I’ll start: Past Lives

I have always hated Past Lives from the start; however, I thought I owed it to myself and the film community to give it another watch. Unfortunately, I think I hate it more now. The crux of the issue is that Celine Song is not as talented as people think she is. As in, she can’t handle nuanced topics at all.

Past Lives, at the very core of it, is a film about missed opportunities and cultural connections to an old life of yours. Fine. However, if that is the angle she wanted to go with, Arthur, Nora’s husband, was a shambolic character who completely ruined the movie and its tone. Song attempts to write Arthur as this understanding husband who just wants to create space for Nora as she navigates this. However, it completely backfires because Song has no idea what a supportive husband looks like, and, as a result, makes him look like a total cuckold.

Openly disrespecting your husband by talking in another language (yes, this is disrespectful as someone who can speak 7 languages) on paper seems like she is attempting to reconnect with her culture and have a better understanding of it. However, it does not allow her the room to actually grow as a character. In fact, I think the movie completely skips the growth. It makes us as the audience assume that she grew because she let Hae Sung go. Arthur doesn't show any resistance. There could be a conflict where both of them grow. But Arthur’s existence is purely a humiliation ritual. Song writes Arthur specifically to cuck him. And then suddenly Nora wants to stay behind in Canada.

Like I said, the concept of the film isn’t terrible; it’s just that Song is not nearly as talented as people think she is at bringing the idea to light. A director like Joachim tried can handle nuance like this much better.

Look forward to having a good faith discussion!

2.5/5 stars

They also seized Soviet land in 1921

Fun fact: Hunt Showdown has operated with an average playerbase of 15-30k for the past decade and people are still having fun with it.

I am looking forward to a similar or better experience with ARC Raiders and wish ya'll a good day.

From https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaLxmtzJk6r/

Nächster Screenshot erst wieder bei 2 Mio, Rakete startet erst.

Not a joke... I was at a guy friend's place recently and noticed a pinned ChatGPT project on his phone called Ben which is my name. Curiosity got me while he was in the bathroom, so I opened it.

And wtf. I found out he'd been feeding it a bunch of stuff about me..old whatsapp chats, my ins, and even transcripts of conversations I'm pretty sure we only had in person or over the phone. Some of the conversations he was having with “me” in there were... really fucking weird too...(I am a guy)

I have no idea how much he's actually collected or for how long. My best guess is maybe one of those always-on recording wearables, like some vocci ring or one of those "normal looking" pendants, since he always wears that kind of stuff. But fuck I don't know.

Now I have no idea how to act around him.... Do I confront him? Pretend I never saw it as I did at his house? Just distance myself?

This is creepy as hell. What would you guys do?

-----

Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up. I've read through most of the comments, and thanks to everyone who actually gave advice...

Yes, I looked through his phone and I know I crossed a line... we've been close friends for 10+ years and have always jokingly grabbed/looked through each other's phones, but I saw my name and curiosity got the better of me.

For those asking what was “weird,” one conversation was like: “How do I make you fall in love with me?” There was also some stuff about enemas and other things I really didn't need to see. That's why I mentioned I'm a guy... I grew up in a pretty traditional asian family, so that caught me pretty off guard. Please give me a little grace there.. no offense intended to anyone.

Thanks to everyone who gave actual advice. If you think the story is fake, fair enough, I'm not gonna argue about it. I've decided I'm going to confront him, make it clear I want everything deleted, and tell him I don't want any further contact after this. Again, really appreciate all the advice.

Where's my hufflepuffs at? 😁

The blueberry cheese cake donut was delicious!

This employee had struggled almost from the beginning. I was his first manager, and I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what would make him successful. More training. More one-on-ones. Different assignments. Written expectations. Reviewing his work. Pulling in other resources. Trying to understand whether I was missing something.

And I kept thinking there had to be something I wasn’t seeing.

The problem was that the issues were so strange and so inconsistent that I genuinely started questioning my own perception. He would understand something one week and not remember it weeks later. He would confidently explain things that weren’t correct. He would spend hours on things that weren’t important while critical work was incomplete. Every time I met with him there seemed to be another mistake—sometimes small, sometimes significant. The amount of time and management attention he required was completely disproportionate to the value he was adding to the team.

And because there were also personal circumstances and a disclosed disability involved, I spent even more time trying to understand what was happening and how much of it I should be accommodating versus what was simply an inability to perform the job.

I talked about this employee constantly. With HR. With leadership. With colleagues. With people I trusted. I spent time thinking about it after work, on weekends, driving home, lying in bed. What am I missing? What else can I do? Is there another way to explain this? Is this a management problem? Is there something going on that I don’t understand?

I’d never had a relationship in my life that felt this psychologically confusing. And I’d certainly never experienced one like it at work.

