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Hindustan Times
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Mountainhead movie review: A hangout trip with tech billionaires turns nasty in this blunt satire by Jesse Armstrong
Mountainhead movie review Cast: Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, and Jason Schwartzman Director: Jesse Armstrong Star rating: ★★★ The shadow of Succession looms large over the premise of Mountainhead- a hilariously morbid, tragically fierce takedown of the ultra-rich. Eat the rich yes, but it is the rich who want to eat themselves. The action begins at a mansion nestled in the snow-capped mountains, where four notoriously rich tech bros meet over the course of a weekend, while the world begins to fall apart. {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} Peppered with deliciously cold dialogues and twisty characters, this feels like familiar terrain for director Jesse Armstrong, fresh-off the feverish success of Succession. One can almost say this could be a spin-off from the Emmy-winning HBO show. The premise Mountainhead is essentially a chamber piece, where the entire action unfolds within the interiors of this mansion tucked away in the mountains. It is the brainchild of Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the founder of a successful wellness app, trying to take up his millionaire status a few notches higher. He basically wants to be on the same page as his three billionaire friends whom he has called to stay over the weekend. One of them is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), who owns the social media app called Traam. He seems to casually refer to acts of mass violence as fake, even as the same app's AI features have caused global outrage. 'This is so hyper-real it can't be real,' he says. Then there is Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose AI company is a potential threat to Venis. He becomes the moral compass of the group. The papa bear in the group is Randy (Steve Carell), the billionaire investor who gets to shoo away a doctor after receiving some bleak health report. 'My view, and it's essentially Hegelian, is that the whole of history essentially operates on the 'F***! What? Cool!' principle,' he believes. {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} What works {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} What works {{/usCountry}} {{^usCountry}} This is just a specimen of the brutally sharp and twisted dialogues that abound in Mountainhead- a film that is wry, unhinged and incredulous, often in the same breath. Armstrong seems to be playing a game here- flirting with an idea with such passive-aggressive distance that it never really takes itself too seriously. The build-up to the central crisis is hilarious and shocking in the way these men try to justify what they are about to do. They are desperate, hungry and absolutely feral; and the film digs into the satire that often trespasses into Lord of the Flies territory. The rich would kill themselves if need arises. The rest of the world can go to smoke. {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} This is just a specimen of the brutally sharp and twisted dialogues that abound in Mountainhead- a film that is wry, unhinged and incredulous, often in the same breath. Armstrong seems to be playing a game here- flirting with an idea with such passive-aggressive distance that it never really takes itself too seriously. The build-up to the central crisis is hilarious and shocking in the way these men try to justify what they are about to do. They are desperate, hungry and absolutely feral; and the film digs into the satire that often trespasses into Lord of the Flies territory. The rich would kill themselves if need arises. The rest of the world can go to smoke. {{/usCountry}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} However, Mountainhead often lacks a sort of momentum and emotional bandwidth because these men are simply too untrustworthy and impossible to witness. The film is almost too cold, too rigid. I could almost feel the absence of a Shiv Roy-like figure in the room, someone who could slightly shake off these men off their blissful ignorance. Nevertheless, the film is elevated to a degree because of the performances of the cast. Final thoughts Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman are in fine form, and Cory Michael Smith is extremely effective in finding the comic vulgarity in Venis. But the real standout is Ramy Youssef- who sees through the rest of them a little more, and makes sense of the deception and manipulative behaviour that lies ahead in the game- poker or not. {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{#usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} {{/userSubscribed}} Mountainhead is a film that is driven by temptations and amoral impulses. It is a shot at the dark end of despair. The tone is extremely precise in its bleakness and doom, given how immediately transfixing these global threats of AI and global crisis have become. There is a moment where a riot in shown in India, and the men watch the scene on Television- with nothing remarkable to note. They are half-convinced of it, and half-bothered in equal measure. But these men have all the power in the world, and we can't help but be alarmed. Mountainhead is available to watch on JioHotstar. 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Time of India
