calliope

His hand being right above a firing, shortened shotgun is an interesting choice.

I’m pretty sure I remember the scene too, actually! That’s probably why I’m so adamant that the original poster is confused or bending the truth for dramatic purposes.

I think most people from the U.S. would understand the context like I did… because Watson reacts to the gun being in the desk.

If I’m remembering it correctly, Watson pauses or something when he sees a gun in the drawer. At the time I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of show it was going to be, or what the context of the gun might be. But him pausing gave me information! It’s a TV show made when they provided information visually instead of also saying it out loud.

Even if someone wasn’t thinking about the laws or culture of the country the media was made, the context needed to understand is provided right in the episode.

But it’s more fun for OP to spin that up into “People from the U.S. are so used to guns…”

Nope!

But the “desk gun” has been a trope in fiction for at least 40 years, which I think is what the original poster is confusing with reality. It’s ironic given their talk of “media literacy.”

What they seem to mean is that Hollywood movies and U.S. TV series use guns in different ways, and it became clear to them when they saw Sherlock.

I’m actually not sure if they consciously know the difference, because a significant number of people take media as a representative shorthand for reality and it’s not.

ya’ll are brainless morons merely voting down that which you understand.

Say again?

I remember the created NC 17 for tv when became adult.

NC-17 predates the TV ratings system by six years: NC-17 for movies was introduced in September 1990, and the TV parental guidelines introduced in December 1996. The equivalent rating for television to NC-17 is TV-MA.

But for me you say X then you are saying a porno.

This is actually why NC-17 was created by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1990. For decades X was “no children allowed,” but X wasn’t copyrighted by the MPAA and it was eventually co-opted by the pornography industry, as you mentioned. The MPAA still needed something for wider-audience films that weren’t pornographic.

There were a lot of X-rated films in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that were rated X but weren’t pornographic. Midnight Cowboy, The Evil Dead, and A Clockwork Orange, for example, were all rated X on release. None are pornographic but probably shouldn’t be seen by children.

The Wikipedia page on the X rating and the MPAA rating system in general has more info.

I feel like we’ve reached a new low when the news cycle is focusing so heavily on commencement speakers.

I thought that was Jason Bateman for a hot second

Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company’s offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company’s new artificial intelligence data tracking program

Imagine still working at Facebook

The Wrap says:

Billy Joel spoke out against an in-the-works biopic from director John Ottman on Tuesday, saying that the life and music rights needed for the film have been denied for years and to move forward with it would be “both legally and professionally misguided.”

“Since 2021, the parties involved have been officially notified that they do not possess Billy Joel’s life rights and will not be able to secure the music rights required for this project,” a spokesperson for Joel said in a statement to TheWrap.

It actually looks like nearly-universal praise, from this article at least.

One guy calls it a “mess,” but the vast majority of the posts say that it’s a lot of fun and a “Saturday morning cartoon come to life” with a lot of respect for the original material. It also embraces the quirky and campy, but has some tired, replayed tropes and some heavy-handed morality.

This is probably my favorite one, from Griffin Schiller on X:

Pains me to say it, but Jared Leto is genuinely unrecognizable and very, VERY good in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Imagine growing a conscience and still working at Meta. In 2026.

I don’t see them quitting, just complaining in an email. So brave.

A few older ones come to mind.

Jaws is maybe an obvious one, unless deep ocean is the main priority.

The Abyss is another one, from 1989, directed by James Cameron.

I saw both of them when I was a kid and they were really memorable. I haven’t watched either in several years but I would watch them again. Especially The Abyss.

Less “great” and more “mediocre 1980s slasher with an inaccurate title,” Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is mostly set on a small cruise ship on the way to Manhattan. I actually hated it when I was younger because of the misleading title, but I watched it again last year and I liked it more. I just had to adjust my expectations that it was actually Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Murders The Kids On A Boat. Obviously, the killer is Jason and not an animal, but I thought it was slightly better than it gets credit for.

It’s honestly remarkable. And it keeps getting upvoted too!

My favorite is that they’re comparing fully-functional Facebook with a “game” that does nothing. Uh… cool.

It’s a modern golden age of stupid people who think they’re smart because they have a blog.

The bottom guy is Parson Brownlow, who was the governor of Tennessee and later a U.S. senator. I had to image search him because I wasn’t familiar with his face.

From Wikipedia:

Brownlow aligned with the Radical Republicans in the state, supporting President Abraham Lincoln’s policies and spent much of his term opposing the policies of conservative Republicans. Brownlow’s gubernatorial policies, which were both autocratic and progressive, helped Tennessee become the first former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union in 1866, exempting it from the lengthy federal military reconstruction inflicted on most of the South.

Soon after the Civil War, Brownlow and Radical Republicans utilized their control of state government to enfranchise male African-American former slaves with the right to vote and run for public office in Tennessee and extend other civil rights to all former slaves.

The top one is Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the U.S.

I did this too! I had her write down the ingredients of my favorite Mac and cheese she made, and I still have it.

1Tbsp salt in boiling water
Add 4 cups macaroni When cooked, drain/add
1/4 cup milk
2 cups Kraft grated cheddar cheese

I liked the grated from the bag as a kid because she made me grate my own cheese. Ha!

The movie was bankrolled by Saudi Arabia to set up infrastructure for the entire filmmaking industry there. That’s why it was so expensive.

Also, a large chunk of the $150 million budget was literally putting infrastructure in place to manage a production of this size. “On-set insiders say Saudi production hub Neom Media was effectively laying the infrastructure for an entire industry on the budget of ‘Desert Warrior,’” the report noted.

https://www.slashfilm.com/2160537/anthony-mackie-desert-warrior-one-of-biggest-box-office-flops-ever/

deleted by creator

I thought this was interesting, at the end

Also, a large chunk of the $150 million budget was literally putting infrastructure in place to manage a production of this size. “On-set insiders say Saudi production hub Neom Media was effectively laying the infrastructure for an entire industry on the budget of ‘Desert Warrior,’” the report noted.

You’re right! I forgot who I was talking about.