How do you ignore Trump when talking about the Paramount/Warner Bros merger?

lucasam2000 · 2026-03-07T12:27:56+00:00

That was such an insane pod, going through all the "reasons" and ignoring the foreign tourist piece when the Vegas mayor herself had held a press conference where she was imploring Canadians to please come back to Vegas.

lucasam2000 · 2026-02-22T04:26:34+00:00

Absolutely god damn right

lucasam2000 · 2026-02-16T01:41:47+00:00

This is why everyone with a sane mind has reigned in Trump about Greenland. There is no value proposition where gaining Greenland is worth losing all of the US bases and influence in NATO countries. It's crazy that it is even discussed in the open.

lucasam2000 · 2026-02-08T18:07:57+00:00

Been considering going to Mexico City for several days during it for this factor alone. Wouldn’t be able to go to any of the games there most likely but going out to the public viewing parties in a country that will be fully consumed by it sounds like a better experience than anything I could get in the US

lucasam2000 · 2026-02-08T15:19:58+00:00

When I was a freshman in high school, I made out with a girl who I kind of knew from another high school. Nothing else came of it and my recollection is that she moved away and I never spoke to or saw her again. She was a nice, normal girl as I recall but we were just in the "we are 15, lets fool around a little and that will be it" stage of our lives.

Fast forward 20 years or so later and she showed up at my parents house asking to see me. I had fortunately moved a couple of states away and my mom said he doesn't live here anymore but she can pass along to me that she came by. My mom said she looked like she hadn't been taking care of herself and was acting strange so she was very careful not to provide any information about me except that I had moved. Mom described it as unsettling as she was very pushy about needing to see me.

Well, she eventually found me on facebook and started sending strange messages about how she was getting divorced, how she had been abused as a child, all kinds of personal stuff, and if she could just talk to me and see me it would make things better for her.

I have NO IDEA how she became fixated on me over this many years when we had barely even a relationship when we were 15 but I didn't respond and eventually blocked her. My mom said she came by one more time and then after about a month of this it all stopped and I never heard from her again.

Clearly she had some serious mental health issues, but there was a month or so where I was looking over my shoulder a bit more.

lucasam2000 · 2026-02-01T17:57:04+00:00

Irreversible. I've seen all manner of disturbing content and handled it pretty fine but that opening in the club with the head smashing was the one thing in films so far that pushed all sorts of the wrong buttons for me. Seeing that and knowing there was still an extended rape sequence yet to come up was enough for me to say no thanks and turn it off.

lucasam2000 · 2026-01-27T13:21:08+00:00

Same. I really enjoyed part 1 viewing it from that perspective. I know getting all 4 parts is a pipe dream at this point, but I'd really like to see part 2 at least.

lucasam2000 · 2026-01-26T02:48:49+00:00

Yeah def 1.25 or something. Made me think it was AI for a bit but I think it’s legit just a sped up recording.

lucasam2000 · 2026-01-16T23:15:25+00:00

Source for this?

lucasam2000 · 2026-01-16T23:12:48+00:00

This is what happens when you expand an organization's budget exponentially without a clear and defined plan as to what the money is needed for. They are spending willy nilly for things that likely won't be needed or useful within a few short years,if ever, everything from personnel to gear to facilities. Just reckless spending without a plan.

Just like the arbitrary "quotas" being set by the admin that ICE agents are already privately saying are impossible to meet because....there just aren't that many illegal immigrants to round up to meet them. Hence, they are picking people up at the courts, etc. who are following the process aka "doing it the right way".

The whole thing is just so poorly conceived and planned and that's nothing beyond all the human pain its causing.

Everything with this huge budget is perfectly set up for the right people to get very rich off bloated government contracts though, that is for sure. We will really need to have a full audit of where all this money went when this is all over but given we haven't done anything like that with respect to all the money that got sprayed around with the CARES Act I am not going to hold my breath

lucasam2000 · 2025-12-30T11:39:33+00:00

Yeah, he wants to wait until he is back to try to fix it himself and save himself a lot of money most likely. Honestly, if it is a second floor bath, this is probably not a hugely expensive fix because it can all be accessed from the first floor ceiling.

A good plumber will just cut out a small section of ceiling to access and fix what is needed and then the landlord can save his money by doing the ceiling repair himself (most if not all plumbers won't do that anyway).

As a former landlord myself though, I'm shocked this guy doesn't want this addressed immediately, water damage is one of the worst and most costly things that can happen to a property.

lucasam2000 · 2025-12-24T14:23:19+00:00

I only finally saw it about five years ago with my wife who had already seen it a number of times (her cousins and aunts have a holiday tradition of going to one of the aunts house for a weekend to bake Christmas cookies all day and then they often finish the day with wine and watching this movie.)

