Aesthetics, plus the seductive appeal that pre-modern, pre-liberal-democratic societies (when the governments were authoritarian, the women were submissive, and the men “were men”) have for reactionaries, incels, and cryptofacists.

While I’d personally argue that the quality of the character development, writing, and storytelling in the show doesn’t even achieve the level of “fine”, you’re right in that 1) people should be allowed to enjoy things in peace and 2) RoP in particular attracts criticism which is often hyperbolic. At the same time, however, there should also be the freedom to honestly critique a piece of media without being labeled as a hater, obsessive fanboy, or a neckbeard, etc. Especially when dealing with an IP as treasured as Tolkien’s.

Whether you find this article excessive in its criticism or not, the writer makes the very valid point that the media landscape today is becoming increasingly saturated with this 'memberberries/nostalgia/callback type of storytelling, along with the constant stream of prequels and sequels based on this formula. People are growing tired of it, and Rings of Power has it deep in its bones.

For a good examination of the showrunners’ over-reliance on referencing the Jackson movie trilogy in lieu of interesting, original storytelling, I highly recommend this YouTube video. I think it really gets to the core of why so many people find RoP frustrating or disappointing as a show in its own right, let alone as a Tolkien adaptation.

Hard to argue with him about the JJ-Abramsification of all things, or the perplexing fact that modern audiences appear to lap it up.

Watching season one of RoP felt undeniably reminiscent of watching The Force Awakens and almost hearing the audible *ding as yet another callback got checked off the list. It’s not art any more; it’s just content to be consumed.

30 is way too many. Ideally, you want about 4-5 parties in order to maintain a healthy democracy without getting bogged down.

Either way, the two party corporate duopoly of the US ain’t it.

There is no rule that says the universe must make sense to human beings. In fact the more we learn about it - subatomic particles, quantum mechanics, the multiverse, etc. the stranger it becomes and the less it appears to operate in ways that are intuitive to our primitive primate brains.

Hell, even space and time might not be fundamental properties, and could themselves be abstractions which emerge from an even deeper underlying reality…

All of which is to say your list should have an extra option:

D. Who The Fuck Knows?

As someone married to a JW and who is friends with several others, I will say this: like any group of people, they can be a mixed bag. Some are more closeted and “in the truth” whereas others are more outgoing and “worldly”.

One the things that I actually admire about them (the individuals, mind you, not the Watchtower organization) is that they really seem to try and live by the teachings of the Bible and study it frequently. Much more so than, say, your average evangelical Protestant.

As someone who is mostly agnostic, those who belive that absence of evidence equals evidence of absence belong in psychotherapy.

This position is a straw man. Atheists generally do not argue that God categorically does not exist. Instead, we usually say that we don’t believe in God because there is insufficient evidence. Much like the proverbial invisible unicorn in your backyard - since there is no evidence that it exists, there is no reason for it to affect how we go about our daily lives.

When it comes to whether you’re agnostic or atheist, I think it helps to answer the following question on a scale of 0 - 10: How confident are you that God exists? If you say around 5, then you’re agnostic. If you say around 1 or 2, then you’re an atheist.

I’d say a good-sized part of it is simply the American preference for watching beautiful, weathly people doing beautiful, wealthy people things. Hollywood rom-coms and US TV shows in general clearly skew towards upper middle class settings when compared to the equivalents from, say, the UK.

In other words, I reckon US media prefer their fictional characters to be aspirational whereas other cultures prefer theirs to be relatable.

The Death of Stalin is great.

It’s not so much saying that someone’s religious beliefs are logically impossible, more highly unlikely. When I typically see this rhetoric, it’s generally along the lines of “how on Earth did you weigh up all the evidence (or lack thereof) and come to the conclusion that God exists?”, or more impolite words to that effect.

I personally don’t browbeat the religious, so I’m not condoning it, but that’s why this line of argument generally isn’t gnostic atheism.

