What Is This?

Somebody made a video map of NYC with AI.

It just looks like Minecraft. 

I'm definitely missing something because I see this and immediately think what a waste of time.

Careful

Climbers plan trip using AI, get stuck. 

AI do not understand physical reality, people.

Sad, It's True...

Matt Walsh on Lindsay Clancy and the psych drugs. 

Of course the great irony is that like 95 percent of the women blaming psych drugs for Lindsay Clancy murdering her children are also on psych drugs themselves. They supposedly believe that these drugs can cause you to annihilate your family and yet that hasn’t stopped them from taking the drugs. And they certainly aren’t calling for the drugs to be banned. In conclusion, they’re totally full of shit.

My suggestion for all our problems: exercise and read more. It would work! 

That's a Take, I Suppose...

Why don't all these white women showing up for Clancy support black women?

Also

I hate thinking about all this, but if Lindsay Clancy was experiencing so many troublesome thoughts and needed help, why couldn't she just isolate herself from her family and kids? Like, just go run off somewhere. 

Logging

Film: Wayne's World

Excellent and a bit innovative. Mike Myers = Gen X genius. 

Goals Get Smaller

As you get older...I am now highly focused on keeping my grass green and healthy. 

American Women

If one of the goals was to see a female president-elect, this outpouring of support for Lindsay Clancy isn't helping the cause.

The Straits

Months ago, I theorized Iran closing the Straits would backfire because, once used, threats lose power. First, it would force all their adversaries to find workarounds. Second, the unknown ramifications suddenly become known and get priced in. 

It now appears the US dredged a channel in Oman to bypass the strait.

Apparently, this channel cannot be seen from Iran and thus allows Persian Gulf oil through, while Iranian oil gets stuck in port due to the US Navy blockade. 

Wow. 

That was quick. I figured pipelines across the desert to the Red Sea would be the solution. But they found an even better one.

I just learned yesterday, there was a similar instance in history when this occurred: during the Suez Crisis in the late 50s and early 60s. Egypt took control of the canal and closed the shipping lanes to the Persian Gulf, thus flexing their territorial muscles for political and foreign policy objectives like Iran of today. What happened? Global ships found an alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, but to make this route economically viable, they started building "supertankers," enormous oil ships. And guess what they found? It became cheaper to transport larger distances with supertankers than with smaller ships through Suez. Woops! Egypt ended up screwing themselves over in the long run.

So be careful how you play your cards. 

This Won't Work

Pheromone maxing. 

Logging

TV: Lucky pilot

An impressive accomplishment, the show combines the worst elements of woke entertainment culture with the worst elements of action-crime shows into one pile of dog shit.

Elements of woke: very angry female protagonist who is highly competent and better than all the men at men stuff; short-haired black female important character with power, hateable white man character, miscellaneous other minority cast to check all the diversity boxes with zero personality otherwise... 

Elements of shitty action-crime: generic "stole money from the wrong dudes" plot; overuse of flashbacks - even flashbacks within flashbacks to both a) give us a jolt of action and b) garner sympathy for the characters; chase sequences with zero intensity or physical logic - the FBI are literally 10 feet away from Ana Taylor Joy in a casino and lose her somehow because she goes into a big room and later, are missing a key (how did ATJ who doesn't even work at a casino get into the door, I have no idea); pure logic fallacies - suddenly at a rest stop, a single lone FBI agent shows up to chase her? Where did this one FBI agent come from? A lot of the crime stuff is quite astonishing, really. We don't even know how she stole the money. Also, the FBI exposition dumping is beyond...there are numerous little dialogue exchanges telling us exactly what we already know about the situation like -  "damn, this is a big room" or "he left without her"  

Good cast, though.

