Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
I'm still hoping he'll reprise his role as Dredd.
In his first outing, the worldbuild was good, his portrayal was spot-on. The story, sure, had its ups and downs. But, in the end, it's a pretty solid comic-book action flick. Better than a lot of the dreck we've seen.
If he's playing Johnny Cage at 53, he could still be Dredd at 60.
Another excellent book. Much more the history of America than the offerings of high school history courses. Especially under the aegis of Project 2025.
Read Paris, 1919 by Margaret MacMillan.
Read Postwar by Tony Judt
Read the Warfare State by Fred J. Cook
And, while not strictly an historical work, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein rounds out this series on how institutions "fuck up the endgame" — to quote from Charlie Wilson's war.
2nded.
These two books upend a lot of "conventional" thinking; and, it's glorious. Graeber is a notorious contrarian and sometime — but he has the receipts.
For more on debt, read Margaret Atwood's Massey lectures, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
Looking for the alternate name for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (the Gate of Grief), sent me looking for other strategic "choke" points.
Aljazeera came through with the first one that was descriptive and visually informative, though they skipped the Strait of Magellan, probably because it's not a shipping lane for oil. Published this year.
London, England, UK. Waterloo Place, St. James's.
. Source.US Secretary of Defense/War.
The sycophant button-pusher "responsible" for:
killing hundreds of innocent people in the Caribbean
killing thousands of innocent people in Iran
licking -2's taint on command
firing several career military officers as they were DEI hires
firing other career military officers who are transgender or otherwise genderqueer
putting forward a $1.5T budget request for the Pentagon
being a petty little shit about his own image
renaming the Department of Defense
discussing active, secret military objectives on a commercial messaging platform
I'm not sure about the taint-licking, though there is ample evidence of his performing loyalty to -2. Much of the rest is detailed in the articles of impeachment filed against him two weeks ago, or virtually any article or SNL sketch about him in the past 18 months.
Watch: Sci-fi (The Expanse, Star Trek, both hard and soft sci-fi movies), cartoons (Samurai Jack; Avatar: the Last Airbender; Love, Death + Robots)
Listen to: Hip-Hop, Post-Rock, Future Garage, Chill beats to sleep/study to, UK Garage, Trip Hop (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Burial, Phelian, LowXY, Bucky, Sibewest, Portishead, Massive Attack, Zero 7, Nujabes)
Do: sit with a notebook and write/ draw/ design, read books.
I'm an introvert with a very active imagination, high intellectual needs, and it's tough to fall asleep. So, I kinda need to burn out to relax.
Hudson Hawk, widely panned, is fun; just refuses to take itself seriously.
iMDB: 5.7/10
RT: 30/100
Metacritic:17/100
I don't care. That's what I think of any film rating system. It's a report, but not the experience itself.
See also: the Southland Tales, The One (2001), Lost Souls (2000). All are, objectively, bad films. And yet... I remember them to be re-watchable.
This write-up is on a site for and app and ends up shilling for that app, but it makes some useful points, confirmed by my years of poking around:
Trust Metacritic most for prestige drama, arthouse cinema, and Oscar contenders.
Trust IMDb most for genre films.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer as a quick pass/fail for critical reception.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score cautiously.
Full disclosure: I don't have the app, don't want the app, and don't care about the app. Also, I skimmed the article in 2 minutes while watching my kids bounce on a trampoline.
If it's a book, and it's in 20-70 years from now, maybe Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. By then, those books will probably read as a history and you can marvel at Octavia Butler's prescience.
Im going to deviate slightly. I'd say the last film I want to see is Synecodoche, NY. I hope that, on reflection, my life's work is as grand as that of PSH's character in the film.
I just hope that, despite the work, I get out more often.
Follow this with Best in Show.
Please watch all of Brad Bird's writer-credit movies. All are fun. Only Tomorrowland is... odd.
I got hacked on Facebook (2018), stopped using Instagram (2019), quit Reddit (2023) & Xitter (2025).
Now I have only books (lots of audiobooks), Google Keep (own thoughts and pics), Lemmy (random thoughts), and Bluesky (microblog).
My input and output are much healthier, the people I interact with (when actually people) are nicer, and I generally don't feel doomed.
