kwyjibo's recent activity

  1. Comment on Megalopolis | Teaser trailer in ~movies

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    Yep, I read Peter Bradshaw's review but thank you for sharing it. I didn't mention it because I rarely agree with him and I wanted to talk about the reviews written by critics whose opinion I...

    Yep, I read Peter Bradshaw's review but thank you for sharing it. I didn't mention it because I rarely agree with him and I wanted to talk about the reviews written by critics whose opinion I trust. I think it's a bit of a relief that Bradshaw found the film boring, because I think he's exactly that as a critic. 😊

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Megalopolis | Teaser trailer in ~movies

    kwyjibo
    (edited )
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    I didn't want to create another topic as people might want to avoid even seeing the titles of reviews about the film, but the they are out and they appear as divided as I'd expected them to be....

    I didn't want to create another topic as people might want to avoid even seeing the titles of reviews about the film, but the they are out and they appear as divided as I'd expected them to be. The critics whose taste overlap with mine, like Bilge Ebiri and to an extent David Ehrlich has written glowing reviews about it. Ebiri, who's usually reserved, went as far as calling it "the craziest thing he's ever seen". I wish Richard Brody had seen it and written about it but I don't think he's attending Cannes. Regardless, it certainly looks like the film will meet my benchmark of "I don't care if it's bad as long as it's interesting."

    1 vote

  3. Comment on What’s your method for archiving bookmarked/liked social media posts? in ~comp

    kwyjibo
    Link
    I use Raindrop. It's not free but it's a polished, nicely built cross platform app also available on the web. I used to use Pinboard and I loved it but its developer has clearly given up on it and...

    I use Raindrop. It's not free but it's a polished, nicely built cross platform app also available on the web. I used to use Pinboard and I loved it but its developer has clearly given up on it and I didn't want to rely on it anymore, given the nature of the service.

    I have not looked into this yet, but in the future I could look into self-hosted solutions. I am happy with Raindrop, but I use it not to retrieve stuff but to store it and I store it, quite frankly, for peace of mind. It's far and few in between the times I actually log into it to dig something up. It's basically a service I pay for because of some psychological need, instead of a practical one. If you fall into the latter category, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    No apologizes necessary, I'm glad we're on the same page now! @daywalker's comment is good and I see that they've elaborated further on a separate topic (I've yet to read it). This conversation...

    No apologizes necessary, I'm glad we're on the same page now!

    @daywalker's comment is good and I see that they've elaborated further on a separate topic (I've yet to read it). This conversation deserves to be discussed in greater detail and maybe I'll write my thoughts in the said topic but I think the issue they describe in the quote boils down to people integrating their identity with what they consume, so they feel they need to justify it against people who refute it, because it feels like their refutation is a direct attack on who they are as people instead of a simple difference of opinion.

    I just think most of this is about narcissism and power and it can be tied directly to Bourdieu's symbolic violence. It's one segment of society with a particular cultural capital trying to impose their power over another. Why? I don't know.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    I don't think I did a good job expressing myself, because I wholeheartedly agree with every point you made. Let me try again. What I meant by environment was systems, rather than individual...

    I don't think I did a good job expressing myself, because I wholeheartedly agree with every point you made. Let me try again.

    When it comes to pure entertainment, let's just let people like what they like and dislike what they dislike.

    What I meant by environment was systems, rather than individual examples. I don't subscribe to the argument that art is wholly subjective, but it's mostly subjective. That being said, I'm absolutely not in the habit of criticizing someone because they liked something I disliked, or even thought was badly made. People's taste are different, develop according to their environments, and if you've found your niche, more power to you and to hell with everyone else. In this particular example, we're talking about films and TV series. They're inconsequential. (This is what I tried to imply with my last sentence in my previous comment.)

    I hear you but why does anyone need to take anyone's opinion or citicism of anything to heart?

    Obviously not every criticism need to be taken to heart, even if it's coming from good faith people. What I'm saying is, bad faith actors create an environment within particular systems that are much more consequential where people who're getting criticized can bundle up the good criticism with the bad and package it all as bad, hence escaping any sort of accountability. I'm not, and was not, talking about The Rings of Power when I make this point. It'd be obnoxious of me to demand accountability (what would that even mean?) for the content of a series, because it's entertainment. I didn't like it but some people did. Since I didn't like it, I'll either give it another chance (I will) or move onto something else. That's simple and not important. What I was trying to touch on is how a similar dynamic is prevalent in other environments that are much more consequential, like politics, because the same people who criticize The Rings of Power for having "too many Black people" are mostly the same people who think Libs of TikTok is the greatest source of journalism since I. F. Stone or something.

