I’m growing so tired of negativity I thought I’d see how a thread about things you like would go. I’m posting it in CS, because I’m mostly thinking about movies, books, music, cuisine etc, but an occasional non CS topic is fine.
A couple of rules:
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No negativity at all. If someone posts about song X, and you think song X is a war crime, leave it. Just try to be happy that it is giving someone joy.
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only mention the things you like about a thing. If you think movie Y is great, but actor Z was miscast, talk about how great the movie is, don’t mention actor Z.
So anyway, tell us about stuff you love. I’ll contribute in a while, but I’m curious where others go.
Not sure why this was tagged movies. Anything is good.
I hope we see the Top Gun Maverick trend of using real-life military props and keeping politics out of films continue.
In the Cafe sense, I adore ChatGPT. I’ll be chatting with it for as long as it exists. Talking to AI is the technologically closest thing to having a conversation with God that there is. I ask it all kinds of things about movies, music, art, and it gives great analysis.
Thank you for giving me a positive thingy. Thank you for trying to make negativity less of a top story.
I love a good, thoughtful, can be educational, one-liner.
In a newspaper, dictionary, googling or most anything read.
Something that just makes the point in one sentence with out wasting words.
I also love crossword puzzles and a good crossword puzzle dictionary, which I never ever use(
).
I’m learning to like silent movies. Not quite love yet.
Again, kudos for doing this.
Favorite movie one liner:
“They can’t all be winners, kid”. Bad Santa
The song Sweet City Woman makes me giddily happy whenever I hear it.
As Steve Martin said, it is impossible to play a sad song on a banjo.
We need more banjos in today’s music.
I can also use the song Sweet City Woman to clear my brain of annoying musical earworms, which happens to me a lot.
I’m enjoying the hell out of T. Kingfisher’s Saints of Steel series. It’s what would happen if Terry Pratchett wrote romance.
Consider the following excerpt.
Right. Paladin. Stoic warrior, charging boldly into danger, so on and so forth. He walked up to the tree, trying to look harmless and good-natured and also sexy, which was a complicated thing to convey. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hips. “May I join you?”
I also enjoyed, from the first book,
“Can we pretend that the severed head is the only thing that happened today?”
Many more severed heads than I traditionally expect in a romance. So funny but at times so moving that I’m like, “Damn. I wish I could do that.”
And here I thought I was your favorite.
The two new Dune movies are staggeringly great adaptations. They’re deeply respectful of the source material, but also confident enough to diverge in sometimes significant ways in order to reach the same thematic ends. They are both timeless and achingly timely, necessary for our current moment. We are incredibly, incredibly fortunate to have them, and their resonance will only increase over the coming years.
The Big Lebowski
I didn’t know what to make of it when I saw it in the theater. I think I was expecting a Tarantino style crime flick, which were the rage at the time, but man did this movie grow on me. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and every time I see something new. The dude is actually a decent detective, coming to the right conclusion once he has all the information. The story is a lot more coherent than people give it credit for and of course there are the endless quotable lines.
Clutch
Maryland’s greatest hard rock band. The only metal band with go go beats. Great lyrics, including a crab cake recipe.
We just got a new dog! She’s adorable! Pix and story soon! Promise!
I don’t speak Italian, but I’m pretty sure he’s singing “I think positive, because I am alive.”
Thanks for fixing the tag, @What_Exit !
At this very moment I’m liking Cash Cab on TV.
What a cool idea. Wish I ever got to do that.
Alas, just gotta enjoy the show.
@burpo_the_wonder_mutt , cannot wait to see new pupper. 
It’s a bright, sunny warm spring day out. Tomorrow will be similar. Don’t ask me about Monday, Eclipse Day – that forecast is wrong!
My son, who I haven’t seen for a few weeks (actually, many weeks, now that I think of it), is coming by for a four-day visit, and we’ll be watching a whole batch of recent movies and dining on comfort foods and nice wines. He tells me he’s recently developed a taste for good wine. The contributions in the “movies you’ve seen recently” CS thread have been very useful, including my own, because even my own comments provide a record of good movies that may otherwise slip my mind.
Yay!! And yes, please. And remember to include pix in the Pet Pictures thread!
A new pup is always such a joy!
After a long and inexplicable absence from my YouTube feed, Smooth McGroove appeared again the other day, and I realised I had just been missing out on his songs.
For the uninitiated: just a guy singing video game music, a capella, in solo-parallel - this is a representative example and it makes me happy every time I hear it:
Cash Cab rocks! A few months ago, when my wife and I drove my tweener son and his friend to the Twin Cities (two hours away), I had prepared Cash Cab -style questions for them as we drove through Minneapolis. It worked out perfectly! They even got their third friend to answer his cell phone (and he knew that answer).
The only hitch is that they were afraid to bug someone on the sidewalk. Understandable!
Further to the matter of puppies, which always belong in a positivity thread, I can think of two stories that maybe belong here.
Many years ago, when my son was around 12 or so, I got him a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog puppy (now represented in the abstract in my avatar). I began to have serious doubts about all the care the dog would need, and when my son started sneezing in what appeared to be allergy to the dog, I used that as a justification for taking the puppy back to the breeder. Now that’s a sad story, but hold on … 
My son was in tears after that, and I was in turmoil. Some days later, feeling like a complete idiot in more ways than one, I called the breeder and asked if the puppy was still available because I wanted him back. He said yes, he still had the puppy. The day we reclaimed him and knew that he was for sure our forever puppy was one of the happiest days ever. And yes, Bernie turned out to be everything one could ever want in a dog!
I used the traditional crate method to house-train him. Pretty soon he was consistent about asking to be let out to do his bathroom duties. So one bright sunny morning I decided we were done with training, and started to dismantle the crate. Bernie was still in it, still waking up as I removed the top. He seemed to sense that a new phase in his life had arrived, and was so overjoyed that he leaped right out of it! I’d never seen him jump so high! 
There was a bar near me that had a Cash Cab happy hour. It was a ton of fun.
