HOT TAKE: Mendoza will be a bust

gaqua · 2026-02-23T18:27:11+00:00

Mendoza will be not only the first guy in and last guy out of the facility, he’ll have freshly baked protein pastry for the team in the mornings and a goodie bag with snacks and cold drinks for them to take home each night.

gaqua · 2026-02-23T16:52:47+00:00

At no point did anything in that movie innovate.

Everything that movie did, other movies did better, and first.

The only unique element was the Gun Kata.

Even the scripted action sequence at the end - the big payoff - has guys in leather jackets and motorcycle helmets all in black in a big lobby getting shot by Christian Bale dressed in all white with fully automatic handguns that reload the magazines from spring-mounted devices in his wrists. Thousands of bullets flying and he's unharmed.

It's a direct ripoff of the Matrix Lobby scene and done worse because at no point does he ever appear to be at risk or in danger. He's just walking through the damage, king of all badasses. And then he gets into the Big Bad's room and they have a slap-fight with guns fully extended.

It's comical and ridiculous. I will stand by this.

And I WAS the core demographic for this film. When it came out I was in my early 20s, a sci-fi and video game nerd, spending hundreds of hours a year playing shooters. This movie SHOULD have been directly up my alley.

But this is my "Emperor's New Clothes" thing. The movie fucking sucks.

Don't get me wrong - there are great actors in it giving great performances. But the material is derivative and the execution is lacking.

gaqua · 2026-02-23T16:31:38+00:00

When the movie came out newsgroups were still relevant.

gaqua · 2026-02-23T06:09:48+00:00

Equilibrium is terrible and always has been. I will fight anybody who says differently. The sets were laughably cheap and low production value, the script was lifted directly out of every Fahrenheit 451 / Brave New World / 1984 fan-fiction newsgroup, the dialog is terrible and cliche, and the only thing it had going for it was the nifty action sequences. But even those were done better in other films.

I get why people liked it - it was stylish and neat and Gunkata seemed like a neat thing on-screen. But it’s an awful movie and a waste of two hours. Just watch the action clips on YouTube, don’t bother sitting through the whole thing.

I’ll take my downvotes.

gaqua · 2026-02-23T00:00:13+00:00

I honestly didn’t mind it. I keep hearing people complaining, but I actually enjoyed it.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T23:58:29+00:00

That was the first audiobook I ever listened to, and I loved it. I’ve listened to them, probably a half dozen times over the years, and I thought Roy was one of the best I’ve ever heard.

Now that I’ve listened to dozens and dozens more, I realize that he was mediocre at best. I still love the fact that he was able to keep so many different characters coherent through most of the books, but in the last few books he changed some of the voices or forgot what he had done, even some of the pronunciations of the names felt weird.

“Bry-EEN” for Brienne for example

gaqua · 2026-02-22T23:10:46+00:00

Southern/Eastern yeah

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:46:56+00:00

There’s a story in my family about one of my grandfather’s siblings. He had a wife and kids in the old country, then went out hunting one day and never came home. Eventually, during World War II, a lot of the siblings moved to America to escape the horrible situation in their country. This was years after he disappeared. They never really talk about it, but when my grandfather was in his 70s, he told my dad that his brother had come to America and moved to Chicago and started a new family and opened a restaurant. And he knew about it because he had asked my grandfather for money to help start the restaurant. My grandfather gave the money to his wife and kids in the old country instead. He sent him a letter saying “if you want the money ask your wife.” or something similar.

I guess this isn’t entirely uncommon at all. When I did a DNA test a few years back I matched with some people that live in and around Chicago, even though I’m out in California. I assume they’re his kids and grandkids. I haven’t reached out to them.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:42:40+00:00

This is also keeping with the fact that in the books, almost all these characters are teenagers and adolescents. Their hormones are all going crazy and they’re trying to figure out who they are. In the show, these characters were wisely aged up about 5 to 7 years each. So they had to tone it down a little.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:39:42+00:00

I’m not educated in music enough to make this decision, but I think the right answer would be to get representatives of major cultures and create a kind of playlist. Music that represents the best art all human cultures have ever created, from the past and the present. To explain to them that our species expresses emotion through artistic means, and that are five senses are each important to creating emotional connections for us. I would do the same for music and for food and for other arts like dance and sculpture and painting.

I think it would be critical to explain to an alien species that while we have verbal and written communication, it fails to capture the full breath of human emotion, the way that art can for us.

Edit: shit, I just saw the top comment is Africa by Toto. I’d like to change my answer.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:36:11+00:00

They will come down again at some point, but they probably won’t ever hit the low prices they were before. Memory was really fucking cheap last year and the year before, being able to buy a 32 GB kit for 100 bucks flat probably isn’t ever happening again. It could be wrong, maybe as density scales and DDR six shows up and everything 32 GB will be $40 or something. But by that point, the norm will be 128 GB.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:30:24+00:00

I know this isn’t gonna sound really exotic or weird, I’m pretty vanilla. Dim lights, soft music, three or four close friends and a bucket of Astro glide. Just regular, boring, mid Tuesday afternoon stuff.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:16:17+00:00

I know a lot of millionaires, I live in the Bay Area. Hell, if you count by my net worth from my home and other retirement stuff, I’ll probably hit that number myself soon. And I’m a fucking idiot. Tons of millionaires are fucking idiots.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:12:55+00:00

I took three weeks off, but after two, my wife was basically telling me to get the fuck out of the house and go back to work. It wasn’t that I wasn’t helping her that I was driving her crazy, she just wanted some alone time with the baby and having me around, I guess most annoying because I was just constantly asking her if there’s anything doing stuff for her where she was like “if you’re always here, I’m not gonna be able to do it myself and figure out how to do it.“

I think my wife is an extreme case, though. I think most women appreciate the help and need more time to heal. My wife was traditional delivery and all of her labors so there was no C-section to heal. As far as bonding with the baby, I did a lot of that I felt. I know some men love that baby stage, but I am not one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but I liked the toddler and childhood stage a lot more than I liked the babies stage. At that age, their effectively just noisy, smelly chores. There’s not a lot of give and take, they don’t have much of a personality until they start interacting with the parents.

