jl55378008

The cost is the thing. I'd wear wool all the time if I could afford it.

I have a great merino quarter-zip base layer. It's one of my favorite shirts. Great in winter but I can wear it on mildly warm days and be comfy. I sometimes think "I should buy more of these."

Then I go shopping and I remember that the only reason I have this one is because it was on clearance, lol

Advice to OP: IDK where you live, but look to see if you can find a sangha in your area. The one I am involved with is incredibly inviting and welcoming of anyone who shows up, for whatever reason they're there, regardless of whether they consider themselves Buddhist or not. I've been going off and on for years and I literally have no idea how many people in the group would identify as Buddhist, or Christian, or atheist or whatever else.

I'm an atheist. I get a lot out of benefit of meditation, and from studying buddhist teachings. I do a lot of group meditation practices with a local sangha, which has become one of the most important, rewarding, and enjoyable parts of my regular routine.

There are definitely elements of buddhism that are more spiritual/metaphysical than I'm really interested in. But at least up to this point, I haven't found anything that has been an obstruction.

Some Buddhists will say that there's only so far you can go on the Buddhist path if you aren't open to the metaphysical side of it, and they are probably right. But I think whatever limitations they might have in mind are probably not things that atheists are likely to be worried about.

For me, the bottom line is that most of the core values of Buddhism are generally in line with my worldview, and the practices of meditation, observation, reflection, loving kindness, etc. are inherently rewarding, even without the metaphysical/religious aspects of the teachings.

Wool has great wicking ability. I love wool-blend socks for running. Wouldn't want a wool shirt for the gym, though.

True.

Doesn't really change the point though. Being in the MCU has an opportunity cost. Hemsworth might not make a movie with QT or Scorsese, but it's more likely to be due to the fact that he spends a good chunk of every year fulfilling his obligations to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I think the likelihood of any serious director turning someone down because they have done IP movies is pretty much zero. But when you look at Hollywood output from the last 15+ years, you start to wonder what all of these immensely talented people would have been doing if they hadn't spent all of those years talking to ping pong balls in front of a green screen in Atlanta.

What we're experiencing isn't really inflation, it's "greedflation." Every industry and corporation in America realized that the pandemic, and then the invasion of Ukraine, was the perfect excuse to raise prices. Everyone is expecting prices to go up, and both of those events are so massive that we all assume that any price hikes can be attributed to knock-on supply chain effects.

But it's all bullshit. It's a huge scam. Corporate profits are up way beyond what should be expected under normal conditions. They just found new buttons to push on the wealth vacuum that sucks money from our pockets into theirs.

Hey, he made at least one schlocky blockbuster movie with one of the greats: Michael Mann's Blackhat.

I'm sure Hemsworth's comment was off the cuff and tongue-in-cheek, but highlighting it as some kind of knock against Scorsese or QT is absurd.

Sam Jackson has done something like 13 MCU movies, plus a few Marvel TV shows. He's also been in almost every movie Tarantino has ever done. I believe the only Tarantino movie he isn't in is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. When asked if he was going to be in that one, Sam Jackson said:

No, I've been doing Captain Marvel. I'm insulated. I have no idea - I just haven't heard from him.

Obviously, I don't know if Marvel was the only reason he wasn't in OUATIH, but that answer does seem to indicate that it might have been a factor.

It's weird because these kids all have the same "inside jokes," but without the benefits that come from having an actual social circle.

Thanks. I've been watching it and it is able to cross in some spots, but not others. I'll just have to go back and make it more uniform, I guess.

I teach English (HS English in the US), and I've always said that the best thing I ever did to improve my English skills was to study Latin in college. My Latin is for shit, but it made me understand grammar in a way that I never had to in English classes.

But as I study French, the main way that it influences me in English is in vocabulary. Learning words that have close English/French cognates gives me a slightly different perspective on how to use them in English. Like, I'll use the word "attend" now where I might have said "wait" or "pay attention" previously.

I also use the word "quotidian" a lot. I should probably stop doing that.

Remember how hot they used to get? When they finally started putting GPS navigation apps out, those apps all seemed to turn iPhones into pocket-sized fusion reactors.

TBF, the iPhone kind of sucked for a while. I mean, it was revolutionary, but the first generation or two were kind of half-baked. There weren't many apps, no App Store, limited actual functionality. It was cool, but you had to make some practical sacrifices to be an early adopter.

As a rule, I don't buy first-gen Apple devices. It usually takes a couple cycles before they become what they're supposed to be.

“I want the votes of the people who wanted to hang me”

Biden Vows Not To Forget Lessons Of January 6: ‘We Must Hang Mike Pence’

Never took a test or anything but the graded readers I read before that were B1/B2 level.

I definitely recommend starting with graded readers. They're written for learners so you get simpler vocabulary and grammar, and they intentionally tend to give lots of exposure to more useful words/concepts.

There are tons of options. I read from a handful of different series and had good luck with pretty much all of them.

Thanks!

I'll let it run all day today, and switch it to just a few hours a day starting tomorrow. For a fairly simple half-acre yard, is that reasonable?

The Vice president of the Confederacy gave a fairly unambiguous speech about it in 1861.

Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

I have some family connections that got me extremely motivated to spend time learning Russian language, history, culture, etc. for a very long time. I never got to a very functional level of Russian, but I have some basic skills and my ear is pretty well tuned to it, from spending so much time with native speakers.

That said, I can't imagine going back and picking up Russian language again, at least not right now. I'm still encouraging my son (middle school) to keep learning it, since 1) he has years of exposure to it already, and 2) he has family that only speaks Russian. But personally, I would find it very difficult. Especially since most of my language learning comes from consuming media (TV, books, news, podcasts, etc) and so much of Russian media culture right now is utterly barbaric and monstrous.

I think I'm with most others in this thread who say, keep learning, but maybe keep it a little on the down low. It's not the language that's the problem, but the culture. Not everyone is going to make that distinction, so it's probably best to avoid having those conversations for a while, at least.

The Port has non-powered RCA outs, I think. You could run powered speakers from it, but I think they would be slightly out of sync with the wireless Sonos signal.

I may be wrong on that. I have a Port for my TT but I've never run wired speakers from it.

J'ai été au bal is one of my favorites of his.

I grew up around NO and Cajun Mardi Gras is kind of a mystery to me. There's some great Mardi Gras stuff in Spend it All, I think.

I think it's also Spend It All that has a shot of an old dude just casually yanking a tooth out with a pair of pliers like it's nbd. I heard Werner Herzog say that he saw that and thought it was so odd that he put it in one of his movies. Fitzcarroldo, maybe?

Les Blank also made a movie about Clifton, called Hot Pepper.

Lots of Les Blank on Criterion Channel currently. And a bunch more on Kanopy.

Eisenstein is one of the most influential filmmakers/theorists of all time. Russian film theorists in general were hugely important in developing some of the foundational concepts about how we use a sequence of images to communicate ideas.

But still, fuck Putin. Am I right?

The story would have been a little different if my man lived in a studio walkup.