    I hope I was able to express myself more clearly this time. I apologize for the initial confusion. Talking in abstract concepts, given that English is not my native language, is not my strongest suit.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    Yep, exactly. I have seen The Rings of Power, I just didn't find it worthwhile to talk about it online but even if I did, I don't think I'd have the energy to make my points available anywhere....
    • Exemplary

    Yep, exactly. I have seen The Rings of Power, I just didn't find it worthwhile to talk about it online but even if I did, I don't think I'd have the energy to make my points available anywhere. Setting that aside, because my opinion neither matter nor have to be heard, what disturbs me most is the dynamic this creates between good faith criticism and those who need to hear them. The toxic environment cultivated by the bad faith crowd narrows a broad spectrum of criticism into a neat little package that makes it convenient to ignore by those who need to take it to heart. I wish this was limited to just discussing what's on television, but it's prevalent in every aspect of society today, including where it's consequential.

    8 votes

  7. Comment on Alice Munro, Nobel laureate and master of the short story, dies at 92 (gifted link) in ~books

    kwyjibo
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    If you're not familiar with her work, or have only read a single book of hers like myself, The New York Times had published an article a few months ago that goes through her most notable books....

    If you're not familiar with her work, or have only read a single book of hers like myself, The New York Times had published an article a few months ago that goes through her most notable books. I'll purchase some of them myself today.

  9. Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv

    kwyjibo
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    I started watching Sugar yesterday. I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. Its story is compelling and fun, but the choices they make about its form, the way it's shot and edited, gives it a lot...

    I started watching Sugar yesterday. I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. Its story is compelling and fun, but the choices they make about its form, the way it's shot and edited, gives it a lot of freshness I had not seen from a series before. There's also Colin Farrell.

  10. Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    I can't possibly know if we read the same criticisms but I don't share the same opinion. There was a particular crowd of obnoxious people who shall go nameless that criticized the series for very...

    I can't possibly know if we read the same criticisms but I don't share the same opinion. There was a particular crowd of obnoxious people who shall go nameless that criticized the series for very wrong reasons, but other than that, I think the series deserved every serious criticism it's received given its ambition (budget) and history (Jackson's films).

    7 votes

  11. Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    I didn't feel like you were, no worries :) I kind of used your comment to write what I should've written in my original comment, which is that if you're only getting familiarized with the case...

    I didn't feel like you were, no worries :)

    I kind of used your comment to write what I should've written in my original comment, which is that if you're only getting familiarized with the case after reading this article alone, take things with a grain of salt before coming to a conclusion. I get that it can be exciting in a twisted way to see how well established and trusted institutions can fuck someone's life up this badly, despite having many laws and procedures to prevent exactly that, but there's clearly more here than meets the eye.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health

    kwyjibo
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Thank you for your comment. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was favoring one side over the other. As I said, I was and still am completely ignorant of the case. The article has a clear...

    Thank you for your comment. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was favoring one side over the other. As I said, I was and still am completely ignorant of the case. The article has a clear bias in favor of Letby and I cannot judge it on its merits alone but given that it's the New Yorker, I don't doubt that it's been fact checked thoroughly as far as what's been put on print. As for what kind of omissions the article has, I have absolutely no idea.

    I'm not necessarily interested in whether she did it or not. The UK has a court system and far better, informed minds than I have judged and will judge again the evidence. I find it a bit strange in general too, this compulsive behavior toward treating the pain actual people are going through as if it's a series. What I found fascinating about the whole thing was the investigation process, as well workings of the courts and all the other externalities around it and how each of them can affect one another.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health

    kwyjibo
    Link
    (Archived link) I had no prior knowledge of anything mentioned in this long article but having read it, it's fascinating. Equally as fascinating is people's responses to it online. I've read lots...

    (Archived link)

    I had no prior knowledge of anything mentioned in this long article but having read it, it's fascinating. Equally as fascinating is people's responses to it online. I've read lots of comments about how much this article proves their priors one way or the other, strongly so, but I've also seen some about the NHS and the way media and courts works in the UK. (Not surprising though, given the article itself is somewhat about all of this.) Apparently the article is not even accessible in the UK because of contempt of court laws.