Well, yes, I realize the world is fucked, fucked up, and fucking crazy. I've reduced by orders of magnitude how toxic it is to my headspace because I'm cutting out the worst of the dreck and engaging with more objectively real information. I'm not in screaming echo chambers populated in the millions. I'm happy if I get 10 responses to a post. Updoots are incidental.
Its like leaving L.A. to settle down in Schitt's Creek.
Falling Down is the American Dream turned nightmare.
I'd submit that — in 1993 — the one that struck me as being the most similar was Demolition Man. Not the Sly Stallone character in comparison, tho. The Dennis Leary character was more a 1 to 1 analogue of the non-conformist pushing back on a system that deems him "not economically viable."
Later, 1998, I'd say that The Way of the Gun (wri/dir Christopher McQuarrie) does this well. I know, I know, low scores on RT and iMDB, but this movie still works for me. Even the opening scene, which sets up a world of reprehensible characters perfectly. It's a rock-solid neo-noir western helmed by a the writer of the Usual Suspects (and a long string of Tom Cruise projects including M:I 5,6,7&8.)
I'd also toss in Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. A man, who has a code, undertakes to address that which he sees as unjust while moving through a world that wants to exploit him. And, American Beauty (1999) (tw: Spacey)
By the late aughts and early '10s, in the wake of the total meltdown of the global economy, Margin Call (2010, only economic violence) and Killing Them Softly (2012). "Now fucking pay me."
From TV: The Wire and Breaking Bad fit the bill.
Continuity, governed by the script supervisor, is designed to be invisible.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." ~ God Entity, Futurama S03E20
Genetic-level diagnoses and treatments.
Inexpensive, rapid genome sequencing.
Commonplace genetic counselling for more than just pregnancy.
Laws in place to govern the collection, use, ownership, and patenting of human genes and genetic information.
Cloned tissues (i.e. blood, skin), organs (i.e. heart, lungs, kidneys) for transplant or repair.
I graduated university the same year the Human Genome Project first published completion. Certainly, that project uncovered more questions than answers.
Also, we've done an absolutely garbage job of becoming appropriate stewards of this technology. Primarily, today, it would be used to identify, segregate, subjugate, and eventually kill a portion of the population.
- JumpDeleted
Permanently Deleted
Books/Magazines/Podcasts:
No Logo by Naomi Klein
Adbusters by Kalle Lasn
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
A New Train of Thought (though somewhat ham-fistedly) by Various Writers
Ashes, Ashes by David Torcivia and Daniel Folkner
Reset by Roland J. Diebert
Fitting the description of movie/show:
Mr. Robot
Utopia (UK version)
Killing Them Softly
The Big Short, Margin Call
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
3-Iron (Korean film)
Parasite (Korean film)
There are several documentaries and short films
The Corporation by Joel Bakan, Harold Crooks, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott
Who Killed the Electric Car?
The End of Suburbia
Man by Steve Cutts (3m47s)
Nuggets by Andreas Hykade (5m06s)
The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis
Also, you might search for films about "corporate malfeasance".
Michael Clayton (top pick)
The Insider (top pick)
Erin Brockovich
Dark Waters
Send him to the Hague. Then, I'll know he's real.
I had intended to not.
Then, after a turn at living together with my partner in an Islamic country — where we were not allowed to officially cohabit — we realized that our rights to watch each other's backs were made way simpler by being married.
So we got married.
Had we always lived in a country that recognized cohabitation or common-law relationships, we might have not. Had our next sojourn not been in a predominantly Catholic country, we might have not. Had we more role models who didn't, we might have not. Had we moved home earlier, we might have not.
But we did. It was 12 years ago.
Bottom line, we don't find it burdensome; or that we are locked in a prison together. We care for one another. We drive one another crazy. We have the same fights over and over. We support each other and keep track of each other's families, friends, medical conditions, and car keys. It's nice. It's mundane. It's comfortable. It's practical.
Getting out would be a giant pain in the everything. And expensive.
We don't wield our rings against one another. We don't demand "rights" from one another because we're married. We don't have extraordinary unspoken expectations of one another. We accept, value, and console one another. We're a unit in this fucked up place.
People are crazy. I'm crazy. She's the crazy I'm used to and can interact with.
I'm too old for new crazy.
Granted, she's certainly gaining more by being married to me than I am being married to her. But, we don't keep score either.
TL;DR — comments in bold.