I don’t think the ending of Oppenheimer hit audiences hard enough; as far as I could tell, I was the only one trying not to stumble as I walked out of the theater. A House of Dynamite helps to drive this gut punch home—three times—which, again, is being lost on audiences looking for entertainment.

A House of Dynamite is a film like Oppenheimer, which also ended with missiles in the air and showed no destruction of cities on screen.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuHE...

Imagine the end of the story where the president did wait (the DNSA pushed for it), and it’s a dud or a dummy/sick joke. The movie ends. The world lives on another day… in a house of dynamite. You're going to quote Oppenheim but not Bigelow? I mean, come on…
thebulletin.org/2025/10/a-co....

Leaving the ending unresolved, while dissatisfying those looking for entertainment, is exactly what this movie needed. And it goes to option/flaw number three — the President could wait.

Bigelow and Oppenheim don’t need the caricature of madness in Dr. Strangelove because the madness pre-exists in the structures that have already been put into place. Both the madness and the insanity are on film, regardless of how straightjacketed and unentertaining it comes across as.

Bigelow and Oppenheim challenge the notion that there are rational reasons.
I listened to this podcast, and the guy said, “It’s like we all built a house filled with dynamite — making all these bombs
and all these plans, and the walls are just ready to blow — but we kept on living in it.”

“I always thought having you follow me around with that book of plans for weapons like that... Just being ready is the point, right? Keeps people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war, right?”
Like you said before, it's insanity.

First, the setup is the least of my worries, but the “flaw” you’re able to hit the hardest. It’s actually addressed in the movie, with characters discussing why a single missile would be launched. It doesn’t matter; it’s not central to the subject matter. The Zoom call of doom happens either way.

Read both threads, your article, and listened to the Weekend Edition. Overall, I’ve been disappointed with the initial takes online; the movie hit me hard and was well done. Yours is one of the better takes, but I still have some issues.

I feel like I’m the only one making this connection, yet it seems so obvious. Kennedy isn’t trying to save lives.

rfugal.medium.com/when-environ...

I’m a Star Wars fan (full disclosure), but I am so impressed by Andor. I believe it stands on its own, like it would be worth watching even if the rest of the Star Wars universe didn’t exist. It doesn’t need it, yet it enriches it.

I’ve been writing in my notes that AI doesn’t communicate through language, it navigates through it, like a GPS, following the paths and grades that we’ve constructed with social labor.

... but more broadly, my model is mostly a response to and extension of David Share's Combinatorial Model.

I can send you more details about it if you're interested, and we can compare notes if you are looking at writing on the topic. Here are the key papers I've been looking at for the visual percepts angle... www.researchrabbitapp.com/collection/p...

My model of reading fluency (and language generally) situates it as an extension of perception. I've been developing a framework that positions languaging as perceiving and navigating a higher-dimensional sociocognitively constructed space through embodied cognition and perceptual simulations.

Thanks for putting these papers side by side, I’m learning a lot from both.

Sorry, an interdisciplinary interloper/interlocutor here, so I’m not as fluent in the discourse. I’m looking for the nuance in what your distinction is between qualia and perceptual integration? I’m working on a model of reading fluency that leans into perception and embodied cognition.