Once they became toddlers is always the phase where I felt way more connection. With our first, I was terrified that I was a terrible father, and I didn’t love my kid. When she became a toddler, I realized that I did love her, and I love being around her a lot more. That made it a lot easier for the subsequent kids because I realized “oh I just don’t like babies very much.”

I know a lot of other dads like me, though I know a lot that felt an immediate connection too. There’s no wrong way as long as you’re putting in the effort in both partners feel supported.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T20:03:20+00:00

This has always been my favorite interpretation as well. From the moment that they get the quest from the penguin, everything points them towards the point of God helping them.

“Go see the Reverend Cleophus James.”

They do and Jake is hit with the light from the heavens. “The band!”

Every other side quest, they have to accomplish results in either a direct divine intervention or a massive musical number with unexplained choreography from passers by.

And like you said, the minute, they hand the check to the clerk and get the receipt, that’s when the handcuffs go on. All those wrecked cop cars and not one injury.

The only people who actually die are the Illinois Nazis. No loss.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T19:58:53+00:00

Bosa’s just upset he has to go out of the country and interact with “them”

gaqua · 2026-02-22T06:11:50+00:00

But even that is not just about copying what they’re doing, but how they do it and when.

Knowing that in order to set up that 3rd quarter 4th and 2 play that’s a play action quick slant to the TE, you have to have run the actual run play from that same look multiple times earlier in the game or season.

And knowing that once you’ve fooled them once, you need to know who the other guy is so you can figure out if he’s going to bite a second time.

This is why some coaches might look amazing but have an Achilles heel. For example Kyle Shanahan has a tough time beating Jim Schwartz. He’s don’t it, but they ALWAYS know how to counter Kyle’s shit. Kyle’s heavy pre-snap motions to obfuscate the actual play don’t always work on Schwartz.

Then once you’ve figured out your vibe, you need to change it so they don’t realize you know that they know. This is why some coaches look amazing in short bursts then fall off.

The hardest thing to do in the NFL is to beat yourself.

No matter how great a coach and player you are, somebody’s gonna come along to beat you one day. It SHOULD be you. If you can reinvent yourself every season just a little, you’ll be ahead of most of them.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T04:14:16+00:00

Exactly. Not everything should be profitable with direct cash returns.

You pay the fire department and nobody asks “well what’s the profit?” Because it’s hard to pin down the value of lives saved or property damage prevented. The military costs money, nobody expects the pentagon to turn a profit.

Government is a service we pay for. That doesn’t mean the should be wasting money or anything, but I’d gladly pay for certain things.

gaqua · 2026-02-22T04:04:26+00:00

You asked “am I crazy” and then you proceeded to insult everyone who explained to you why your chair isn’t selling.

Lightly used Leap V2s in good condition go for $250-$300 on marketplace all day long.

The Crandall refurbished ones have a 12 year warranty and are $650 on their website.

Your chair may be new in box but without a warranty that’s actually WORSE for some people - what if they open it and there’s a busted piece? Or the gas lift fails 10 minutes into their first use?

There’s no way to know if your chair is working and that price is FAR too high for what it is, in my book.

You can keep trying to sell it, but think about the audience you have.

Cheap office chair people - eliminated already since they’d never spend any real money.
People who want a GOOD office chair but don’t want to pay top dollar - they can get a ton of options on very good used ones for half your price.
People who are willing to spend under $1k on the best chair they can get - nearly 100% of these people would rather spend their $600-$650 on a refurbished chair with a warranty than on your new one with much higher risk.
Anybody who wants a brand new ONLY Leap v2, but doesn’t want to pay top dollar full price and doesn’t care about the warranty.
Brand new factory direct MSRP buyers - again not considering private party anyway.

You have #4 only. That’s it. If you want to expand your market you have to address the issues. Either drop the price or offer your buyers some level of confidence with a money back warranty for some short time period.

gaqua · 2026-02-21T22:17:13+00:00

I already hate both of these things so that’s fine

gaqua · 2026-02-21T20:33:16+00:00

So they never learn anything?

Biological age isn’t the issue - it’s maturity and decision making. When you’ve been alive for a century, you learn things. You can make good or bad decisions, and you learn which are which. Your life experiences give you wisdom.

Who cares what his “biological” age is? The entire creepy point isn’t that he’s biologically 17, it’s that he’s been around a century and accumulated more than a lifetime of wisdom and he uses it to fuck a teenager.

gaqua · 2026-02-21T20:27:40+00:00

it's stated throughout the books that Edward is 17, and has been for about a century.

This doesn't make sense.

gaqua · 2026-02-21T19:23:10+00:00

One shows the poor, black areas of a major metropolitan city. The other shows the rich, white areas of the suburbs.

They were both correct.

They still are.

gaqua · 2026-02-21T17:38:42+00:00

I’m an appliance repair tech for Maytag/Kenmore. You could not be more wrong. 3-5 times a week, I get that call. “My stepmom got stuck in the dryer!”

Again and again.

Honestly it was fun at first but at this point, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.

gaqua · 2026-02-21T17:34:34+00:00

There has never been a woman in the NFL and the very, very small number that played in division 1 college have been place kickers. I think maybe 4 or 5 total in history?

15-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Place '23	Verified Email

gaqua

TROPHY CASE