The Some Like It HOT TAKES thread

Alz wrote:

I can't read books anymore. I don't know if it's my lack of interest, or attention span, or if I just haven't found the right book in any of the numerous attempts I've given in the past few months. I used to read for hours at a time, devouring hundreds of pages at a time. Now if I sit down with a new book, after 15 minutes I get bored and distracted. If I go back to a book after a few days, I find I've forgotten most of what I read the first time.

Oddly enough, it's not so bad with books I've read in the past. Maybe it's because I can skim past parts that I remember, or if it's because it had been something I knew I'd enjoyed way back when. But new books? Sorry.

I’m the same way and it’s due largely to my attention span. I’m so busy and stressed and surrounded by constant distractions that i can’t get any reading done, or it puts me to sleep if I read in bed.

The only time I can get significant reading done is on our “do nothing” vacation where all I do is sit on the beach, drink, and read.

DSGamer wrote:
Books have always been time machines, in a sense. Today, their time-machine powers are even more obvious – and even more inspiring. They can transport us to a pre-internet frame of mind. Those solitary journeys are all the more rich for their sudden strangeness.

I like this sentiment.

I'd rather read a hard copy novel than on tablet for similar reasons.

Same words, different experience.

Saying that, I too don't read books nearly as much as I used to either.

muttonchop wrote:

Up until know I've really enjoyed The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but the most recent season was hot garbage.

Spoiler:

So the main themes this season seems to be trying to address are privilege, toxic masculinity, and the #metoo movement -- which would be noble, if the show didn't completely fail at it.

I mean the first episode is all about how sometimes workplace sexual harassment is just a hilarious misunderstanding.

What
the
f*ck?

"Kimmy is naive and oblivious to social norms" is a fun gag when it just results in some public embarrassment. Outright sexual harassment and a toxic work environment? Not so much.

On top of that, the majority of the show's #metoo references take the form of a running gag involving a rapey puppet, which seems like a really sh*tty way to completely trivialize this very real issue.

And don't even get me started on the episode where Titus's big moment is learning it's wrong to stereotype nerds when the entire season portrays all of its nerdy characters as a bunch of sexless autistim-spectrum stereotypes.

Plus, it's just not that funny. There's an overly-long true crime mockumentary that pales in comparison to things like American Vandal, and most of the jokes just fell completely flat for me. There's barely any character development and most of the storylines are just wrap-up of dangling plotlines from the previous season.

I stopped watching a few episodes into season 3 because I realized that concept wasn't that "Kimmy is naive and oblivious to social norms", but that EVERYONE on the show is oblivious to social norms.

Kimmy does her offbeat quirky thing, and none of the other characters care.
Titus does his offbeat quirky thing, and none of the other characters care.
Carol Kane does her offbeat quirky thing, and none of the other characters care.
Jane Krakowski does her character from 30 Rock, and none of the other characters care.

PaladinTom wrote:
Alz wrote:

I can't read books anymore. I don't know if it's my lack of interest, or attention span, or if I just haven't found the right book in any of the numerous attempts I've given in the past few months. I used to read for hours at a time, devouring hundreds of pages at a time. Now if I sit down with a new book, after 15 minutes I get bored and distracted. If I go back to a book after a few days, I find I've forgotten most of what I read the first time.

Oddly enough, it's not so bad with books I've read in the past. Maybe it's because I can skim past parts that I remember, or if it's because it had been something I knew I'd enjoyed way back when. But new books? Sorry.

I’m the same way and it’s due largely to my attention span. I’m so busy and stressed and surrounded by constant distractions that i can’t get any reading done, or it puts me to sleep if I read in bed.

The only time I can get significant reading done is on our “do nothing” vacation where all I do is sit on the beach, drink, and read.

For me it is partially I need time to read which almost never happens but I also need to push through the first 50 to 100 pages. They are the worst part of every book for me. Finally reading Leviathan Wakes the Expanse book series but after watching the first season and I don't need to extract the world. Building. I think the world building load time just sucks but I love it after that. In series books I just need to bemoan the first 50 to 100 pages of the first book not subsequent books. However now more my issue is not having time to read.

There is never a reason why "4 dollars" is a valid way to express an amount of currency. Either "$4" or "four dollars" is acceptable, but mixing notation is a war crime.

/extremelytepidtake

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

There is never a reason why "4 dollars" is a valid way to express an amount of currency. Either "$4" or "four dollars" is acceptable, but mixing notation is a war crime.

/extremelytepidtake

Four $
$Four

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

There is never a reason why "4 dollars" is a valid way to express an amount of currency. Either "$4" or "four dollars" is acceptable, but mixing notation is a war crime.

/extremelytepidtake

You're using an AZERTY keyboard and the asterisk key is broken?

Dollars are boring. We should shift to units of BHB (brought-home-bacon). Bacon: the honest-value currency system (coming soon to a wallet near you).

... also, we should switch to Roman numerals. Just 'cause.

