Parent Thought 1349

Among the more important thing parents can do for children is let them have a childhood. So much of our culture now trends the other way.

Logging

Film: Blonde

First 25 minutes or so. I'll probably watch this film in the same manner I'm reading Love and Fate. Slowly and over the course of months.

Play: Hamlet

Reading Shakespeare aloud makes it 40-60% more comprehensible. 

And another thought: Too bad Shakespeare is a dead white male and thus being deemphasized in schools. I imagine if might help students with mental health problems seeing how the 16th century prince dealt with it. Maybe it might make them feel less alone and more connected to humanity at large.

Logging

TV: Abbot Elementary S1

Better than watching Selling Sunset for mindless entertainment. But doesn't quite live up to The Office, Parks and Recs, but still...I like a number of the actresses a lot.

TV: Hearstopper E1-2

Feels like a show made for people who are way too into tv.

Meloni In Italy

Watched a snippit of her speech...compelling stuff...but got this weird feeling that it was too elegant, too well argued, and strange she quoted GK Chesterton. And then I find out she regularly talks with Steve Bannon. Strange world we live in. America exports both wokeness and its reaction. Strong evidence for the "we are living in a simulation" theory.

Logging

Film: Elvis

Enjoyed, particularly Butler as Elvis. But maybe not a memorable film story that I'll go back to.

TV: House of the Dragon S1 E6

Still not great yet I really enjoy watching. This coming from someone who has literally read all the books, so I guess I'm a GRRM fanboy? Whereas I would basically recommend Game of Thrones the show to anyone...and recommend the books to anyone who likes fantasy, or the show, etc...I probably would not recommend HOTD to anyone but the large sized fans of the Westeros world. For instance, my wife got into GOT, but couldn't make it through 1.5 episodes of HOTD. Anyhow, the show isn't a disaster and has recovered since E1-2.

Film: No Time to Die

Haven't yet finished, but I feel a professional obligation to watch all the James Bond films. One of worst trends in movie storytelling these days - a presumption the audience knows, cares, or remembers what happened in the prior film. Who is responsible for this nonsense? Even Top Gun Maverick had a bit of this - like our audience actually remembers the "Penny" character reference from the first film, ie the Jennifer Connelly character? With Top Gun at least this comes across as almost like an absurd joke, but in watching Bond (and MCU) and other things, I feel like these filmmakers really think the audience follows what happened before. Maybe some of them do. I certainly do not.

Logging

Film: Expendables Part 2 

Sly Stallone has written or co-written 23 films. If you took away his directing and movie stardom, he'd be one of the most significant (not best) screenwriters of his generation.

Liz Warren

With the stock market down, how is Liz Warren's wealth tax plan looking? Will the Fed government be providing welfare payments to the billionaires with negative income this year? 

Logging

Film: Stray Dog

Incredible. First act slowest part, but setting up character's internal conflict pays major dividends down the road. And Takashi Shimura might be a top ten all timer for me.

TV: House of the Dragon E5

Show is really growing on me.

Book: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Love the digressions into Cliff Booth's (and others) assessments of the movies of their time. I hope there is some young QT out there watching present movies with a similar passion and sensibility, although I'm pretty sure he's a true one of a kind.

"It Actually Makes Money for the Hospital"

A "pitch" for performing trans surgeries centered around how much money it will make for the hospitals.

As I've said before: Nuremberg trials.

Of course I have no idea, but I bet 80-90% of these kids pushed into medical care are just run of the mill gay kids still trying to figure it out. 

"The Real Killers"

Pitch idea: doc series featuring OJ and Adnan working together as PIs searching for the real killers. 

Epic Troll

DeSantis sends a plane load of migrants to Martha's Vineyards. I think we need a lot more of this. In LA, the homeless encampments should be moved outside the Mayor's house and the houses of the city counsel members like Ramen, Bonin, etc who endlessly advocate for "unhoused" resources and oppose any attempts to clear housing encampments. Let them live with the consequences of their policies.

Longer Story...

But Medicaid dental insurance now pays for 3 check ups a year for kids under 6 which is better than my paid for dental insurance. How I know this is a longer story, but suffice to say our policy makers now believe the people for who I (the taxpayer) pay dental insurance for (the poor) deserve better dental care than those who pay for their own insurance. To point this out will offend liberal minded peoples, but if you need me to explain why this is unstable and unsustainable, I don't know what to say. But maybe start with this: I don't have much hope for curing things like "systemic racism" if there's a large part of our population who can't figure out how to brush their kids teeth twice a day.

