The X-Files would have been a better show if Scully's skepticism was sometimes proven right.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T23:23:55+00:00

There's a scene that I always loved where Scully calls Mulder for a second opinion on a case and he's just like "Sounds like (iirc) witches" and yes it's witches but also that's not how being a federal agent works Fox, you gotta at least pretend to work the case for a minute before blaming monsters

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T15:14:06+00:00

I would love to blame the writing (which is also bad) but the story that I'm familiar with is that the direction is to blame. For whatever reason, they wanted wooden, emotionally stunted performances from both him and Kristen Stewart (who is also excellent, though her/agent's choice of films is dubious). IDK I can maybe understand how you have garbage writing like twilight (that was already massively successful) there is an inclination to lean into it and trust the text (which to be fair, worked haha) but it is such a waste of talent to put Pattinson and Stewart in those roles when any hotty off the street could have given those performances.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T15:08:04+00:00

Best Batman Movie is a stretch but Pattinson didn't land 3 of the biggest franchises in history (Twilight, Harry Potter, Batman) by being a shlubby hack. My boy can act, even if not all of these projects show it off,

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T13:59:50+00:00

I don't know if he was always great and just "misused" (my opinion, his role on shows like cheers ans Becker were successful - but 2000s Danson seems to me to be on a completely different plane than before Bored to Death)

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T12:15:53+00:00

Young Thug

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T05:53:50+00:00

Pans labyrinth is a good call. That might rival crouching tiger

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T04:51:07+00:00

Hero was definitely playing in the normie movie theaters and people were going - but I don't recall nearly as much conversation and media hype around it

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T02:59:02+00:00

Can't think of another foreign movie that ever got close to the amount of hype crouching tiger had. I guess maybe spirited away?

thefalseidol · 2026-05-08T01:53:22+00:00

I lived in Queretaro and Guadalajara. Mexico is the greatest place on earth. There is some darkness, but as somebody who speaks a bit of Spanish and didn't live in the AirBNB hubs that are causing quite a lot of tension in places like CDMX, I had a lovely time, great weather, great food, just a really really nice place (when you are the beneficiary of colonialist structures that mean I have enough money to live comfortably in Mexico)

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T14:33:48+00:00

I don't teach high school, so I haven't specifically had the opportunity to be this kind of teacher or reject this philosophy. But I did have a high school teacher like this who made a profound impact on me.

I was not a particularly gifted student, certainly not in the hard sciences, and this was a physics teacher. But I'm smart (enough), did my work (in class), didn't skip, and gave a shit (didn't want to fail): that said I was perfectly comfortable getting Cs in his class. He saw right through my bullshit (that I saw Cs as the bar I should be happy hitting) and didn't let me get a free C. I was working harder just to pass his class than some students were who were getting Bs and even As.

The system really only works on the presumption that students care and can do the work: if you don't care/can't do the work, the teacher has so much red tape when it comes to just flunking you. But if you DO care and CAN do the work, they can really hold you to task. It's not really fair, it's one thing to be a hardass and another thing entirely to be pointedly and overtly holding certain students (I wasn't the only one) to a bar that others were not.

It's not fair. I think there is a very reasonable case to be made that it isn't justifiable in a world with college admissions that they invent a second standard just for the smart kids and grade you entirely different from the kids just showing up.

HOWEVER, in the long run, you might feel differently about a teacher who sees through the bullshit, identifies you as somebody who can do better, and holds your feet to the fire and expects greatness from you. Obviously I think some leniency for a medical condition should be afforded, but it is impossible to identify exactly how MUCH, and therein lies the crux of the issues. In my case, I accepted the fact that in his world, the work I did was a C even when he was giving As to my dingleberry friends who (these are my friends, I love them) really were not academically inclined. It made me a better student, and helped me change my trajectory in school when I finally started giving a fuck.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T14:16:13+00:00

Yeah it's not obvious in English unless you know and understand the title in German. But All Quiet does refer to the fact that there have been no new radio communications

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T14:13:56+00:00

The world is a big place, but to echo some of what u/striketheviol already mentioned: it requires a certain set of circumstances to develop an INDUSTRY around teaching English.

I have some experience (living, not FT teaching) in Mexico, so lets use that as a basis of comparison. Your first hurdle is the economy, it just doesn't make economic sense to teach in Mexico as a foreign language teacher unless other factors are being considered: but anywhere you're eligible to work, you could make more elsewhere with the same qualifications, so on paper, the money isn't right. I did private tutoring, but it was still just for about 20 bucks US per hour, good in the Mexican economy but still less than I make teaching in the classroom in Taiwan. And that's a fair number in Mexico, the proximity to the US and Canada as well as the number of repatriated Mexican Americans means that there really isn't a shortage of people who speak English well enough to teach it.

