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A few of my muslim students said that they couldn’t draw a rainbow in art class, “because in our religion this is a bad thing”.

I asked them “but are not all of nature’s wonders the work of Allah?” While I watched the gears rolling behind their eyes I told them to ask their imams “who makes the rainbows in the sky?”. And that they may return their given assignments after having received the answer.

The first film could open with the Battle of the Powers in full swing. Then we’d take a step back, with a Vala (Mandos?) explaining why this war was fought, explaining the creation of Arda and the awakening of the Elves. Then the capture of Melkor.

The mostly peaceful Great Journey would be a nice break after the action of the war. Thingol and Melian’s meeting would also be a critical thing to include. The Great Journey could conclude with the Eldar crossing the sea on the island, then a few thousand year time jump forward.

The elven civilization of Aman is now in full bloom and rhe focus is now on Fëanor, who is already s reknown master of many crafts. Melkor is released on probation and things go bad. The Doom of Mandos might be a better cliffhanger, cutting off at the Oath would leave the impact of Fëanor’s bad choices stunted. His “from the best to the worst” - arc would have the maximum effect wirh him ordering the first Kinslaying and betraying his brothers by burning rhe ships in the first film.

I’d say that two thirds of the film should be about Fëanor and Melkor in Aman, with the bombastic war of the gods in the beginning that should have enough intrigue for general audiences.

And yes, six films should be minimum to give justice to the overall story of the Silmarils ;)

This, but split the first into two films. Introducing the setting and the players of the First Age and the Fall of the Noldor in one film would be too much. The first film could end at the Oath of Fëanor or the Noldor receiving the Doom of Mandos.

The second one would end with the realms of the Noldor already established with the siege of Angband in place. The epilogue would see Finrod discovering and befriending the first Men in Beleriand. Otherwise the jump to the following “Beren and Lúthien” would be awkward and Finrod’s sacrifice wouldn’t have the depth it deserves.

These two films should be “Morgoth’s” films, establishing him as the nigh unbeatable force of irredeemable evil that he is. Since he takes a step back in the further tales, these should flesh him out and make it perfectly clear that the Noldor’s war against him is hopeless without the Valar.

These two would be the obvious choices, being the stories where the characters even actually do get some characterizatization.

The big problem with the film adaptations would be laying out the setting of the First Age properly to audiences who would not be familiar with the story. It would need a lot of worldbuilding to get it right.

The Silmarillion is my favourite book and I would love to see it done right. There is hope, even if it is slim.

My bad breath disappeared completely after I started scraping my tongue daily. I also use a textured toothbrush, no complaints.

This is the way.

Windows updates should be accompanied by “Yakety Sax” playing loud in the background.

Generally the subtitles here used to be exceptionally good, but nowadays the quality varies wildly. The broadcast companies used to have their own in-house experts who did the translations extremely well, translating even the proverbs and cultural idioms to a form that made perfect sense in the context. Those old school translators were highly respected.

But then the companies started skimming money off everything to increase their profits and started buying the translations from the cheapest provider, which led to the drastic drop of quality consistency.

I learned English by watching subtitled films and series since I was 4, we had a VHS-system which I used extensively. At the time there was very little domestic production aimed for children and almost 100% of imported material was subtitled, so that kids would have an extra incentive to learn how to read. I remember that the Disney films my friends had were always dubbed, but my parents considered them too expensive to buy.

My kids are now in the lower grades of elementary school and I’ve watched a lot of new subtitled films with them. The translations aren’t downright bad, but they are clearly “lazy”. If there is something difficult to translate directly, mostly they just skip it if it’s not important to the plot. And many of them are done by only listening to the audio track, missing the visual cues that would indicate the correct meaning of the words. As in use of “a drill” as a tool, when it should be about a training excersize.

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

This is the way

Legion is simply amazing. I still do not understand how they got it made.

Winamp is one of the few things I really miss from Windows.

This young woman is an exceptional writer. Not many her age can achieve such coherency and well laid structure in longer essays.

I hope she will continue using her skills and keep fighting against this new rise of misogyny.

A long, long time ago my friends baked a batch of brownies. One of them had managed to buy a batch of “really good weed” and dumped it all into the batter. I wasn’t present during the baking, but when I got offered one I could tell just by the smell that it was STRONG.

I ate just one small brownie while we watched Pulp Fiction. My friends ate 2-3 each. “There’s something wrong with these, I’m not feeling anything”, they said.

By the time the film ended my friends were giggling and squirming on the couch. Coherent speech was far beyond them. I was also pretty high, but with a little bit of focus still in full control of my abilities. I brewed a fresh pot of strong coffee, drank a few cups and kept watch for an hour or two. It took a lot of effort, but I got my friends to drink some water and I walked/dragged each to the toilet, so they wouldn’t soil the couch.

Then I made sure everyone was resting comfortably and walked home. It was a warm summer night and I remember vividly how awesome all the sounds and smells felt on that long walk.

Next morning I called to check up on them and everyone was feeling great, but not one of them had any idea what had happened after the 3rd act of the film.

We’re about the same age. If I had a penny every time I discovered that something we were taught as the truth was later discovered to be completely wrong, I’d have a LOT of pennies.

Do you have a source for this claim? I remember reading an article where a mosquito researcher claimed that eradicating mosquitoes would have basically zero effect on any ecosystem. While they provide an additional food source for several species, no other species is dependent on them. If they would disappear, their predators would just eat something else.

One could argue that if the mosquitoe’s predators switched their cuisine, it could have an effect on other insect species. But the reseacher was adamant that this would be neglicible, since in many regions mosquitoes don’t even hatch until mid-June and the birds do just fine without them.

A clipshow episode. These were used as cheap fillers when the shows still had 20+ episode seasons, if the production needed to save money this was the easiest way to do it.

My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don’t, nothing in-between. They work or they don’t.

Around the time when HDMI was released my friend bought some "super-high-end "cable that cost over 200$, since he wanted the "best possible performance " out of his system. I tried to explain that the cheapest cables would give the exact same results if they’re not faulty from the start. We had a loud argument about this, even though the guy is a goddamn tech PhD. He just could not admit he got scammed and tried to give me a lecture about “how the gold plated connectors make all the difference”.

You are correct.

This anecdote is empirical, I know, but from my own experience I know how very hard if not impossible it can be to tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC tracks, even with a high quality setup.

I happened to find excellent vintage studio monitors some time ago and with my music afficionado friend we wanted to try if we could tell the difference. We are no audiophiles, but we both can tell the difference between good and bad sound.

Both selected three favourite tracks from different genres and we converted the CD-ripped FLACs to 320kbps CBR and put them on a random playlist with the originals. Then we listened.

Both got a few right, but I couldn’t really say what it was that made guess the FLAC. It was more like a feeling in the back of your head than anything substantial. “This sounds somehow more alive” is maybe the best description I can give. Or it was just dumb luck.

Anyway we came to the conclusion that 320kbps can be enough to replicate an enjoyable sound, at least for us. Not one track sounded lacking and we had a good time with our little experiment.

EDIT: Fixed typos.