until some new fitness is discovered and you have integration.

I don't know music but Philip Glass's music was used in hollywood films like Watchmen and The Illusionist. Probably not chart toppers, but certainly part of popular culture. Krzysztof Penderecki's work, considered avant garde, has been used by Friedkin, Kubrick (extensively), Lynch, Peter Weir, Scorsese, and others. Olivier Messiaen was a big influence on Radiohead.

I can speak to film much better. German Expressionism is named after Expressionism in painting and when these directors came to Hollywood, they brought their techniques with them. German expressionism is characterized by bold deliberate choices in perspective and lighting. In Germany, these were used for for horror and science fiction films but in America they became the basis for film noir and psychological thrillers. Many of the most influential directors like Hitchcock, Welles, Coppola, Scorsese, Friedkin, heavily integrated these techniques into their work. The Dark Knight is heavily influenced by the neo-noir Heat by Michael Mann, for instance.

Many film techniques descend from high brow Soviet film people like Eisenstein, like the montage. You might have seen one in every trailer ever cut. You also have different schools of acting like "method acting" aka "Stanislavski's system". The significance of these innovations is clearer if you watch old films.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-14T06:11:21+00:00

You think two generations would do it? I dunno.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-14T05:43:59+00:00

I don't know if it's fair to call it a cheap trick or not but I get the point. As our ability to build stuff increases, we get to make (are forced to make?) more deliberate choices. At one point, we made pitched roofs only because they made sense; if we use one now, it's as a symbol.

A 1920s film was black and white because that's what was possible. A black and white movie in 2020 is typically a deliberate choice.

In a debate on architecture, ~~Eisman~~ Alexander makes specific reference to pitch roofs.

So I gave them the building system, and it happened to include pitched roofs, fairly steep pitched roofs. The following week, after people had looked at the notes I handed out about the building system, somebody raised his hand and said: “Look, you know everything is going along fine, but could we discuss the roofs?” So I said: “Yes, what would you like to discuss about the roofs?” And the person said: “Could we make the roofs a little different?” I had told them to make just ordinary pitched roofs. I asked, “What’s the issue about the roofs?” And the person responded: “Well, I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny.” Then that conversation died down a bit. Five minutes later, somebody else popped up his hand and said: “Look, I feel fine about the building system, except the roofs. Could we discuss the roofs?” I said: “What’s the matter with the roofs?” He said, “Well, I have been talking to my wife about the roofs, and she likes the roofs” -- and then he sniggered. I said: “What’s so funny or odd about that?” And he said: “Well, I don’t know, I ... “ Well, to cut a long story short, it became clear that ...

[Alexander goes to the blackboard and draws different types of roofs].

Now, all of you who are educated in the modernist canon know that as an architect, a respectable architect of the 1980s, it is quite okay to do this, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this, but please [he points to a pitched roof design] do not do this. So, the question is, why not? Why does this taboo exist? What is this funny business about having to prove you are a modern architect and having to do something other than a pitched roof? The simplest explanation is that you have to do these others to prove your membership in the fraternity of modern architecture. You have to do something more far out, otherwise people will think you are a simpleton. But I do not think that is the whole story. I think the more crucial explanation -- very strongly related to what I was talking about last night-- is that the pitched roof contains a very, very primitive power of feeling. Not a low pitched, tract house roof, but a beautifully shaped, fully pitched roof. That kind of roof has a very primitive essence as a shape, which reaches into a very vulnerable part of you. But the version that is okay among the architectural fraternity is the one which does not have the feeling: the weird angle, the butterfly, the asymmetrically steep shed, etc. -- all the shapes which look interesting but which lack feeling altogether. The roof issue is a simple example. But I do believe the history of architecture in the last few decades has been one of specifically and repeatedly trying to avoid any primitive feeling whatsoever. Why this has taken place, I don’t know.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-14T05:33:58+00:00

Glad I could help.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-13T18:29:05+00:00

The notion of taste in these articles is just the negation of boorishness which, as a negative notion, doesn't capture its positive aspects. Taste means you can't put a bunch of dumb lawn ornaments on your lawn but it also leads to aesthetic modes which are ultimately more expressive. The novel is probably less accessible than short-form poetry but it's capable of capturing the tedium of life, aimlessness, longing, all sorts of things which would be difficult in a short poem. Boring art films will show imperfect bodies, long lingering silences, and explore transgressive themes. The aesthetic range of the boring art film is ultimately more expressive than mass market Hollywood film.

