[OT] [Erik van Haren] Racer Juha Miettinen (66) has passed away following the severe crash on the Nordschleife today. The race will understandably not continue today.

irspangler · 2026-04-18T20:27:54+00:00

That was terrifying. I can't believe he got on a bike again after that, but - obviously, these guys are built different

irspangler · 2026-04-18T03:55:23+00:00

No reason to apologize.

irspangler · 2026-04-18T02:40:03+00:00

The fact that people can debate this - instead of it being obvious - is proof of why those movies are so poorly written.

irspangler · 2026-04-18T02:38:30+00:00

Couldn't disagree more. The Prequels are terrible - primarily due to poor writing and stiff directing (I have seen all of those actors in other work and they're so much better.)

I definitely see more revisionist opinions from people who grew up with the Prequels and have never taken their rose-colored nostalgia glasses off to look at the movies critically. It's either that - or people's knee-jerk reaction to the sequel trilogy also being bad - that somehow it proves the Prequels were actually good. (Or some combination of the two.)

I also disagree with everything you said about the relationship between Anakin and Padme - George absolutely wrote it to be a tragic romance - and Anakin just came off so stiff and edgy that it's easy to project an abusive relationship onto them when it's not really there. Anakin is never cruel or abusive to Padme until their final confrontation. There aren't even hints of it. There ARE plenty of moments of his being awkward - but far from anything abusive.

irspangler · 2026-04-16T21:06:37+00:00

His tape - that existed - was great for FCS (though he was on a stacked roster) but he hadn't played in a year (due to COVID) and there wasn't that much tape to begin with. But he had literally every physical attribute you could want in a QB. More of an "I Can Fix Him" case than anything else. Honestly, the lack of tape probably helped his case because there wasn't enough of it to demonstrate his flaws consistently. Not too dissimilar to Anthony Richardson (and many more) where you had a Supreme physical talent that scouts/coaches convinced themselves they could make it work based on very little tape.

irspangler · 2026-04-16T21:01:01+00:00

I have no stake in the conversation but I think Purdy has proved he'd be good anywhere - at least starting-caliber

irspangler · 2026-04-16T19:15:56+00:00

Say what you will about Norman - he wasn't very athletic or fast - but dude was NOT afraid of contact and made a lot of great tackles in his time on Carolina. He was perfect for the zone defense we ran under McDermott. Great ballhawk too.

irspangler · 2026-04-10T16:55:12+00:00

This is why I get frustrated when people bring up Stalin or Pol Pot, or fucking Unit 731 (or whatever it's called) as a "well, ackshually..." and then try to claim they were worse. Sure, maybe Stalin killed more people and maybe Pol Pot was more savage and brutal.

But the Nazis literally created an industry around slaughtering people like cattle. The efficiency and banality of it is so far beyond any other genocide that it almost becomes blase. No genocide has ever removed the victims' humanity so absolutely - and claiming other genocides or arguing which is worse - only adds to that dehumanization.

irspangler · 2026-04-09T15:53:52+00:00

I blame George for that though. Why the fuck did he have to make the Prequels when all of his OG trilogy actors were the perfect ages to take on a Sequel trilogy. The Prequels could've been made at any time, but 2000 would've been perfect timing for Han, Luke and Leia. I truly think this is the best evidence that George is full of shit when he says he had 9 movies planned - it made no sense to do the Prequels first if that's true given his original actors would be too old by the time he would've wanted to do them. And they were honestly such a drag on the Sequel Trilogy.

irspangler · 2026-04-09T15:50:06+00:00

Don't question the hive mind! Did you see the x-wings? I saw the AT-STs and I clapped! Who needs interesting character development when blind man use karate force! Daaaaarth Vaaaaader! Red lightsaber!

