Counterpoints are useful to help negate echo chambers where we end up clicking on the articles which validate our world view.
In addition the most upvoted comments (at least on the Financial Times website) are sometimes more informed and nuanced than the articles themselves. The article often gets the debate rolling - come for the articles, stay for the comments (so to speak).
In the comments section of news websites, it wasn't counterpoints. It was just aggression, lies, toxicity, etc.
The Financial Times is pretty rarefied air. Everyone must be subscribed, so no anonymity (I would guesss). How much does a subscription cost? $300+ per year?
Illegal immigration? Yes - they are upset by people whose first act on entering a country is to break the law.
I say that as a legal immigrant to the US whose parents were legal immigrants to the UK. It took me over 18 months to get my green card approved and years for my parents to obtain a British ancestry visa so they could enter and work.
As far as hate towards transgender people, it takes energy to hate. Most people (who don't have trans loved ones) simply don't care and are upset that they are compelled to care.
> It was at this time that my then boyfriend's father heavily questioned if I had the ability to support his son, since I asked him right around the time OG2 was released."
I appreciate women bear the brunt of child rearing but I find this patriarchal attitude a bit of an anachronism too.
Anecdata but our design agency decided to branch out beyond fully local Wordpress sites to something more cutting edge using Prisma + React.
It had a great developer experience but was slow and had poor pagespeed and usability scores compared to the standard Wordpress sites they were providing clients. Their next site was a bog standard all local Wordpress job although they've since moved onto React/Gatsby.
What types of sites are these? I’d say React and co should be kept for webapps, not websites. If it’s just static content or a simple shopping site, Wordpress is going to beat any client-side system hands down
There's a whole ecosystem around using React for static site development now, this is exactly what Gatsby is if I'm not mistaken. Use React as a more powerful templating system for authoring content, but generate most of it out as static HTML/CSS, while still having the capability for individual components to have interactivity / data fetching post load.
Also, I think this is what's going on with NextJS and React's server-side-components stuff. Having solved client-side webapps, the world has now turned to reinventing Cold Fusion...
Recently I've been interviewing and assessing technical tests regularly.
We have this one technical coding challenge. Most of the submissions are 1000+ LOC and quite heavily engineered. One submission though was 300 LOC, runs 3x as quick as everyone elses and is the only one to get 100% in our acceptance tests. The author was very self-deprecating about it - describing it as a quickly cobbled together submission.
I'm nearly 40 and find I over analyze the design of everything. Which is great when I'm architecting a high level software feature, but when I get to coding I'm almost at analysis paralysis over every, damn detail. I miss that sense of flow.
You're correct, Cameron did miscalculate but to blame him entirely forgets the mood of the country and the political parties in 2010. There was a lot of talk about leaving the EU in the run up to the 2010 election from of course the usual suspects like Farage but also from Cable and Clegg (leaders of the lib dems).
According to the source below:
> To the best of our knowledge, the Liberal Democrats were the first of the three major UK parties, including Labour and the Conservatives, to campaign for a referendum on EU membership.
Only party which didn't push for an EU referendum in the 2010 run-up was Labour.
Also 38, also married, also two daughters, also have depression.
I can't tell you what works or not for you but I can say what helped me go from suicidal over a failing business to functional enough to interview at 20+ tech companies and land a job I like.
I firstly spoke with someone. Dealing with depression totally alone is not easy. I don't know your wife (ofc) but if someone married you they (probably?) care enough to hear more than just good news from you. If you really can't afford to share with your wife then damn, that's rough, but do share with someone who knows your situation and can advise your doctor, a therapist, a parent, someone.
Deleting contacts on social is a symptom of depression. I did it and my counsellor raised it. Ask yourself if you'd notice if someone unfriended you first? It's not like FB notifies you. Your friends and family care, they do, but they also have their own lives and also let's be honest, a lot of people hardly check FB in depth these days anyways. No one is going to notice their friend list drop down by 1.
