The Danger Of Good Intentions
Paternalism - a world view that states that sometimes forcing a person against their freedom, if for their own good, is acceptable. A good example is the collapsing bridge thought experiment. A bridge is about to collapse and you know it for certain. You advertise this fact so people will not go onto the bridge. You put signs. You tell people about it. But somebody still walks toward the bridge with what looks like an intention to cross it anyway. You show that person the signs. No response. You yell at the person "The bridge is about to collapse!". No response either. You realize that the person probably doesn't even speak English. Is it okay to force this person, to reduce his freedom, and force him out of the bridge?
Barbie
I was not sure if I wanted to see Barbie. I certainly didn't want to see it together with Oppenheimer. But the funny thing is, I still didn't review Oppenheimer, while here I am reviewing Barbie. I think I have the same reason here as with Nope as of why I avoided it. You know Nope was directed by a black man. And it was one of its main selling points. Barbie is directed by a woman. And everybody is talking about it. And it feels forced to watch a movie for that kind of reason. So I avoided Barbie until now. But since I had a Ryan Gosling marathon, I though that I might as well get into this film. And oh my god. I have thoughts!
A Haunting In Venice
Sir Kenneth Branagh! That's the end of the review. Just kidding. A Haunting In Venice is the new picture directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh which is a kind of a sub-genre of films of it's own. Branagh started his directorial career by directing a movie where he played the main role. And continued directing movies where he played the main roles ever since. Of course sometimes he might make a movie where he plays not the main character, like the 1992's Peter's Friends where Peter is played by Stephen Fry. And Branagh just has a very big role in it. And sometimes he plays in movies where he is not the director. Like in Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer all directed by Christopher Nolan. Of course lately he got himself directing jobs where he didn't cast himself what so ever. Like in Marvel's Thor ( where the actor was cast by Marvel ) or Disney's Cinderella where for obvious reasons a middle aged man cannot play the main character. But most of the time he plays the main character in the films he directs. It kind of became a meme at this point that if Branagh directs a film, most likely he plays the main character.
Vendor Lock In
A Vendor Lock-In is when certain software is developed to be incompatible by design with other software that have similar functionality. It is used to establish a monopoly. And any such function is malicious.
3 Things Keeping Us From True Freedom
Freedom is something we all fight for. Some succeed more than others. But there is no fully Free society yet in the world. By fully Free I don't mean a total anarchy. This would not be fully Free since it would be possible for people to have power over other people. Which is not freedom already. It's a different form of control. But fully Free means that every person would have the most freedom that person can have without it becoming power. This is very far from the situation right now.
Riddle Of Fire
There is a sub genre of film which includes my movie Moria's Race and things like Spy Kids. Those are movies where child characters are opposing adults. And winning them. But there is a kind of spectrum in this sub genre. Spy Kids franchise, for example, is very clean and sterile. Trying as hard as possible to get a good age rating. While others might get a bit riskier. Riddle Of Fire is one such film.
Why Jews Are Successful
Like it or not, but it seems like a large majority of hate toward Jewish people stems from the rate of Jewish success, which is apparently so large, that people form conspiracy theories, which I would love to be true, about Jewish elite classes or whatever, that rig the system in favor of Jews above anyone else ( actually if I think about this hard enough something like this is theoretically possible, but it would be completely decentralized and almost utterly uncoordinated ) . The truth is perhaps anti-climatically mundane in comparison.
The Ultimate Paradox Of Freedom
Is it freedom to be rebellious? Or is it just an uncontrollable reaction? There is this concept called Reverse Psychology which suggests that sometimes to obtain a wanted result from somebody it's better to push that somebody in the opposite direction. But reverse psychology doesn't work always. Only when the person feels like his or her freedom is at stake. For example when a parent doesn't allow a teenager to engage in a particular activity. The parent might not be an inherently evil person. He might not desire to exercise any kind of power. He maybe just really wants to protect the teenager. But the teenager feels like his or her freedom is being betrayed and taken away. So they rebel. Is it freedom to be rebellious, though? Or is it just an uncontrollable reaction? Is there freedom at all? Or is it just a big paradox?
Please Help Me Debunk This Theory
I know that philosophy is not a science. Because it is about what we cannot know, as some smart people out there say. But I've got here a philosophical theory which I want you to debunk. The theory is something I truly believe in, and therefor I'm biased towards it. So I suppose you could be better at debunking it, since you are not me.
Subscription
Though unfortunately Subscriptions in software today are the norm, they are a malicious functionality. Any software that you already have installed should work whenever you want it to work. Having a timer implemented in it, so it will refuse to work, unless you pay every once in a while, is malicious.
My Girl
Between the 1970s to the 1990s there was a very interesting period in Hollywood. Directors like Steven Spielberg came from relative nobodies to super-stars. Which inspired a lot of directors to take upon the formula of sentimental adventure and try doing something else with it. My Girl looks like a movie clearly inspired by Spielberg, but not quite Spielbergian, in a sense that it doesn't deal with extraordinary circumstances, but rather deals with a family and friendship dynamics.
Digital Restrictions Management
Digital Restrictions Management or DRM is any software functionality that is designed to prevent you from using the files on your computer the way you want to use those files. This is obviously a malicious feature. And is defective by design.
Insecurity
Sometimes software is just simply Insecure. Which is a lot worse in proprietary software where users can't check the software for Insecurities.
Kids Should Be Told More Complex Stories
People are flawed. All of us are. Each has something stupid about. And the funny thing is, it's impossible to avoid people either. We had tried! Lock-downs didn't work. People want to be with other people. And it's preferable that people would be with other people often. Communication is often a key to good psychological state. If we don't want all people to turn to murder maniacs we should never allow lock-downs to happen.
What Lies Beneath
Have you ever wondered what would Alfred Hitchcock do in the age of CGI and VFX? What kind of strange insane shorts he would come up with? Well Robert Zemeckis set out for himself a challenge to find out. He is notorious for using visual effects creatively. A lot of people might be familiar with the mirror shot he did in the film Contact. So something like trying to make a Hitchcockian thriller of the 21st century was just about the right kind of thing for Zemeckis.
Software Trustworthyness Scale
If you leave, suspended in air, an object of any kind, it will accelerate toward the center of the earth at about 9.8 meters per second per second. This is how we measure gravity. On the moon the gravity is only 16.5% of earth's since objects on it's surface accelerate towards it's center at roughly 1.6 meters per second per second. Knowing both values we can see how much more gravity there is on earth than on the moon. And we can decide a bunch of things based on these observations.
Only God Forgives
From my review of Drive you probably know that I like the taste of Nicolas Winding Refn's cock. And in this review I will be sucking his cock once again, while drooping saliva all of his masterpiece Only God Forgives.
Miami Vice
Good film directors tend to take upon themselves projects that risk being misunderstood sometimes. An artist can't just draw the same drawing over and over. He wants to experiment. Director Michael Mann is famous with his films about crime. And the realistic depiction of what crime and police work actually looks like. But if you are doing this over and over, you tend to become interested in something else. Which is terrible for a director who has fans with certain expectations.