Ok 1990, but close enough, were so weird. This is actually a good song despite being horrible for obvious reasons. (Good in the sense that it's actually a bit more sophisticated than its hair metal veneer makes you think).
Friday, December 15, 2017
Damage
I had a celebrity crush on Mira Sovino once upon a time. Her pop is good too, though I didn't have a crush on him.
Just seeing this after I awoke, I burst out crying. There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure. Thank you Peter Jackson for being honest. I’m just heartsick https://t.co/ljK9NqICbm
— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 15, 2017
A Perfect Job For Eschaton World Industries
I hope we are hired.
Senior White House official Jared Kushner and his legal team are searching for a crisis public relations firm, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Release A Star War Every Week
Half a joke, but I do find it a bit of a mystery that movie studios don't actually milk their cash cows as much as they can. Sure people talk/complain about how everything's a sequel, etc, but they could probably film two hours of Luke Skywalker on an exercise bike and people would pay 10 bucks to see it.
Nobody has yet embraced my long-suggested plan of returning to the "serial" model. Release those things every 3 months.
Nobody has yet embraced my long-suggested plan of returning to the "serial" model. Release those things every 3 months.
Evil Team Of Evil
One big problem with the supervillains in comic books and Star Wars and similar is... it isn't clear what motivates them. I have not seen the new Star War, but I don't really know what motivated any of the bad guys in any of the other movies. Yes, sure, money power blahblahblah but there's too often just an "evil for the sake of being evil" aspect. What is all that evil really for? Maybe I should get an exclusive interview with the Koch Brothers to delve into this question.
The Rules Changed
"The American Dream" has always been a bit of a fantasy, especially as race and class and gender greatly determine who gets to dream, but the basic post-war upward mobility thing in which "we" could all count on some economic stability and maybe even a bit of prosperity if we did what we were supposed to do has fallen apart. I'd say it started cracking during Reagan/Bush...the internet boom papered over those cracks for a bit...then the housing bubble papered over them again... and 10 years later, everything is fucked up and bullshit for The Kids Today.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but I keep coming back to the very simple one: public universities used to be something you could kinda sorta work your way through, and now even public university students are graduating with 30 grand of debt. Too many olds don't understand this. It's depressing.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but I keep coming back to the very simple one: public universities used to be something you could kinda sorta work your way through, and now even public university students are graduating with 30 grand of debt. Too many olds don't understand this. It's depressing.
Paris Is Hell
This piece from John Elledge does a pretty good job getting across what I have often tried to communicate on this shitty blog: You don't have to have midtown Manhattan skyscrapers to have the kind of population density that makes for a good city. Not everybody wants to live in a city! Cool. But even city dwellers often don't get that city doesn't mean "the place where the skyscrapers are." Paris is basically 6 story buildings everywhere. Philly isn't quite dense enough in a lot of places. Too many 2 and 3 story rowhouses and the population often isn't quite high enough to support local commercial corridors. That doesn't mean we should tear down all those blocks and replace them, but a few more 6 story buildings in appropriate places (often prevented by zoning laws) would probably be beneficial. That cool coffee shop can't stay in business unless there's enough foot traffic.
Nice Things
Buying a house is complicated. There are so many things to consider and of course you can't possibly competently consider them all. I got lucky. Not that everything in my house is perfect (the joys of homeownership are neverending), but in various ways the location is a lot better than I knew when I moved in (almost 10 years! time flies). I knew I was pretty close to the subway, which is useful and good, but what I didn't really think about was the bus. I live close to a bus route with frequent service. OK late night and Sunday service is a bit spotty, but otherwise it runs every 10 minutesish. I have a lovely little app on my phone which shows me where the buses are and I can run to the corner and get hyperlooped into Center City, as we call it here in the urban hellhole, in about 7 minutes. It's not that far. I can and do walk sometimes, too.
Personal cars are "freedom" some places but in the city they're a nightmare. You'd have to be nuts to actually drive and park in Center City if you had another option. I love my bus.
Personal cars are "freedom" some places but in the city they're a nightmare. You'd have to be nuts to actually drive and park in Center City if you had another option. I love my bus.
Visionaries
One reason mass transit is so crappy most places in the US - even where it exists - is too many of the people involved in the planning have never actually used it. People like Musk come along and tell them something cool and they actually listen. This is probably the stupidest idea I have ever heard but lots of people think it sounds cool. Even if it worked perfectly as envisioned the capacity of such a system would be ridiculously low.
What if it's my car...but better and faster and has no congestion and takes me anywhere I want to go! Cool idea, bro. See you on the 405.
What if it's my car...but better and faster and has no congestion and takes me anywhere I want to go! Cool idea, bro. See you on the 405.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
I've Even Lied
I tried to have a less than sucky blog today but somehow it still sucked! Sometimes you work really hard and ... then nothing.
I still like The Orville. It's Star Trek: TNG with dumb Seth McFarlane jokes and while they can't quite figure out the balance it's the best ST:TNG since ST:TNG.
I still like The Orville. It's Star Trek: TNG with dumb Seth McFarlane jokes and while they can't quite figure out the balance it's the best ST:TNG since ST:TNG.
I'm So Old I Can Remember When I Was Young
Old people are bad
Young people are supposed to be able to make youthful mistakes.
Within the Times itself, the Thrush scandal has created something of a schism. On one side, according to newsroom sources, there is a cohort of young, millennial, New York-based employees for whom the event has been particularly upsetting. These employees, these sources note, are generationally hyper-attuned to issues related to race, gender, and newsroom diversity, which they often discuss on the Times’s internal Slack app. For some within this cohort, there’s a sentiment that the Times should set an example amid our cultural awakening—that it would be hard to keep Thrush employed while continuing to lead the charge in covering the reckoning that has entangled him.
Things are different in the Washington bureau. While there are some who feel deeply uncomfortable with his conduct, the prevailing sentiment among Thrush’s colleagues in D.C. is that he should not lose his job over the contents of the Vox report, according to a half-dozen members of the bureau—men and women—with whom I spoke for this article, in addition to several other well-placed Times figures who are regularly in touch with the bureau. The Vox piece, the logic went, castigated Thrush for “bad judgment around young women journalists,” but did not make any allegations regarding sexual harassment, sexually motivated quid pro quo, sexual assault, or predation. (If any such charges were to come up in the Times probe, many suggested, he would obviously lose his goodwill.) For now, Thrush’s support extends all the way up to bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller, according to people familiar with her thinking. (Reached by phone, Bumiller declined to comment.)
Young people are supposed to be able to make youthful mistakes.
Alpha
Trump favorability among Fox viewers (%):
— Adrian Gray (@adrian_gray) December 13, 2017
Jun: 90
Oct: 74
Dec: 58
(Suffolk) https://t.co/qioNBOEVYm
At some point even the faithful realize the "alpha dog" is just an annoying cuck.
Life Sucks
Hopefully your life doesn't suck and I admit, all things considered, mine has been pretty good, but I've had a few tragedies. Most people have. Shit happens. Shit certainly will happen eventually. Mortality and all that. You don't have to be a saint to have a bit of empathy for other people. I am not a saint. But the cruelty of Republicans astounds me.
Nazis
I suppose it was a long time ago. Even in college I remember somebody on my hall studying for an history type course asking, "So...world war 2...that was the one with Hitler, right?" But, really, Nazis are Nazis and we shouldn't have to keep explaining that.
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