15-05-2025
- General
- Time of India
Upanishadic neti neti and hegelian dialectic
By Sumit Paul Upanishadic neti, neti, not this, not that, and Hegel's dialectic, while distinct, share a common thread: the use of negation and movement to arrive at a deeper understanding of reality. Though Hegel's dialectic focuses on developing concepts through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, neti, neti is a process that enables an inquirer to arrive at the ineffable nature of Brahmn, Ultimate Reality. Hegel's dialectic is a method of philosophical inquiry positing that reality progresses through a dynamic interplay of opposing forces: a thesis, a proposition or idea; its antithesis, a counterproposition; synthesis, a new proposition that reconciles the two. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad employs neti, neti to describe the nature of Brahmn, the ultimate reality. While there are dissimilarities between Hegelian dialectic and Upanishadic neti, neti , both systems are unanimous on one count: rejection of absolutist ideas. Nothing can be called the ultimate truth because even the socalled truth is never the universal truth – neti, neti. What perpetually eludes us is the Ultimate Truth. According to Nyaya Shastra, there are only subjective truths and relative realities. Spiritual quest must never stop. It should go on and on. 'Tujhe paa lene mein woh betaab kaifiyat kahan/Zindagi woh hai jo teri justajoo mein kat gayee.' In other words, it's always better to travel than to arrive. Hegel believed that to negate is a man's intellectual fate. Both Hegel and Upanishads must be understood and appreciated in today's context of obstinacy, to use Foucault's phrase, when every religion insists that it's the only chosen path and every belief system calls itself the best and flawless. Both Hegel and Upanishads believe in transcendence of ideas and existing truths. Marcel Proust believed there was no end to spiralling ascendancy of quality. It's like perfection. You can only strive for it, but you can never become perfect. One, therefore, needs to keep improving and evolving till the last breath. To be an absolutist is to close all doors to Truth. Religions and their moral codes are periodic and relative truths. So, when we insist that what we know is the absolute truth, it blocks further inquiry and exploration into the nature of reality and different ways people experience Ultimate Reality. As veils lift, more profound mysteries, echoing ongoing nature of spiritual and intellectual exploration, are revealed to those who continue to inquire. As we peel away layers of ignorance or illusion, we will find that journey of understanding and knowledge is an ongoing process. Hegelian dialectics and Upanishadic wisdom emphasise that true understanding is not a destination but a continuous journey. Once we understand Hegelian dialectic and imbibe the spirit of Upanishads , we can expand the scope of our knowledge and understanding. It'll also mellow us, inculcate universal empathy and enhance our ability to engage in dialogue. For some, it may facilitate satori. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Express Tribune
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Sociology of dissonance
Listen to article Warning: This piece delves into big idea debates. If you are distracted or fasting, leave it for now. Come back to it with a stimulated mind and a full stomach. We live in an age of cognitive dissonance. That strong bond between people's thoughts, opinions, values and actions is long gone. In other words: do as I say, not as I do. But what caused it? Technology? At a time when schools and workplaces go out of their way to encourage people to participate in mindfulness exercises, the first suspicion naturally falls on smartphones, screens and social media. But the erosion of moral clarity predates not just social media, smartphones or even the internet. The other potential culprit could be the decline of state institutions. Notice how, despite Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE, no less — waging war on the American federal bureaucracy, there is no spontaneous groundswell of sympathy for the axed departments or employees. In fact, an AP report titled "Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing" is enough to tell you about the zeitgeist. But politics is the process of making and unmaking. Institutions rise, decline and fade away. Since power knows no vacuum, they are replaced by new, durable ones. So, blaming institutional decline, including the alleged erosion of democratic values, runs