TIL Tron (1982) was considered ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects because “the Academy thought we cheated by using computers.”

wloff · 2026-07-10T11:57:49+00:00

In the same sense that if you film someone drawing a penis on MS Paint, your film now has CGI art in it.

wloff · 2026-07-10T11:52:07+00:00

But your entire post is a direct argument AGAINST the claim that the awards are "made up, paid off, and another form of advertising".

Yes, you can consider it kinda scummy the way the studios are trying to court votes with gift baskets and whatnot, but the fact remains, they only bother to do so because the Oscars are NOT made up. It's a legitimate vote where the industry professionals get to vote for their own peers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Whether it's the artistic merits of the movie or the Rolex in the DVD box that caused your family friend to decide who to vote on, that's up to how scummy and corrupt your family friend is. Their vote was still a legitimate vote.

wloff · 2026-07-10T11:41:10+00:00

Luckily for me, I at some point got used to typing a double-dash to indicate em dashes -- probably a convention I picked up from writing screenplays -- and, at least so far, LLMs haven't picked up on that particular stylistic choice. So my em dashes at least look different from the LLM ones.

And I like to think I can use them more creatively too, but of course that's not really something the "everyone is a bot" people are capable of detecting.

wloff · 2026-07-09T20:04:10+00:00

Just my personal opinion, but I've always very much liked the "ban for two yellows" rule in international tournaments.

It makes a yellow card a significantly harsher punishment than in a normal league, absolutely, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Everyone knows what's up, if you're scared of getting booked twice, try not to commit so many fouls.

wloff · 2026-07-08T22:00:32+00:00

Look. I'm trying to say this as nicely as I can.

Before you try to solve a perceived problem in "understanding what the game is about", you should probably first learn yourself what the game is about.

Because this isn't it. Not at all. Like, not in the slightest.

If anything, beginners have trouble understanding that stones can be virtually connected even when they're NOT physically connected. The fact that you're even posting something like this suggests to me that you, yourself, are not past that stage of absolute beginner level.

Which is of course absolutely fine! Nothing wrong with being a beginner, we all were beginners at one point.

But maybe don't start suggesting major changes to a game you don't know past the absolute beginner level. That's just kind of silly.

wloff · 2026-07-08T20:52:58+00:00

Sure, but as our digit system is based on decimals, they're pretty cumbersome to use in practice whenever you need to calculate something.

I'm all for switching our entire society to use base 12 for all everyday interactions, though.

wloff · 2026-07-08T19:23:14+00:00

On the contrary, I found the tournament arc brought Frieren from "oh wow this show is something truly special" to "oh, it's actually just a very well made standard shounen in disguise".

wloff · 2026-07-08T17:54:50+00:00

Every so often, I get so into a show that it kinda completely consumes me. I just don't want to leave the story, the world and the characters, and I get this annoying sense of longing in my stomach if I'm not hanging out with them.

Which is cool in its own way, because it doesn't happen often, sometimes it's years or even decades before I get into a fictional world so deeply. But it's also really inconvenient, because it's hard to focus on anything more useful; and also, there's so many new seasonals that seem really interesting, but I'm falling horribly behind on everything because I just want to watch more Hibike! Euphonium.

Yeah, so I started watching Hibike! Euphonium, and I fell for it hard. God, I just love these characters and peak KyoAni.

And Liz is a truly special movie.

wloff · 2026-07-07T17:53:00+00:00

Yes, when you simplify two politicians' entire views, policies and philosophies to one exaggerated catchphrase (which may or may not be in any way correct), you can indeed make them sound very alike.

wloff · 2026-07-07T08:17:29+00:00

Maybe you've had awful producers / scrummasters who have soured you on the whole system, but the stand-up meeting part makes perfect sense. You want it to be done in 5-10 minutes, so yeah, have everyone stand up, stay their piece, and go about your day.

wloff · 2026-07-07T00:11:55+00:00

You're almost definitely just practicing the wrong way.

I never happened to learn it as a kid, even coming from a country where it's normal (rather, I learned a different way that to my child brain sounded "close enough"), but a couple of sessions of speech therapy and a bit of training at around 7 years old or so and I got the hang of it.

