Random Thread

[Raphael]

Just got home from a neurological examination. The one where they electroshock your hands and arms to look for carpal tunnel stuff. In the middle of it, the equipment stopped working. Rebooting the computer didn't help, but completely shutting down the power supply for the entire set of equipment and turning it on again did the trick.

[keenir]

Just got home from a neurological examination. The one where they electroshock your hands and arms to look for carpal tunnel stuff. In the middle of it, the equipment stopped working.

Hm, how do they test the equipment for similar problems?

Rebooting the computer didn't help, but completely shutting down the power supply for the entire set of equipment and turning it on again did the trick.

Ah, good to know the classics still work.

[Raphael]

Hm, how do they test the equipment for similar problems?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you mean, "how did they figure out that something was wrong?"? Well, the first sign was that the computer screen window didn't show any data coming in. Then, that parts of the computer screen window had become completely unresponsive. Also, that I didn't feel any electricity any more. And finally, that all the little lights on the device that provided the electricity, and also on the one that took the measurements, were off.

[Raphael]

I've been wondering for a while if I might be very, very, very mildly lactase intolerant. (A spellcheck that doesn't recognize "lactase"? WTF?)

Now, I've never had any really serious, or potentially health-threatening, reactions to milk or dairy products. But I do occasionally feel a bit of a rumbling in my stomach when I've drunken something with a lot of milk or eaten something with a lot of dairy products. I sometimes get mild diarrhea in that situation. And sometimes, I'm a bit hungry, and then I drink a coffee with milk, and then I'm not hungry any more, although I haven't eaten anything.

So, are those signs of a very mild form of lactase intolerance, or just normal reactions to consuming dairy products?

[Travis B.]

I've been wondering for a while if I might be very, very, very mildly lactase intolerant. (A spellcheck that doesn't recognize "lactase"? WTF?)

Now, I've never had any really serious, or potentially health-threatening, reactions to milk or dairy products. But I do occasionally feel a bit of a rumbling in my stomach when I've drunken something with a lot of milk or eaten something with a lot of dairy products. I sometimes get mild diarrhea in that situation. And sometimes, I'm a bit hungry, and then I drink a coffee with milk, and then I'm not hungry any more, although I haven't eaten anything.

So, are those signs of a very mild form of lactase intolerance, or just normal reactions to consuming dairy products?

Lactose is the sugar in milk, lactase is the enzyme which metabolizes it. I imagine that lactase is a pretty common enzyme to mention (it gets ~11,000,000 ghits), and googlling it immediately brings up a dictionary entry for it, but your spellcheck may just be biology-compromised....

[keenir]

I've been wondering for a while if I might be very, very, very mildly lactase intolerant. (A spellcheck that doesn't recognize "lactase"? WTF?)

Now, I've never had any really serious, or potentially health-threatening, reactions to milk or dairy products. But I do occasionally feel a bit of a rumbling in my stomach when I've drunken something with a lot of milk or eaten something with a lot of dairy products. I sometimes get mild diarrhea in that situation.

Mild lactose intolerance, by the sound of it; I have it too, so I know the sound.
(sorry)

Seriously, sometimes all we can do is find out how much milk we can drink or eat&drink (say, cereal, two or four bowls is the limit? how much hot chocolate?).....though never test two different forms of dairy on the same day - ideally, space out the tests with a minimum dairy day between them.

After doing that, you will know what your limits are for liquids, solids, and puddings, which are always handy yardsticks when at others' homes or at a restaurant, museum, zoo, etc.

possibly TMI:

More: show

you may also find, as I did, that if you have a lot of dairy, but not enough to incite your bowls to diarrhea, you'll have gas...irregularly spaced out in occurance, but not anything that will require evacuating a room.

And sometimes, I'm a bit hungry, and then I drink a coffee with milk, and then I'm not hungry any more, although I haven't eaten anything.

That part, sounds like you just had the munchies -- I find they can be appeased with a drink. (even if otherwise I'd eat a bowl or two of cereal or an equivilent amount of food)

[Raphael]

Mild lactose intolerance, by the sound of it; I have it too, so I know the sound.
(sorry)

Seriously, sometimes all we can do is find out how much milk we can drink or eat&drink (say, cereal, two or four bowls is the limit? how much hot chocolate?).....though never test two different forms of dairy on the same day - ideally, space out the tests with a minimum dairy day between them.

