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Mermaids

A review of the 1990 film 'Mermaids' starring Winona Ryder

status: Finished

Status Indicator

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certainty: certain

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The confidence tag expresses how well-supported the content is, or how likely its overall ideas are right. This uses a scale from "impossible" to "certain", based on the Kesselman List of Estimative Words: 1. "certain" 2. "highly likely" 3. "likely" 4. "possible" 5. "unlikely" 6. "highly unlikely" 7. "remote" 8. "impossible" Even ideas that seem unlikely may be worth exploring if their potential impact is significant enough.

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importance: 5/10

Importance Rating

The importance rating distinguishes between trivial topics and those which might change your life. Using a scale from 0-10, content is ranked based on its potential impact on: - the reader - the intended audience - the world at large For example, topics about fundamental research or transformative technologies would rank 9-10, while personal reflections or minor experiments might rank 0-1.

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Citation
Yotam, Kris · May 2025

Yotam, Kris. (May 2025). Mermaids. krisyotam.com. https://krisyotam.com/reviews/film/mermaids

@article{yotam2025mermaids,
  title   = "Mermaids",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "May",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/reviews/film/mermaids"
}
Quote of the moment
The software entity is constantly subject to pressures for change. Of course, so are buildings, cars, computers. But manufactured things are infrequently changed after manufacture; they are superseded by later models, or essential changes are incorporated into copies of the same basic design. Callbacks of automobiles are really quite infrequent; field changes of computers somewhat less so. Both are much less frequent than modifications to fielded software. In part, this is so because the software of a system embodies its function, and the function is the part that most feels the pressures of change. In part it is because software can be changed more easily—it is pure thought-stuff, infinitely malleable.
Fred Brooks (The Mythical Man-Month)
Kris Yotam
Kris Yotam
long-form stable essays
Updated
2026-05-12
Reading time

in Naperville, IL
Last visitor from Mitaka, Japan