MPX

Reading the newspaper today and apparently Winston Smith's on the job because we no longer can say monkeypox, it now goes by MPX which makes it sound like Acura's new SUV model.

Nuremberg Trials

There's gonna be a Nuremberg Trials one day about the professional cartels who moved vulnerable children into puberty blockers and gender reassignment.  And then you'll see all those who work with kids removing their he/she pronouns from email signatures and lying about their tacit participation. And I hope this effort will be lead by the sane adults in the trans community who exist.

The Queen

I don't give a rat's ass about the British royal family but The Queen? What she came to symbolize in our contemporary world? Restraint, dignity... Her last 21 years were her greatest. 

To the women of that generation - under heralded giants.

Thought

Heat's a better movie, but The Insider's a better story. 

The Great Renaming Extravaganza

While we rename schools and streets for old racists, somehow the Tisch family - who made money in tobacco - still has their name on a cancer institute in NYC. This is the game behind the game being played - corrupt billionaires distracting the masses from the way they made/make money by having us focus our anger at a bunch of dead guys. 

Logging

Article: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Later became the film The Insider. Quote:

Snuff was a critical product for B&W, Wigand said, because it is “start-up stuff for kids.… It was Sandefur’s baby. You have to look at the age somebody starts smoking. If you don’t get them before they are 18 or 20, you never get them.” (Thomas Sandefur declined to make any comment for this article.)

Question: did all those same types who used to go work in Big Tobacco just start working for Big Pharma? 

Logging

TV: House of the Dragon Ep 2-3

I find myself wanting to watch more, whilst knowing it won't be very good. Characters don't seem very well sketched. I'm thrown off by the timeline. I find some of the moves rather predictable (but perhaps because I read the book years ago).

The public discussions regarding the casting and "wokeness" strike me as a smokescreen for the more interesting creative choices of the show. Do we buy there were black people in Valyeria? Why not? I can't find the energy to care very much one way or the other in these fantasy epics. Yet, I know what the "racists" are getting at: the shows are simply meeting the artificial diversity quotas imposed by the guilds and studios - so suggesting these are "creative" choices are a bit of a stretch. What I find somewhat interesting is that the "right" thing to do these days is make the fantasy worlds reflect the racial realities or woke rules of 2022, but in the case of HOTD, they are very deferential to the sexual politics of courtship of Westeros where a 50+ widowed king and a prepubescent 9 year old girl could be going on an internet walking date. The subtextual realities of our times bubble up to the surface - right wingers secretly letting their inner racists out while the left wingers let out their inner groomer.

Student Debt Reduction

If it fails in court, I propose an alternative:

An open fund where all individuals who feel debt should be relieved may contribute any amount of their own personal money to the cause. That money then will be apportioned to those making below 125K a year. I would even argue there ought to be some type of matching program where more an individual contributes to their own debt reduction, the more matching funds they receive. All paid for by the "majority" of Americans who support debt relief.

I would put up some money for this for two reasons: 1) Despite my policy opinions, I am sympathetic to students with debt 2) It would be sensible policy to allow people to put their money where their mouths are rather than create more perverse incentives for the people in power to hijack money from those out of power.

California

My gut instinct is that the state functioned mostly well through the 1990s from the massive investments in infrastructure and education from the 40s-60s. There are obvious exceptions, particularly the LAPD, but the state as a whole worked. But now? Total and complete dysfunction. We have politicians who all "believe" in global warming, promote electric cars, and yet, none of them can think two steps ahead and update and reinforce our electrical grid? To the point where we are supposed to cut back on AC and not charge cars during this massive heat wave? What is the point of being an environmentalist if you have no plan for dealing with such the weather changes? We have a huge number of politicians who want to shut down - I believe - our last nuclear power plant. And somehow Gavin Newsom made the one good decision of his tenure to keep it open because he realized - shit, the grid going out isn't gonna be good for my Presidential nomination. 

But this is a pattern far beyond just this grid thing. We are in the midst of a huge drought. And we are canceling plans to build a desalination plant?

We are experiencing major forest fires year after year because we can't manage the forests.

We can't build housing to make living affordable because we can't build the infrastructure to make it possible for people to travel to and from work in a reasonable time.

We can't educate our students because the unions and schools don't care (and we have low standards). I mean, when I was growing up, it was common to see public school teachers who had attended UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, places like that. Is anyone seeing this in our public schools right now?

I dunno man, something has broke in the brains of people here. We've always had kooks. They used to mind their business and want to be left alone to smoke weed, surf, or go to Dead shows and sell burritos. Now, these people run for public office. They teach grade school. They are on the city council. They make COVID policy. We let the inmates control the asylum.