It looks like a black sea bass. They get enormous and it was common 100 years ago to catch ones like that. In CA they had to ban fishing them because they almost went extinct. They’ve made a major comeback though.

I actually grew up next to the blonde dude (Tobias Jelinek). I was friends with his younger sister and we went to see Hocus Pocus in the theater when it came out. It was really cool to see someone you know on the big screen like that.

I love HTtH. The rocket launcher to blow up doll scene? Beautiful.

I’ve been asking it complex questions that involve tons of context and conjecture as a way to test it out.

One question was “how would the world be different if the Roman Empire had discovered gun powder?”. It said that it’s impossible to know for sure, but that it would have likely led to an even more militarily and politically dominant Empire than it already was, that it would likely have been able to expand its borders even further, that it would have potentially profited financially by producing hun powder as an export, and that it may have been able to last much longer as an empire due to its military advantage.

This impressed me because all of those statements are very reasonable and I agree with them, plus compared to a google search they’re light years ahead.

I also asked it what Diogenes the Cynic would think about the modern world, and it said that it’s impossible to know for sure but that he would likely be upset by it. The rationale was that the modern world is consumer driven, with large class distinctions, and a life that is very far from our “natural” state. These are all the things that Diogenes railed against, even in ancient times, which have only gotten more severe and widespread.

This also impressed me because that answer requires context/understanding of a philosopher’s thought process in ancient times, his attitude about his own times according to his thought process, then how our current times relate to his ancient times, and finally an extrapolation of his thought process on our current times based on the difference between ancient&current times.

Again I agreed with its outcome and walked away impressed.

Oh man I came here to say this! Such an awesome movie.

Hmm interesting. That’s not the one I saw but that’s interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, sounds like it. Morodor but with wine and olives.

I agree. They were unusually focused on practical advancement.

The Romans were a special breed. Almost like a modern society in ancient times. It’s interesting how similar we are to them and also interesting to imagine what they could have done if they had discovered gun powder, or germ theory, or electricity.

I tried to find it again but couldn’t after a 3 min search. It’s out there somewhere though.

There’s a lot of articles about ancient Roman pollution due to large scale resource extraction and industrial output. Ice cores from glaciers are able to show the signature of the Romans due to how much wood they burned in order to run their empire’s production of goods.

There’s a story told by a Roman writer, I can’t remember who, about what it was like seeing a town in Spain that was set up to produce iron goods on a mass scale. They said you could see a haze in the distance as you approached and that there weren’t any trees left. When you got closer it became a sort of hell scape with everything covered in soot or ash and the sky was a dark orange. This was all from how many blacksmiths were working their fires and producing iron goods, so you can imagine the scale.

The Romans took their production to this level and had many towns like that one, so that’s how they were able to outfit their armies with swords and everything else.

I love this movie. It’s so ridiculous and weird.