Models Abound
No, not these kinds of models: intellectual models!
This is a video where the creator puts forth the following: that when creating film, one can entropy, or de-entropy. The act of de-entropy is characterized as distilling down an idea to its core-most element, and having a razor focus on it. He uses the Star Wars "light saber" as one of the best possible examples: it intimates close-quarters person combat, it's elegant, it's color-coded-- remember, Darth Vader's is red-- and serves as a movie prop-equivalent metaphor for the whole film's premise.
Adding entropy, by contrast, involves splintering your idea by adding obnoxious ironic self-aware bits where they are inappropriate, having meta references to absolutely nowhere, or blindly serving up nostalgia in a hollow way. He uses the example from the second Star Trek reboot film, where Benedict Cumberbatch's character says his name is "Khan"-- even though none of the characters in that version of the timeline even know who Khan is. It's a shameless nostalgia grab which serves no purpose for the film itself: it's entropy.
I couldn't even make it all the way through that particular film before I shut it off. This video creator's model explains why the film felt so silly and impossible for me to take seriously. He describes that film today is made by corporate passion, versus creative passion: today's films are't intended to be good art-- rather, they are designed to fill a niche in a publisher's product portfolio, to sell merchandise, to tick a box for a streaming service, and so forth.
Sound familiar? Every single thing he discusses applies to contemporary video games as well. Maybe I'll write a future post, building on that premise-- although it's largely self-explanatory for my regular readers who also play modern video games. It's also interesting that he follows up on the "is it me, or the content?" question in the same ways that I have, many times.
Three Ways to Reply
A second model I'd like to discuss comes from a book I've just started reading: "Theology and Sanity", by Frank Sheed. The premise is that if I say to you, "What is over there?" while looking at a desk, you have three ways of replying:
- You can see what is there: "Yup, it's a desk."
- You can not see what is there: "I don't see anything."
- You see what's not there: "No, that's a chair!"
People living along with you in The Real World will reply with the first option. People who are blind to the truth or perhaps who have their heads in the sand will reply with the second option, which he calls "darkness"-- the inability to see what's there. The third option is reserved for those are live in their own unreality, in delusion-- a situation he calls "double darkness".
I just turned forty two years old. Over those decades I've seen a pattern-- like making a gradient in PhotoShop or The Gimp: in my younger years people spoke predominantly in the first manner; then things shifted to denial, as people increasingly were being unable or unwilling to confront the truth; nowadays, it's a fifty-fifty shot that I'll get the third kind of reply, where people are so far off into the weeds that it's like they are living in a another, parallel dimension.
But that's an ephemeral "Fourth Turning" artifact. Let's return to Frank Sheed's model: he explains that "nothing" does not have form; God created us from nothing; thus, the only thing retaining our form is God's will; if God were to cease willing it, we would disappear back into nothingness instantly.
People who do not recognize God-- my example might be a materialist scientist-- are thus not living in reality: they can recognize accidents of reality, like atoms or light photons, but they are ultimately not able to see the whole. He equates it to an expert in eyeballs, who has never seen a face: without the context of the face, the beauty and ultimate form of the eyeball is not available. Meanwhile, people who actively reject God fall into the forth category: they profer strange delusions in place of reality.
GR Corolla Driving Impressions
I haven't discussed the new car much yet.
Size-wise, it's comparable to the WRX-- perhaps ever-so-slightly larger. But it gives off similar proportions as the Subaru, when standing next to it. The seating position is similar as well: upright, sitting "high up" as compared to my old 350z or my current GR86. There is a huge amount of headroom-- a weird amount, almost.
Like my 86, to start the engine you depress the clutch and brake pedals both, then hit the GR-branded "Start" button. Immediately, three things become obvious: the engine exhaust note almost sounds like a diesel truck, as it's very deep and oddly coarse; the clutch pedal has a lot of travel and is very communicative as to where it catches; and the car feels very "busy", with lots of flashing animations on the digital gauge cluster, and across the touch screen's user interface.
The GR86 has a touch screen and digital gauge cluster too, but it has none of the Danger Features-- er, I mean, "Safety Features"-- which characterize the GR Corolla. The 86 leaves you alone; the GR Corolla has mazes of nested "Settings" menus where you can tell the car not to ding at you if a bicycle is coming, or not to steal the steering from you if you shift in the lane, among several other dangerous and distracting modes and behaviors-- all of which have bizarre, impossible-to-recollect acronyms.
Thankfully, those features seem to stay off, with the exception of the "slam on the brakes" Danger Feature, which not only re-enables itself on every car start, but which puts a large orange light on the cluster when disengaged-- it's like having a "Check Engine" light on all of the time. Further, the cruise control needs to be manually flipped to the normal cruise mode on every car start, as opposed to the default meat sack "automatically be just as maddeningly inconsistent as the idiot in front of me" mode.
Pre-flight checklist complete, the driving can commence: and it's superb! Just as in the 86, the GR Corolla's electric steering rack manages to feel almost hydraulic. The car does not have much power down low, but still feels significantly more torquey than the 2014 WRX at, let's say, 2500 rpm. It has two drive modes, "Normal" and "Sport"-- I couldn't tell what the heck the difference was. There is also a "Custom" and "Eco", neither of which I care to bother with.
The brakes feel great. Progressive, and strong.
Like the old-- God rest its soul-- WRX STI, the GR Corolla has different diff modes. The "Track" 50/50 mode feels just like the also-50/50 2014 WRX-- the car rotates at high speed in the same kind of neutral, pleasant manner. The 60/40 mode is intended for normal cruising, and does not feel neutral at high speed. Meanwhile, the 30/70 mode is disappointing: the rear-wheel drive "emulation" just feels awkward and unnatural in a car with a 58/42 front/rear weight bias.
Where the 86 gets sideways at the mere suggestion, the GR Corolla is planted. Even with the stock summer tires, on a wet road, in the cold, I was unable to get even a hint of movement out of it.
I have no clue how quick this car is, being only 120-odd miles into a ~600 mile engine break-in period. On paper it can do quarter mile in the low-13s, which is quicker than anything I've personally owned before.
Overall, the car is great. Where the GR86-- at least initially, the car has grown on me significantly-- feels like it has economy car parts grafted together into an entry-level vehicle, the GR Corolla feels more premium. It has heated mirrors, heated wipers, heated steering wheel, a leather interior, a wireless phone charger, wireless Apple CarPlay support, a heavy-duty and notchy feeling shifter, and myriad other characteristics. It feels more "custom" and less "budget", like the 86.
My only criticism is that it is too computerized for my taste. It's not as obnoxious as my mother-in-law's ~2020 Subaru Forester, a car I feel I am guiding, like a horse, versus being in control of-- but it's still a bit too far in that direction, to the point where I feel its obtrusively-placed touch screen (the 86's is recessed down below the dashboard-- out of the way) and hyperactive gauge cluster are distracting.
All the same, I think with more driving time behind the wheel, I'll become more acclimatized and able to enjoy the car's mechanical advantages, which seem plentiful.