A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing

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Cake day: January 19th, 2023

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  • Quoting from Sotomayer’s dissent (pp 29-30, paragraphing my own):

    This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Kore- matsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting).

    The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world.

    When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.

    Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to as- sassinate a political rival? Immune.

    Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune.

    Takes a bribe in ex- change for a pardon?

    Immune. Immune, immune, immune.


    They go on with an incisive critique of the majority’s reasoning:

    Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trap- pings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.










  • from the Craig era they all took themselves way too seriously.

    Yea … I think this is the issue I ran into. For Casino … and Quantum too, IMO, as a previous hater I’m a defender now … the seriousness works, it’s part of the darker more violent energy. But afterwards, the stories and directing just don’t capture that same energy … so at some point you start to sort of see through what they’re trying to do and lose immersion.





  • Yea, the point of any thing like this would be to provide a better grip on what’s going on with these phrases and to break down the opacity of their coming from another language.

    The thing with latin though is that it isn’t quite an alien language to english speakers … so many components of it have ended up in language that an english speaker can kind of “triangulate” some of it.

    The “ad” in “ad hoc”, for instance. It’s the same “ad” in “advance” or “addition” “admit”. And “hoc” is related to English “here”. It literally means “toward this (thing)”, which takes on the meaning “for the purpose of this thing” … that is, being “for a specific thing”, not “general purpose”.


  • Seems to miss some big ones and providing understanding of them.

    “Et cetera”

    • “and other things”
    • abbreviated to “etc”
    • not pronounced “excetera” … but honestly I wouldn’t worry about it because this is the sort of alteration the Romans would have made and did make, and language is always evolving.
    • IMO, basically a distinct English word now

    “Exempli gratia”

    • “for the sake of an example” / “for example”
    • abbreviated “eg”
    • basically a distinct English word now in the abbreviated form, pronounced “ee gee”.
    • easily substituted with a plain English translation “for example”

    “Id est”

    • “that is”
    • abbreviated “ie”
    • like the above, basically a distinct English word now, IMO.
    • easily substituted with its plain English equivalent: “that is”
      • especially given how close the Latin is to the English …. Notice how similar the two phrases sound … that’s not a coincidence, these languages are related after all.

  • Oh sure, there’d have to be a quality dimension to this too. According to the theory, not every Disney film is going to be a hit, but the hits will often be Disney films.

    It’s a bit conspiratorial … in the end it’s probably about films that are enjoyable by a broad demographic, and that’s Disney.

    The dynamics of somewhat random box office hits seems reasonable to me though. How many now see like 1-2 films in the cinemas a year? Getting their tickets is probably tricky and requires some sort of virality dynamic.







  • The interesting test will be when the Gunniverse starts

    Was just thinking the same thing recently … inadvertently, that “project” seems perfectly timed to steer the industry in a moment of uncertainty. Like 2 “flops” from Gunn and that could be the clear beginning of the end of mainstream comic films. Great successes, and it’ll keep going for sure.

    I wonder if Dune (at least part 2) is having any bearing on the industry … because I’d guess it isn’t at a broad level because that kind of content and film making is just not economical enough at the “cinematic universe” scale. But then again, are we going to see more classic and epic Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories being pushed out? Is some exec chucking a fit about why they don’t own the rights to Asimov’s Foundation?