If, on the other hand, someone is actually saying that the existence of God is logically impossible, a priori, then that would be gnostic atheism. But, like I said before, that generally isn’t what most atheists believe or argue for.

Gnostic atheists are only a thing on paper; I’ve never met or heard of another atheist who ascribes to this view. As the link you provided states, this academic definition of atheism is not one ascribed to by the vast majority of self-described atheists.

Or, to quote the American Atheists organization:

Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods. Source

On this basis, any invisible unicorn/intergalactic teapot/flying spaghetti monster argument that invokes “burden of proof” is not an gnostic atheist position. The argument is based on the idea that until evidence for an invisible unicorn exists, there is no reason for it to have any bearing on our behavior.

This is different from saying that because no evidence of an invisible unicorn exists, that we must conclude that it categorically does not exist. You cannot logically prove the non-existence of a non-existent entity.

As an atheist who is not anti-religion, I wholeheartedly agree. The religious do not have a monopoly on irrationality, or weaponizing ideology.

I see many atheists on forums proposing the idea that if we could only just get rid of religion, the world would be a harmonious and rational place. As if human beings wouldn’t still be perfectly able to come up with new and interesting ways to rationalize conflict and division amongst themselves.

I agree with your second paragraph but take issue with your first.

Atheism is not the belief that God categorically does not exist; it’s the position that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that God exists, and that therefore there is no reason to believe in him/her/it. It’s a subtle but important distinction because the first is not logically consistent whereas the latter is.

Agnosticism, on the other hand, tends to either be the view that the likelihood of God existing is more or less equal to that of God not existing, or the view that we will probably never know so we cannot come down on one side or the other.

True. There’s something to be said for pleasuring any passing bats who might be in the vicinity.

It’s a fair question. Human hearing ability is a spectrum like anything else, however when it comes to discerning the difference in audio quality, the vast, vast majority of people cannot reliably tell the difference between high-bitrate lossy and lossless when they do a double blinded test. And that includes audiophiles with equipment worth thousands of dollars.

Of that tiny minority who can consistently distinguish between the two, they generally can only tell by listening very closely for the very particular characteristics of the encoder format, which takes a highly trained ear and a lot of practice.

The blind aspect is important because side-by-side comparisons (be they different audio formats, or 60fps vs 120fps video) are highly unreliable because people will generally subconsciously prefer the one they know is supposed to be better.

Yeah they do, although CBR performs noticeably worse than VBR with Lame MP3. As I mentioned elsewhere, MP3 @ V0 or V1 VBR sounds just as good as the above. I just personally haven’t used MP3 for years because the newer codecs are more efficient.

Oh yeah. 128k rips from back then were rough. MP3 has gotten somewhat better since then, to be fair. V0/V1 VBR is still perfectly fine to listen to; it’s just not as efficient as the newer codecs.

Up to a certain point, yes. >192k AAC / OGG / Opus sounds just as good as FLAC in a blind test, though. Even with good equipment.

This is true, especially if you are storing files locally. However, even compared to “CD quality” FLAC, a 24/192 album is still going to be around three times larger (around 1GB per album) to download. If everyone switched over to streaming hi-res audio tomorrow, there would be a noticeable jump in worldwide Internet traffic.

I’m personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping up over 3x (and even more compared to lossy streaming) for no discernable benefit.

Hi-resolution audio, especially for streaming. The general idea is that listening to digital audio files that have a greater bit depth and sample rate than CD (24-bit/192Khz vs 16-bit/44.1 KHz) translates to better-sounding audio, but in practice that isn’t the case.

For a detailed breakdown as to why, there’s a great explanation here. But in summary, the format for CDs was so chosen because it covers enough depth and range to cover the full spectrum of human hearing.

So while “hi-res” audio does contain a lot more information (which, incidentally, means it uses up significantly more data/storage space and costs more money), our ears aren’t capable of hearing it in the first place. Certain people may try to argue otherwise based on their own subjective experience, but to that I say “the placebo effect is a helluva drug.”