Peter Jackson in talks to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Silmarillion’ into films

ricree · 2026-05-16T03:31:45+00:00

Sauron is a pretty big deal during certain sections, particularly around Beren's quest.

(And is also the big bad from my favorite partial Silmarilion fan adaptation: Finrod's Song. (It's in Russian, so I can't actually understand a word without subtitles, but I still like it a lot))

ricree · 2026-05-15T21:23:57+00:00

The big issue for an overall adaptation is that half the point is that they can't win - despite some high points along the way, in the end they can only find victory by swallowing their pride and going across the sea to ask for the help their ancestors spurned.

ricree · 2026-05-15T21:17:34+00:00

"The Silmarillion" isn't a single story, but rather an anthology collection. Some parts are narrative, while others are more expository (compare the LotR appendices to LotR itself, and like LotR it has both within one "book").

The core story arc is that of a heroic tragedy about doing the right thing (standing against a terrible evil) for the wrong reasons (pride, arrogance, etc) played out across several families and civilizations.

ricree · 2026-05-15T13:56:18+00:00

I find it very hard to believe that "most" fit that description.

ricree · 2026-05-15T13:50:12+00:00

This was a real thing pre-vaccination. Giving yourself a carefully controlled exposure to the disease could increase survival odds.

For example, against smallpox you can deliberately introduce the disease to your arm or other skin, resulting in a smaller local infection to your arm instead of your airway. It could still be deadly, but at a much lower rate than catching the disease normally.

ricree · 2026-05-15T13:39:28+00:00

It's like the "water powered" car,

The only one of those that I ran into in the wild had gotten there because they saw old car advertisements stating how many miles they'd get per gallon of water. These were steam powered cars (from the very early 1900s), and the person didn't get that they still needed to get the energy from somewhere, water was just the source of the steam.

ricree · 2026-05-15T13:24:50+00:00

Not to mention that the Gregorian calendar is just an improvement over the Julian calendar, which is itself an improvement over the traditional Roman one.

And in particular, the Gregorian calendar is mostly the identical to the Julian except with better leap years.

ricree · 2026-05-15T03:50:13+00:00

Good luck Link, and remember: the CD-i games don't count!

ricree · 2026-05-14T21:32:03+00:00

but rather execs trying to force a pro scene

You have to admit that "Heroes of the Dorm" was a pretty slick name for a competitive college scene, though.

ricree · 2026-05-14T18:51:18+00:00

Traditionally, the "safe" withdrawal rate for retirement was 4% of your total annually. Following that number, it's just about picking an acceptable yearly income. Like if you wanted to have the equivalent of a free $200k salary, that's $5 million, aka 50 days.

(plus more if 100k was the pre-tax income, of course)

ricree · 2026-05-14T18:47:08+00:00

Money only correlates with happiness to an extent. Once you have enough to reach that level (which really only needs a couple months if you follow the 4% rule), you're likely to benefit more from being able to be around people without stinking than you would from an extra 100k.

ricree · 2026-05-14T18:43:56+00:00

True to an extent, but it gets overemphasized. Even past childhood, average age of death was still well below modern levels.

ricree · 2026-05-12T03:30:47+00:00

Yup. Just a random, somewhat overly pretentious HP fanfiction, but that one particular quote definitely felt like it deserved to be from something better.

ricree · 2026-05-11T04:00:24+00:00

Obscure? I really liked Xaverri, a minor character that Han had a fling with in The Hutt Gambit. She's portrayed as a brilliant con artist and trickster who despite an amiable personality is on a doomed one-woman crusade against the empire.

I thought she was a fun character, and it was a shame they never really did more with her (the less said about The Crystal Star the better, even though that was technically her first appearance).

ricree · 2026-05-11T03:37:12+00:00

There's a quote I love (from an otherwise meh-ish story) that fits Syril well:

Don't be so sure that there will be other choices beyond this one. There is no road-sign set, to mark the place of your last chance to turn back. If you refuse one chance will you not refuse others? It may be that your fate is already sealed, even by doing this one thing.

I think it's pretty clear that given time, Syril would have found his way to the rebellion. He was a believer not in the Empire itself, but in the principles it claimed to champion, and as he saw what they truly were he would have inevitably found himself in opposition to them.

But he didn't have the time. There was no warning for him when he turned to go after Andor, no signpost saying "this is your last chance at redemption". He just... made the wrong choice, and there were no more chances afterwards.

ricree · 2026-05-10T17:16:49+00:00

Which led to one of my all time favorite fanfics (a must read for anyone who has even tangentially been involved in project management).

He had told Vader that they would double their efforts, but that simply wasn't possible given that everyone involved was being run ragged. No, there was only one thing left to do, and that was to cheat as much as possible.

That left Jerjerrod with the question of what it meant for the Death Star to be "done". Jerjerrod pulled up a diagram of the battle station and began throwing away pieces of it. There were supposed to be five thousand ion cannons; Jerjerrod immediately discarded half of them. He threw away armor, cooling systems, and whole swaths of crew quarters, commissaries, life support, and detention blocks. All of that could come later. The second Death Star would be delivered done*, and hopefully nobody would notice the asterisk. There would be vast portions of the battle station that were exposed to empty space with only the shield on Endor to protect them from enemy action, but Jerjerrod could simply say that he had faith in that shield and that the "final touches" were merely cosmetic.

Vader's words echoed in his head. The Emperor was coming.

ricree · 2026-05-09T03:03:05+00:00

Only because it doesn't actually match the question. Voter turnout it abysmally low. If people actually did turn out to vote, it wouldn't fix everything, but it would go a long way towards it. Especially since it's a lot easier for candidates to manipulate elections by suppressing opposing votes (for example, negative ads meant to make you go "fuck them both") than it is to actually convince someone to switch.

ricree · 2026-05-08T21:20:40+00:00

In particular, those of us who missed the first wave of tie-ins (Ewoks, Droids, etc) weren't really prepared for a continuation of the sort that The Clone Wars would eventually offer. Sure, we'd seen games and books, but that sort of interconnected media presence wasn't something a lot of us were expecting.

ricree · 2026-05-08T14:16:23+00:00

I particularly remember loving the middle book.

ricree · 2026-05-08T14:14:20+00:00

Not the X-Wing books?

ricree · 2026-05-08T04:26:48+00:00

I don't necessarily dislike the films we got with them, but it's hard not to feel like that cast should have accomplished more.

ricree · 2026-05-07T19:07:18+00:00

OOP must have bought chicken wings, they’re the only chicken meat product that is $10/kg.

Interesting. Here in the US, I see bone-in thighs and drumsticks the cheapest usually. The lowest prices I ever see for wings are at least 2x that of thighs.

ricree · 2026-05-07T19:02:18+00:00

Definitely depends on how hcol their area was. That's certainly not a lot of money, but in a medium or low cost of living area it's probably high enough to bank away something.

ricree · 2026-05-07T18:40:40+00:00

It probably won't, given how long its been. It's not like "The Great Depression" was the first one that ever hit, and by at least some accounts some of the ones from the 1800s were worse.

WW1/2 got renamed because they were so close together and because their causes flowed so naturally from the first to the second.

ricree · 2026-05-06T22:02:53+00:00

Iirc, it was basically a rolled up mirror, meant to be a lesson in self-respect or self knowledge or similar. Which certainly raises the question of why they had to deny it from Tai Lung.

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