Egggghhhh

Solovair makes the original docs. They're the original company. Wood splint in them and all. There's other choices for good boots though - Redbacks, redwings, bluntstones, etc etc. Just gotta buy industrial wear.

Yeah, theatre kids do fuck, but if you're not one of them you don't wanna be involved. I did a theatre related degree at university. I'm a very strange person, and I would not say they're not the right type of strange. I really cannot stand to be around them. These mfers know Hamilton off by heart.

If you want a fit that is tried and tested, simple, hard to go wrong - thrift a pair of Levi's that aren't skinny, but also aren't baggy. Sort of boxy. The denim must not be stretch denim.

Then get a black or white t shirt. Possibly graphic. Nothing recognisably branded. None of this Vans shite, or whatever. Go to a thrift store and find a t shirt that fits you nicely. Dont buy one that's merch for some boring dad-ass rock band, or The Rolling Stones or whatever.

Shoes are pretty easy. Find the right line between sneaker and smart. I recommend looking at the stock of Clarks. Or Adidas sambas, these days. Please, for the love of god don't buy Vans. They instantly mark you out as a dorky millennial. Doc Martens are just about fine, but honestly, with the wrong fit you'll look like a theatre kid. If you want boots, ideally look elsewhere. Docs don't have the quality that they used to.

I recommend a nice dark brown belt with it. If you've got an athletically shaped body I think tucking your shirt in is generally good and accommodates that. Even if you aren't, test the tuck out. Wearing a baggy t shirt over jeans makes you look like you have a weird long torso.

There you go. Simple. I just sorted your fashion life out. Experiment from there. The main thing is stick away from mainstream brands. They're all overproduced crap and look tacky. Their appeal is not quality fit or anything, it's brand recognition so consumers feel part of something.

This is over complicated and will make you look like a Christian.

If you want a fit that is tried and tested, simple, hard to go wrong - thrift a pair of Levi's that aren't skinny, but also aren't baggy. Sort of boxy. The denim must not be stretch denim.

Then get a black or white t shirt. Possibly graphic. Nothing recognisably branded. None of this Vans shite, or whatever. Go to a thrift store and find a t shirt that fits you nicely. Dont buy one that's merch for some boring dad-ass rock band, or The Rolling Stones or whatever.

Shoes are pretty easy. Find the right line between sneaker and smart. I recommend looking at the stock of Clarks. Or Adidas sambas, these days. Please, for the love of god don't buy Vans. They instantly mark you out as a dorky millennial. Doc Martens are just about fine, but honestly, with the wrong fit you'll look like a theatre kid. If you want boots, ideally look elsewhere. Docs don't have the quality that they used to.

I recommend a nice dark brown belt with it. If you've got an athletically shaped body I think tucking your shirt in is generally good and accommodates that. Even if you aren't, test the tuck out. Wearing a baggy t shirt over jeans makes you look like you have a weird long torso.

There you go. Simple. I just sorted your fashion life out. Experiment from there. The main thing is stick away from mainstream brands. They're all overproduced crap and look tacky. Their appeal is not quality fit or anything, it's brand recognition so consumers feel part of something.

Yeah, the new terms and conditions about reproduction of your content is nuts. It's literally that new (shit) black mirror episode Joan is Awful.

However, it's hard not to have social media if you're a creative. I'm going to have to bite the bullet at some point.

Hmmm. So you mean like muscle mass, BMI, wearing glasses and so on?

I think in general we look different because now people from lots of different places are getting it on and starting families. Even when it's just a white person from Germany and a white person from England there's still some degree of your offspring looking 'new'. I moved from a more rural area to the countries capital and you can really see that the kids of people who live rural look like they always did, going back to Ye Olden Days, whereas city folk's kids who've interbred with people from outside of their home town just look more modern in the face. Not in a bad way, they just simply look different.

Look at the Hollywood starlets through time - it's not just shifting beauty standards but also just that people who look like that don't really exist in the same numbers anymore. Same goes for models and actors these days - they have a more alien look about them (again, not in the pejorative sense) - just in the sense that now especially with the globalisation of beauty standards, the hottest people from one country are now able to fuck the hottest people from the other country, and both of those people might be operating on whatever beauty standard the American beauty industry has set. It means certain features are super pronounced like cheekbones and stuff.

Idk, maybe this is all bullshit. Just a hunching.

Which one is this?

Anyone got a hint? Or am I missing a joke?

Arrakis Iraqis potato tomato

Interesting. I'll give it a go. When I had the pixel it did take pretty decent pictures, but there was just something slightly off about it.

Big Tony 4 Evers

I've got a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10s. The battery life is great. It overheats if I play Hearthstone on it on a hot day, but it was probably for the best that I deleted that game anyway. Every other phone I've had has been like that too.

My only hangup is the camera. It's just shit. I hate iPhones but their image quality blows every other device out of the water. Yeah, Samsung and Pixel and Huawei all claim theirs is better, but the software fucks the image up. I've tried out all of the phone brands over the years. They all capture ugly pictures, especially of faces, compared to the iPhone.

Stink tank

The alternative is getting good at masking and submitting to the reality that you're just gonna have boring surface level conversations for the rest of your life. It's arguably even more of a hollowing experience.

The only people I actually get on with are also neurodivergent.

I watched it. I am not at all exaggerating when I say it's almost entirely CGI. Seriously. To the point that in the first sequence of the movie (a flashback), where they de-age Harrison Ford, the whole thing is so choc-a-bloc with CGI that it looks like the Tintin movie.

SPOILERS AHEAD, I DONT KNOW HOW TO DO THE EMBEDDED SPOILER THING SO BE WARNED. SPOILER. SPOILER. SPOILER.