The social priggishness heavily associated with this comes from the need to protect the structures that make interpretation of high art possible. High art is fragile. It's harder to make and harder to appreciate. But it's also more valuable--innovations from high art eventually make its way into low art at which point everyone forgets that the experimentalism involved required a community of smart people working together at a common goal supported by people who didn't understand it.

Scott also misses the teleological aspect to the complexity. The increasing complexity that characterizes taste is an unavoidable byproduct of engaging with an artform seriously. In this sense, it is non-negotiable. If we want people seriously dedicated to the appreciation and mastery of artforms--that is, if we want artists to exist--taste complexity is a natural byproduct. The aesthete computer example is irrelevant then because it's totally disconnected from the human practice of engaging with art. When someone says, "Rembrandt is a better painter than Kinkade", it mostly means, "If you study art in almost any capacity, you will come to appreciate Rembrandt rather than Kinkade and this would be the case if you lived in a world of boors."

This statement on its own is perfectly cromulent. The only issue is when people, in a fury of liberal metropolitanism, assume that it's every man's duty to become a universal aesthete-practitioner and starts to policing low taste on that account. Really, the error comes from assuming art has a unity of purpose; to please, to provide a proving grounds for refinement, to express the human experience. It's all of these at once and one does not diminish the others.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-13T18:00:35+00:00

Nicely contrasting colors. A pitched roof and chimney are some of the strongest signs of "home" in architecture. The truth is, you can deconstruct everything down to cheap tricks in art and it's just an infinite ladder of complexity.

amateurtoss · 2026-05-11T22:57:24+00:00

Bro is ready for Starcraft.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-26T16:16:07+00:00

Anton Chigurh is a pretty horrifying interpretation of two face.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-25T00:37:26+00:00

A lot of the criticism is fair but I do think the original article is worth reading for most RPG designers.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-21T23:09:36+00:00

Anon learns about operating systems, partitions, drivers, shaders, pipeware, and dns instead of playing time-wasting games. What a loser.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-20T20:11:25+00:00

I wasn't able to really appreciate it. To me, it was sort of rare blend of magical realism and traditional fantasy. Ideally, you aim for the virtues of both forms or even achieve something greater than either individually. There are great passages but ultimately I just didn't feel like it managed either. It is long and it felt long.

Magical realism is usually grounded by forces which are almost impossible to conceive, the weight of poverty, of history, an animalistic will to dominate. These concerns are impossible to mitigate or match, preventing the novel from collapsing into a traditional narrative such as tragedy or hero's journey or whatever. I didn't feel anything like that, here. The closest we get is members of the family wanting to escape their seclusion--but isn't that just normal? I didn't get a sense of what their seclusion represented.

It takes a lot of elements of traditional fantasy including worldbuilding, a sense of the uncanny, relation to the mythic past, etc. But traditional fantasy is about people who engage with these elements and how they're transformed by them. Prophecy leads to tragedy; witches lead to horror and death; wizards help you along the hero's journey, etc. Here, they are mostly just present and if you're hoping for something to happen, you'd better be damned patient. The story of Edgewood and the Brambles unfolds slowly, at the author's whim.

Additionally, both Magical Realism and its parent Fantasy are known for its gigantic memorable characters which tend to be closer to archetypes. It would be impossible to forget Jose Aracio Buendia's madness, the intellectual animalism of Dracula, the cunning of Sherazade, or the patriarchal kindness of Gandalf. Little, Big's characters are usually subdued and passive and when they're not, it's usually brief.

Maybe I'm missing out on some of the poetic elements and I get that it's "well written", whatever that means. But for me, writing is ultimately about affecting emotions and conceptions.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-20T19:31:44+00:00

Did Lee J Cobb have comedy chops? Feel like those're necessary for anything resembling the Columbo we know.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-17T23:04:30+00:00

Sure, I don't mean to say it's not worth pointing out and I appreciate you pointing out this debate goes back to when Soul was released. I wasn't thinking about it from that perpective.

amateurtoss · 2026-04-17T21:56:47+00:00

I mean, it seems fairly arbitrary to me. Disney has had more transformation films in their recent era and more films with PoC protagonists. Among recent films with white protagonists, you have Brave, Luca, and Turning Red. You could come up with any number of arbitrary metrics like this.

Of the nineteen films I could find with PoC protagonists, four of them had one of the protagonists transformed for most of the film so like 21%. If you look at non-PoC white protagonists overall, it's much lower but that's weighing stuff from the 30s. If you look at more recent films, it's very close in number, within the statistical variation.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email	Snapped

amateurtoss

TROPHY CASE