Jonman wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

There is never a reason why "4 dollars" is a valid way to express an amount of currency. Either "$4" or "four dollars" is acceptable, but mixing notation is a war crime.

/extremelytepidtake

You're using an AZERTY keyboard a weirdo and the asterisk key is broken?

Fixed that for HOT TAKERY!!

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:
Jonman wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

There is never a reason why "4 dollars" is a valid way to express an amount of currency. Either "$4" or "four dollars" is acceptable, but mixing notation is a war crime.

/extremelytepidtake

You're using an AZERTY keyboard a weirdo and the asterisk key is broken?

Fixed that for HOT TAKERY!! :P

Your hot take is that the French are weird?

Barely lukewarm - as an Englishman, I'm contractually obliged to agree with you.

"Queer Eye" (the TV show), is a fatally flawed TV show.

While it's pretty fun and endearing in its "Red America" outreach it has one giant flaw. It's materialistic / consumeristic in a way that's really off-putting the more you watch it. The show neatly packages consumption has a solution to becoming your best self. Worse, this message that permeates the entire show highlights exactly what's gone wrong with "Blue America".

There's empathy for the conditions that causes one to not take care of themselves, but they immediately sprint to solutions and solutions often require money and there's the giant blind spot.

DSGamer wrote:

"Queer Eye" (the TV show), is a fatally flawed TV show.

While it's pretty fun and endearing in its "Red America" outreach it has one giant flaw. It's materialistic / consumeristic in a way that's really off-putting the more you watch it. The show neatly packages consumption has a solution to becoming your best self. Worse, this message that permeates the entire show highlights exactly what's gone wrong with "Blue America".

There's empathy for the conditions that causes one to not take care of themselves, but they immediately sprint to solutions and solutions often require money and there's the giant blind spot.

That's the problem just about every makeover show has. The home makeover one was causing people to lose their new homes because they couldn't pay for the increased utility bills and taxes that came with the fancy new house.

It’s not a lot different from how social media, particularly Facebook, affects people. We self edit our lives to present the world, so our feeds look like everyone else has these perfect lives and perfect homes. It’s only half the story.

These makeover shows do the same thing, creating a false sense of needing the best of everything.

I have not watched the new Queer Eye, but my wife and I used to watch the old one. For me, the show was more about the social interactions of straight and gay men in which the gay men were privledged, and it was the straight guy being forced to adapt. And I thought the hosts were funny and very entertaining.

But I’ve not yet been drawn to tune into the new version.

The new one has a weird power dynamic as well. You definitely watch (sometimes) straight men getting comfortable with gay men. However, because a lot of the show is this red state outreach (explicitly so in the first season) the power dynamic is strange.

There’s almost a dynamic of the Queer Eye cast going on a listening tour to red America. As if after a few years of having similar rights to straight people suddenly gay Americans need to give straight men the attention *they* deserve. I mean, it’s good that they’re empathetic, but it’s a little weird sometimes in the first season.

Either way it worked then. This season I’m feeling the hyper consumerism a lot more.

That is a really interesting observation about how the power dynamic changed in a way I would not have seen coming. In that way, it's not a lot different than Sarah Silverman's show, which is an explicit listening tour.

I’ve heard that about the Sarah Silverman show. And look I have family in a red state. I had to recently move my father from Idaho to Oregon so my brothers and I could look after him. So I’m intimately in touch with how red state America feels and how urban America frequently condescends or looks down their nose.

It’s just strange to me to see 5 gay men almost apologizing to people who don’t want them to have rights. In some cases don’t even consider them people.

And yet somehow the show overcomes that weird power dynamic and works. Mostly.

It’s a twisted message to tell people that the solution is to spend more money is my hot take. Overall I think the show is interesting.

Bible verses are pre-internet Christian memes.

#Dead_Sea_LOLs

Stengah wrote:

Bible verses are pre-internet Christian memes.

Big Bible always pushing news ways for Teens to read the Bible. Hey kids the Bible is cool! Look memes and a Vine!

Stengah wrote:

Bible verses are pre-internet Christian memes.

Have you been reading Snow Crash?

NathanialG wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Bible verses are pre-internet Christian memes.

Have you been reading Snow Crash?

No. Chris Pratt tweeted a bible verse in response to James Gunn being fired.

"It was a dark and stormy night" is a perfectly fine opening sentence to a story.

Ghost is the most overrated Game of Thrones “character”

Arya is the most overrated Game of Thrones character

Game of Thrones is overrated.

Remember when Gamespot, Kotaku, and Polygon had articles about video games and not about Game of Thrones?

ruhk wrote:

Game of Thrones is overrated.

Is this even a hot take? I think this is 100% true.

DSGamer wrote:
ruhk wrote:

Game of Thrones is overrated.

Is this even a hot take? I think this is 100% true.

Comment moved to thread Things you should know by now, but only just discovered.

I've never seen Game of Thrones, but isn't it pretty much just Macbeth for a modern age?

Aaron D. wrote:

I've never seen Game of Thrones, but isn't it pretty much just Macbeth for a modern age?

It’s the Friends prequel.