🖋️ 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.
🎥 Mr. Harrigan's Phone, 2022 - ★★★★
Maybe because I have recently been watching some below average / average movies recently - that this one stands out. On another day. I might rate it at 3 1/2 stars - but leaving at 4 for now.
Here’s the question … coincidence … or action from the grave?
🎥 Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard, 2022 - ★★★★
It’s a documentary - so move on if you don’t like them. Personally - big as the issue was - I totally missed the story when it was in the news. BUT very good. I would like to have seen more delving into the Libyan connections - rather than a ‘simple’ fraud - maybe there will be a part two?
🎥 Cleanskin, 2012 - ★★½
Mindless. Watched as part of a binge-watch when I was feeling sorry for myself. Not too hard to keep up. Definitely don’t bother if you are sitting down to ‘watch a movie’.
🎥 Thor: Love and Thunder, 2022 - ★★★½
I have watched all the Thor’s and this one is VERY different - probably because Taika Waititi isn’t just the director (Thor - Ragnarok) but also the writer. Not sure what the ‘Marvel Heads’ will say / are saying … but for me it worked.
🎥 Blackout, 2022 - ★★½
Just like the character in the movie … I really can’t remember much. The script is out of some script hopper and this is the latest version of it,
I have a streaming cold … so in that respect perfect, too hard to switch off, and not much to track.
🎥 Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992 - ★★★★½
30 years ago. Seriously? It feels just like yesterday. Of course … it could have been. The script is timeless.
Dana Channeling Lennon?
The Fog of Global War, Dana Blankenhorn
“This is also no normal midterm election. This is an existential battle between democracy and fascism. Major media try to both sides it, but that’s increasingly impossible. Every possible -ism is rising against democratic compromise and common sense – sexism, racism, fascism, Christianism. All the evils bedeviling the rest of the world have come here to roost because Vladimir Putin invited them in.”
and concludes ominously
“I do know that, around the world, compromise is no longer possible. This world cannot continue half slave and half free. It will be all one thing or all the other.”
“Every possible -ism …”
Everybody’s talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism This-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism
💬 John Lennon
🎥 Uncorked, 2020 - ★★★½
It was on Netflix … and just wanted ‘something’. Turns out it was just what I needed. The storyline is recognizable .. with wine and barbecue this time. For all of that - well done.
Trust me, I don’t need to spend time reviewing a bad film … so I don’t.
🎥 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008 - ★★★★
It took me forever to get around to watching this film and when I finally did … oh my. Tears (mine) at the end - which to me is always a good guide to the quality.
🎥 Joker, 2019 - ★★★★½
I’m a sucker for the Batman franchise interpretation anyway…but they don’t always work. This ‘side story’ is a stunning film.
Just Too GOOD - but you might have missed.
This is not a list designed to be ALL great movies - just those great movies that you might have missed as you journey through life.
I Hadn’t Previously Absorbed This Nuance
At the White House, Ornato, who as deputy chief of staff had oversight over Secret Service decisions, told Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, that the vice-president was going to be moved to the Maryland military facility Joint Base Andrews. Had he been evacuated, Pence would no longer have been able to certify Biden’s electoral victory, and Trump’s goal of postponing his defeat would have been fulfilled.
When Ornato said that the Secret Service would move Pence, Kellogg was adamant, Rucker and Leonnig reported. “You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”
Some People Are Just Born To Over Achieve ...
Books, Siddhartha Mukherjee says, just tumble out of him, like fluffy towels and clean socks cascade out of a dryer at the end of the cycle. And it’s a good thing, because it’s not as if the man has a lot of idle time to spare.
Mukherjee, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, an oncologist and a researcher of cancer treatments, is one of those people who appears to have found a glitch to exploit in the space-time continuum. He sees patients, runs a blood cancers research lab, co-parents two children, writes deeply researched features for The New Yorker, helps run four separate biotechnology and health care companies he co-founded, acts as adviser to a half-dozen more, and throws elaborate dinner parties with his wife, the sculptor Sarah Sze, that are a Manhattan byword.
Oh, and even as he was completing medical school at Harvard University, he trained as an Indian classical music vocalist. Although he reluctantly relinquished dreams of a parallel career as a singer, he continues to perform with a jazz fusion band.
And yet he insists that it is not difficult to make space to write books, exhaustive though they might be: His latest, “The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human,” thuds in at 480 pages. It will be published Oct. 25.
Read more at NYT : Siddhartha Mukherjee Weaves History and Biology to Tell the Story of Us.
Let's Get Ready To Rumble ...
… or not. Yeah - definitely not.
.. and you all thought SPACs were dead!
Definitely an interesting mix of ‘purveyors’ on the platform, noting that Russell Brand had decided that he needs to not only join the likes of QANON, Alex Jones, Greenwald, Lindell and Truth Social - but be there exclusively!
Side note
“Thiel co-led an investment in the company last year along with VC firm Narya Capital. Narya, based in Cincinnati and named for a ring in the Lord of the Rings books, is also backed by Thiel and led by his one-time business associates Colin Greenspon and Ohio Republican Senate candidate JD Vance.”
The Attention Economy
It’s funny how 'xx is the new oil' keeps cropping up … this one is kind of related - but focussed not specifically on data - but rather, The ‘Attention Economy’ ….
"For the better part of the past century, the most important commodity has been oil. Wars have been fought over it — Pearl Harbor was a preemptive strike to secure Japanese access to Indonesian oil — and it elevated desert tribes to the ranks of the wealthiest cohorts in history. But the sun has passed midday on oil’s supremacy. We’ve moved from an oil economy to an attention economy.
We used to refer to an information economy. But economies are defined by scarcity, not abundance (scarcity = value), and in an age of information abundance, what’s scarce? A: Attention. The scale of the world’s largest companies, the wealth of its richest people, and the power of governments are all rooted in the extraction, monetization, and custody of attention."
Some other phrasing that caught my eye and mind …
"If Facebook is Exxon and Netflix Shell, TikTok is fracking king Chesapeake Energy, the rule-breaking insurgent armed with novel extraction methods that threaten the established order.”
"everyone is trying to outTik the Tok”
"MrBeast … most popular video (is) a real-life reenactment of Squid Game, which cost $3.5 million to produce (the cost of an episode of Mad Men). It received 300 million views."
You can read the whole Scott Galloway piece here.
Thinking Allowed
This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.- More about People First
- Other People First Posts
(not just from the ‘other domain’ … all of them.)
Does The U.S.A. Condone Human Trafficking?
Given that I have been reading about the ‘impending’ arrest of Gaetz for human trafficking since March 2021, I don’t expect a move against the people involved in the Abbott and DeSantis shenanigans any time soon … if ever.
If the US continues to not react, isn’t it condoning trafficking and/or admitting that its laws are toothless?
Were I a trafficker in US custody, I would definitely use this inaction as part of my defense.
If the UK behaved this way - I would use it in my defence.
‘#NotALawyer