Internet communists: political violence is bad

From time to time I'm reminded of a quote I once read. It was originally spoken by Thomas Mann, a German novelist who had fled to Britain and began broadcasting for the BBC. In reaction to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich:

Able Archer 83

Something that always bugged me about Game of Thrones (though this was present in the books too, just moreso in the show): the universe is clearly supposed to be analagous to the early Medieval period, but the political institutions are much more so that of Early Modern Europe. It would be like having an 18th century…

It's the Flags of our Fathers non-issue over again

I have a feeling that in ten years people are going to look back at Game of Thrones and realize it wasn't that good.

I think that's it's fair to view Polanski harshly, and that's good enough to not consume his movies. But there's also room to have some sympathy for him: most of his family and friends were murdered in the Holocaust, then he came to America and had his wife and friends murdered there. His escape from justice is…

Not sure if you know this but the Manson family murdered Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate (who was pregnant at the time) and a number of their friends.

Almost certainly not. There would be no way to be a competitive eater if you were reflexively throwing it all up.

Succeeding where the Germans and the Manson family failed?

Paul Verhoeven is the greatest director of the past 30 years. His brilliance deserves all the attention it gets.

I ignored reading or watching anything about the new season before I watched it (slowly… over two weeks or so), so it was a lovely surprise.

Kelly Macdonald <3

What were people's thoughts on the new series of Black Mirror?

And everyone still has the same avatars!

So I finally finished season six. You know, of this show. I was involved a lot in the earlier comment threads. My heart skipped a beat when I saw this review was sitting at nearly 100 K comments. Not exactly sure why I waited so long to watch season 6. I guess season 5 kind of burnt me out on how much of a retread it…

Also, the final layer makes none of it make sense. All of a sudden there's no theme, no logical progression, no deeper impact or commentary. It's like an even worse version of the already-bad Usual Suspects twist where it makes the rest of it pointless just for an added bit of shock.

The protocols/minutes of the Wannsee Conference were written in euphemistic language (after all, they were talking about the "final solution" not "Operation Kill Jews"). Better Kill Saul is a better joke, but Better Deport Saul is more historically accurate.

Perdido Street Station also featured a telepathic spider.

Justified is actually an example of a pre-adaptation, I think. Some plot elements of the second and third season came from the Leonard's last novel Raylan, despite its publication date of December 2012 coming after both of those seasons.