I firmly believe Abrams is a good director and an atrocious writer. If he could somehow get paired up with a decent script and not have any say on the story he could probably make good, fun stuff.

Problem is he has a hand in writing almost everything he directs

Please do, I hope joy is spread far and wide

Best valentines trio I ever got my wife was chocolate, flowers, and an electric heated blanket. February is cold and her being warm and cozy with chocolates is wonderful.

Highly recommend.

Thoughts on Del Toro’s Frankenstein?

Any Del Toro film really, but I’d also throw in The Shape of Water

Lemme know what/if you find some good stuff

Listen to critique and criticism, absolutely, especially from minorities and oppressed peoples. Absorb and understand them, but use them to inform and advance your own understanding, not replace it.

Offloading your thinking, even to the well intentioned, leaves you woefully unprepared for life

Not only is it a stupid argument, but I would advocate for finding personal preferences via different mediums for different books. I tend to do better with classics and non-fiction via audio, for example, and that has opened up a whole side of reading that I may never have gotten to otherwise

This is my biggest struggle

Definitely one of those the-internet-isn’t-real-life scenarios. People have a tendency to believe that the sardonic cynicism displayed behind a screen is the permanent human condition and, thankfully, that’s not even close to true

Counterpoint, what if they are only allowed to use Twitter and can’t access any other internet service or site whatsoever. All other accounts are also banned from Twitter, and then the death spiral commences.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you but there is no legacy your name will be forgotten your tombstone will crumble and the world will go on as if you never existed try to live well anyway

I appreciate he made a popular movie about killing nazis. Otherwise, meh

And, of course, in practice power corrupted and did create a tyrannical ruling class.

But even in the ideal, oppression from someone who makes the same wages as you but still holds power over you is still oppression. ML’s just want to be the oppressors it seems.

But I’m preaching to the choir

I remember I read some Lenin just to be well versed and I never understood how he (and by extension ML’s) could never grasp that setting up a governmental power structure inherently creates a new class. For all the talk of equal wages and standing, a tyranny of the proletariat is still a tyranny

I will never understand the whole “this is bad, therefore the currently active alternative must be good” mentality.

I swear people have lost the concept that there can be multiple simultaneous truths

Oh I fully agree

There’s certainly a class of upper middle class suburbanites who want to fancy themselves erudite thinkers and by that they mean they sometimes read the NYT and The Atlantic. It’s unfortunately a larger chunk than we’d like to think.

And yeah, this is silly, but better late than never I guess?