🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
🎥 Dirty Grandpa, 2016 - ★★½
It's got Robert DeNiro in the main role ... slam dunk - right? Sadly - no.
🎥 Cloverfield, 2008 - ★★★
Three stars is generous, because I didn't get through it. Just spotted it on AppleTV as a promo - so thought I would try it out, since I never saw it the first time round. (I know I know). Maybe it just hit me wrong?
🎥 Big Night, 1996 - ★★★★
I watched it in the theater when it came out. Love Tucci and this did not disappoint. (Just thought it was time to post a positive review - because I have been sharing some clangers recently.)
🎥 Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, 2023 - ★★½
I used to love the Asterix comic books. But have never really enjoyed the films. So not sure why I thought this time it would be different.
🎥 Mother’s Day, 2023 - ★½
Not to be confused with other films called Mother’s Day … I’ve not seen all of them, but none can be as bad as this one.
Where’s Waldo
It all started somewhere - and eventually @Jean did one - and then added a list of other ‘Where’s Waldo’ pages here. So I thought hell, why not … and then it got complicated, because like others, to me - passing through isn’t sufficient, so I added a few caveats. —
- Passing through does NOT do it. To be on the list, I have to have spent at least two nights in that place (so removing those pesky ’en route’ stop overs’.
- I decided that I wanted to separate where I have lived from visited - so I start with a much shorter list before listing all the places.
- As it turns out, a lot of places I have been to has seen me there for longer than a week, and some of the places I have been to more than once …
- Each list is alphabetical
- I’m English - so yes - the UK is four countries. —
Places I Have Lived
Germany
Kenya
New Zealand
Singapore
UK - England
UK - Wales
USA - CA
USA - CT
USA - HI
USA - NY
USA - VA
Places I Have Visited
USA
(Been to in Bold, ’Struck out’ - I do need to visit. (Or do I?) )
Washington DC
AlabamaAlaska- Arizona
Arkansas- California (Lived)
- Colorado
- Connecticut (Lived)
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii (Lived)
Idaho- Illinois
- Indiana
Iowa- Kansas
Kentucky- Louisiana
Maine- Maryland
- Massachusetts
Michigan- Minnesota
Mississippi- Missouri
MontanaNebraska- Nevada
New Hampshire- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York (Lived)
North CarolinaNorth Dakota- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania*
- Rhode Island
South CarolinaSouth Dakota- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
Vermont- Virginia (Lived)
- Washington
West VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
Rest Of World
(The) African Continent
Egypt
Kenya
Mauritius
South Africa
Tunisia
(The) Americas
Bahamas
Bermuda
Canada
Mexico
U.S.A. (see detailed list above)
Asia
China
Hong Kong
India
Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
‘Australasia’
New Zealand
Europe
Andora
Austria
Belgium
(The) Czech Republic (Strictly speaking - Czechoslovakia and I didn’t get to Slovakia)
Denmark
Eire / Ireland
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Nederlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia and Croatia (Strictly speaking - Yugoslavia and I didn’t get to Bosnia, Serbia or Macedonia)
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey (Or should this be under Asia?)
U.K. - England
U.K. - Wales
U.K. - Scotland
U.K. - Northern Ireland
Yugoslavia
(The) Middle East
U.A.E.
I think that’s it.
I Have - So You Don't Have To.
A few links with no ‘search or surf’ needed. All you need to do is click.
You are welcome.
🔗 Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes turns herself in for 11-year prison term. - I didn’t get the popcorn because my guess is that she will be out for ‘good behavior’ before I could finish the box.
🔗 Lawyer ‘Greatly Regrets’ Using ChatGPT in Briefing That Included Fake Citations. … and on a related note 🔗 I cannot believe the shit that morons are getting up to with ChatGPT - because in 2023 it is obligatory for all lists (even micro lists like this) to have at least one link be about ChatGPT, so I went for two - and related as well!
🔗 Tom Evslin: Is AI Dangerous? - turns out yes … and no … because it depends.
🔗 A New Uber Clone With Armed Drivers Is the App for a Violent and Paranoid America (Apple News) - if you follow me, you might know that Uber is not (shall we say) high on my list of innovative and ethical companies - so in that respect they are absolutely an Uber clone.
🔗 The QAnon Shaman Is Out of Prison and Selling Yoga Leggings Now (Apple News) - because of course he is. Beats me why he didn’t start it in prison. Oh wait ….
🎵 Malcolm McLaren ... Talentless Hack or Talented Svengali?
🔗 Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock at 40: the album that foretold today’s anything-goes pop.
For all of his total lack of skill as a musician / singer .. his ability to constantly break new ground and open listeners ears to new possibilities was quite extraordinary.
Duck Rock never made it to ‘personal favorite’ status, but still extraordinary.
My most favorite McLaren is surely ’Fans’ - 40 years old NEXT year
🎵 Mirror To The Sky - Yes
I have now listened to the new Yes album maybe 4 times. It is definitely not their greatest album - by any stretch - but it is also far from the worst.
Peak Yes years for me were those leading up to Topographic … and to compete with that era is hard … but this does (though it does lose 😎).
Trivia thought.
I wonder why the ‘title track’ off Mirror To The Sky is called ‘Mirror to the Sky’?
