Thread by @butserfarm on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Once, a little boy in Novogrod doodled on birch bark. Over 700 years later we can see his artwork miraculously preserved -- and if you're a parent, you might have something similar up on your fridge! The boy's name was Onfim, and he dreamed of being a knight (and a monster too). Here's some more of Onfim's drawings, including knights on horseback and someone yelling (?) at Onfim (top left). In another of Onfim's drawings of a knight, he captioned it with his own name. Could these knights be Onfim and his friends having adventures? Image Onfim also wrote a lot, practicing the alphabet and doing homework. Here we can see his homework on the bottom of a recycled birch bark bag. On the right, he wrote 'Hello from Onfim to Daniel' beside a picture of a fire-breathing monster who proclaims 'I am a wild beast'! Image Children so often get left out of our understanding of the past, but kids have always been here, playing and learning and discovering their world. Finds like Onfim's doodles are so precious because they remind us of that fact -- in a child's own words, even!"
Rimming was Everywhere in the Middle Ages, but Not for the Reason You Think - "For medieval Christian writers it wasn’t performing oral sex but receiving it that was the greater sin. The early eighth century Penitential of Theodore, a handbook for confessors that advised them on how much penance to prescribe for various sins, stipulates that “someone who sends semen into the mouth shall do penance for seven years: this is the worst of evils.”... in ascending order of severity sexual crimes progressed from masturbation, to fornication (sex between unmarried partners), adultery, bestiality, anal sex, and then oral sex. Of course, this is just one particular view of things so we should be careful of concluding that this is what all Catholics or even Catholic clerics thought. Even for the married (male-female) medieval couple, navigating the regulations about when and how one could have sex was remarkably complicated. James Brundage’s Law, Sex and Christian Society includes a somewhat hilarious flowchart illustrating the decision-making process. Sex was only permissible if the couple had been married for more than three days; the wife was not menstruating, pregnant, or nursing; the couple wanted a child; it was nighttime on a Monday, Tuesday or Thursday; the couple was not entirely naked; and they weren’t contemplating having sex in a church. Sex also should not take place during Lent, Advent, Easter, Whitsun week, or on a fast or feast day. And even if you met all of these regulations and were careful to ensure that you never saw your spouse naked, you should have sex only once, and avoid lewd kisses, intercourse “from the rear,” and oral sex. As Brundage puts it, “The regime seems well devised to rob marital sex of spontaneity and perhaps of joy.” It really raises the bar on what it means to have ‘bad sex.’ It’s not entirely surprising that the standards of acceptable sexual interaction have shifted in the past millennium. Even in comparatively brief periods of time perspectives could easily change. Dr. Erik Wade of the University of Bonn has argued that in the 700s, before the Penitential of Theodore was written, bestiality was a pretty minor sin. Then it transitioned, he told me, to a serious sin comparable to homosexuality “and by the late Middle Ages, bestiality was considered one of the most horrific sexual sins.” The shift, he added, took place precisely because of the comparison with homosexuality, which the church regarded as a serious offense. The irony here, he added, is that “while modern conservatives might resist gay rights by claiming that they are a slippery slope to legalizing bestiality (as Justice Scalia liked to claim!), medieval clergy seem to have [thought the reverse and] made bestiality’s reputation bad by comparing it to men who have sex with men.” When it came to sexual indiscretions, however, women largely flew under the radar. Apart from adultery, Wade told The Daily Beast, women’s sexuality was rather under-theorized: “The Church rarely paid much attention to women having sex with each other and often treated female homosexuality as a minor sin, at least until the late Middle Ages.” There are other sexual sins that people seem to have worried about, however. The penitential manuals, Wade argues, addressed questions that people had posed to the archbishop. Other fairly common inquiries found in these texts include the penance for sex between the thighs, incest, men raping women, pedophilia and—in one unusual tidbit—how much penance a nun should do for having sex with another nun using a “device.” One omission from penance lists is rimming, or anilingus. Given that awareness of rimming in (straight) mainstream culture is relatively recent, perhaps this doesn’t strike us as surprising. For anyone who has examined medieval manuscripts, however, it’s a strange oversight because so many manuscripts contain images of anuses being kissed and licked. The reason for the disconnect, Wade told me, is that “these images, as well as the references in literature to lips encountering backsides, seem to all be comical.”