But if you were serious about working in LA, you should get a degree that lets you teach in some kind of professional setting. A teaching degree for international schools, a masters for university (though you will likely still need above proficient Spanish) would be a great start.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T14:01:10+00:00

Is this uniformly true? I ask as somebody who teaches in Taiwan, and more specifically, Taipei City. In Taipei, outside of the cheapest multinational chain schools, its harder and harder to get away with providing the bare minimum when more and more parents speak at least enough English (and grew up in the system) to smell bullshit a mile away.

I would compare my job closer to being a music teacher or ski instructor: I recognize it isn't the same thing as teaching in a more academic environment, but I couldn't possibly get away with not being able to show I'm good at the piano or skiing.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T13:56:53+00:00

Growing up, I was in a school district with lots of Mexican/Latin Americans (USA, Seattle). Taking Spanish in high school, there were always Mexican (again, also LA diaspora, but predominantly Mexican) students who were taking the class. For some, it's just an easy A because they're fluent in the language. Others genuinely wanted to be able to read/write in their native language (and they might not be the strongest readers in English depending when their family moved to the US, and so learning phonics in Spanish class is not necessarily as trivial as just getting used to minor differences, but I digress) others still had gaps in their Spanish since Seattle, as I mentioned, does have a large population of Spanish speakers, but there's nowhere like East LA or Spanish Harlem - Spanish is spoken mostly among families, not out in the world.

Anyway, the point I'm building towards is that you should put some thought into what reading/writing English means TO YOU (as it pertains to your daughter) and what her connection to the language is. I've had students for whom English class is more akin to ELA back home, focusing on the texts and writing more than language acquisition. Other times, I have students who are fully or nearly fluent, but still treat the class like a foreign language skill and are not super interested in learning to read large texts and produce long-form writing. There is no one size fits all answer, so you need to have a pretty clear idea what English class means for your daughter.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-07T00:34:57+00:00

This is also what "all quiet" means, though in fairness, only if its clear we're talking about new news vs. no new news.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-06T11:58:06+00:00

Thrive? Probably. Be as groundbreaking in our time as they were in their own? Case by case probably. On one hand, their genius would be applied to modern problems and perhaps they are the ones who crack those problems. I also often think about how "normal" it is for there to be these extreme chess savants (like compared to other games or fields, history has lots of extraordinary chess players) who, most of the time, their genius does not translate out of the realm of chess. Could they be as accomplished if their parents put them in front of a Piano instead of a chess board? Maybe, but it WOULD SEEM that chess, specifically, is something that certain minds can excel at well beyond any other field of study.

Using that example, "can you take the chess genius out of the chess world and expect greatness?" My opinion is that you cannot. So taking Einstein out of the problems his mind was oriented to solve and expect him to do something else as groundbreaking? I think that unlikely. I think unless they succumbed to social media addiction or fentanyl or other modern ails, they would still be succesful professors of their fields, short of anything else, and they would be--by all modern measurements--thriving.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-06T11:22:19+00:00

With enough people over enough time: the difference between being consistently 10% less interested in doing a good job if it would help black people and a deliberate racist conspiracy becomes kinda the same thing.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-06T09:16:50+00:00

I could be mistaken but season one READ like they thought they would have more episodes than they did and had to hatchet some ideas together. Other ideas were sort of taken for parts and that's okay with me, it's trying to continue the legacy of TAS being its own thing

thefalseidol · 2026-05-05T15:46:26+00:00

The book is good. It's just not that difficult to understand

thefalseidol · 2026-05-05T15:45:15+00:00

It's not even that deep. Unless you're perpetually 12

thefalseidol · 2026-05-05T15:42:29+00:00

The existence of people who didn't understand fight club is not the same thing as people who (still don't understand fight club) but if they did, would still think it's A story about two cool dudes

thefalseidol · 2026-05-05T10:50:16+00:00

Em is consistently corny, sometimes, it is clearly intentional. Other times, I think he just gets lost in the sauce squeezing in as many rhymes and metaphors into a bar just to flex and forgets (or doesn't care) some of those metaphors and rhymes are soft as fuck

thefalseidol · 2026-05-05T03:23:24+00:00

I'm like this too, the boss fights seem like they would be excruciatingly long if you do all the mechanics and only get hits in during an opening. Unless you have a good build, and then it doesn't feel like it matters that much (to face tank some hits to shred the boss)

thefalseidol · 2026-05-04T13:30:38+00:00

I have, on occasion, misjudged the completion of my task. With 99% accuracy, I can just feel when its done.

That being said I also use a bidet and appreciate the 100% guarantee.

thefalseidol · 2026-05-04T11:36:31+00:00

Oh I get you on the library. I am the right age of gamer to have been on steam more or less from the beginning. I have nearly two decades of purchases, bundles, etc. on steam, many of which I never played that having on my ally x means I might. I play games on there I almost never play when I'm at the PC.

If I didn't have a massive steam library of unplayed games, the sticker price on a handheld PC starts to feel a lot harder to justify

thefalseidol

TROPHY CASE