After doing that, you will know what your limits are for liquids, solids, and puddings, which are always handy yardsticks when at others' homes or at a restaurant, museum, zoo, etc.

Thank you, good to know!

possibly TMI: [spoiler] you may also find, as I did, that if you have a lot of dairy, but not enough to incite your bowls to diarrhea, you'll have gas...irregularly spaced out in occurance, but not anything that will require evacuating a room. [/spoiler]

More: show

I suspect the tag you were looking for is [ more ] [ /more ].

Thank you too, Travis!

[keenir]

More: show

I suspect the tag you were looking for is [ more ] [ /more ].

yes, thats the one; many thanks!

More: show

or as we said in my youth, thanks a million.

(not sure how far young it was in my youth, granted)

[Raphael]

I know that Twitter is a complete hellhole these days, owned by a quasi-nazi who supports absolute free speech except for people he doesn't like, but, that said, I just have to link to this tweet:

https://twitter.com/sophiasgaler/status ... 0244518917

45% of male university students said they’d feel confident labelling the nubis on a diagram of the female reproductive system.

The problem? I made the nubis up.

Now I have your attention...I’ve got brand new data out about young people and how they've been failed /1

[foxcatdog]

Do Blade Runner (new or old one), No Country for Old Men, Taxi Driver and Intertsellar lack coherent strong narratives which are found in even the most mundane of ordinary movies? I've noticed it's a common theme with movies considered "great" (Pulp Fiction/Dune (new one) and i don't like it.

[foxcatdog]

Exercepts from a book i am writing what do you think?

You awoke to a lack of light. You slept early so you awoke early as you thought. You looked beside you to find your cats eyes like lamps staring into you bright with green. You remembered they were blue when you first got him when he was just a soft kitten. Now he was aged and you were a young adult. You stroked his backside and he meowed before hopping off a leading out of your room. You stood up and put on a coat which was sitting beside your bed waiting for another morning like this.

A traveling wizard you supposed. Certainly a maker of tricks and images. And a master of getting in your head. He wasn’t too good with words but he didn’t need to be. And he could travel distances too. Perhaps you should meet him again, you thought.

[Man in Space]

Second-person narratives are cool and I wish more of them existed.

[Raphael]

Another blog post by me. This one might actually contain some useful information:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... rspective/

[keenir]

Do Blade Runner (new or old one), No Country for Old Men, Taxi Driver and Intertsellar lack coherent strong narratives which are found in even the most mundane of ordinary movies? I've noticed it's a common theme with movies considered "great" (Pulp Fiction/Dune (new one) and i don't like it.

I'd ask what you consider a "coherent narrative" or a "strong narrative" or both of those...if i remember Interstellar, the narrative was the need to find a new home while avoiding disaster. (or is that plot and not narrative?)

[foxcatdog]

Do Blade Runner (new or old one), No Country for Old Men, Taxi Driver and Interstellar lack coherent strong narratives which are found in even the most mundane of ordinary movies? I've noticed it's a common theme with movies considered "great" (Pulp Fiction/Dune (new one) and i don't like it.

I'd ask what you consider a "coherent narrative" or a "strong narrative" or both of those...if i remember Interstellar, the narrative was the need to find a new home while avoiding disaster. (or is that plot and not narrative?)

I couldn't name the plot of pulp fiction since it completely lacks one in my opinion with their being no sense to it. The movies seems to think placing explicit language and violence together makes for something interesting.

Dune has an attempted narrative or the first half of one but in my opinion it lacks tenseness so scenes which appear quite dramatic seem to happen with no consequence to the viewer (me).

I just included interstellar because it's my brothers favourite movie and he likes those movies i've never seen them mentioned by the other people who like those movies.

[zompist]

Do Blade Runner (new or old one), No Country for Old Men, Taxi Driver and Intertsellar lack coherent strong narratives which are found in even the most mundane of ordinary movies? I've noticed it's a common theme with movies considered "great" (Pulp Fiction/Dune (new one) and i don't like it.

I've only seen one of those, the first Blade Runner. I certainly wouldn't put it forward as an example of great scriptwriting. It has one of the most distinctive and compelling atmospheres in movies, plus just enough of The Robot Story (about every story about robots is the same story) to be poignant.

But, it was based on a Philip K. Dick novel. As a general rule, if you read a Dick novel you won't understand it-- that's kind of the point. It's like Kafka: you don't read The Trialas a whodunnit.

