Thule/Pituffik is why the whole "buying Greenland" thing never made sense to me, no matter how you try to look at it or steelman it... Before they were threatened with being purchased and invaded, Greenland and Denmark were our allies, and it's not like Greenland had a shortage of (non-green) land. If it was about military access, we could have just asked to build another base.
My wild guess is to make our adversaries and the world think we are capable of being a nation that attempts to conquer other lands. More so make our adversaries like Russia know we are not weak and we can conquer too and or we are now unhinged too don't even think about messing with us.
Whether my assumption is right or wrong its a different vibe then the peacemaker image/vibe previous administrations have followed.
OK there's that (Site J is fascinating). But there's also another in-mountain base near Helheim Glacier, and an under ice research base midway between Helheim and Jacobshavn Glacier (Site G or H?)
lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
Eh... it's extremely flabby, like most of these franchise-tied TV series (all the Marvel ones have the same problem, both the Netflix and Disney ones, though the Netflix ones are far worse about it). Tons of scenes where I want to yell at the editor "fucking cut away! It's over!" and then it goes on another 20 seconds, shots where it clearly should have cut a couple seconds earlier, whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character, et c, and it adds up.
My best guess for why they do this is that it fills time with fewer set-ups and sets, saving production costs. I can't figure out another angle for how this could be saving money per minute of "content".
The new season makes that really clear, because each 3-episode "movie" is 130ish minutes long and clearly could have been one 90ish minute film without losing anything important at all, still with plenty of time for relaxed-pace character development and such.
> whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character
Modern TV is made to be consumed (I use that word intentionally, not watched) by people who aren't really paying attention to what's happening, so you need to restate any major plot point several times to make sure it sticks.
You've got 30 seconds you shot that, when the editor sits down to put it all together, definitely needs to be trimmed. But if you do that, it's 30 fewer seconds of "content". Your business measures output in terms of minutes of content, finished or watched. If you leave it in, the scene's worse, but how many viewers will stop watching because of it? Fewer than what it's worth to have that extra half-minute of "content". So it stays.
And operating this way, you can shoot 7 minutes of dialog that'd be trimmed to 4.5 minutes in a good edit (it's many individual shots, and most have at least a little on the beginning or end that need to go), instead trimming only what's absolutely necessary and get 5 or maybe 5.5 minutes out of it; do that over an entire 40 minute episode and you've saved yourself an entire longish scene that you'd have had to set up for otherwise, to fill the same time. Each set-up is expensive, so that's also saving you money despite being the same amount of "content".
Way off topic, but it makes me wonder if Trump can't "get" Greenland the way he wants, if he'll just order Google et.al. to change their maps to show it as part of the United States anyway, and let cultural seepage do the work for him.
"This must be America. It says so on Google Maps!"
https://archive.ph/bTZuA
A couple other threads (on Project Iceworm and its tunnels),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 ("NASA aircraft uncover Cold War nuclear missile tunnels under Greenland ice sheet (space.com)"—42 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42249801 ("California scientists accidentally find nuclear fever dream in Arctic snow (sfgate.com)"—4 commments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374013 ("The U.S. Army tried portable nuclear power at remote bases 60 years ago (atlasobscura.com)" (2021)—152 comments)
There's very interesting bases in Greenland even today.
Such as?
Presumably, you mean Pituffik Space Base[1], formerly Thule Air Base, and Thule Site J?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Site_J
Thule/Pituffik is why the whole "buying Greenland" thing never made sense to me, no matter how you try to look at it or steelman it... Before they were threatened with being purchased and invaded, Greenland and Denmark were our allies, and it's not like Greenland had a shortage of (non-green) land. If it was about military access, we could have just asked to build another base.
No need to ask. As mentioned in the article, the U.S. has the right, by treaty, to build military bases in Greenland already.