the risk of putting the cart before the horse — or of confusing causes with effects. My view on this matter will require patience, as I have to show you how I reached that conclusion. But I promise we will get there soon enough. I was reviewing my old pieces, and one article stunned me. In 1998, I published a piece using Hegelian dialectics, as they were all the rage back then due to Dr Francis Fukuyama's work. The piece was about the consequences of the collapse of the communist sphere of influence. My argument was that during the Cold War, capitalism and communism acted as natural thesis and antithesis. Instead of taking us to the logical synthesis that could emerge as a compromise between the two visions, the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc left us with the uncanny situation of an unevolved thesis - without competition or resolution. Because this happened without much forethought, fascism was stepping up to fill the gap. You saw what happened after that. Dr Fukuyama declared the end of history. Elsewhere, domain experts proclaimed the arrival of a new unipolar world order. And then began the cutthroat competition of inventing a new enemy. Why? Because the emphasis on globalisation in this unipolar world seemed to lead to the inextricable decline of nation-states. How could nation-states tolerate that? So, the institutions and organisations meant for the Cold War were repurposed for new fights. And you cannot have new fights without new enemies. Hence began the new quest of inventing enemies. Who should the enemy be? Islam? China? Russia? Terrorism? Or the existential challenge posed by technological and climate change? The last one should have been the main focus. But here's the rub: an existential challenge to human civilisation would have required new institutions - not the old ones. That would have dramatically reoriented the state infrastructure and rendered massive military hardware useless. So, Islam, China, and maybe Russia were all fair game. There was only one problem with this approach: none of these identities were in a shape fit to contest. To present a threat as credible, you have to make it real. Hence, big guns were brought in. Dr Samuel Huntington used some of the oldest tricks in the priming book to invent a threat. Tell some of the identified depressed identities that they were important enough to pose a threat to Western primacy. Tell Muslims that they had a distinct civilisation that could not coexist with the West. Why? Because there were enough disaffected and recently disowned jihadi Western proxies in the Muslim world - used against the Soviet Union and then dumped - that could be conditioned to pose an immediate threat in the shape of terrorism. Then China. And so on. In hardening various identities, he was laying the foundation of extremism and fascism at home and abroad. Look at the following clever bit from an obscure novel by Michael Dibdin titled Dead Lagoon, which he quoted in his book: "There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven." Within a decade, both these bogeymen were ready for deployment. And for a heartbeat, it felt like it worked. The aftermath of 9/11 unified the world behind the US. But within years, the country's political and financial elite had driven this goodwill into the ground. The 2003 Iraq invasion and the 2008 financial crisis of greed fractured our world and eroded people's faith in institutions. When repeated attempts to reset the system did not work, they voted for Trump in 2016. You saw how the existing system reacted to his first term in office. In this way, Western media also ended up eroding its credibility. But the death knell was yet to come. The sudden emergence of the Covid crisis made many already suspicious of the proverbial deep state believe that this "weapon" was launched to defeat Donald Trump. Remember, paranoia flourishes the quickest in the presence of trauma. And it was an unprecedented trauma, where millions died, and billions were forced to stay indoors against their will. Hence began the erosion of faith in reality itself. What followed was a total and irrevocable tribalism. If you cannot trust reality, you can at least trust your beloved leaders, right? So, cognitive dissonance became an acceptable price for survival. But what about the need for bipolarity as the oversight mechanism of overenthusiasm? There is no chance of the resurrection of communism. However, the democratic socialism that emerged as the repudiation of Donald Trump's platform in 2016 under the leadership of Bernie Sanders — which was snubbed by establishment politics — is resurfacing. AOC and Sanders have joined hands under the banner of "fighting oligarchy". That means we are in for two intermittent cycles — one libertarian conservative, and the other socialist. The middle ground is all but gone. Centrists like us will drift between the two extremes. However, this tribalism may eventually result in a better synthesis than the one we witnessed at the end of the Cold War.