... If ass-kissing was something other than pure comedy, then the roots of its meaning was theological. In her book Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: The Devil in the Latrine, Martha Bayless explores how Christians considered the lower parts of the body—especially the backside— to be a source of sinfulness and, well, filth. Wade explained that this is “why medieval illustrations of devils often had faces on their groins or backsides, to show that their bodies were as disordered as their morality. Kissing a rear end meant that your morality was distorted.” Images of witches sealing pacts with the devil often show them kissing his anus or the anus of a cat. When the Knights Templar were disbanded for heresy, part of the accusations against them involved devil worship and the related practice of anal kissing. Of course, this doesn’t mean that people weren’t engaged in anilingus, Wade said, “They likely were. It’s just that at a cultural level, the act seemed to signify something else.” The humorous undertones persisted in 18th century cartoons that showed politicians kissing the behinds of voters... our sense of which parts of the body are considered erogenous zones has changed; how we categorize certain behaviors has altered. Until recently labels “heterosexual” and “homosexual” were meaningless in contexts that condemned oral and anal sex between genders. In the medieval period, some manuals for confessors group sex “from behind” or anal sex between a married couple not with sexual sins like masturbation or adultery, but rather with other marital issues. It’s not at all clear that they saw anal sex between a man and a woman and anal sex between two men as the same kind of thing even if they thought both were sinful."
Video | Facebook - "Pranking Chinese Locals With My Chinese Tattoo! My Tattoo Says "Kung Pao Chicken" In Chinese 😂"
AI finds conservative women more attractive, happier in photos - "Conservative female politicians tend to appear happier and more attractive in pictures than liberal politicos, a new artificial intelligence study conducted in Denmark found. Published in the Nature-owned journal Scientific Reports in March, the research found AI can predict a person’s political ideology with 61% accuracy by analyzing just one headshot. The scientists inputted about 3,200 publicly submitted photos of political candidates who ran in the 2017 Danish municipal election into Microsoft Azure’s Face API tool to assess the person’s emotional state. The analysis found 80% of the faces displayed a happy expression, while 19% read as neutral. “For females (though not males), high attractiveness scores were found among those the model identified as likely to be conservative,” read the findings. “These results are credible given that previous research using human raters has also highlighted a link between attractiveness and conservatism.”... “We also found that expressing happiness is associated with conservatism for both genders."
Liberals get very upset when you point out that conservatives look better and are happier than liberals, because they don't Trust the Science
Meme - *Fly flies into web*
Spider: "It's over. You won't disturb my human anymore. Sleep well my friend"
China's Great Wall damaged by workers looking for shortcut - "A part of China's Great Wall has been severely damaged by construction workers in central Shanxi province, who used an excavator to dig through it... A 2016 report from newspaper Beijing Times suggests more than 30% of the Ming Great Wall has disappeared entirely, with only 8% of it considered well preserved."
Woman Whose Face Was Tattooed Against Her Will Gets Removal Surgery Thanks To A Kind Stranger - "Usually, you are warned to think twice before getting a tattoo inked on your face. But Taylor White had no choice in the matter when obscenities were forcibly tattooed onto her face when she was just 21. Over a decade later since the traumatizing incident, the Florida resident is finally in the process of removing her extensive face tattoo, thanks to the kindness of Karridy Askenasy, also known as TheDadBot to his TikTok followers, who stumbled onto White’s livestream by mistake... On the night of her 21st birthday, he took Taylor out to a local bar with the intention of getting her drunk for the first time in her life. However, unbeknownst to her, he and his friends allegedly harbored more wicked plans for the night. The man, whose identity Taylor chose not to disclose, brought her back to a hotel room after several drinks that left little to no energy in her to fight back. Her memory went blank from that point until the following morning when she awoke in the vacant hotel room, her face in pain. Upon looking in the mirror, she discovered “really horrible things” inked on her face, which she refrained from describing due to their horrifying nature. After being holed up at home for weeks while waiting for her wounds to heal, Taylor went back to her tattoo studio in the hope that heavy concealer would hide her vandalized face. However, her worst fears were confirmed – she won’t lead a normal life looking like this. “He said, ‘You can’t live like this,’” Taylor said referencing the reaction of her boss who offered to cover the unwanted face tattoos in blackout ink so that she at least could live a semi-normal life... Remarkably, a laser tattoo removal company named Removery generously agreed to perform the removal at no charge, a service that typically carries a price tag in the thousands of dollars. Carmen VanderHeiden Brodie, the vice president of clinical operations at Removery, has told the NY Post that it could take “upwards of two years” to bring Taylor’s life back to normal."