I Agree With This Take

Michelle Obama trying to be funny about not missing her children. There is a line between "feminism" and being hateful and angry that is often hard to distinguish. The feminists will say, "we're angry for a reason, since we do all this emotional labor, etc." Maybe so. But at some point, when does this veer over into I'm angry and I'm gonna use this feminist skin suit as an excuse? Because there's gotta be some women in the world who possess enough resources, privilege, opportunities, connections, respect, etc where you no longer get to claim the bitterness, right? I dunno, like maybe a career woman who went to Princeton and Harvard, who lived in the White House for eight years, who had a huge Netflix deal...just thinking out loud here...

Logging

TV: Silo S1

Decent TV.

 

For The Record...

I reserve my allotments of empathy and sympathy for the moms who don't murder their children.

Danish Dating

You would know some of this if you watched the film Klown.

Will Turkey and Pakistan Help?

Saudi preps for renewed war against Houthis. 

The Hollywood Bowl

Is right next to the dump we know as Hollywood. And yet, when you're there, it's one of the nicest, most pleasant civic experiences one can have in LA.

This means to me that LA is capable of having nice civic places. So why isn't more of LA like the Hollywood Bowl?

Robot Olympics

Like the rest of you, I'm enjoying a few clipped videos of robots doing crazy shit. But I gotta say: I don't get this whole thing. They created a robot that runs faster than Usain Bolt? Who gives a shit? An ebike goes faster than him too. Just because the robot is shaped human-ish this becomes a proper comparison? Why not just put the robot up against a Honda?

What goes on in China is so bizarre to me. Here's an interesting little clip on the broader Chinese perspective and what's happening with their economy over the past 25 years. They shifted from manufacturing into real estate development post 2008. That lead to this huge property bubble and many Chinese folks were completely wiped out of their savings/retirement because they had invested in real estate. And this bubble was popped by the government, and now they are shifting all resources into AI, EVs, and robotics. Hence, the Robot Olympics. So I guess I see all this as similar to the real estate thing...when I was in China, I saw these huge massive buildings in the middle of nowhere with no one living in them. No grocery stores around, no schools, no one had money to buy the apartments. I asked, who owns these places? They say "people in Beijing," This would be like someone in DC owning a luxury apartment in rural Tennessee, but with no infrastructure around it as an investment. Do people do this? How would it ever pay off? Now, with the robots shaped like humans. Does anyone want this?

I saw someone saying they'd play tennis with one of these robots. Really? How much would one cost? Would you pay 100K to play tennis with one? 10K? Rent for $50 a hour? How about hitting with a 15-year old from JV team and pay them $15 a hour if you have no other options...

Logging

Book: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George RR Martin

I think it might be his best. 

As highly rated as he is, he's still underrated. 

Film: The Odyssey

I foolishly saw this in 70mm non-IMAX, only realizing it when I got to the theater and was like, "WTF is up with this normal-ass movie screen."  

The film had some incredible sequences. While watching the Cyclops section, I couldn't stop thinking, "why weren't people talking about this portion of the film?" I thought it was incredible. Finale sequence with the suitors is terrific as well. The sack of Troy. But when strung all together, the film suffers from repetition. Too many sequences of - guys arrive on shore, find problem, run back to boats. Too much Odysseus and Calypso discussing his memory loss and return home. Too much repetitive dialogue across different scenes of characters banging home certain thematic messages. And finally, I didn't vibe with the idea of Odysseus's guilt about using the Trojan Horse. Bro, you were at war. You fight to win. It just didn't feel like either the world of the Greeks or the world of today, if you get down to it. It feels to me like the attitude and thoughts of a person who spends too much time sitting in a chair. 

The movie needed a Harvey Weinstein pair of eyes. There were sections in the middle where I felt myself wanting to sleep. I don't understand 3 hour films. I don't want my legs to feel stiff or to need to pee during a movie. A 3 hour film guarantees these things. This film could've easily been 2 hours and probably would've been better for it. If The Searchers could do it, Nolan could do it. 

I wanted to write more on this, including commentary on the crazy Emily Wilson review but...