Intentional? If so why?
Sloppy? Very ‘un Yes’.
Favorite opening … the first minute of ‘Unknown Place’ - it falls off very quickly.
Favorite Track … the title track - which also happens to be the longest … I am a sucker for long musical exploration.
‘One Second is Enough’ … meh as is most of ‘disc 2’ … why did they bother?
‘BIDIRECTIONAL’ You Tube RSS Feeds
🔗 Scripting News: YouTube and inbound RSS
Interesting link from @dave
Also interesting is the YouTube outbound RSS that he wants.
Google don’t make it easy - BUT - every YouTube channel does have an RSS feed - I just added my channel to feed into MicroBlog, to make sure it still works. There are three videos in there - that have a total viewership of something less than 3 :-) So don’t get excited.
BUT - it is possible.
You Might Know Me As A 'Tech Exec' - But Actually, I Am An Astronaut.
When you read that ‘blah blah’ who’s ‘made a name for themselves’ as an actor, writer, singer, chef, musician … whatever .. has now just turned to interior design (I bought my 15,000 share foot house in Malibu and just had ‘this vision’) … or fashion design … or whatever …. what are your thoughts?
I ask because I just spotted that 🔗 Dua Lipa has just designed her first collection for Versace. I know this is not her first outing in design - but surely first with an icon?
Is this akin to tRump writing reading a book or Harry ‘writing’ one?
How about Johnny D sharing the stage with Jeff?
Galling?
I think so.
Lemons - Do They Exist - Or A Cunkstion?
Anyone else worried that this is even a question? Or that it needs to be asked?
Anyway, I don’t have an answer about lemon origins except to say that they are at least as real as babies, and if they aren’t real then what the fuck did I just eat?
💬 The Bloggess
To be clear, this is not a Bloggess origin story … but rather a debate that seems to have emerged on the inter-webs somewhere about ‘Intelligence versus Artificial Intelligence’ - with people pointing out that Lemons ‘do not occur naturally’ … so are artificial … so not ‘real’ … at least in ‘that’ sense of the word.
First, if that is true, then total news to me. But put that aside, because the quirkiness of the debate tickles me. It’s ‘the other thing’ that has slipped quietly under the radar, that I am worrying about, because at some point in the online world, ‘real’ has become synonymous with ‘exist’.
That is … if it is not real - then it does not exist.
Really?
Now, I am not a philosopher - so the existence of a lemon I leave to people further up the pay grade scale than I, but I did get to wondering whether this is a ‘Cunkstion’1, or at least Cunk like?
Can someone higher up the pay scale have a think and reply please?
Read More From The Bloggess: 🔗 When life may or may not give you lemons
-
Cunkstion - a contraction of ‘Cunk Question’ - which is one of those innocent, easy ‘obvious’ questions that nobody has ever asked - but when you do - the expert finds themselves tied up in knots for one of three reasons …1) it is just plain stupid, 2 a non sequitur or 3) a deeply profound question demonstrating great insight (if on occasions - accidentally). ↩︎
🔗 A List of AI Links
Like a lot of us I guess - I have been reading and listening a lot to the AI chatter. This is a list of not everything I have read and listened to - and not quite sure why these ended up on a list and others didn’t - but still you might find an interesting nougat in here?
Draft Action Suddenly Not Working
For the longest time I have used a drafts action to post to MicroBlog. There are also two others I use, but there was one particularly I used for my Daily Stoic post.
After updating MicroBlog to version 3, the action gave an error, essentially overwriting part of the URL with ‘code characters’ so then I had to edit what was fine in drafts so it worked in MicroBlog. Annoying.
I think that the only thing that changed was the MB upgrade.
Today I took a closer look - and couldn’t work it out.
So I just reinstalled the action and voila - working again … I think. 🤞🏼
Also found another action - so now I have 4 of them!
🎥 The Mother, 2023 - ★★★
It’s JLo, so it wasn’t going to be bad … and it wasn’t … though predictable … like the bad guy who never dies. Interesting that director and writers all women.
Substack Spam
Om writing about Substack Spam
Anyone can add my email address to their newsletter list without my permission. Whether I want it or not, I get a pitch for their newsletter, and I have to go to their website and unsubscribe to opt out of the service.
I did not know that. Is he right?
“Opt out” is a growth hacking tactic that has become commonplace online and a time stealer, penalizing all Internet users. Online marketers are just a different version of spammers who annoy us on our mobile phones. And it is so because no one speaks on behalf of the people.
I have been observing this … just hadn’t thought of it as being a Substack issue. The whole thing flies in the face of good email practice that Chad and Jay wrote about in what seems like another life - but apparently the book only came out 10 years ago … is that right?
🎥 Tetris, 2023 - ★★★½
Maybe it should be 4 stars? Great little bit of history ... But I don’t know the real story well enough to know how much poetic license was employed. I liked the graphic reminders (and associated pixel resolutions) spread throughout the film, that were so mind blowing to everyone at the time. I also had no idea that Maxwell was so involved in the story.
🎥 Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, 2022 - ★★★
Does the fact the we started watching it - had to stop half way through and still haven't yet felt inspired to go back and finish it tell you anything?