Pouring water on the FIRE movement: Experts say retiring at 35 is impossible for most — and even if you can, the cost is high - "There are many stories of people who have scrimped, saved, invested and retired early, some as early as 35. These stories sound idyllic, and their tellers inspirational — do what I did, and you too can have this life. But it’s not that simple. Finance experts say the concept has both positives and pitfalls. Ian Calvert, vice-president and principal at HighView Financial Group, said there are different interpretations of the FIRE model, from moderate to extreme. There are success stories of those who have taken the more extreme route, said Calvert, but it’s important to remember there are certain prerequisites to this lifestyle. “You have to have … super aggressive savings right out of the gate,” he said. In other words, if you graduate from university with debt, or you don’t have financial help from your parents, you’re starting with a handicap that likely means you will not be able to retire at 35 no matter how aggressively you save. Jason Heath, managing director at Objective Financial Partners, agreed. “It’s not attainable for a huge part of the population,” said Heath. No matter how many times you turn down the latte or avocado toast, you can’t make up for large financial setbacks in just a matter of a few years. Another misconception about FIRE is the idea that once you reach retirement, the rest of your life will be a financial breeze. While that may be the case for a lucky few, for most, the discipline that got them there must continue as they are essentially relying on a fixed income for the foreseeable future. Those who do retire significantly early will miss out on paying into pension plans, noted Calvert, meaning they won’t have the pensions in later life that others do. They’ll also be missing out on their prime earning years, as many people see their salaries and bonuses go up toward the middle or end of their careers. Heath said the longer people are retired, the more opportunity there is for things to go wrong, whether it’s a stock market downturn or a medical emergency. Some millennials have been lucky so far in the market or in real estate, but they can’t assume that growth will continue unchecked, he said. Jessica Moorhouse, financial educator and host of the More Money podcast, said it can also be hard on people’s mental health to be extremely frugal, even for just a few years. Her advice? Plan for tomorrow, but live for today. Heath worries that when people choose “frugality at all costs” in order to reach certain milestones, they make lifestyle sacrifices they will regret later. He knows some people who succeeded in retiring early, got bored and went back to work. Financial independence doesn’t have to be about retirement; it can help people make a career change or go back to school... The simple math that some FIRE evangelists push is not always the best path, said Moorhouse. People need flexibility and a buffer for emergencies, not a strict rule, when it comes to saving and investing. “You’ll be more likely to succeed with whatever your goal is if you can be flexible and make changes and pivot when you need to.” Heath said what the average person can learn from FIRE is the principle of setting financial goals, and aiming to spend less than they make to achieve them."
How "The Print Shop" Turned People into Banner Wizards in the 1980s - "In 1984, Brøderbund Software released "The Print Shop," a pioneering desktop publishing app that allowed anyone with a PC to easily make large banners, signs, and greeting cards at home for the first time"
Iran – Missing In Action – Jeremy Corbyn - "A number of ‘lefties’ have gone missing in action. The precise point they went missing is telling. Jeremy Corbyn, still the leader of HM Opposition, Labour, seems to go missing shortly after the outbreak of ‘WWIII with Iran’, around the time the Iranians shoot down flight PS752... This is true to form. Attacks on astonishingly bad regimes are met with Corbyn’s dismay that WWIII is about to start, while these terrible regimes otherwise get little attention from Corbyn … unless they are Marxist Socialist regimes. Next, Jeremy is miffed that Boris hasn’t included Jezbollah in any briefings on the ‘assasination’ … nobody seems to know why... he justifiably and rightly tweets about the murder of a taxi driver in Finsbury. But nothing on Iran... Jeremy seems not to like anyone being thankful that the Middle East is rid of Soleimani. A pity Jezza thinks more of what the theocratic state’s TV has to say than the persecuted Iranian people who seem to be very grateful the “reckless and lawless” Soleimani is gone... In Iran on the 7th, at the contrived burial procession for Soleimani, the state killed at least 56 people and injured over 200. Nothing from Jeremy? You’d think he’d show sorrow for such a loss of life, as he usually does. However, this is a diplomatic nightmare for Jezbollah, star of Iranian state TV, well wisher of the homecoming of a ‘brother’ terrorist’s return to Iran... on the 8th, the Iranians fire missiles, supposedly at US bases in Iraq, and PS752 goes down, killing all on board. In the end, not quite the glorious day the regime and its supporters hoped for. Where’s Jeremy? He’s usually out of the trap with a rocket up his own up his ass when there are condolences to be given. Nothing. On the 10th he manages a retweet on the sorry state of the NHS... WTF!?? It wasn’t merely a crash??? Even the mullahs are saying they shot down the plane. And what about the #FreeIran2020 protests now making news everywhere except on ‘lefty’ accounts? Nothing. .. So much for his complaints about Johnson’s two days in getting back to YOU, Jezbollah. The man can’t even acknowledge his precious theocratic regime shot down a passenger plane. Where’s his outrage at that? Oh, it was merely an unfortunate crash. What a despicable toady to mullahs he is."