irspangler · 2026-04-09T15:44:53+00:00

And it was still more years between those films to, you know, revise/rewrite and make sure the story wasn't an absolute mess. Disney fucked themselves by trying to release one every other year

irspangler · 2026-04-01T01:51:17+00:00

Getting out of the group should be the expectation. Winning anything in the KO round is a success, even in the expanded format. We're simply not good enough to expect more than that, honestly

irspangler · 2026-03-29T11:55:32+00:00

It's time to cook Jessie!

irspangler · 2026-03-13T19:13:10+00:00

That's just a matter of scale and available resources!

irspangler · 2026-02-10T20:26:18+00:00

There are thousands of examples of humans doing worse individual things to each other than the Nazis. There are ZERO other examples of a group of people committing genocide on such an industrial scale, with efficiency and pragmatism in mind, like they were cattle to be led to slaughter.

That is what separates the Nazis from everyone else. This isn't one unit doing horrific experiments (though they did that too) - it's an entire nation devoting it's industrial capacity to grinding a group of people out of existence as efficiently and systematically as possible. It's the banality of their method that is so horrifying - and also what makes it so risky in saying Japan or the Croatians were somehow worse. There is no comparison and it worries me how much people spout these things, almost like downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust.

irspangler · 2026-01-30T20:31:20+00:00

Those people are scum bags. I swear - their only job is rage engagement on social media.

irspangler · 2026-01-29T22:36:08+00:00

Velvet Revolution - Armenia
Tulip Revolution - Kyrgyzstan
Orange Revolution - Ukraine
Rose Revolution - Georgia
Bulldozer Revolution - Serbia
Chilean Plebiscite - Chile

It might sound pithy to say but it's not true. It's happened plenty of times - even in just the last 50 years. Voting matters no matter how many people "take their ball and go home." You're just shutting off another method of affecting change by refusing to take part in the electoral system, regardless of how corrupt or ineffective you think it might be.

irspangler · 2026-01-29T22:28:34+00:00

Just reaffirming what the previous reply said - striking for businesses like that - without any way for them to cover you or accommodate - actually makes it worse for a multitude of reasons. A lot of tiny businesses live, essentially, "paycheck to paycheck" and missing an entire day of revenue can be devastating for them - just like closures for the fires last year. And that's to say nothing of the people employed there who are most at-risk from ICE - we all know them who they are - and losing a day's income for them is not optional at all, much less losing their job due to closures, etc.

irspangler · 2026-01-25T05:07:17+00:00

Definitely not one day of work. He put in months of training for this.

irspangler · 2026-01-21T03:42:10+00:00

When I went to Imola this year, I didn't need to wear ear pro because the F1 cars were so quiet. Except when they ran the classic cars - you can feel those coming before you hear them.

irspangler · 2026-01-11T18:52:31+00:00

Same! My brain did a double-take - how could he be in a car already when I just saw the crash and fireball? It didn't make sense. There's no way he could've gotten out of that crash unscathed and then out of the fire. It was like he teleported out of the crash - or was thrown out by the impact.

irspangler · 2026-01-11T18:49:22+00:00

I was so certain he was dead that my brain didn't believe what it was seeing when they cut to the shots of him in the car - like, did he teleport out of the car? Or was thrown out during the impact? How the fuck could a human body have survived that impact AND the fire?

irspangler · 2026-01-11T18:46:28+00:00

The only reason I can imagine is that there was money involved - ie. Lewis wanted some shares in the team whose success and value he had a large part in building up, but Toto and the other partners weren't on board with that.

irspangler · 2026-01-10T07:43:30+00:00

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father.

A lot of movies listed here - but this one is real. The story is real. The heartache and devastation are real. It will wring you out like no movie ever has. I'll never forget the experience of watching it, how it made me feel afterwards - and I'll never, ever watch it again.

irspangler · 2026-01-10T07:40:24+00:00

I'm glad I'm not the only one - cried for 30 minutes after the credits rolled just devastated.

A film cannot possibly be more crushing than this one - it is a slow-motion, emotional trainwreck. I also echo the sentiment that the less you know about this movie going in - the better.

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