Eventually we were moving toward formal performance management when he resigned.

Then came the letter.

He accused me of harassment, discrimination and creating a hostile work environment. He distributed it to nearly 100 people in our organization and HIGH level leaders.

And I just sat there and thought: Thank God.

I was relieved because I suddenly realized how much of my own life I had spent trying to solve this one person’s problems. It was over and I felt free!

I’ve been thinking about how much energy managers can pour into one struggling employee—especially when you’re trying to be compassionate, trying to understand the person behind the performance problems, and genuinely trying to give them every chance to succeed.

At some point, though, I think you have to ask whether all that effort is actually helping the employee—or whether you’re just trying to solve a problem that isn’t yours to solve.

Have you ever had an employee who consumed an extraordinary amount of your mental energy because you simply could not figure out what was going on with them? And did you ever reach the point where you realized that the amount of effort you were putting in was completely out of proportion to what they were contributing? How did you learn for the next time?

Next on my tbr is Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb.

I'm still trying to find what I love. Trying to read as many different authors as I can. I'm also going to read Gardens of the Moon after Assassin's Apprentice. I've been told it's refreshingly difficult.

There is a difference between criticizing bad generated output and treating the mere use of AI as proof that something is bad.

That distinction is disappearing.

A one-shot prompt that produces a brittle app full of fake functionality is slop. Fine.

A developer using ChatGPT/Codex/agents to accelerate implementation while still controlling architecture, reviewing diffs, writing tests, validating security and debugging failures is not meaningfully described by the same word.

The tool is not the quality standard.

We did not call every manually written codebase “human slop” because production software had bugs before 2022. Humans have shipped oceans of terrible code for decades. AI changes the volume and speed, which means validation matters more, but the engineering criteria are still engineering criteria.

What I think is happening is that an old status signal is being disrupted. “I know how to write the code” used to imply a lot more scarcity. Increasingly the differentiator is “I know how to make the right system exist and prove that it works.”

That includes understanding the problem, specifying behavior, architecture, failure modes, security boundaries, tests, observability and maintenance. Those skills become more important when generation gets cheap.

The developers who combine real engineering knowledge with AI are going to be dramatically more productive than either pure prompt-and-pray users or people who refuse the tools on principle.

So yes: call out slop. But define the failure.

Broken? Say broken. Insecure? Say insecure. Unmaintainable? Say unmaintainable. Fake? Say fake. Untested? Say untested.

“AI touched it” is not a diagnosis.

- He'll be here, Alfred. I know it

- What makes you so sure?

- Faith Alfred! Faith!

Ich wohne in Norddeutschland und meine Familie in Sachsen, dementsprechend bin ich, wenn dann meist nur 1-2 Mal für eine Woche im Jahr "unten".

Ich bin jetzt seit knapp 3 Jahren vegan und wann immer ich runterkomme muss ich meine Mutter daran erinnern, dass ich immernoch vegan bin.

Ich fahre morgen zum Geburtstag meines Bruders runter und lerne zum ersten Mal die Familie des neuen Freundes meiner Mutter kennen, da wir bei ihnen feiern. Montag gehts wieder heim, also bin ich 4 Tage dort, also 3 Abendessen. Gestern fragte ich nach ob sie Bescheid gesagt hat, dass ich vegan bin. Und oh boy....

Zum einen vergisst oder rafft sie immer wieder nicht, dass ich VEGAN lebe. Nicht nur vegetarisch, V E G A N!
Und als ich vorschlug, dass wir doch einen Abend komplett vegan kochen könnten, meinte sie im O-Ton: "Also für alle vegetarisch kochen, dann wirst du auf Granit beißen. Wir können für dich was extra machen aber ich glaube du verscherzt es dir mit [Name des neuen Freundes], wenn es kein Fleisch gibt."

Ich will Menschen gerne zeigen, dass es auch mega leckeres Essen gibt, wofür kein Tier sterben oder leiden musste. Denm liebe Omnis: Ihr werdet nicht sofort tot umfallen, wenn ihr mal eine Mahlzeit ohne Tierleid und Leichen fresst.

Aber keine Ahnung, vielleicht bin ich das Arschloch und verlange zu viel von den armen Omnis, wenn ich mal eine vegane Mahlzeit vorschlage (2 Mahlzeiten pro Jahr) und sollte froh sein, dass überhaupt extra was zubereitet wird. (Wobei ich ja nicht mal verlange, dass FÜR mich gekocht werden muss, ich koche gerne mit anderen zusammen, da ich selber sehr gern koche.)