From 2020
Iran – Missing In Action – Owen Jones - "Owen Jones writes articles on a number of issues, but mainly Labour support, and, being gay himself he writes and campaigns on LBGT+ issues. You’d think Owen would be all over the Iranian regime, given they are well known for hanging gay men. He has occasionally tweeted that Iran’s regime is “vile”, though under the search term ‘Iran’ there’s no explicit tweet about the hanging of gay men, or the protests by Iranian women about the forced hijab. His comments on Iran focus almost exclusively one of his obsessions: the US potential for starting a war with Iran – not in itself an unrealistic concern, but when he has zero tweets about gay men being hanged by the regime, it makes one a little suspicious of his motivations and his agenda. I’m not suggesting he’s not interested in these issues or in the suffering of people in Iran, but what I am suggesting is that his political biases prevent him being explicit about it … after all, it wouldn’t do to be thought an Islamophobe. And, what would Mehdi Hasan think about it? This post is about how Owen is quite interested in some events in Iran, such as the killing of Soleimani, and the prospect of US troops going into Iran. Until, that is, flight PS752 is shot down. Then it all goes very quiet. Not unlike other left wing accounts... Mind reading, the uncanny skill that all left wingers seem to be blessed with... From the downing of the plane, through the street protests of the Iranian people, his only tweet of street protests is of events in India – and that’s because in this case the victims are Muslims and the perpetrators are not, which is such a consistent bias seen all over the far left it would be comical if not so tragic a betrayal of liberal principles to the fascism of Islam... An authoritarian state? The UK? Well, I too am concerned about the restrictions on free speech … restrictions that Owen Jones seems to have either overlooked or supported. And yet he has nothing to say on Iran and the #FreeIran2020 protests going on there, where an actual authoritarian state is now taking pot shots at protesters, with live rounds, … in the aftermath of having shot down a passenger plane. This is our freedom loving socialist people of the left: Fuck freedom, if it means we have to criticise Islamic regimes, or heaven forbid, actual Muslims no matter how despotic they are."
'My sugar addiction ruined my life - I was a recluse and hid cans under my bed' - " As well as her declining health, Em was severely overweight at 17 stone and had blotchy, spotty skin. “I was eating so badly. I was a sugar addict for so many years of my life,” Em, from Wintree, Liverpool, said. “I was drinking between five and six bottles of Lucozade a day, as well as Coca Cola, Dr Pepper, and anything I could get my hands on to get that sugary hit.” The sugar addiction was causing Em to have frequent dizzy spells, heart palpitations and chronic fatigue. And as well as physical ailments, her mental health was suffering too, presenting as anxiety, depression and agoraphobia."
Woman who got tattoo dedicated to her local butcher insists she's 'not crazy' - "Tattoos are a personal thing to everyone individually. Whether you opt for something small and personal, something big and bold or something a little more sentimental to you- everyone's opinions are different. What might be amazing to one may not be to another's taste. However, one woman has taken sentimental to a whole new level and wanted to appreciate one thing that meant a lot to her - her local butcher. Sharing her adoration for Malcolm Michaels Quality Butchers in Leeds, the doting fan has hit back at cruel trolls who have called her 'crazy' for her unique new tattoo."
Meme - "One day English will kill us
CROCODILES DO NOT SWIM HERE"
Meme - "Say something positive about gay Men"
"Not only do they leave more girls for us, they take another dude with them."
