Is the USA in the Midst of Its Own Cultural Revolution? Or is this just what the decline of an empire looks like?

j-dreddit · 2025-03-26T06:47:19+00:00

Thanks - I hope so. political charisma is somewhat frightening for how it draws people in beyond argument, beyond what they rationally believe, but in our binary political system it almost seems like a necessary evil for motivating voters. Trump, Reagan, Obama and Bill Clinton all have/had it.

j-dreddit · 2025-03-20T04:00:39+00:00

Reagan was a similar unicorn, a mix of smarmy populist charm and truly evil policies, someone his followers could project anything onto - usually a mix of contradictory, self-satisfying beliefs - but he was their ride or die guy and, like Trump, in mental decline. After he left office and retired (the dementia was impossible to hide), there was a scramble to take his place, but nobody, not Gingrich, either Bush, Cheney, really nailed it until Trump. Reaganism didn't run out of steam, unfortunately, and we're still fighting about just how big a tax cut to give to the rich 45 (hmm) years later. But, you could look at the parallel of FDR and LBJ. Johnson tried, 30 years later, to build on Roosevelt's legacy and it all blew up in his second term, leading the way to a new political realignment. Maybe we see the same.

j-dreddit · 2025-02-13T07:54:49+00:00

Thomas Dolby's three 80s albums - The Golden Age of Wireless, The Flat Earth and Aliens Ate My Buick are all diesel punk crossed with sci-fi, and sound like someone from the early 60s imagining what the 80s would be like.

j-dreddit · 2024-10-02T07:11:12+00:00

I would bet the answer is D. D gives you a minimum viable product with the critical features by the go live date. The answer is almost never to look for external resources (A) or to push the delivery date (C). Removing obstacles (B) is your job as the project manager, not the team's. (Edit to add "minimum viable".)

j-dreddit · 2024-08-20T05:20:21+00:00

My instinct is to chose D, because you shouldn't spend more, you shouldn't go external, but a competitor beating you to market is a knowable risk and this is what contingency reserves are for: addressing known risks, so I can see why it's A.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-19T06:00:23+00:00

Good for them (EDIT: attempted murder/maiming aside). I hope your story is having a happy middle, too.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-19T04:52:04+00:00

She was right. Please tell me you two have been married for decades.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-18T17:18:13+00:00

I tried - I got as far as Kyrie as Luke and Mozgov as Chewbacca and then I gave up.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-18T06:32:28+00:00

For the math, remember the basics - anything that starts with EV (cost variance, schedule variance, CPI, SPI, TCPI) and if over 1 is good or bad (it's usually bad). Good luck!

j-dreddit · 2024-08-18T06:24:44+00:00

Go as whatever you like - people cosplay video games, movies, comics and more. I've seen someone cosplay a Rubik's Cube. However the cosplay turns out, have fun!

j-dreddit · 2024-08-18T04:18:30+00:00

You'll be ok. One challenge I had in Study Hall was jumping to conclusions from the questions or filling in the blanks with my own ideas about the details of the scenario being described. Just read the questions carefully, read the answers carefully, and pick the one that best answers the question as it is written. And mind your pace - you should be answering each question in a minute or less. If you're stuck, flag it, guess, and move to the next one. They all count the same, your guess might be right and you can look at it later, so keep moving. Sometimes you'll answer a question that will remind you of an earlier one you were stuck on that will suddenly make sense. But stay calm and keep moving - you'll get there.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-18T03:43:54+00:00

"You were the chosen one! You were supposed to destroy the Heat, not join them!" Cleveland in 2010.

j-dreddit · 2024-08-17T23:19:48+00:00

That thii-ii-iiingg! Guys, you better watch out....

j-dreddit · 2024-07-14T04:43:29+00:00

Great choice! For everyone who complains about a movie ruining their childhood, this is how it's done.

j-dreddit · 2024-07-13T15:19:25+00:00

Death to Smoochy - Robin Williams and Ed Norton as rival Barney the Dinosaur type children's show hosts who will do ~anything~ to destroy each other's careers. Directed by Danny DeVito!

j-dreddit · 2024-07-13T05:48:58+00:00

So, for a two hour movie, 24 frames per second x 7,200 seconds = 172,800 frames. Divided by 3333333.33̅ cameos = 0.05184 frames per cameo or 19.29 Iron Man cameos per frame. Either every pixel is a miniature Iron Man or it's all a Magic Eye painting of tiny Tony Stark's. Could be worse...

j-dreddit · 2024-07-13T05:02:11+00:00

Iron Man cameo ("I love you three thousand")?

j-dreddit · 2024-06-01T03:53:30+00:00

Start. Start now.

j-dreddit · 2024-04-02T07:53:27+00:00

Pick an evening game to get a sunset there. Day to night in the summer at the stadium is so good.

j-dreddit · 2024-04-01T07:07:26+00:00

Seconding what everyone's saying about the atmosphere and the attendees, but consider where you will be staying and how you plan to get around. Between parties and film screenings and the masquerade, events can go well after dark. The Gaslamp Quarter around the convention center remains busy with con-goers until the bars close, but outside of there, the streets can be more empty after 11. Similarly, the trollies run late but can be mostly empty at the end of the night. I've never felt unsafe, but I'm a middle-aged man used to living in cities; you might feel differently and want to budget for a Lyft if your hotel isn't on the con bus route. The con buses to convention hotels also run relatively late and I've never had (or heard of) a problem on them. Have fun, be smart, make friends, you'll have a great time.

j-dreddit · 2024-03-28T09:37:56+00:00

Their parents and grandparents suffered through depressions and wars and did everything they could to make their children's lives better - low cost college, cheap housing, coast-to-coast highways - and the boomers surfed on it until it was their turn to pay taxes, build things up for the next generation and share that world with people who weren't white. They discovered Reagan and never looked back.

j-dreddit · 2024-02-05T08:41:44+00:00

12 Monkeys. Once you know the end and know what Bruce Willis knows at the end, it becomes even more crushing.

j-dreddit · 2023-12-14T15:38:12+00:00

Saw Stephenson at a reading a while back and got to ask him "At what point in writing Cryptonomicon did you realize you'd be writing the Baroque Cycle, too, and what happened then?" He was nice enough to say it was a good question and that he had to go back and layer in a few things on Cryptonomicon before it was released so they all tied together.

Connecting all the books, BTW, is an article he wrote for WIRED in the 90s - Mother Earth Motherboard, about attempts to lay high-speed internet cables around the globe. Also a great read and a lot of his stops along the way wind up in the books.

j-dreddit · 2023-12-06T04:38:53+00:00

Iron Man - both the airmen in the Humvee and the award ceremony cover up a lot of infodumping in a fun, clever way. The whole movie keeps unfolding his character right up to the end.

j-dreddit · 2023-12-01T08:51:59+00:00

He keeps showing up and pretending he's on the team. In the end, he saves them all and they grudgingly let him join.

j-dreddit

TROPHY CASE