New European
15-03-2025
- Business
- New European
Brexit Britain is being outstripped by Slovenia and Malta
To call this year's UK Living Standards Review a sobering read is an understatement. The findings of this annual deep-dive are enough to make Patsy Stone, Father Jack Hackett and the Withnail acting family take up Dry January. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has found that the poorest households in the UK are now worse off than the poorest in Slovenia and Malta. Living standards in the wealthiest bits of the UK are comparable to those in other wealthy countries like France and Germany, but if you were to rank each of 269 European regions in terms of income, the poorest German region would rank 82nd – well above the EU average – and the poorest UK region 193rd – well below the EU average. Want to sober up a bit more? Real incomes in the majority of European regions have grown at a faster rate than those in the UK. Since 2020, the year of the pandemic but also of our official departure from the EU, we have fallen behind the average real wage growth of developed countries. At the turn of the millennium, we had broadly similar wage levels to Norway and Canada, which has since outstripped us. We were well ahead of New Zealand (which overtook UK wages in 2020) and Slovenia (which is set to do so in the next few years). Meanwhile, had UK wages grown as they did in the US after the 2008 financial crisis, UK workers would be £4,300 better off today. The NIESR is getting some stick for not naming Brexit as a direct cause of some of the UK's problems in this report. In fairness, it does note how membership of the European Union's single market has helped growth in some eastern European countries. And the NIESR did publish a big report on Brexit's effects on the UK just 16 months ago which said that the damage to GDP was at 2-3% of GDP in 2023 and would rise to 5-6% of GDP by 2035. This new report makes some short-term recommendations about easing our standard of living crisis – including removing the two-child limit for child benefit – that make for interesting reading as Labour mull cuts to the welfare budget. But in the longer-term, it seems clear that a game-changer is needed to break the spiral of low pay and low growth. Most of us agree on what that game-changer should be, but not everybody. A recent column by the Brexiteer Telegraph journalist Allister Heath began with two sentences that made the NIESR report seem cheerful: 'Britain stands alone in a brutish world. Our small, impoverished yet special nation has spent too long lying to itself'. Heath then stated, correctly, that the US was now a write-off. But some people can't see the obvious when it is staring them in the face. 'Europe isn't the answer,' wrote Heath. 'The EU is an imperialist technocracy with an obsession with Hegelian dialectics and a hatred for traitor-nations that have thrown off the shackles of the acquis communautaire.' To which the only correct responses are a) 'Parklife!' and b) pass that bottle this way, I need a drink.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
A CBR1000RR-Swapped N600 May Be The Perfect Honda
Tiny little city cars are very good, but motorcycles are even better. Of course, each one has its pros and cons, which can only mean one thing: The ideal vehicle is some Hegelian synthesis of the two. Something like this Honda N600, perhaps, which eschews its traditional little two-cylinder for an inline-four out of a Fireblade — and swaps its 45 stock horses for 170 horsepower at 13,000 screaming RPM. The build comes from the mad geniuses over at Cars and Cameras, who have really come into their own as our own little domestic Garage54. Cars and Cameras released part one of the CBR1000RR-powered N600 build, which is nearly 44 minutes of cutting, welding, and making the big four cylinder fit behind the N600's front seats. It's sort of a Renault 5 Turbo layout, which is a far cry from the car's original front-engine, front-wheel-drive design. The first episode covers everything from rolling the N600 into the shop, all the way through to the CBR engine's first start in the new chassis. Any other YouTube channel would take months of slow-drip posts to get to that point, and for that we thank Cars and Cameras. Read more: These Are The Dumbest Looking Cars Of All Time, According To You Despite the increases in displacement and power, the CBR engine is actually lighter than the mill that originally powered the N600 — even with a fuel tank, exhaust manifold, and wiring harness still mounted to the bike engine. All that power with less weight than an already-light stock Honda sounds like a recipe for a car that's an absolute blast to drive. Or a deathtrap. Quite possibly both. The engine isn't really interfacing with the car much in by the end of the video — little things like "pedals" are left as an exercise for later in the build, instead relying on the bike's throttle tube — which raises some questions about how exactly the build crew plans to make that all work. Running a chain to a sprocket at the rear is reasonable enough, but converting a throttle with a return cable to a single pedal seems like a much more intricate job. Seems like we'll all have to stay tuned for the next episode to see how they pull it off. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