> I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone
I'm gonna be dictatorial on this one and just say 'stop'. Don't do it. Junk food is a treat, like ice cream. You wouldn't incorporate ice cream as a regular part
of your nutrition.
> then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful
That's true for any parent, especially those dealing with stress and depression. You're not alone on this one. I get done with the day after tucking my kids in and I literally have like 1-2 hours to maybe learn something tech related to advance my career or veg out with my wife and enjoy a TV show. It sucks, but that's life, no parent I've spoken with differs in this regard.
> I have no idea how to spend my free time.
Another symptom of depression. Loss of interest in things we used to enjoy doing or withdrawing from hobbies. So what if you have 1000 games, they're there to give you joy not anxiety. You might have 9000 grains of rice in a 1lb bag in your cupboard but you don't worry about when you'll eat each individual one. Let them be, not playing them is as valid an option as playing them. Probably more so if you're time poor.
> Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass.
I think software has this problem regardless, some of us are better at estimating some less so. I wouldn't worry about that. Unless you're repeating a development task you've done before many times (write a new rest controller, develop a CRUD web app) it's heard to give an estimate on something you haven't done before.
Pick a language you like and which advances the career you want and just start reading, hacking, messing around with it. Python's a great one for work and play tbh, but the important thing is to start. Most of the great coders I've worked with just get stuck into something new, they don't seem to care too much whether what they're learning will be obsolete or is non-optimal. I myself struggle with this one which is probably why I only know Java :)
Noticed that Paul Atreides says 'There's a crusade coming' in the trailer. In the book they specifically use the word 'jihad' repeatedly and the book draws from a variety of influences in the Middle East. I hope they haven't toned things down too much for a modern audience. Part of what made the book so special was its vocabulary.
I can’t completely blame the writers. Since Dune was written, a few things such as 9/11 have happened. Radical Islamic terrorism was nowhere near what it ultimately became after the book for dune was released in 1965.
Prior to 9/11, I think the majority of the public probably had a very different association with the word “jihad.” It pretty much conjures the image of crazy bearded Muslims in Afghanistan strapping bombs to themselves and blowing things up.
That image simply does not describe precisely what happens in the book. I think the word “jihad” also creates a jarring interruption and a distraction also.
“What the hell, why is this white guy talking about jihad?” It feels like a non sequiter and a distraction. Do white people jihad things? What???
The media will jump on it and start calling this a racist tv show which perpetuates stereotypes. It’s also cultural appropriation by modern standards, which are crazy.
HBO has had a HUGE blowback to Game Of Thrones on this topic in a dozen ways. I think the blowback was so bad they changed their entire programming to be more diverse and inclusive (Watchmen, Lovecraft Etc). George Martin has been constantly pestered with questions from concerned audiences about white saviors and other such things.
Long story short, the term jihad is an unwelcome distraction, too loaded, opens HBO to criticism they don’t want and it doesn’t accurately describe precisely what happens in the book.
I think crusade is correct and doesn’t create this interruption.
From "Why Muslims See the Crusades So Differently from Christians" [1]
Are jihad and crusade related?
PC: There is a family resemblance because they share roots in monotheism, where God is a jealous God. And both Crusades and Jihad offered martyrdom to those who die. But while they look alike, they have some important differences. Crusades were directed at the liberation of sacred land considered rightfully Christian, whereas Jihad was about rescuing souls.
SM: I personally don’t find any structural difference between the two. Jihad has an Islamic concept: religiously sanctioned aggression. The Crusades were precisely that.
What was the impact of the Crusades in the Muslim world?
SM: The legacy of the Crusades in the Muslim world is that a lot of Muslims think of where they are today in terms of Western encroachment. For some, the Crusades are seen not just as a medieval threat, but as a present one—a perpetual Western attempt to undermine Islam. It could be physical colonialism or cultural colonialism.
