mezentius

7 ms·

1.
by mezentius 7mo ago
1) People who don’t derive pleasure from reading do generally see it as an affection, because they can’t understand the appeal outside of apparent status-signaling. Reading, and discovering new material to read, is in fact an intensely self
2.
by mezentius 1y ago
Dithering is used quite frequently in PICO-8 projects at the “native” (128x128) resolution. Here’s an example from a few years ago: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=110273#p
3.
by mezentius 1y ago
The excellent book, “Rites Of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age”—which uses this infamous incident as a jumping-off point from which to explore Modernity as an incipient artistic and social phenomenon that accelerates du
4.
by mezentius 1y ago
I’m guessing you haven’t worked in the film business, as ‘more efficient’ is not the same as ‘brighter’ in real-world conditions on a film set. LED lighting brings efficiencies in power use, weight, and heat, but nowhere near the quoted fig
5.
by mezentius 1y ago
The exact number “24” may be a standard for historical reasons, but a frame rate AROUND 24 is not an arbitrary standard. Higher frame rates require more light so that the image is properly exposed for the 1/(2x frame rate) of a second
6.
by mezentius 1y ago
You’re describing something real; I’m a screenwriter and have worked on studio films where this kind of character arc was encouraged. (I wouldn’t call it a distinct structure because it can be mapped onto a very similar, traditional three-p
7.
by mezentius 1y ago
With respect, I have no personal investment in defending the quality of PKD’s prose; I wouldn’t even count him among my favorite authors. I’m a professional writer—and while that doesn’t make my opinion authoritative, as writers disagree on
8.
by mezentius 1y ago
Sure—in order of mention, that would be “A Scanner Darkly” and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” The slyly comic tone of the latter may surprise those who’ve only seen its rather dour film adaptation (“Blade Runner”), which the origina
9.
by mezentius 1y ago
A good starting point is Stanislaw Lem, “Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans.” [1] For more recent analysis, read Jonathan Lethem: “My initial responsiveness to Dick’s work was to delight in his mordant surrealist onslaught aga
10.
by mezentius 1y ago
This sentiment is often repeated by people who should know better (Adam Gopnik, no less) but it’s always seemed to me patently false. PKD was a highly skillful prose writer, but it’s often not entirely appreciated that he wrote to produce a
11.
by mezentius 2y ago
A simple technique not listed here for drawing contour edges: 1) Create an array storing all unique edges of the faces (each edge being composed of a vertex pair V0, V1), as well as the two normals of the faces joined by that edge (N0 and N
12.
by mezentius 2y ago
I work in Hollywood. Like USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers is just another example of a political advocacy group using a university as cover for ideological messaging, under the auspices
13.
by mezentius 2y ago
A later version is available here (along with the compiler itself): https://winworldpc.com/product/metaware-high-c-cpp/33x
14.
by mezentius 2y ago
I do some light hacking in iDOS for fun as well. Might as well go straight to Borland C++ 3.1 [0] (the "professional" version) over Turbo C++ these days. When you eventually hit the Great Wall of 16-bit real mode, I recommend swit
15.
by mezentius 2y ago
It’s great. I’ve been running iDOS regularly on a 3rd-gen iPad Pro, at 26800 cycles (roughly a 486DX4 100Mhz). I can run every DOS game well supported by DOSBox, write in WordPerfect 6.2, install and run Windows 3.1 at full speed, and compi
16.
by mezentius 2y ago
Absolutely. Chandler was in fact employed by an oil company before he tapped a richer vein (sorry) with his fiction. Incidentally, while re-reading Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake," I realized that the scene in which Marlowe
17.
by mezentius 2y ago
No—not necessarily. In the case of, say, a hypothetical plane crash in a desert, with two thirsty survivors and one cup of water, resource allocation may also be a profound ethical dilemma. The article’s author (and hospital administrators)
18.
by mezentius 2y ago
Well, no, the article doesn't address any of those issues. In the case of the teenager apparently allowed to die through refusal-of-service, the logic of the situation as presented by the hospital—either the child dies, or others die—i
19.
by mezentius 2y ago
I'm not hand-waving the issue; as I said, it's clearly a very difficult problem. But it is not an ethical dilemma ; it is a resource-allocation problem. In the United States, we are historically good at solving those, when proper
20.
by mezentius 2y ago
I fail to see how this is, as one specialist puts it, a “profound ethical dilemma," and not simply a temporary and embarrassing misalignment of resources. If you can prevent people from dying—and enable them to live meaningful, sentien
21.
by mezentius 2y ago
>> Nobody is yet trying to create permanent wastelands inhabited only by robots. On the contrary-- I think that capability would be enthusiastically adopted by a state like Ukraine, which is fighting an asymmetric defensive war agains
22.
by mezentius 3y ago
"This absolute horror scenario is what happened to writer Michael Berben (not his real name)." Absolutely didn't happen. You might occasionally credit a story in the NYT or WSJ using an anonymous source—but when one appears i
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by mezentius 3y ago
This is, at best, a wildly misleading headline, as the WGA would in most cases NOT allow it. This was the official WGA statement on AI-generated writing: “The WGA’s proposal to regulate use of material produced using artificial intelligence
24.
by mezentius 4y ago
That is NPR's analysis of the situation, based on expertise, available information, and reliable polling such as that which I linked above. "Opinion" is reading an article, then entirely ignoring its conclusions and support
25.
by mezentius 4y ago
It's almost as if you didn't read the article you linked, which summarizes, "the elections likely hinged on local issues, not China." Polls indicate that the Taiwanese overwhelmingly want to either "maintain the sta
26.
by mezentius 4y ago
Sure, and China used to be a sclerotic caste-based bureaucracy ruled by a hereditary elite. Things change. Taiwan isn't ruled by Chiang Kai-shek anymore; it's a sovereign, democratic society with a flourishing economy and a sense
27.
by mezentius 4y ago
Aside from Billy Wilder saying repeatedly--both in print and in person from 1976 onward--that it did? This is picking a nit on a nit, but I'm not sure that qualifies as 'quote investigation,' as by the same reasoning, we can&
28.
by mezentius 4y ago
A small point: "Don't give the audience 4, give them 2 + 2", as articulated in that way, does not originate with Pixar and Andrew Stanton. It comes from the film director Ernst Lubitsch, as told to his disciple, Billy Wilder.
29.
by mezentius 4y ago
This isn’t a terribly comforting example, as the former states of the USSR have been fighting a slow-motion civil war since 1991, of which the Russian invasion of Ukraine is simply the latest chapter. See also Chechnya, Georgia, Nagorno-Kar
30.
by mezentius 4y ago
Yes, thank you, that was my intended meaning.

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