Beware, as there’s some swearing, but here’s MovieBob’s take on the movie Pixels:

Like for reals, yo. This was my response:

To be honest, I have had zero interest in any of Adam Sandler’s movies for the last few years. He’s gotten too old to play the goofy manchild, and he even seems to be tired of the roles that he’s playing.

Which, logically speaking, would make this the perfect time in his life to reevaluate the scripts that he works on and begin producing a better product. Instead, he keeps grinding out the same overdone garbage, and even as he hates his own movies, he expects that people are going to love them.

It feels like a big F-you to his audience. There is a burningly obvious lack of respect toward the people that keep giving him their money. Seriously, yo, I’d rather spend my money on subpar weed than on another movie that’s going to leave me pissed off and frustrated as I try to slam the pneumatic door of the movie theater.

TL;DR, if I ever watch Pixels it will be on Netflix or something. I’d rather have my nostalgia ruined at home.

I’ve started Turking it.

What’s that? you ask. Well, it’s a microjob program run by Amazon called the Mechanical Turk. It’s basically our incentive to see ourselves as single processes in an otherwise cosmic-level machine. It’s humbling, yet soothing at the same time.

We are a solid state entity. We breathe together and move together as one single will.

Yet when you draw close, there are a million tiny universes being born and dying in the blink of an eye. And in that brief flash of light, there’s a whole life spooling out untethered, a lashing photocosm of ecstatic living done by a being that doesn’t realize quite how small it is. It lives, breathes, and dies; and somewhere in there, amongst all of the pain and joy and mindless wondering, a job is performed and a change ripples outward, adding to the outcome, the Plan. Everything we do is somewhat preordained, it’s only the getting there that’s considered free will.

I like to tell myself that what I do has some meaning.

I hate to think that I waste my time performing largely mindless tasks for $0.50 a pop.

To be honest, I’m not that enthused about being in the freelance job market. I don’t mind working and I don’t mind being paid money, but there’s some part of me that will always like having some idea of what to do. Work isn’t something I want to think about. It’s a task I want to perform as quick and clean as possible, with no one yelling at me and none of the sense of guilt that screwing up on the job brings.

I hate to disappoint anyone.

There’s something nice about Turking. It’s soothing and monotonous. It quiets something inside me that I’ve never been able to … Read the rest “Is it weird to treat mTurk like it’s a reverse-freemium game?”

Read a Wired article, “Rape Scenes Aren’t Just Awful. They’re Lazy Writing,” and all I can say is, “Good.” This is something that needs to be said. I’ve probably read a variation of this article a dozen times in the past year, and it needs to be written again and again and again until movie and television creators get it through their thick skulls.

Rape is not titillating. It is not romantic. It’s not a plot point that needs to be pursued via a step-by-step scene progression that’s slowed down to -10 speed so every agonizing emotion can be read and cataloged.

Rape is an act of aggression committed by depraved individuals that need to spend a significant amount of their life locked up in a small box having their brains reconditioned.

At the very least, rapists need to be made aware that what they’re doing is WRONG. Like seriously, dude, if you don’t know that holding someone down and ignoring them saying “No, stop, no” is rape, then you should not be having sex with ANYONE, not even yourself, until you’ve taken some kind of class.

And I will opine that a lot of the confusion people feel about what constitutes as rape is due to popular culture. Movies, television, books, music, comic books — creators think they’re being clever or blurring the lines by introducing “conflict” in the form of a “traumatic past.” It’s too hard to just say that someone was physically assaulted; there needs to be a horribly drawn out flashback scene detailing every moment of degradation and fear. Because, you know, that’s what society needs. Realism or something.

From the Wired article:

But do we really? Although the recent Mad Max: Fury Road movie featured a number of central female characters who had

… Read the rest “That Wired article: “Rape Scenes Aren’t Just Awful. They’re Lazy Writing”

I’ve never played the game or read the fanfic. I literally know dick all about Borderlands 2. Yet he’s asking me these questions and I’m seeing these things, and it’s really getting my imagination going.

A. Is the corrosive – acid? plasma? electricity? – held together with an electrostatic charge of some kind? The discharge would continue onward until it hits something and dissipates, releasing the corrosive in a destructive splash.

A1. Bioengineered capsaicin for a non-lethal deterrent.

Hits the victim like a bursting cloud of paralyzing awful.

Riot cops carry Pepper Blast ammo in their pouches. They also pack more lethal ammunition for their various weapons. Including the so-called Annihilator rounds that hit the victim with a monomolecular acid.

A2. People begin wearing body armor at all times. It’s not enough to completely protect the wearer, but it can block a single blast.

Energy Armor becomes a regular thing, though it’s very expensive. The wearer has solid armor to protect against physical attack, as well as a grid sewn throughout to emit a repulsion field. When an electrostatic ball is fired at the wearer, the Energy Armor sends it rebounding in another direction.

B1. A future where people can have themselves biologically reprinted. They are reconstructed inside projection machines and step out to continue the fight.

B2. People are reconstructed as themselves. They wake up and keep on going without a single stumble or second thought.

B2-1. The mc realizes that he’s a clone. “I’m not me. I’m the memory of someone that died. And when I bite it there will be someone that looks like me to pick up my life where I left it, but that person won’t be me.”

B2-2. People prearrange the dispensation of their genetic memory and the brain scans they leave behind.

B2-2a. … Read the rest “The Kid asked, “How do they shoot that corrosive?” in Borderlands 2 [nsfw]”

Things I like: bacon. Bob's Burgers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. cats. cheese. chocolate. crossword puzzles. Dredd. eggrolls. fried chicken. gochujang. Hannigram. HEAs. HFNs. jigsaw puzzles. kimchi. lo mein noodles. mushrooms. nectarines. Nintendo Switch. paperback books. pineapple. pizza. potstickers. raspberry jam. Rick and Morty. sleeping in. snickerdoodles. spaghetti. strawberries. sudoku. tacos. tomatoes. vacations. vaccinations.