Huldra

Thinking about Dungeon Meshi and I wonder if theres a tabletop system that primarily scales power with equipment and other material factors like that as opposed to abstract increases in power that vaguely represent getting stronger and more skilled.

tbf to Grizzly Man in this regard, the only people who are on the prophet side of things are his ex and probable ex who helped run his weird grizzly bear awareness shit(and who actually had the rights to his film material), everyone else is pretty much unanimous in that he was acting with gross disregard for his own safety, the safety of the women he apparently repeatedly took with him on his "expeditions"(one of which died alongside him), the safety of everyone else who visits the area, as well as the safety of the bears themselves.

The rest of the film I guess is more of an observation of the strange mix of artificiality and nature in how the guy presented himself, doing repeated takes of supposedly unscripted monologues, setting up tripods to do travel shots, flat out lying about his girlfriend being with him during large parts of the expedition, shit like that.

Watched Grizzly Man recently and the choice in final shots stuck with me in an odd way, basically its kind of the same shot in a lot of ways, separated by some unrelated footage.

First shot shows Timothy Treadwell, the guy the documentary is about, walking across an open field shadowed by a couple of playful looking foxes, going away from a fixed tripod camera, while the second shot is of Treadwell already in the distance, on a stream, with two big bears between him and the camera, and he starts walking away while the bears follow sorta lazily.

And it just felt a bit strange that the two shots are so similar, and I keep thinking about what the sorta purpose is, both shots are obviously stunning, and the latter has the very literal symbolism of Tim walking away from this world, flanked by two bears(after his death by a bear mauling and eating him, that bear and one other was shot in the process of recovering his remains.) The first shot feels almost comically idyllic, like a fairytale character in living flesh walking around with his sidekicks, which I guess is probably how he would have wanted to be seen.

And the second is also very idyllic, and showing him with the bears feels like kind of a moment of empathy on Herzogs part, making a memorial of him, but it also sort of feels like it invites a final bit of scrutiny or questioning on the part of the audience, the bears following behind Treadwell can be seen many ways, you have the kind of symbolic and spiritual thing that he would have liked, but then theres also a question of why they follow behind, if its just animal curiosity and such, and then theres also just the obvious feeling that it looks like they are stalking him.

Idk just wanted to blurt out some of my thoughts about it, the whole film is very interesting but that choice in ending stuck with me very specifically, Im not 100% sure its just meant as juxtaposition, or even if it is meant like that, but it doesnt feel like it would entirely just be a memorial either, to leave the film off with the exact images that Timothy Treadwell himself would have wished to be seen like.

This is relatively common in exile atrocity propaganda circles, I recall there was a separate case where a woman went from claiming to be a hired teacher in the reeducation camps to having been actually an inmate as well, and having snuck into a restricted area to see Chinese ground invasion plans just sorta scattered about.

Really funny that the Larry David elmo thing leapfrogged right past the arguably valid point of "in the modern social media landscape, kids will immediately see that out of context from being on an adult talk show" to literal adults up to like 50 years old going "Larry David reminded me of childhood trauma and that makes HIM a morally evil sociopathic narcissist who likes to hurt children!"

Good god thats horrifying, although slightly less so than when I got shown a news piece about how Sterile Processing Technicians in at least some places in the US are treated as literally just the equivalent of dishwashers, so they pick people off the street to get bare minimum training in rendering surgical equipment safe.

I'm sure theres a lot of technical medical stuff you get to learn as a pharmacist(unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit) but it feels like for the user-end there ought to be a pretty big focus on just basic administrative competence and efficiency.

It does feel like this might genuinely be a case where chauvinism played a role in attitudes, because surely the USSR must have seen what was inflicted on Africa and other places despite their inclusion in capitalism, and I have to assume the feeling was that it would be different for the states of the USSR, or at least Russia specifically.

Isn't xpeopletwitter subs supposed to be like observational in a sense?

This is literally just white people blue maga posting in earnest.

The dictatorship of tourism, or something.

My twitter for you page isnt even filled with reactionaries all that often, 9 times out of 10 its some jackass I don't even follow, nor is followed by anyone else I follow, quote tweeting a reactionary with the most non-commentary ever.

Sick of it, anyone that pops up with a "oh they arent even pretending to not be nazis anymore" I just block, annoying dipshits.

Also then you google the second guys name and find out that what he actually did back in WW2 was send fanmail to J Edgar Hoover about hypnosis and also tried to set up his own freelance counter-espionage circle at some university, while impersonating an FBI agent, until some student told his parents and they complained to the actual FBI.

Not even hyperbole, google "George Estabrooks" and check out the FOIA material on him on The Black Vault, its extremely funny, he starts mailing random ideas about submarine defense that Hoover has to tell him to send to the Navy instead. Eventually the FBI documents start including a note that if he tries to talk to the director of the FBI, to instead send him to someone who knows how to use a lie detector.