makememadscientist - Tumblr blog

[makememadscientist]

Is fast car the new wonderwall?

[makememadscientist]

Not social anxiety in person (although definitely some of that) but social media social anxiety. I'm a perpetual lurker on social media but I can't ever bring myself to engage. I have a tiktok that I have literally never posted a single video to, deleted several Twitter accounts that didn't even have my name attached to them because I was uncomfortable with posting anything, got rid of an Instagram account that I never used because posting to my 50 odd followers (all people I knew in real life and was friends with at one time or another) felt like a Herculean feat. Hell, I had a different Tumblr account for like 10 years before this one that I never posted a single thing to. I just debated reblogging a different post for 20 minutes and adding a stupid comment and only bots follow this account!

[makememadscientist]

Language is fluid and words change meaning over time. I fully buy that and stand behind it. I think, however, there is something to be said about the type of and amount of words that recently we have taken as a society, used much more liberally, and watered down the meaning to a point where we have socially normalized the toxic behaviors that they once depicted.

Words like queerbaiting have been sanitized to take the onus off large production companies that wanted to benefit off the money that came from the LGBTQ community without alienating the predominantly straight and socially conservative audience with hints they never intended to follow through on. Now, we use it as a vague attack against anything that is not queer enough to meet our standards, regardless of intent.

Gaslighting was a term originally used to refer to someone intentionally and maliciously slowly convincing a victim to disbelieve their own observations about reality in order to ultimately create distrust in the victim's mental faculties. It was a term for a form of intentional abuse. Now, the term is often used to refer to anyone who lies to us.

Likewise, therapy terms like trigger and narcissist have undergone the same treatment. Instead of discussing important aspects of psychology in the context of professionals seeking to provide help for individuals they are now thrown around about anything or anyone we don't like.

These are by far not the only examples, nor am I anywhere near the first person to point this phenomenon out but I think it is important that we examine the way that the evolution of words like this doesn't benefit victims like the words originally meant to, but instead protects the perpetrators that they used to target by defanging them.

[makememadscientist]

Unpopular MCU opinion specifically regarding Guardians of the Galaxy 3: The emotional impact of the movie didn't work for me because of the janky science.

It isn't a bad movie, I thought it was fine and I enjoyed it more than most of the other movies Marvel has put out recently. But the bad science took me out of it. I know, you're supposed to suspend your disbelief and I usually can! But don't hinge the plot and the emotional core on bad science. The plot relyed on the High Evolutionary and the bogus understanding of how evolution works. Maybe that would have been fine on its own but it was such an important aspect of Rocket's backstory and thus the emotional crux of the movie. It didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the movie but it did mean that I couldn't get as emotionally invested as I needed to.

I'm so glad that it hit home for so many people but I think Marvel, and really most SciFi and superhero IP need to learn that if you want to use science as a plot device it needs to have enough basis in actual scientific understanding to make sense. I'm not saying that it should hold up to a PhD defense but if reading the Wikipedia page could have cleared up the problem then it isn't good enough!

[makememadscientist]

I see everyone comparing the new season of Dimension 20 with Inside Out and I totally see it but to me it really is reminding me of a film noir version of Osmosis Jones

[makememadscientist]

I just read A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and watched the SuperCarlinBrothers videos about the Hunger Games series they put out the last few weeks. There were some interesting points made but I actually disagree completely with the theory that proposed Coin orchestrated Katniss being a tribute for the 74th Hunger Games. I think it's pretty clear that there are already rebels in place in positions around District 12 and within the industry of the Games in the Capitol but I don't think they were pulling the strings yet. They may have been instructed to aid any tributes that looked promising but I don't think it would have been anything more than that until after Katniss and Peeta won.

The videos also suggested that, as with Lucy Gray in the 10th Hunger Games and possibly (probably) the twist of the Third Quarter Quell, the reaping isn't beyond tampering with. People love that Katniss isn't a "chosen one" in the books and I completely agree. I think that her being a tribute was completely unplanned for and a result of her love for her sister.

But I don't think this discredits the idea of the reaping of tributes not being completely random. In fact, I think it's possible that there is unspoken pressure to make sure that tributes from District 12 wouldn't necessarily be good candidates because of President Snow's history with Lucy. Yes, District 12 is the smallest and poorest district. And yes, if the Career Districts actually have some people training for the Games it makes sense that they win the most often. But I also think it's telling that District 12 NEVER wins. In 63 years District 12 has won once! I don't think that is unintentional.

Here is where we kind of go into headcannon territory. Now it has been a few years since I've read the Hunger Games trilogy so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that it is possible that a 12 year old girl who is known to be extremely kind and compassionate doesn't seem like an ideal tribute. I think Prim's name being called was random but I also think that it's possible that her pick wasn't as unlikely as it would appear to be.

It is entirely possible that, even though Snow is not the type of person who would ever advertise weaknesses if it could be helped and a great deal of his relationship with Lucy was obfuscated, there is still some lingering whispers about him having a particular problem with District 12 victors even if the specifics are not known. If that is the case, people trying to garner favor may influence the reaping so that tributes that are chosen for District 12 are less likely to win.

From the description I remember of Haymitch and his Games I don't think he sounds like someone who would have been expected to win. I also don't think that Peeta, although strong, would have had the drive to compete well enough to win if Katniss was not there as an incentive. Gale and Katniss both have their names entered more times than most but are also known to be capable hunters. Even the Peacekeepers (if I'm remembering correctly) know that the two are capable. It is entirely statistically possible for candidates like them to never get called at Reaping but I also think it's possible that candidates like them are specifically not chosen for District 12. At best, there may be incentive to just not say the names of people if they seem too capable or at worst their names are removed entirely from the running. If names like Katniss' are removed, suddenly a 12 year old girl with slim odds of being chosen suddenly has higher odds to battle. In which case, in a funny way, Katniss is the very opposite of a "chosen one" as the LEAST likely to be chosen.