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Almond

@almondsquirrel.bsky.social

610 followers 360 following 3.4K posts

I know things and squeak a lot. Begrudgingly Seattle.

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Reposted by Almond

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 53m

one response to this (correct) observation is to say “well, the cops will attack you no matter how you dress and behave.” that’s right. images of cops and ICE beating grandmas and kids in inflatable frog costumes is a win for the opposition.

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 2h

one of the reasons they're so mad at "no kings" is that they thought they were going to get a different kind of protest. they *want* the black bloc to be out there fighting with the cops. those are the images they've been trying to generate from "go." instead--

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

MAGA Rage at “No Kings” Boils Over—and It Quickly Backfires on Trump

As Trump allies smear the coming protests, a good writer on MAGA skewers the absurdity of these attacks on large swaths of Americans—and explains why our best recourse will be to turn out in force.

newrepublic.com

Reposted by Almond

Lemonlight @lemonlight.bsky.social · 14h

I'm pulling tricks with my Sega Genesis that would make Hiroshi Yamauchi rise from the fucking grave just to shit himself

Reposted by Almond

小島秀夫 @hideokojima.bsky.kojimaproductions.jp · 3h

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 3h

But instead sociopathy is defeated by punching the guy who just follows orders really hard and thus superman films will never escape the allegation of them being knuckleheaded bro fests where brawn solves all problems and any moral complexity or social commentary is just another villain scheme.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 3h

This is also yet another reason why Lex begrudgingly helping superman save the world at great humiliation to himself would have been a much more interesting direction and made Superman's moral argument stand out so much more - caring about people is powerful, even sociopaths need to care for others.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 3h

Another point why Lex doesn't work as Evil Tony Stark: Tony *is* morally disposable which is why we care when he chooses to give up weapons manufacturing even at great personal cost - he could have just retired on a beach. Lex has to be evil though for the plot, so there's no weight to his choices.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

But the problem with 2025 Superman is that Lex is **morally disposable** to the movie's plot. He builds nothing of value to society and everyone turns on him immediately, so his defeat is meaningless. Lex is shielded by his metahumans more than his humanity, making it a Man of Steel Punchfest.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

It's the most capeshit thing ever for me to say but Ryan Reynolds coming back as Green Lantern only to go batshit insane and fight Nathan Fillion Guy Gardner sounds fucking great.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

It's not quite marvel villain syndrome but the fact that Lex is so cartoonishly pathetically self-defeatingly evil in Superman 2025 makes me think they'll do a much better job handling Darkseid, Sinestro, or Brainiac. I'm excited to see Guy Gardner show up in an Emerald Twilight adaptation.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

"Over time, society will improve toward utopia, until socipathic monsters like Lex Luthor are no longer needed. But until that point, we have Superman, who can remind us of what it means to be human."

Instead we got "Sometimes you got to punch narcissists in the face" which is fine I guess.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

But it's kind of a toothless, feckless, cowardly move that absolves the audience of having to blame society or themselves or their own value system. They don't have to think "Hm, maybe we shouldn't give rich people all the power in society" because they can go "Oh well Lex is obviously evil!"

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

I get why they turned Lex into a Palmer Luckey style military contractor, because imagine the optics of "Superman wants to stop the guy who makes clean energy and free housing???" But swinging it to the opposite extreme of "superman's haters are actually bots" is kind of insane.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

Nicholas Holt's acting is great. But it's not JLA Lex, It's not comic Lex, it's definitely not All Star Superman lex and it's far from President Luthor.

It's a better version of Smallville Lex, but a worse version of every other Lex, and I do worry any All Star Superman adaptation will kinda suck.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

I get why they wrote it that way - they don't want lex to become a Tyler Durden/Joker/Travis Bickle style character.

But the message of Superman really fell flat for me because the way they wrote Lex kinda showed that Punching People Really Hard Until They Incriminate Themselves is the solution.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

Their core dynamic is missing:

Lex has the ability to kill superman, but can't exercise it without ruining his reputation or destroying the world.

Superman has the ability to arrest Lex, but can't exercise it without violating the laws of our society and becoming an enemy against earth.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

Often, Luthor will begrudgingly team up with superman rather than let the world die, knowing he'll get another chance. It's DARKSEID is the one who would destroy a world just to rule over the cinders.

Lex is a transhuman OPTIMIST - a character attribute completely missing from the film.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

But the problem with 2025 Superman is that Lex is **morally disposable** to the movie's plot. He builds nothing of value to society and everyone turns on him immediately, so his defeat is meaningless. Lex is shielded by his metahumans more than his humanity, making it a Man of Steel Punchfest.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

To break it down:

Society shields Lex from Superman's punches, despite him being narcissistic sociopath, because lex is good at all the things superman is not: making trains run on time, inventing clean energy, fixing the economy, and building hospitals. Enforcing morality is **hard**. It matters.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

Luthor is superman's Foil. Superman is raised on a farm, Luthor runs away from home to the big city. Luthor is entrenched in human politics, business, society, Superman is an outsider. Luthor is a sociopath rewarded handsomely by society, Superman is empathetic but ostracized in a thankless job.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

It's really hard for the film's core message - "Empathy is punk rock" to have weight when it's foil message "sociopathy is the establishment" is so weak. Lex is a villain /because/ he is supposed to represent the /best/ of humanity, forcing the audience to look inward and critique their own values.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 4h

I finally watched Superman 2025 and while I generally do like the movie, I have one big issue with it:

Superman's message is extremely undercut from writing Lex Luthor as so irredeemably evil that he would risk destroying earth just to kill Superman, which is wildly out of character for him.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 8h

The pareto front for computers right now is memory bandwidth vs memory capacity for the price.

For $4k you can get a Mac Studio with 96GB at 820GB/s.
For $6k you can get an Epyc/TR desktop with 256-384GB at 390-580 GB/s.
Even $2-3k can get you 128GB Strix Halo at 256GB/s.
Spark is luxury computing.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 13h

Memory bandwidth is going to be a limit on these, and it's cripplingly slow (<300 GB/s) compared to a mac studio or epyc workstation (500-600), primarily because they use cheap LPDDR5 instead of HBM/GDDR6. This kind of makes it useless for any serious AI production, it's a tinkering box.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 13h

To be fair, it does have a lot faster FP8/FP4 performance for raw computation, but as an "AI box" it's kinda lackluster and really overpriced, obviously aimed more at replacing desktop workstations and 'business laptops' with these 'AI boxes'. They're cashing in, not innovating.

Almond @almondsquirrel.bsky.social · 13h

Nvidia plans to sell people RTX 4060s with 128GB of VRAM for $4000

The Verge @theverge.com · 14h

Nvidia’s ‘personal AI supercomputer’ goes on sale October 15th

Nvidia’s ‘personal AI supercomputer’ goes on sale October 15th

Get the computing power of an energy-hungry datacenter from the comfort of your desk.

www.theverge.com

Reposted by Almond

Casval Rem Pike-un ☄️🍩 @redcomets.net · 14h

Kamille looking baffled