Gojek driver refuses detour to Ng Teng Fong A&E for man having heart attack, stops him 450m away at preset drop-off point - "A 52-year-old man suffering a heart attack booked a Gojek ride to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, but the driver refused to send him to the A&E directly, insisting on going to the drop-off point that the man had booked by mistake. The hospital's A&E is located at Tower B, while the customer had booked his destination on the Gojek app as Tower A, 450 metres, or a two-minute drive away. Despite his protests, the man was eventually dropped off at Tower A in the early hours of the morning on Sep. 2 (Saturday). Thankfully, he managed to find his way to the A&E on foot and was able to undergo heart surgery in time."
S'pore govt committed to maintaining racial percentages but CMIO shouldn't be overemphasised: K Shanmugam - "Speaking on Singapore's immigration policy and its importance in helping to maintain the CMIO percentages, Shanmugam stated that the government is "publicly committed to keeping our [CMIO] percentages more or less constant". However, Shanmugam shared that the percentages are not maintained to keep the Chinese community percentage at 70 per cent, but the main community concerned about immigration is the non-Chinese community. He shared that when he has dialogues with senior Malay community leaders, the main question he gets is whether the government would set the community percentage to 14 to 15 per cent. He cited the challenge in persuading "highly skilled, successful Malays from Malaysia or Indonesia to come to Singapore." "The Malays are very, very sort of mindful that they want to be the second largest community in Singapore. Now, if you mess with that, you undermine Malay confidence." "Our guarantee, that these percentages we do our best to keep them constant, is actually because of the Malay community." Later, Shanmugam clarified that he views keeping the percentages constant as a form of assurance. "We see this as a kind of assurance, so that people feel assured of their place, and they are not going to be overtaken.""
Tourist, who has been to 33 countries, shares why S'pore not in her list of favourites places - ""There is just no natural substance to the country," Grace said as she listed all the reasons why Singapore did not make the cut... one gripe she had was that she did not have pleasant encounters with Singaporeans. "I'm not sure if it's a me thing, but locals are pretty rude," she said, without mincing her words. She proceeded to share an unpleasant encounter she experienced with a local taxi driver as soon as she arrived at the airport. Grace said the taxi driver did not smile at her and her travel companion. She was also made to put her luggage in the trunk by herself. The only conversation they had, she claimed, was when he asked how much money she makes. Grace's next reason was that Singapore feels "super westernised". She said she did not feel like she was really in Asia when she was in Singapore, though she was unsure if it was because there were a lot of tourists and expats living around the area she visited. Shortly after making this claim, Grace revealed that she stayed at Marina Bay Sands during her time here. She went on in the video to state that everything in Singapore is expensive... Grace also claimed she had trouble finding a restaurant that was not "overpriced" and had "decent food", making her turn to the hawker centres to settle her meals. Grace then asked, as she shared that everything in the city-state is man-made and created just for entertainment: "What do you actually do in Singapore besides eat and shop?" "I feel like it's the Las Vegas of Asia but actually not quite there yet," she said."
Hollow Kawali Handles - "Almost every Filipino household has a kawali or wok. It’s the quintessential kitchen equipment: used for everything from searing meats and sautéing vegetables to frying an egg. Most Pinoy woks are made of aluminum, carbon steel or cast iron, and often silver or black. The typical one has a short, hollow handle. No one has really given this design much thought. That is, until a Reddit user posted a pretty convincing theory about the true purpose of that hollow handle... “TIL (Today I Learned) the short handles of local Pinoy woks are actually sockets for the REAL wooden handle as per original Chinese woks,” OP said. “Which means for the longest time, Pinoys have been suffering pointlessly with our dumb f***ing woks.”"