[Moose-tache]

There are two very good reasons why these movies don't have "strong narrative structure." The first is that half of them are book adaptations. Like biopics, adaptations are basically a greatest hits reel turned into a movie in editing. I felt this accutely in the new Dune; you can really feel that they wanted to keep some things but couldn't keep everything, and had to keep it recognizable for people who haven't read the books . So it feels like "and then this happens, and then this, and hey, remember when this happened? Well, here it is again!" Maybe this is also a problem of reboots.

The other reason is the French New Wave. The French New Wave tought a generation of American filmmakers that mise-en-scene is more important than narrative structure. If you think today's movies lack coherent plot, go back and watch some New Hollywood classics like Easy Rider or Dog Day Afternoon or The Deer Hunter. Or literally anything by Stanley Kubrick. This was the golden age of auteur film making with studio budgets, and many directors are openly nostalgic for it. Every film student makes a movie where "nothing happens" because 40% of their curriculum is Les Quatre Cents Coups on a loop. And to be fair, sometimes it works. I just watched two seasons of The White Lotus before I realized that in 16 episodes not one thing happened, event transpired, or doing occurred. And I still loved it.

EDIT: Also, is it just me, or is France unusually good at turning past glory into present good will? You know why everyone assumes French food is good? It's because they invented laminated dough and roux-based sauces back in the 17th century. That's it. They've been cashing in the same chips over and over for four hundred years. It's the same with movies. The French invented the jump cut and now we're all supposed to jerk off Jean-Luc Godard's corpse for all eternity.

[Moose-tache]

Another blog post by me. This one might actually contain some useful information:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... rspective/

If I understand correctly, the income cap for Gesetzlich Krankenproblemsinsurancezen is 66,000 Euros. Since the cost is based on income, this means that the cost for essentially the same procedures and medicines would increase with income until they hit the cap, and then you can opt out. So it's like a big tax on the upper middle class, which the actual upper class are excempt from. And the working class doesn't get the benefit of rich people paying $1000 Euros a month for aspirin. Sounds like a big win for rich Germans.

[foxcatdog]

I've only seen one of those, the first Blade Runner. I certainly wouldn't put it forward as an example of great scriptwriting. It has one of the most distinctive and compelling atmospheres in movies, plus just enough of The Robot Story (about every story about robots is the same story) to be poignant.

Really because i was under the impression they came in 2 varieties. A) about robots imitating humans and trying to be compatible with them (oneshot, i, robot (or is that about it i never watched it only seen snippets)) or B) about robots trying to take over the world and being incompatible with humanity (terminator and also oneshot)

There are two very good reasons why these movies don't have "strong narrative structure." The first is that half of them are book adaptations. Like biopics, adaptations are basically a greatest hits reel turned into a movie in editing. I felt this accutely in the new Dune; you can really feel that they wanted to keep some things but couldn't keep everything, and had to keep it recognizable for people who haven't read the books . So it feels like "and then this happens, and then this, and hey, remember when this happened? Well, here it is again!" Maybe this is also a problem of reboots.

The other reason is the French New Wave. The French New Wave tought a generation of American filmmakers that mise-en-scene is more important than narrative structure. If you think today's movies lack coherent plot, go back and watch some New Hollywood classics like Easy Rider or Dog Day Afternoon or The Deer Hunter. Or literally anything by Stanley Kubrick. This was the golden age of auteur film making with studio budgets, and many directors are openly nostalgic for it. Every film student makes a movie where "nothing happens" because 40% of their curriculum is Les Quatre Cents Coups on a loop. And to be fair, sometimes it works. I just watched two seasons of The White Lotus before I realized that in 16 episodes not one thing happened, event transpired, or doing occurred. And I still loved it.

EDIT: Also, is it just me, or is France unusually good at turning past glory into present good will? You know why everyone assumes French food is good? It's because they invented laminated dough and roux-based sauces back in the 17th century. That's it. They've been cashing in the same chips over and over for four hundred years. It's the same with movies. The French invented the jump cut and now we're all supposed to jerk off Jean-Luc Godard's corpse for all eternity.

I suspected so.

[foxcatdog]

Second-person narratives are cool and I wish more of them existed.

I find it most natural to write that way. I don't even intend it to be second person. I'm not even really sure i'm not writing first person i just insert you's instead of i's.