    Some quotes (I made some clarifications within brackets):

    The police consulted with an endocrinologist, who said that the babies theoretically could have received insulin through their I.V. bags. Evans said that, with the insulin cases, “at last one could find some kind of smoking gun.” But there was a problem: the blood sample for the first baby had been taken ten hours after Letby had left the hospital; any insulin delivered by her would no longer be detectable, especially since the tube for the first I.V. bag had fallen out of place, which meant that the baby had to be given a new one. To connect Letby to the insulin, one would have to believe that she had managed to inject insulin into a bag that a different nurse had randomly chosen from the unit’s refrigerator.

    Burkhard Schafer, a law professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies the intersection of law and science, said that it appeared as if the Letby prosecution had “learned the wrong lessons from previous miscarriages of justice.” Instead of making sure that its statistical figures were accurate, the prosecution seems to have ignored statistics. “Looking for a responsible human—this is what the police are good at,” Schafer told me. “What is not in the police’s remit is finding a systemic problem in an organization like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category. It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy.”

    Schafer said that he became concerned about the case when he saw the diagram of suspicious events with the line of X’s under Letby’s name. He thought that it should have spanned a longer period of time and included all the deaths on the unit, not just the ones in the indictment. The diagram appeared to be a product of the “Texas sharpshooter fallacy,” a common mistake in statistical reasoning which occurs when researchers have access to a large amount of data but focus on a smaller subset that fits a hypothesis. The term comes from the fable of a marksman who fires a gun multiple times at the side of a barn. Then he draws a bull’s-eye around the cluster where the most bullets landed.

    Dewi Evans, the retired pediatrician, told me that he had picked which medical episodes rose to the level of “suspicious events.” When I asked what his criteria were, he said, “Unexpected, precipitous, anything that is out of the usual—something with which you are not familiar.” For one baby, the distinction between suspicious and not suspicious largely came down to how to define projectile vomiting.

    Letby’s defense team said that it had found at least two other incidents that seemed to meet the same criteria of suspiciousness as the twenty-four on the diagram. But they happened when Letby wasn’t on duty. Evans identified events that may have been left out, too. He told me that, after Letby’s first arrest, he was given another batch of medical records to review, and that he had notified the police of twenty-five more cases that he thought the police should investigate. He didn’t know if Letby was present for them, and they didn’t end up being on the diagram, either. If some of these twenty-seven cases had been represented, the row of X’s under Letby’s name might have been much less compelling. (The Cheshire police and the prosecution did not respond to a request for comment, citing the court order.)

    Within a week [after the trial], the Cheshire police announced that they had made an hour-long documentary film about the case with “exclusive access to the investigation team,” produced by its communications department. Fourteen members of Operation Hummingbird spoke about the investigation, accompanied by an emotional soundtrack. A few days later, the Times of London reported that a major British production company, competing against at least six studios, had won access to the police and the prosecutors to make a documentary, which potentially would be distributed by Netflix. Soon afterward, the Cheshire police revealed that they had launched an investigation into whether the Countess was guilty of “corporate manslaughter.” The police also said that they were reviewing the records of four thousand babies who had been treated on units where Letby had worked in her career, to see if she had harmed other children.

    Several months into the trial, Myers [Letby's barrister] asked Judge Goss to strike evidence given by Evans and to stop him from returning to the witness box, but the request was denied. Myers had learned that a month before, in a different case, a judge on the Court of Appeal had described a medical report written by Evans as “worthless.” “No court would have accepted a report of this quality,” the judge had concluded. “The report has the hallmarks of an exercise in working out an explanation” and “ends with tendentious and partisan expressions of opinion that are outside Dr. Evans’ professional competence.” The judge also wrote that Evans “either knows what his professional colleagues have concluded and disregards it or he has not taken steps to inform himself of their views. Either approach amounts to a breach of proper professional conduct.” (Evans said that he disagreed with the judgment.)

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Megalopolis | Teaser trailer in ~movies

    kwyjibo
    Link
    This sure looks like is going to be a wonderful spectacle. I really, really hope I can see it in IMAX but I doubt it will even get a theatrical release where I live and given the cost-cutting...