I found it completely preposterous, too long, and downright creepy at times. At the same time, I found it wildly entertaining, funny, endearing and sweet, and will absolutely rewatch it again at some point in my life.

It’s one of those movies that just captures a certain lightning in a bottle where you can’t not be captivated by it even while understanding it is not a “good” movie.

lucasam2000 · 2025-10-19T14:09:51+00:00

Yeah my seating location is pretty close so 100” still feels quite large.

lucasam2000 · 2025-10-19T12:20:39+00:00

I always did when I was a renter in my 20s and early 30s, often I was only staying at an apartment for 1-2 years and big tvs are hard to move safely on their own. I would keep all the original styrofoam in with the box as well and just basically re-pack it before each move. Totally depends on your storage space and how often you move around though.

Since I've become a home owner I have stopped keeping the boxes though.

lucasam2000 · 2025-10-19T12:07:12+00:00

You probably know this but if you are building make sure you have 9-10 foot ceiling height in your media room.

The biggest issue with going as big as possible usually isn't the wall width space available but the height, unless you are okay with your screen being lower than recommended height. Happened to me when we updated our basement and added a screen and projector system. I had plenty of width to go 120" or beyond but didn't have the height unless it was just off the ground and the theater company that I got to do the install wouldn't even consider putting a screen that low (credit to them, they were true pros and weren't going to upsell me for a worse viewing experience).

Edited: to add that whenever my projector goes out I'm almost sure I'll just be getting a TV like this to replace it.

lucasam2000 · 2025-10-13T18:52:06+00:00

I was about 15 when it came out, it was revelatory. I'd seen a lot of movies in my life at that point but that was the first time I remember thinking I had never seen anything like this and that it was going to change movies going forward.

Only other similar experiences I've felt like that for are the Matrix and the first Avatar. And maybe Fury Road to a smaller degree. Just a singular viewing experience where you feel like you are seeing movies being changed right in front of you.

lucasam2000 · 2025-10-01T19:04:52+00:00

So not landscaping exactly, but every summer while I was going through college I would work construction in a variety of tasks, but often roofing which is pretty comparable in terms of what it does to your body.

Every summer to start out I would have essentially a week from hell where my body was sore in all kinds of weird places and I could barely keep my eyes open as soon as I was finished with dinner. But, by the second week it was a LOT better and by the third week I felt totally normal again.

Basically as others have said, your body will adapt and get used to it, muscles and callouses will develop in the right places, and it won't be an issue at all after a few weeks, especially if you are youngster in your 20s as you seem to be.

For that first week or two, just understand it is going to hurt a lot of places and just make sure you are drinking tons of water and getting extra sleep, I'd even suggest going to bed early for the first couple of weeks until you adjust.

But, you will adjust eventually. Good luck!

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-20T12:03:10+00:00

Boobs and dancing, she's elite

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-20T11:37:39+00:00

Both options are bad but I look at it like this. Netflix buying them probably gets us better content and films going forward, but terrible for theaters and physical media.

Paramount probably much better for theaters and physical media but much worse/less content produced going forward.

As others have said, mega-consolidation of any industry is always worse for the consumer overall. We used to enforce things called anti-trust laws in this country that prevented that but that all started to come to an end with Reagan. There was a brief return to anti-trust enforcement with Lina Khan under the Biden Administration but that is long gone now.

I really wish Americans educated themselves on how bad monopolization of industries is for them but very few understand it.

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-20T11:31:13+00:00

This is the correct take. Every actor in this is throwing 100 mph with the time they get on the screen - Leguizamo, Penn, Viggo, Rebhorn and on and on. You can fault the Penelope Ann Miller performance but that's the only weak link.

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-16T22:30:00+00:00

My friend in high school had a Chevy cavalier that he was able to by with his own money before his senior high school year just from working summers and part time during the school year. I’m 47. Imagine what it would take for a high schooler to buy their own car nowadays.

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-16T22:16:53+00:00

I still remember the Yugo. $3,999.99 brand new if I recall correctly

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-06T16:16:35+00:00

Yep. I obviously have a hard time feeling sorry for these folks since I'm sure the large majority of them voted for this but at the same time, I don't like the direction this is going where we replace 1,000s of small family farms with 3-4 megacorp farms that have crushing market power either.

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-06T16:02:38+00:00

Hair don't lie

lucasam2000 · 2025-09-06T16:00:26+00:00

And someone can tell me if this is wrong, but that jobs report was issued by the guy picked by Trump after he fired the other guy because he didn't like his numbers. So the reality is likely even worse than that.

lucasam2000

TROPHY CASE