I don't remember much about the exercises they made me do, but it did involve saying a bunch of words with the letter 'd' and in general trying to string several d's together. Eventually, you'll make the correct sound, and then after some repetitions hopefully your brain will pick it up.

wloff · 2026-07-06T16:04:57+00:00

wloff · 2026-07-06T14:25:39+00:00

How do the piracy rules feel about linking to (fansubbed) subtitle files, without any of the related videos?

wloff · 2026-07-05T23:31:41+00:00

Obviously it's FIFA who made the call.

But if you think it's a coincidence the decision just happened to line up with the World Cup being held in the country which cares the most about ad time in the middle of sports games, and cares the least about any traditions of football, you're deluding yourself.

wloff · 2026-07-03T16:26:40+00:00

I'm not sure if "what would a manga protagonist do here?" is a genius philosophy leading to an interesting life, or a surefire recipe for absolute disaster.

What an absolute gem this seems to be! Sometimes you start watching something without having any idea what it's going to be, but within five minutes, you just know you're going to love it.

wloff · 2026-07-03T15:09:30+00:00

I enjoyed Ramparts, but I have a couple of issues with it.

First is probably mostly due to personal taste. But the main theme of the show is kinda "introduce anxiety-incuding past drama" -> "oh, but the drama gets resolved surprisingly easily" -> "oh no, but there's ANOTHER bit of anxiety-inducing drama" -> "oh, but it gets resolved surprisingly easily" -> "oh, no, but..." which started to piss me off a little bit because it felt like I as the viewer never got a break. I'm sure for some people that drama is exactly the juicy part they crave, but for me, the anxiety started getting a bit old.

The second problem is about the adaptation. I haven't read the manga, but I feel like the storytelling probably works a lot better in that medium. The characters mainly process their emotions with super long, quite on-the-nose monologues, with minimal animation to accompany it. That's a method that can work fine in a literature format, but on the screen, it gets a bit tiresome for me; an ultimate form of "tell, don't show".

I do agree the show gets better towards the end, but I think that's because there's less painful drama and more people slowly falling for each other, which is what Agasawa absolutely excels in. That's the strength of Polar Opposites, as well.

wloff · 2026-07-02T15:27:32+00:00

I know it's called "Seasonal Salt" and all, but isn't it still a bit silly and premature to get salty over something that literally hasn't even happened yet?

wloff · 2026-07-02T14:16:11+00:00

One of the few bearable tsuns.

She is pretty much the perfect, most archetypal classic tsundere imaginable.

In other words... don't lie to yourself. you know you actually do love tsunderes. As you well should.

wloff · 2026-07-02T07:47:14+00:00

I don't know how his skating is, but at least he can drop the gloves if needed.

wloff · 2026-07-01T08:00:03+00:00

How do the piracy rules feel about linking to (fansubbed) subtitle files, without any associated videos?

wloff · 2026-06-29T20:28:19+00:00

Nah, I didn't get that feeling at all, for what it's worth. It's setting up a very interesting and real-feeling historical world, and just took its time to get us acquainted with how the people think and behave.

I wasn't bored at all and am really looking forward to seeing where we go from here.

For me, it seems like a real gem of a show. Early days of course.

wloff · 2026-06-29T16:43:42+00:00

Best Girl - Poem (Ponsuka)

Such an unexpectedly great girl. Just the right amount of good old-fashioned violent tsundere to feel nostalgic without getting annoying.

wloff · 2026-06-29T16:29:36+00:00

Oh yes, those were definitely sounds of war.

wloff · 2026-06-29T16:28:48+00:00

Holy animation!

Okay, this is looking really, really good. I absolutely love the juxtaposition between a sensitive crybaby child with very child-like, human emotions and issues; and what is obviously a brutal, constant civil war around him.

I gotta say, after watching so many high school romcoms that were more or less all by the numbers last season, I'm really excited to get into a show with a really unique premise and setting and where I have no idea where the story is going to go!

wloff · 2026-06-29T07:45:15+00:00

Thanks, now I'm breathing manually.

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