    This sure looks like is going to be a wonderful spectacle. I really, really hope I can see it in IMAX but I doubt it will even get a theatrical release where I live and given the cost-cutting measures of non-IMAX theaters, I might just skip and wait to see it on my TV despite my excitement.

    I'm also looking forward to reading the reactions after the Cannes premiere. I obviously don't know if it will be worthy of Palme d'Or (what that even means is another topic) but I do hope it wins something because I want Coppola's big bet to pay off in some way.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Megalopolis | First look clip in ~movies

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    My pleasure! You're in for a treat.

    My pleasure! You're in for a treat.

  17. Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    Not at all. Despite not having been engaged with anyone here privately, I have a baseline of trust with established members such as yourself and that extends to moderation, too. We can have...

    I know it's probably pretty annoying having me essentially just say "trust me" in response to your concerns and suggestions.

    Not at all. Despite not having been engaged with anyone here privately, I have a baseline of trust with established members such as yourself and that extends to moderation, too. We can have disagreements here and there and that's natural, but I don't have the slightest inclination that anyone's acting in bad faith.

    I wasn't going to make an extra comment to point this out, but since I'm replying to you, I may as well mention that I hid my post with a note.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    Thank you for your insight. I mean, look, since you're speaking from experience not just as a long standing member of the community but someone as an insider, at least compared to a regular member...

    Thank you for your insight. I mean, look, since you're speaking from experience not just as a long standing member of the community but someone as an insider, at least compared to a regular member like me, I'll take your word for it. If I had remember the things you'd mentioned, I wouldn't have started this topic but I only had vague memories of the past and I didn't make the connection that they're in any way related to what I intended to talk about.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    I do agree with your comments, but I'd like to clarify that I'm not advocating for users to police the moderators or their decisions. If there was transparency over irreversible moderation...

    I do agree with your comments, but I'd like to clarify that I'm not advocating for users to police the moderators or their decisions. If there was transparency over irreversible moderation decisions, I think there should also be a firm rule against members of the community debating said decisions for the reasons you've outlined well.

    I do disagree with you that deleting an entire topic or a comment thread is a useful tool against against people carrying their disagreements further into other threads, though. I don't think I've ever had a heated discussion with anyone in this community, let alone a long standing one, but if I did I'm sure I'd remember their name and just wouldn't engage with them anymore. I wouldn't follow them into other threads and take jabs at them for some vain gratification. Would everyone act the same way? I doubt it but that's why there's moderation, which is doing a great job except for this one thing.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes

    kwyjibo
    Link Parent
    I hope my post wouldn't be considered as needless meta drama/debate. I do agree with your comments but as I said in my post, wouldn't it be better to have some faith in the community, too? I think...

    it's a lot of extra work for little benefit, and total moderation transparency would also likely just lead to a bunch of negatives as well, like excessive rule lawyering and needless meta drama/debate.

    I hope my post wouldn't be considered as needless meta drama/debate. I do agree with your comments but as I said in my post, wouldn't it be better to have some faith in the community, too? I think most of us can figure out a bad faith actor whose sole intention is to stir the pot. We're a relatively small community. I don't know you personally, but I do know your username. I'm sure my name is familiar to you. We're anonymous, but with time we accrue a degree of reputation within the community that no one in their right mind would be willing to throw away just to stir something up. Maybe I'm being naive, I don't know.

    I believe I have read that blog post before, but I'll read it again. For the record, I am generally happy with how Tildes is being run. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be here. There's just one thing that doesn't sit right with me.

    I mentioned this briefly but perhaps I should've elaborated it further in my post. Commenting takes time for all of us. We want to make sure we're heard and understood correctly by those who don't really know us and come across as decent and open minded, so we try to choose our words carefully. If I engage in a conversation with a person or a group of mutual interest about a disagreement that we have and that post gets removed without a warning or explanation, I feel like that's not mindful of the time people spend contributing and it further disincentives people into not doing so anymore.

    If I were to give a concrete example of how transparent moderation can be, I'd point people to look at MetaFilter1, which is a somewhat similar community to Tildes (of which I'm also a part of). I honestly do not know how they handle removing topics themselves, but for comments, they have a reasonable solution.

    1: I get that we're talking about different scales of operation, but from the outside looking in, that also seems like a choice.

    3 votes