Zompist Bboard Again

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:09 am 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 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:48 am
Hm, how do they test the equipment for similar problems?

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:26 pm 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?

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:26 pm 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.

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.

keenir wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 3:58 pm
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: [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]

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 6:49 am

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)

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

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.

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:15 am 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.

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 4:26 pm

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:15 am 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?)

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:15 am 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.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:07 pm Another blog post by me. This one might actually contain some useful information:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... rspective/

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:59 pm 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.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:20 pm 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.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:17 am Second-person narratives are cool and I wish more of them existed.