So let's see what he did in gm 6s.

habe eben einen thread gelesen, bei dem es darum geht, dass man an einem Dienstag sich für den Donnerstag der kommenden Woche verabredet.

die Mehrheit meint, dass am Dienstag “lass uns nächsten Donnerstag Treffen“ der Donnerstag 9 Tage später gemeint ist.

das ergibt keinen Sinn. und ist komplett hohl.

am nächsten beschreibt etwss, was sehr nahe liegt. sprich wenn ich sage, zb Montag kannst du nächsten Donnerstag helfen, ist der nächste Donnerstag (3tage später) gemeint, nicht der übernächste.

Es geht heute ja so die Idee rum das man sich "früher" (was wohl irgendwie so 50/60/70er sein soll) als durchschnittlicher Familienvater mit einem Einkommen nicht nur ne Familie ernähren, sondern sich auch ein haus bauen konnte.

Das ist Quatsch.

Auch damals wohnten die meisten mit durchschnittlichem Einkommen in einer Mietwohnungen oder einen geerbten Haus zweifelhafter Qualität.

Und wer sich damals mit solch einem Einkommen ein haus baute (ja, die gabs) der hat sehr viel selbst gemacht und hatte ne größere Familie und Freunde die da mit halfen. Da wurde dann halt der Keller mal von Hand mit ner Schaufel und Schubkarre in wochenlanger Sklavenarbeite ausgebuddelt.

Die Häuser hatte keine Zentralheizung, sondern (falls "modern") Öl-Einzelöfgen oder gar (LUXUS) eine zentrale Ölversorgung der Einzelöfen. War das zu teuer dann halt Holz/Braunkohlebrikett-Einzelöfen.

Die Wände waren nicht isoliert und da man in die Wände alles verbaut hat was man finden konnte (nicht nur die billigen, ev. selbst gemachten Hohlblocksteine). Das heisst auch gerne mal direkt Betonanker in die Wände gegossen oder Stellen mit Vollziegeln aufgefüllt. Das sind dann ideale Wärmebrücken. Die erkennt man im Winter daran, das sich an solchen Stellen dann Schimmel oder Eis bildete.

Es gab kein fließend warmes Wasser. Im Bad auch nicht, da gabs dann den/die Badeöfen. Also erst mal anfeuern um Wasser warm zu machen. Immerhin wurde damit dann auch das Bad warm, ne Heizung hatte das Bad ja sonst nicht.

Die typische Temperatur im Winter war zwischen 25C (Raum mit Öfen) bis runter zu 14C (Raum ohne Ofen, erwärmt durch Luftaustausch mit warmen Zimmer)

Weder Dach noch oberste Geschossdecke war isoliert. OK, vielleicht 10cm Beton oder Dreck in der obersten Decke, das wars dann aber schon. Und das merkt man im Winter in den Räumen drunter. Wer sowas kennt, kann das schon durch die (fehlende) Strahlungswärme erfühlen.

In den Räumen gabs vielleicht 1-2 Steckdosen. Und nur eine Sicherung für das ganze Stockwerk.

Fenster waren einfach verglast oder, LUXUS, ein Doppelt-Kastenfenster.

Die Wände waren zum Grund hin nicht Feuchte isoliert. Dir ist also 30cm ab Boden immer der Putz abgeplatzt bzw. gab Ausblühungen da die Feuchte die Wände hoch gezogen ist.

Als Baumaterial für die Wände wurden gerne Holblocksteine benützt. Die auch gerne selbst hergestellt wurden, ne einfache Form, klein gemahlener Weltkriegsziegelschutt und ein bissle Wasser und Zement. Fertig ist der Stein und damit wurde dann die Bude hoch gezogen.

Und die Decken, die Decken! Holzbalkendecke ohne Schallisolierung. Man hört die Nachbarn eins drüber nicht nur rumlaufen, sondern kann auch jedes Gespräch hören. GANZ toll, echt jetzt.

Ich wohne z.B. in nem Haus das deutsche Flüchtlinge aus den Ostgebieten in den 60ern gebaut haben. Die haben erst die freistehende Garage gebaut, haben dann in der Garage gewohnt während se selber, mit ihren Kollegen, das Haus, in dem ich heute lebe, gebaut haben. An der Bude ist so ungefähr jede Bausünde verbaut die man sich vorstellen kann. Woher sollten se es auch besser wissen, keiner von denen die das Haus bauten, hatte ne Ahnung von Hausbau.

Auch die Einzelofenfeuerung im Bad kenne ich noch aus meiner Jugendzeit, ist noch nicht so lange her. Und das bei meinem Kumpel in den 80ern in jedem kalten Winter sein Goldfischaquarium im Wohnzimmer eingefroren ist, geschenkt, Goldfische können sowas ab.

Kurzum, wer meint er könne sich mit seinem Durschnittgehalt ein modernes Haus leisten bauen zu lassen, der leidet an der gefährlichen "früher war Alles besser" Krankheit.