“Crusade” and “jihad” (other than in the particular religion of origin) have pretty much identical denotation, connotation, and cultural baggage.
The idea that “jihad” has problems that “crusade” does not is pretty exactly the same problem that you point to HBO getting in trouble for in regard to Game of Thrones, so it is super ironic that you present the narrative you do as a defensive reaction to the blowback from GoT.
I had the impression that the Fremen were based on the middle Eastern stereotype male. This was a great use of the word Jihad to describe. The culture needed a focus point and the Atreides family provided one by manipulating their beliefs.
Jihad was also used to describe the past where thinking machines (AI) was destroyed in a tech smashing jihad which lead to the world of the books without AI.
While I liked the books 20 years ago .. I think that the previous Dune movies were really bad and I'm going to give the new movie a chance. Even without being true to the books and somewhat politically correct.
I thought the jihad that Paul fears is part of the 'great enemy' to humanity, not the fremen. The fear of that jihad/crusade/great-enemy is what gets Leto going on the Golden Path and the eventual scattering of mankind.
Muad'Dib fears the jihad he himself would unleash on the universe, and can't find a way to stop without ceasing his own quest for power.
The 'great enemy' that Leto tries to forestall is sometimes called Kralizec and isn't necessarily explained in detail, although there are hints it would be some kind of Ixian hunter-killer assassination machines which run out of control, and hunt down all of humanity which is within view of prescient sight. Hence, the Scattering and Leto's breeding program to create humans invisible to prescience so that humanity could never again be vulnerable to extinction from any such threat.
I mean I get the debate going around about using "crusade" instead of "jihad" but straight from the books appendices:
>JIHAD: a religious crusade; fanatical crusade.
>JIHAD, BUTLERIAN: (see also Great Revolt)—the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G.
Yeah I caught that too. The whole book was a critique of colonialism, unsustainable capitalism, and deconstruction of the white savior complex. I hope he doesn’t shy away from these subjects.
My very first thought when they were doing this remake was literally that word.
There are times when words change for PC reasons, but this isn't one of them. 'Jihad' is a very potent word in the modern lexicon and it would just be unnecessarily out of bounds to use it. It would have the wrong context and be a huge distraction.
'Crusade' is fine, and not 'unPC' because it has Christian connotations, so few care, and creatively perfectly fine ... but I feel is actually a little hypocritical in a sense to use it, in lieu of 'Jihad'. But it's a hard word to replace.
Already, the culture wars are starting, with industry people on Twitter indicating this is a 'move about Middle Eastern culture with no Middle Eastern Actors' type thing, comparisons to 'God's of Egypt' - when of course, this is definitely not a movie about 'the Middle East' rather, that's only one of many cultural artifacts borrowed for the setting.
As for the trailer:
The music is absolutely terrible, it's going to ruin the film for me.
Otherwise, it looks 'contemporary' i.e. it will be 'good' but not 'timeless'. David Lynch's version was a 'flawed masterpiece' - the characters really embodied the 'realpolitik baroque noir' of the book. David Lynch used a lot of serious actors with stage backgrounds, who could also evoke and embody the very cold 'old world' callousness of the nobility. Jason Momoa does not.
In the trailer there are just too many standard Hollywood, familiar faces, Timothy Chatalet feels like a 'regular gen Z kid', relatable, but doesn't have the 'weight of the soul' on his mind.
The aesthetic is 'of the Villeneuve style' but it's definitely not exciting or novel, I feel Villeneuve & Co. have 'operationalized' their schtick and it lacks enthusiasm.
If we can judge from the trailer it will be 'passable' for most fans and regular people, but it won't be great at all.
I predict this will be about as good as his Blade Runner remake.
I am disappointed because there is huge opportunity for creative expansion - instead of 'standard remake for 2020' they could have actually tried some art.
The fact that people are still watching this movie 35 years later implies there is something very good about it.