Are there mineral/energy resources there to extract? That's the only thing that would make sense to me.
yes, significant amounts
My wild guess is to make our adversaries and the world think we are capable of being a nation that attempts to conquer other lands. More so make our adversaries like Russia know we are not weak and we can conquer too and or we are now unhinged too don't even think about messing with us.
Whether my assumption is right or wrong its a different vibe then the peacemaker image/vibe previous administrations have followed.
Interesting assumption. Could be the administration is attempting to seem “relatable” before negotiating with Russia and China.
OK there's that (Site J is fascinating). But there's also another in-mountain base near Helheim Glacier, and an under ice research base midway between Helheim and Jacobshavn Glacier (Site G or H?)
lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
The most interesting ones are probably secret.
“Helix” was a fictional TV show about a bio lab in the arctic.
Is this the one where they brought in a nuclear reactor?
edit: Yes, it was the PM-2A. A "portable" (but larger) version similar to the infamous SL-1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program#Lis...
Here's a documentary on Camp Century https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.2569752
This seems a color version of the same,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5tWbTCocA ("Camp Century, The City Under The Ice - 1964 - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage")
(Found via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408226#30411047 (under "Newcomer's Welcome Package: Thule Air Base, Greenland [pdf] (militaryonesource.mil)"—60 comments (nb. the OP is a dead link)))
reminds me of stargate sg1
The ideas in fiction come from somewhere…
This is amazing. Would love to see what it looks like down there now.
I have a friend that was stationed there. He's pretty old. I think it was in the 1960s.
Wild. The most Hoth-like thing I've seen.
Hoth was almost certainly inspired by Camp Century (first profiled in the Saturday Evening Post in 1960)
Really.
Offtopic: Andor series is the best Star Wars.
I too will use any excuse to proselytize Andor. Speaking of Andor, it's the best Star Wars anything of all time and some of the best TV period.
Can confirm, peak Star Wars. All the references to the original movies are on point
Eh... it's extremely flabby, like most of these franchise-tied TV series (all the Marvel ones have the same problem, both the Netflix and Disney ones, though the Netflix ones are far worse about it). Tons of scenes where I want to yell at the editor "fucking cut away! It's over!" and then it goes on another 20 seconds, shots where it clearly should have cut a couple seconds earlier, whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character, et c, and it adds up.
My best guess for why they do this is that it fills time with fewer set-ups and sets, saving production costs. I can't figure out another angle for how this could be saving money per minute of "content".
The new season makes that really clear, because each 3-episode "movie" is 130ish minutes long and clearly could have been one 90ish minute film without losing anything important at all, still with plenty of time for relaxed-pace character development and such.
> whole pieces of dialog that are painfully redundant, restating things or adding nothing to either plot or character
Modern TV is made to be consumed (I use that word intentionally, not watched) by people who aren't really paying attention to what's happening, so you need to restate any major plot point several times to make sure it sticks.
I do think the cost thing is a factor.
You've got 30 seconds you shot that, when the editor sits down to put it all together, definitely needs to be trimmed. But if you do that, it's 30 fewer seconds of "content". Your business measures output in terms of minutes of content, finished or watched. If you leave it in, the scene's worse, but how many viewers will stop watching because of it? Fewer than what it's worth to have that extra half-minute of "content". So it stays.
And operating this way, you can shoot 7 minutes of dialog that'd be trimmed to 4.5 minutes in a good edit (it's many individual shots, and most have at least a little on the beginning or end that need to go), instead trimming only what's absolutely necessary and get 5 or maybe 5.5 minutes out of it; do that over an entire 40 minute episode and you've saved yourself an entire longish scene that you'd have had to set up for otherwise, to fill the same time. Each set-up is expensive, so that's also saving you money despite being the same amount of "content".
yes, nuclear submarine can not shoot nuclear warhead thru ice that is true.
[flagged]
Way off topic, but it makes me wonder if Trump can't "get" Greenland the way he wants, if he'll just order Google et.al. to change their maps to show it as part of the United States anyway, and let cultural seepage do the work for him.
"This must be America. It says so on Google Maps!"
[dead]