They’re kind of already doing this, and it makes me happy. I mean, we already have 10 avengers, 4 non-avengers superheros, and the guardians of the galaxy kicking around in the MCU. And yet the next character to get a film is some totally new guy that no one’s heard of. There’s just no room on the schedule for an…

I feel like there’s a lot of misunderstanding here. The government isn’t paying for this, the mining company is. I’m sure the government would be perfectly happy to just shut down the mine instead. But the town doesn’t want them to shut down the mine, because the mine is the whole reason the town exists - I’d bet 90%…

Ah, you’ve hit on some deep philosophy there. I’d argue that numbers aren’t “really” anything - they’re an invention, a model we use which happens to have many practical applications. The positive integers are a good model for quantities of objects, while adding negatives allows you to model more abstract things like…

From talking to my friends, I’ve gotta say the reason so few of my generation are getting married is because our parents’ generation fucked up marriage so bad that half of us think it’ll jinx our relationships. If anything, the same-sex marriage movement helped renew support for marriage as an institution, since it’s…

Yeah, I dislike the requirement to provide an address - lots of people don’t have a fixed address for lots of reasons. Though I’ve heard some homeless shelters will let you use their address for this sort of thing.

Our culture will handle it the way we always do - by expecting attendees to bring a ~$12 bottle of wine. That way everyone gets to pretend there’s no money exchanged, but the host can still recoup costs. It works for dinner parties, it’ll work for movies.

I follow box office results as a hobby, and a low Rotten Tomatoes score absolutely hurts a film’s box office - especially if it’s something really low like <30%. The strength of the effect depends on the genre - horror movies and comedies aren’t affected as much, whereas even a mediocre score like 60-70% can tank an…

That’s a good point, I think this distinction is key. The “home row” technique was developed to minimize errors when you can’t see what you’re doing (because you’re looking at the source text). But nowadays most people type their own thoughts, so they are free to look at their hands if they need to, or to look up at…

Genuine question: why is Deadpool advertising in China? Is there anything to gain from it? Anyone who wants to see the movie there is going to have to pirate it, it’s not getting released.

I’m always sad when I read these lists and there’s no book characters mentioned - SF/Fantasy is more than just movies and TV shows!

I say we just name this new one “Pluto” and forget this all ever happened.

Given the timing of this announcement, I’d bet this has nothing to do with Avatar itself and everything to do with avoiding Star Wars. There was no way those movies could both open in December 2017 without each taking a big hit at the box office. Disney chose to play chicken and it looks like 20th Century Fox lost.

Gateway’s sequels are good in their own way, but they’re very different from the original book. I consider them more as a separate series set in the same universe, rather than a true sequel.

Where do they send the goats?

Ironically, the best historical analogue is probably... Genghis Khan. Ancient history, but still well-remembered for being bad news.

Moore’s Law is already dead - there’s been a clear tapering off in recent years. Processors are improving in other ways - increased parallelism, lower power, etc, but aren’t getting that much faster.

Was this a leak or an official trailer release? I wasn’t expecting any trailers for Civil War until after Star Wars.

I haven’t been watching these CW superhero shows at all, but man, this looks like so much fun. I think I found where I’ll be getting my campy superhero fix while SHIELD’s on hiatus.

So should I take this as a spoiler that Daredevil doesn’t show up at all in the first season of Jessica Jones? I was kind of hoping he would.

At first I was thinking Japanese, but looking at the video fullscreen, it’s Braille. In retrospect, I should probably have been able to guess that!