If I were to judge it by Tintin standards it would actually be quite a good sequence. There's a few too many cuts here and there but on the whole, for a kids movie it's quite good. There's some CGI jank but there's also fun stunts and a decent story told within the action. It doesn't come close to feeling as good as original Indiana Jones action scenes, but I do understand that as it's now Disney IP they've made it super accessible to kids.

So at this point I'd re adjusted my standards and had a bit of hope. The scene after has some real life Indy adjusting to being old and it's quite charming. There's another CGI action sequence but it sort of holds up and has some novel, if very disneyish action scenes. It's not very grounded and very make believe, but still quite a fun and bombastic sendoff.

Then they go to another country and there's another giant CGI fest, and this time it's just noise. Visual noise. Audio noise. Plot noise. It looks terrible. Phoebe Waller Bridge is annoying throughout, pretty much just playing her Fleabag character but in a setting that it doesn't work in. The child actor is also pretty bad. Indy fixes a car by sticking gum in the grille because 'moroccan gum is made from heat resistant plants' or some bullshit. The stakes seem low. Theres never really any doubt as to whether anyone important is in danger. The enemies are very hammy and seem like they're just blazing around having fun at disneyworld rather than posing any actual menace.

Then they travel some more and it really loses its tether. Indy casually states that his son died in Vietnam. Bla bla bla more CGI but this time underwater. The plot begins racing towards the end at a crazy rate as they go place to place to place but the movie still somehow has about 2 hours left. More travelling, more plot reversals that arrive out of nowhere and occur across the span of an actor saying one line. All the characters start making silly decisions. An artifact swaps between all the characters at which point Phoebe Waller Bridge quips "that's capitalism 🤓". I'm not sure the writer really understood their own joke and it feels super out of place. No one in the full theatre laughed.

Then it gets even more nuts and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER:

Indy gets shot in the chest but seems to be completely fine. They go back in time. They had to really. Every movie is about multiverses and stuff these days. Indiana Jones has had a huge dose of powercreep. They go back to a Roman battle and Indy is on the verge of death, about 5 hours after being shot in the chest at the age of 85. He wants to stay in the past, to be a relic of history (very subtle, Disney). Instead of having any sort of emotional resolution, Phoebe Waller Bridge bombs once again and straight up just smacks Indy in the face. Knocks him out cold and carries him home.

Cut back to present day. Marion comes back and there's a happy ending. They take it to the bedroom. The final shot is of his hat on the washing line outside the bedroom. A hand comes out and takes it.

Indiana Jones fucks with his hat on.

The end.

I use my young cousin as a yardstick for what kids are into these days. I know all kids are different, but this one in particular loves Tesla cars and Mr Beast. He even bought a bottle of prime on eBay for like £15. I feel so bad for him. Advertising has melted his brain. There's no reason for a kid to be obsessed with an energy drink brand. There's no reason for a kid to really even like a Tesla. Car kids when I was growing up all liked the big fat trucks or the super fast sports cars, which makes sense because really they are impressive feats of engineering and look pretty sleek. Tesla's are just some overmarketed and overrated electric car.

TV basically isn't a thing anymore. No more shows about fantasy worlds and interesting characters. No stories that play out over an episode. Just YouTube, an endless supply of advertisement sludge, with maximised attention grabbing short term stimulation. I really do fear that this next generation is going to turn out utterly brain-dead. I'm only the generation before that and we're all total fuckwits already.

I actually can't stand it anymore. Everything is so infected. Yesterday I watched a MrBeast video out of curiousity and it sent me into a doom spiral. The kids are fucked.

Calling them liberals is generous. Most of em are right wing and proud.

It does have very reactionary roots, although I think there's more to them than something just being borne out of reactionary views.

As a plot device it can set up and be explained by a lot of scenarios. A lot of its cultural endurance probably is down to it being an interesting scenario, and a scenario that's very easy for people to self insert to feel good about why they're a brain genius who totally would've survived the apocalypse.

I base these musings off nothing but vibes though, could be wrong.

Anyway, Shaun of The Dead has a funny little riff at the end about the post Zombie world and how we might treat these 'subhumans' after. The military clears things up pretty quickly (as they probably would), and then the remaining zombies are just used in challenge type obstacle course gameshows and stuff. Apart from the protagonists best friend Ed, who he keeps in his shed and attempts to rehabilitate by playing video games with him and sharing junk food.

Yeah, those critiques of the franchises it mentioned are true, and broadly speaking it's accurate but it's tracking trends in zombie media. That doesn't mean all zombie media that comes out now is allegory for immigrants.

I haven't played Dead Island 2, but a cursory read of the plot seems to me like it's just playing on pandemic fears. They don't tie zombie outbreak to global migration like World War Z does, rather it's just some scientist who discovered that all humans have a gene that's going to make them all become zombies unless he essentially vaccinates them by giving them an inactive version of the virus. It's the opposite to what you're saying really because all of humanity is affected by this 'expiry date', not just certain people who need to be stopped from migrating. It's set in a quarantined L.A. It just seems like they're exploring the 'greater good' of quarantine and vaccines to me. I guess there's elements of eugenics in that some people are pre-immune to the zombie gene but I wouldn't assume that was their intention.

Perhaps you could read into problematics of killing hordes of people defined as not human if you wanted to, but I think that might constitute being a joyless leftist. (I am one of them)

That kind of happens in the first one before Optimus helps them out. In general it's shown that they get their asses kicked if Autobots aren't around until the fifth film, and even then its because they've got Galvatron on side.