Best Of
Re: What do you think of modern movies?
@Jeroen said:
I think we should talk a little about Disney’s Star Wars. I thought The Force Awakens was vaguely ok, The Last Jedi was terrible, and The Rise of Skywalker was if anything even worse. All the spin-offs barring only Rogue One were poor and disappointing. They’ve been at the helm for fourteen years now, and if anything it’s been getting worse lately.Disney spent 4.05 billion dollars on acquiring Star Wars, and for me, they’ve succeeded in tarnishing whatever bright memories I had of the brand. I grew up with the original trilogy, even had some of the toys, and even though I was never a hardcore fan I enjoyed them a lot. Now I get irritated even with the original trilogy, the awfulness of the remembered efforts at a backstory just makes me shudder.
On the whole, I think Disney failed to understand what made Star Wars cool, failed to understand the story’s appeal and mythical quality, and instead just fed it into a content production machine and ran it into the ground. Sad but there you are.
I'm more or less onboard with that, I'd also give a nod to Skeleton Crew as a Goonies style kids adventure. Rogue One and Andor had a different vibe than the rest of the franchise that I loved. Andor is maybe the best TV I've seen since Game of Thrones. I recently dropped my Disney+ account as the Marvel content has dropped off as well.
person
Re: Good news
@federica
The order of the Day, Week,Year.....STAY UPRIGHT, BREATHING AND ABOVE GROUND!
Lionduck
Re: Good news
I'm upright, breathing, and above ground. Having had a death of a loved one, and two other deaths of friends' husbands - in the space of 5 months - that is something I am astoundingly grateful for.
Well, it's good news to me, anyway! 😁
federica
Re: Into Death
Just a brief reflection:
Too many look at death as an end.
Death is the return to the state of non-being, not non-existence.
we have the cycle of this which we call "life". - Birth, Growth, Maturity, Decline, death
Here death does not mean end. The Buddhist term is KU.
We can use the analogy of a wave upon the ocean. A wave appears upon the ocean, rises, crests, falls, the dissipates back into the ocean. although the individual wave appears to have arisen and fallen back to disappear into the ocean, it remains a part of the ocean. It has not gone. It has merely returned to a latent state.
Our lives are like the waves, arising from the the "Great Ocean" of life, to raise, crest, fall back into the ocean. Then to rise again, to repeat the cycle as a new wave each time.
Where did you emerge from to be born? There you return to, there is ku. The memories of this life fade away. Yet your essence (Certain faiths call it soul) carries forward , the sum total of your chain of causes carries into your next existence as what is commonly called "Karma". The Karma Storehouse is often called the Eighth Consciousness overlaid upon the Ninth consciousness known as the State or consciousness of Buddha.
We may fear death or yearn for death as an end, from nothing to nothing. That arises from our fundamental ignorance as to the nature of life itself and the true nature of death. If/when you understand the nature of death, you understand the nature of life. thus the fear of life or death or yearning for death disappears. Ku ceases to be a dark hole or a wall and reveals itself to be part of the wave and the great ocean itself.
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: The AI tsunami
I thought this was interesting. They put a bunch of agents from the different companies together with instructions to build a society for 15 days. ChatGPT failed to do anything meaningful, Claude built a healthy society with no violence, but also had a very high level of conformity so it couldn't innovate, Gemini had some disfunction but was intellectually rich with an expanded constitution, blogs, community meetings and Grok burnt down the world in 4 days.
I've been happy with Claude but I'm going to switch to Gemini for a while and see what that one is like.
person
The importance of close relationships
I came across this short video which talked about how the quality and depth of your close relationships was the best predictor of happiness and cognitive health, according to an 88-year study by Harvard. Surprising and wonderful, and especially important for caregivers.
Jeroen