Rotten Tomatoes Still Has Hollywood in Its Grip - "In 2018, a movie-publicity company called Bunker 15 took on a new project: Ophelia, a feminist retelling of Hamlet starring Daisy Ridley. Critics who had seen early screenings had published 13 reviews, seven of them negative, which translated to a score of 46 percent on the all-important aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes — a disappointing outcome for a film with prestige aspirations and no domestic distributor. But just because the “Tomatometer” says a title is “rotten” — scoring below 60 percent — it doesn’t need to stay that way. Bunker 15 went to work. While most film-PR companies aim to get the attention of critics from top publications, Bunker 15 takes a more bottom-up approach, recruiting obscure, often self-published critics who are nevertheless part of the pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review. (These payments are not typically disclosed, and Rotten Tomatoes says it prohibits “reviewing based on a financial incentive.”)... Between October 2018 and January 2019, Rotten Tomatoes added eight reviews to Ophelia’s score. Seven were favorable, and most came from critics who have reviewed at least one other Bunker 15 movie. The writer of a negative review says that Bunker 15 lobbied them to change it... The Ophelia affair is a useful microcosm for understanding how Rotten Tomatoes, which turned 25 in August, has come to function. The site was conceived in the early days of the web as a Hot or Not for movies. Now, it can make or break them — with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit. The Tomatometer may be the most important metric in entertainment, yet it’s also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked. “The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”... Rotten Tomatoes — with help from Yelp, Goodreads, and countless other review aggregators — has desensitized us to the opinions of individual critics... There’s also no accounting for enthusiasm — no attempt to distinguish between extremely and slightly positive (or negative) reviews. That means a film can score a perfect 100 with just passing grades. “In the old days, if an independent film got all three-star reviews, that was like the kiss of death,” says Publicist No. 2. “But with Rotten Tomatoes, if you get all three-star reviews, it’s fantastic.”... When a studio is prepping the release of a new title, it will screen the film for critics in advance. It’s a film publicist’s job to organize these screenings and invite the writers they think will respond most positively. Then that publicist will set the movie’s review embargo in part so that its initial Tomatometer score is as high as possible at the moment when it can have maximal benefits for word of mouth and early ticket sales. Granted, that is not rocket science or even particularly new. But the strategy can be surprisingly effective on tentpole releases, for which studios can leverage the growing universe of fan-run websites, whose critics are generally more admiring of comic-book movies than those who write for mainstream outlets. (No offense to comicbookmovie.com.) For example, in February, the Tomatometer score for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted at 79 percent based on its first batch of reviews. Days later, after more critics had weighed in, its rating sank into the 40s. But the gambit may have worked. Quantumania had the best opening weekend of any movie in the Ant-Man series, at $106 million. In its second weekend, with its rottenness more firmly established, the film’s grosses slid 69 percent, the steepest drop-off in Marvel history... in 2018 when Rotten Tomatoes loosened the restrictions on whose reviews could be indexed. Once, the site had required its contributors to write for publications with substantial web traffic or print circulations. Now, more freelance and self-publishing critics have been allowed to join along with some who review movies via YouTube or podcasts. The move has been widely characterized as a response to long-standing complaints over a lack of gender and racial diversity on the site and in criticism at large. A 2017 study found that 82 percent of Rotten Tomatoes’ reviews of the highest-grossing movies of that year had been written by white critics and 78 percent by men. With its more relaxed criteria, Rotten Tomatoes gave the “critical conversation a hard push in the direction of inclusion,” declared the New York Times. Rotten Tomatoes says that more than 1,000 new critics have become “Tomatometer-approved” since 2018, bringing the site’s total to about 3,500. Of those new members, the company says, 50 percent are women and 24 percent are people of color. (Rotten Tomatoes also says that with individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ or say they have a disability factored in, 66 percent of the new critics come from underrepresented groups.)... in 2016, the average Tomatometer score for all wide releases was in the rotten low 50s. By 2021, that average had climbed to a fresh 60 percent... Attempts to evince a relationship between movies’ Tomatometer scores and their financial success have yielded conflicting results. A 2017 study by the director of USC’s Data & Analytics Project concluded that “Rotten Tomatoes scores have never played a very big role in driving box office performance, either positively or negatively.”"
Weird. I thought it was a conspiracy theory that companies paid for positive film reviews to game metrics
When "diversity" is a way to game metrics
Bruce Willis' aphasia was suspected by coworkers for years. - Los Angeles Times - "The 67-year-old’s family said he will retire from acting because he has aphasia... According to those who have worked with the elder Willis on his recent films, the actor has been exhibiting signs of decline in recent years. In interviews with The Times this month, nearly two dozen people who were on set with the actor expressed concern about Willis’ well-being. These individuals questioned whether the actor was fully aware of his surroundings on set, where he was often paid $2 million for two days of work... fans online began questioning why Willis was cranking out so many low-budget films, most of which were panned by critics. The group behind the Razzie Awards, which each year compiles a list of the industry’s worst films, in February created an entire category for Willis’ films."