Lynch distanced himself publicly from it, because it was an economic disaster bad on many levels, but I'll bet $100 that with some afterthought, people can recognize what is 'good' about it.
It's a genre defining feature, almost entirely unto it's own, the creative design was 'otherworldly' to the point it probably has not been matched in SciFi ever. Baron Harkonen's scene where he murders of his aid ... the scene where Paul sends his ultra-creepy sister Alia in, alone to 'face the emperor' and she murders Baron ... the representation of the Gild Navigators - just so well done.
Almost everyone but possibly Feyd (ie Sting) and maybe Duncan Idaho, maybe the Padishah Emperor was perfectly cast.
Lynch bit off more than he could chew, and there were too many characters in too little time.
You know when a creative representation just 'feels so right it's right'? For example with the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy? Frodo, Gandalf, the Elves - it was 'perfect' - it seemed to 'everyone' that 'this is right'.
I feel the creative direction with Lynch's Dune was that. Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam from Lynch? I think this image is etched into our minds as 'exactly what she is like'. Our comparisons in the future will be in reference to her.
There was a very interesting version by Jorodowsky that looked really fun, however, I feel it was way too corny, and would have ended up more like Barbarella [1].
For those interested: Jurodovsky's Dune [2].
The missing ingredient in everyone else's Dune is the acid! I would say to Villeneuve "Ok, now take what you have done, and remake it while you are on an acid trip". It's a psychedelic movie about transcendence, God, realpolitik etc.. Hardcore stuff.
I’m also a huge fan of Lynch’s Dune. Lynch, I would say, probably hates the movie because of memories of industry drama and studio pressure- more to do with having had a bad experience than the movie being actually terrible. It also almost killed his career in a way. I wonder if he had a desire to work on more big budget films in the mainstream like Spielberg throughout his career and perhaps Dune was the film which ended those dreams. Guy has like three of four legit towering masterpieces (not including twin Peaks)so his career was great despite things but I do wonder what kinds of movies he’d have ended up making if Dune was a success or if he never made Dune after The (very nearly perfect film) Elephant Man.
High concept sci-fi is consistent box office poison and while this new version of Dune looks good, and I want to see it, I don’t think it will set the world on fire. It seems to feel like YA fiction more than I’d like it to be and borrows heavily, stylistically, from Lynch’s Dune but doesn’t seem to have the same design impact as the original. The YA tone in the trailer for me feels like studio meddling. But we’ll see how good the actual movie is. Blade Runner 2 was a fine film but not quite a home run and I expect the same from Dune.
Totally agree, and your point about 'budget and studio' I think hits at this.
This is a 'remake' of the 'everyone is doing remakes' theme, and it's designed to make money first.
There's so much money at stake, it's hard to tell who is pushing for what and how and it's really 'something else' to ask a Director (+ team, remember, he has his own 'team' for every flick) to 'risk everything' on some high concept stuff.
So we get Lynch translated into Avengers with some modern styling and that's that.
I'm hoping that a Billionaire Herbert fan will give a project like this to someone willing to make a go of it and 'let them lose' - or - more practically - after this film is a success (and it probably will be) - we'll get the Netflix series for the remaining books, made in the UK by people who know what they are doing and at least it will be 'good TV'.
When Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney he was talking about using to money to produce medium to high budget genre films with deep fine art sensibilities with almost zero meddling which is almost never what we get from Hollywood. Unfortunately that was like ten years ago and Lucas is like totally removed from the cultural zeitgeist.
Deal makers need to be forbidden from creative decisions. One of the major studios should consider adopting a Blumhouse business model where new talent are given a very small budget to prove themselves with zero restrictions or meddling and if they can turn a profit on the Low stakes film then they are promoted to a new budget tier using the previous films profits to bankroll the next film. I truly believe the cream would rise to the top under this model and a new golden era of groundbreaking pictures would occur. Or not, we’ll never know until someone tries. I’m really hoping Blumhouse keeps going in this direction and take bigger risks.
