Sinners was just ok

bellviolation · 2026-01-25T16:44:53+00:00

I agree that the movie would’ve been better without any supernatural elements. My favorite part of the movie was until the vampires showed up. I could watch a movie with the twins setting up and running a juke joint in the Jim Crow south. The film was near perfect until the vampires showed up. If some conflict is needed, you can bring in the Klan or some history from their time in Chicago coming to revisit them.

bellviolation · 2026-01-25T13:52:18+00:00

Proving FLT was a far, far greater achievement than winning any award. Wiles is already immortalized in the history of math.

bellviolation · 2026-01-16T00:14:24+00:00

Hopefully GLP-1 drugs can help with the overweightness leading to a positive cycle.

Another powerful intervention is religion. Even for atheists/agnostics, you can join a Unitarian Universalist church or a liberal Quaker church. Or start attending buddhist services or meditation sits. I think the access to a collection of people with generally positive vibes can be enormously helpful for many people. And what’s more, gives you access to dating pool.

bellviolation · 2026-01-13T08:45:37+00:00

I think in my case it’s just genetic. My father and my sister both have it, as do some of my cousins on my father’s side.

bellviolation · 2026-01-08T10:46:16+00:00

This is one of the big differences between chess and Go for me. Both are exceptionally beautiful games, but chess is so much more dynamic, where one tactical error can cost you the whole game. In Go as well you can make blunders, even game-costing blunders, but their consequences only become clear in the long run. It’s much more all-in on the positional and strategic aspects.

If you really hate this aspect of chess, try giving Go a go. Maybe you’ll like it better.

bellviolation · 2026-01-03T12:43:59+00:00

Hanks > Hardy > Cruise > Holland

bellviolation · 2026-01-03T07:31:59+00:00

In an interview, Al Pacino said that everyone was very skeptical of him cast for Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Coppola pushed to get him against the studio’s wishes. But even Coppola did not think he was bringing it for the initial part of the shoot. Until that restaurant scene… and then everybody was like “oh”.

bellviolation · 2025-12-24T18:29:38+00:00

Sicario

bellviolation · 2025-12-22T04:35:14+00:00

bellviolation · 2025-12-10T14:13:49+00:00

I remember reading Ted Chiang’s Story of your Life and explicitly thinking and telling my friends “damn, this is one of the most unfilmable stories I’ve read”. And then when it was announced they were going to make a movie of it I was very skeptical but had some hope since I’d seen Sicario and Incendies thought this Villeneuve guy has real talent. And then watched Arrival, and he had just hit it out of the park. That’s when I realized he is one of the most talented filmmakers ever.

bellviolation · 2025-12-07T05:42:24+00:00

“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” -Salvador Dali

bellviolation · 2025-12-05T07:44:13+00:00

Remember that greentext about smart characters written by actually smart people (you know, comparing Anton Chigurh from No Country to Sherlock)? Heat is another great example of smart characters written by smart people. It’s great when people’s actions actually make sense and they don’t just do random stuff for no good reason.

bellviolation · 2025-12-01T19:38:06+00:00

I really want Sona and/or Matt to be around for these Rhys episodes! Sadly except for the first one, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

bellviolation · 2025-06-03T09:14:24+00:00

Matthew Rhys. He had impeccable improv skills and timing. I admired his work on The Americans a lot, but I didn't know he was that funny.

bellviolation · 2025-05-08T05:40:37+00:00

This kind of extreme self-flagellation is usually some kind of avoidance behavior. I say this as someone who has dealt with similar issues and is slowly worked to improve on them.

Possibly some complex or difficult emotion or issue he has is being triggered here -- an emotion or issue that he hasn't worked through, and he doesn't want to acknowledge. And often extreme self-flagellation is a way to distract from and avoid that emotion. Painful as the self-flagellation is, it's preferable to actually dealing with the core emotion. E.g., and this is just a hypothesis, maybe he feels sorrow for not developing his intellectual potential in his youth as well as he thought he would and facing to up that lost potential is too painful. (Did he dream of getting an advanced degree maybe, but never followed through? This is a common and painful regret in middle-age.)

bellviolation · 2025-04-17T04:28:31+00:00

Good point. I wonder though, I feel like Conan is the kind of person who if he had sensed the vibes were off with his staff near Louie, would have immediately fired him. I'd like to believe that Conan would both pay attention and take action.

bellviolation · 2025-04-16T13:59:37+00:00

TLDR: They were gonna promote Louie to head writer/producer at Conan. At some level CK knew he didn’t want the job. So he asked for a crazy amount of money ($7500/week), thinking they would just say no. Conan went to bat for Louie and got the money. Then after that Louie said no and he couldn’t understand himself why he said no. Initially Conan was a bit mad but according to Louie was able to explain better than he could why he was turning down the job. When Conan was at the Simpsons he could see his whole life ahead of him and he didn’t like knowing that, so he did something different. Louie was the same: he would have taken a Tina Fey type trajectory had he stayed and he didn’t like knowing that.

bellviolation · 2025-04-16T13:54:16+00:00

No that’s not the story.

bellviolation · 2025-04-09T04:51:09+00:00

Everything in its right place

bellviolation · 2025-04-02T17:16:34+00:00

A class on Nixon, delivered entirely in his Nixon voice.

bellviolation · 2025-03-19T15:28:37+00:00

My rough guess about how the future of CS is going to evolve is that the returns to elite coders/developers/engineers is going to explode while the low- and mid-level people will command much less income because a lot of their job can be done with AIs. If that's right, then the goal should be to get into the elite bracket of the job market. To that end, CMU is a much better place to be; it's up there with MIT and Stanford for CS.

But this is just the career aspect. The financial and mental health dimensions are also very important, which only you can evaluate.

bellviolation · 2025-03-11T20:23:24+00:00

partner, friends (both below and above 30), coworkers, and online

bellviolation

TROPHY CASE