Charles Coonce

15th Century Tech Guru

[James Walker @jwalkermobile]

Boarding this morning’s flight with my emotional support trout…

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

Once you understand that every single "Christianity is evil" argument made in the West by vapid culture warriors could literally only function in a space where Christianity built all current hermeneutics, it's hard to take these people serious.

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

I am utterly bored with the sophomore level hermeneutics of the newer heretical teachers.

At least the Gnostics and Docetists tried something interesting.

I miss the old Kanye.

[Protestia @Protestia]

"I do not believe Christ died for our sin....I don't live in a sacrificial culture anymore... When people are like 'I'm just moved by the idea that Jesus died for our sins'- I'm not. I don't even understand the sacrifical system."

'Pastor' of Vinnings Lake Church is too honest.

[The Last Homely House @AHomelyHouse]

"Sir, there is a fourth man in the fire".

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

Please stop this whole "engaged" thing for 4 years. It defeats the meaning of what an engagement is

[Nostalgia @NostalgiaFolder]

Heinz EZ Squirt Ketchup (2000-2006)

[Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar]

If you say that something is fake, a false flag, a setup, a hoax, a psyop, or staged before you have gathered any evidence and had a chance to analyze it, you’re radicalized, and that radicalization is impacting your ability to assess reality.

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

There's some real irony in this coming from a gov that won't even extradite terørists after an attack.

[Pop Base @PopBase]

Wireless Festival has been cancelled after the British Government banned Kanye West from entering the United Kingdom.

[Tom Holland @holland_tom]

Startled (but kind of flattered) to learn that I have killed New Atheism

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

This may very well be a facet:

[Spencer Askew @spencer_askew]

Outside of the fact that the film is incredibly well-made, I’ve been ruminating on why Project Hail Mary has struck such a cultural chord.

I think it comes down to the reality that society is starving for hope. “Cool guy” cynicism is dead. People are craving “earnest,” even when it’s cheesy. We’re through resonating with jaded and bitter characters that turn up their nose at concepts of goodness and self-sacrifice.

We want someone who stares the apocalypse in the face and still finds a reason to have hope, crack jokes, and love their friends well.

They pushed nihilism HARD, and it has been thoroughly and utterly rejected by the masses.

PHM is a return to meaningful storytelling, rather than disillusioned content-creation.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

$33.1M opening day with zero green screens. Read that again.

Project Hail Mary cost $200 million to make. Lord and Miller built the entire Hail Mary spacecraft as a practical set. Thousands of physical buttons, hundreds of real screens, a hatch modeled after ISS designs. The alien, Rocky, is a full animatronic puppet designed by Neal Scanlan, the creature shop legend behind the best Star Wars practical work. Ryan Gosling acted against a real puppet in every single scene.

The movie has 2,018 VFX shots. That sounds like a lot until you compare it to Avatar: Fire and Ash, which ran over 3,500. The difference: Avatar builds the world digitally and asks the audience to believe it. Project Hail Mary builds the world physically and uses VFX to clean up wires, remove puppeteers, and paint in space backgrounds. One approach creates spectacle. The other creates presence.

This is a $200 million bet against the last 15 years of Hollywood production logic.

After Avengers: Endgame, the industry standardized around green screen stages and digital environments because it was faster and cheaper per shot. Studios could reshoot entire sequences in post. The tradeoff was invisible until it wasn't: audiences started describing blockbusters as looking like "video games." Snow White's $42M opening. The Marvels at $46M. Quantumania. Ant-Man built on a soundstage that looked like it.

Lord and Miller went the opposite direction and spent more money on physical construction than most studios spend on entire VFX pipelines. Greig Fraser, the cinematographer who shot Dune, lit the Hail Mary with practical lights so the camera could move freely through real corridors. When Gosling floats in zero-g, that's wire work, not simulation. When he touches a panel, it's a real panel.

Guillermo del Toro saw the film and called the commitment to practical sets and puppets "a goal, an aspiration, and a commitment. Especially now."

The "especially now" is doing all the work in that sentence. He's talking about an industry where the default response to a $200M budget is to minimize physical production and maximize digital flexibility. Project Hail Mary did the opposite and just posted the biggest non-franchise opening day in domestic box office history.

The audience can tell. They've always been able to tell.

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

The entire economy is just podcasters getting mad at other podcasters.

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

JUST IN: Hamas calls on Iran to stop attack on neighbouring countries

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

The reactionary horseshoe right have reached a point where I can't tell if they are a.) the most obtuse people to exist or b.) Have succumbed to the "Candace" phenomena and can only exist in a ragebait engineered algorithm sphere.

[Joel Webbon @JoelWebbon]

Is Jesus a Jew?

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

@drantbradley @modsiwW

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

@SandyofCthulhu I thought it was about the comrades we made along the way

[Charles Coonce @eccentricoonce]

@bluesky

[Daniel @growing_daniel]

The samurai is born, not made

[Simon Sarris @simonsarris]

tell them the truth

[O.W. Root @owroot]

My parents had an electric carving knife that they kept in a plastic box in a drawer in the basement. It only came out a couple time each year, and Thanksgiving was one of those times.

Because they only used it sparingly, and because my parents keep things forever, it was old to quite old. My wife's parents were the same way. Taking the electric carving knife out was like an unspoken ritual, like bringing out the big guns, the special weapons, the reserves. The meal was nearly ready and the blade was at the helm.

Finally, once the meal was finished, the knife would be cleaned, and everything would be put back into the plastic container and returned to the cabinet in the basement to wait for the next time it was needed.

These are not the carving knives we had, but they were similar.