There’s no reason why Dune couldn’t make a great movie, or any other SF book classic but it seems like once SFX and money enter the picture you get deal makers injecting weird love triangles, buddy sidekicks, Rihanna songs, whatever it takes to ruin everything. Hollywood is also super arrogant about how they have mastered storytelling so whenever they adapt something good, like let’s say the Sandman comics, they need to “fix” everything to make it really good.
I'm more cynical and believe that the amount of risk involved means a serious degree of risk aversion towards 'proven models' - which means boring or at best 'fun and chipper' but not 'great cinema' - like Avengers.
The 'lowest common denominator' on planet earth is actually significantly lower than merely just a US audience.
Stories have to be simple and stupid (think Transformers) in order to make a run in theaters.
They have to work across cultures.
Something like 'The Joker' can work - but that was relatively low budget - and still risky.
Avengers are basically the perfect format for today because they are fun characters, a big fanbase, and with some 'smart writing' all they need then is 'good production'. That's it. It doesn't have to be great.
Star Wars and Star Trek should fit this model but they screwed it up.
Dune and many other stories are just 'out of bounds' given the risk involved.
A lot of actors are lamenting this, and it's why we are only seeing 'remakes'. Comedies, RomComs - dying.
I agree with much of what you say but I’m still optimistic that smart, high concept genre films can be made with integrity and turn a profit without the need for calculated compromises or a kind of censorship against anything being too cool or interesting to the point of alienating 1/2 people. But it’s possible that a film like The Matrix, as an example, is about as good as SF/Fantasy could possibly get and we should count ourselves lucky that films like that sometimes are made and become successful.
Take Starship Troopers for example. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who dislikes that movie. It almost seems like everyone between the ages of 10 and 20 when the movie came out has seen it in some form. But it seems like a movie such as Starship Troopers would be impossible now, especially with its satire intact. I often feel like we are regressing in many ways as a population of mature adults and the overall state of the film industry suggests exactly that. I remember hearing Spielberg talking about how he can’t get funding to make theatrical releases anymore. Even Spielberg has become high risk. What are we even becoming as people?
But I digress. I hope the trailer for Dune is slightly misrepresenting the film. I want fantastic cinema to make a comeback.
It might be a fun project to go through the movie after its release and bleep out every politically charged word or phrase. I really do hate this reductionism.
I spent 8 years at the same startup - it graduated from chaotic and exciting to staid and dysfunctional.
I moved pretty high up so was in a position where I could introduce modern practises like agile, but I could never get management to mandate dev staff to do simple things like have a daily standup. The meetings would invariably drift onto other topics and go from a 15 minute standup to an hour long discussion about everything going on in the company where the CEO would get involved and try and hash things out.
As you can imagine we'd end up doing these at most once a week which became incredibly frustrating trying to get everyone on the same page.
On top of that the code base was stuck on XML, JSP/JSTLs, XMPP, Java 7 and Adobe Flex based APIs and libraries. The whole world was moving onto mobile apps, ES5/6, REST-JSON, Websockets, WebRTC and we were stuck using archaic stuff like XMLPullParsers, Flash Remoting and SOAP.
Those first 4 years were valuable lessons on what to do and I grew as an engineer, but those last 4 years were definitely lessons on what not to do. But you grow comfortable.
I think being comfortable is a dangerous place to be.
To quote Jim Rohn I think you have to embrace discomfort and ask yourself 'What am I becoming?' rather than 'What am I getting?' and ensure that you're growing. You don't want one year's experience times 8 - you want 8 years of growth.
Counterpoints are useful to help negate echo chambers where we end up clicking on the articles which validate our world view.
In addition the most upvoted comments (at least on the Financial Times website) are sometimes more informed and nuanced than the articles themselves. The article often gets the debate rolling - come for the articles, stay for the comments (so to speak).
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