A brief prescript: if you want some links that were too good for this roundup (not to shatter the
illusion too much…), check out the nine new ones on the main site’s
linkroll!
Atlas of Space. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, but i
like the presentation, and it gives me the inspiration to maybe possibly make my own clone at
some point.
As comic relief, he’s great, and should obviously be played by Tim Robinson in the inevitable event
of a remake. As a person, fuuuuuck this guy. A life is hanging in the balance and you just
want to watch some Yankee cricket? You fold under pressure, rather than actually reëvaluating your
beliefs? Kill yourself, my man.
Detestable for the same reason as Angry Man #7. A doormat with no opinions of his own whose soul is
carried away with the current. But at least he’s affable.
The kind of man who turns on Fox News, sees his son send a post-ironic femboy meme in the family
group chat, and immediately decides every transgender person should be rounded up. Not a
dyed-in-the-wool bigot like Angry Man #10, but no nicer to be around. All we can do is pray that
someone turns on the parental controls on his TV and switches him over
to MSNBC.
He treats the case as frivolously as Angry Man #7, but you know what? I can’t help but like him. He
just wants to show off his cereal box slogans and play noughts and crosses.
The most mysterious Angry Man. He’s of the same ethnicity as the descendant, and he knows how
switch-blades work, but otherwise… who knows? What mysteries lie in his past? We’ll never find out,
but he seems like a cool dude.
“You know, i would have voted for FDR a fifth time if i could.” The greatest bleeding-heart liberal
in cinematic history. His heroism made a tear come out of my eye that then turned into a dove of
peace and flew away. But just as admirable as those who lead the charge are those who can admit
their faults — which leads us to…
Hell yes. Unlike Angry Men #3 and #10, #4 doesn’t vote “guilty” because of prejudice. He sincerely
believes that the boy did it, and, once every argument is dismantled, he quietly accedes and admits
defeat rather than loudly crashing out. Also spends the most time aura-farming out of any of the
Angry Men.
The coolest old man in the universe. The Paddington Bear of the 12AMCU,
able to disarm anyone with a hard stare. Somehow the only person in the room who knows how glasses
work. 10/10 Angry Man-ing.
Edwardsiella andrillæ, a rare sea anemone discovered in 2013 that lives clinging onto the bottom of the Antarctic
ice sheet.
I’m sure you’ve all seen WPlace.live by now, which has become an unexpected internet sensation, and
it was on my list when i first found it (back when it seemed to be used only by
Brazilians)… but, eh, it’s lost its luster. Too much spam, too much brigading. There was a nice
period at the start where everyone in the Holy Land was keeping to their side of the Green Line. Tel
Aviv, Nazareth, Gaza, Jerusalem, Bethlehem — all beautiful. Now it’s just a giant mess. Anyway!
Links.
Protoweb, a service hosting old versions of
websites for retro computers to access.
StoryTerra is an interactive map of stories (films,
books, games, &c.) that take place in a certain place and time. A bit laggy, and there
are a few omissions from whatever algorithm they’ve used to categorise it, but still fun to
explore!
Raspberry Shake, a decentralised network
of Raspberry Pi-based seismometers that anyone can join.
Gen Z isn’t powerless against technology.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom about around my generation’s poor relationship with the
computer, and while it has merit, i found this article a refreshingly optimistic
counterargument.
A supercut of characters in
TV and movies going, “What are you gonna do, shoot me?” and getting
shot.
The ultimate Xanthe-bait: A
group of medical scientists conjectures that the mythic feminising effects of Salmacis pond,
sacred spring of Hermaphroditos, may have been very real and a
result of the presence of mycoœstrogens. (via
Linkfest)
I don’t know whose dumbfuck crawler is responsible for this, but whoever it is, can you
please calm down? I welcome robotic visitors1, but they don’t have to be so hyperactive. I promise you the data will still be there tomorrow.
Edit: The tidal wave has stopped, but i have started logging bots’ User-Agents
just in case whatever that thing is comes back. I hope they’re happy with themselves.
Edit #2: Well, that was quick. They’re back… and they’re not even using a “bot”
User-Agent to identify themselves! That’s just bad manners.
Edit #3: I’ve implemented a basic rate-limiting system with a limit fast enough that it won’t
affect my biological readers. Fingers crossed.
Sit tibi terra levis, Jacobe Lovell. I’ll be busting out my copy of
Lost Moon in his honour.
Last time on “Stuff i watched recently”, i covered
four thriller films. Today, we’re back to our normal farrago of
assorted genres — and i must warn you, it’s been quite a while since i’ve seen some of these,
starting with…
The first act of this presumably final entry in the Tom Cruise Tries to Kill Himself series
consists of a clumsy, torpid recap of every attempted Cruisicide so far, interspersed with clips
from past films1
and people talking up Tom Cruise as The Most Important Boy In The World. But, as soon as Tramell
Tillman’s beautiful visage shines upon the Imax screen, we’re shocked back to life, and the ensuing
setpiece — a palm-sweating scamper aboard a collapsing nuclear submarine — may well be the best,
tensest, and invigoratingest this franchise has ever brought us. (7/10)
Wes Craven dares to ask the unaskable: What if, in Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis wasn’t a
complete imbecile who can’t even hold onto a knife for more than five seconds? Nancy Thompson enters
into the pantheon of sensible horror protagonists by doing everything right, up to and including
hiding a second instant coffee maker underneath her bed.
The special effects are the star of the show here, from spandex walls to bottomless tubs, lifting up
some shonky performances (Johnny Depp acts circles around everyone else in every scene he’s in) and
a truly abysmal ending. With a premise like that, it’s not hard to see why it became such a
sensation. (6/10)
“Every species can smell its own extinction. The last ones left won’t have a pretty time with
it. In ten years, maybe less, the human race will just be a bedtime story for their children. A
myth, nothing more.”
John Carpenter knocks it out of the park again in this bizarre, prescient downwards spiral of
metafictional cosmic horror. In an era of deepfakes, diffusion, and dripped-out popes, it can seem
as though fiction and reality are merging. What happens when we as a society can no longer tell the
difference? If you believe In the Mouth of Madness… it’s not going to be pretty.
(10/10)
The town crier came up to me and shouted, “Hear ye, hear ye! Superhero movies are good again!” So i
gave James Gunn’s Superman a shot, and what do you know? He was right.
Mr Gunn kicks off his newborn cinematic universe by cannonballing straight into the deep end. The
Superman experience is akin to starting a long-running comic at issue #387, in the best way
possible. Superman has already been doing his thing for three years. Lex Luthor has a pocket
dimension and Vladjamin Putinyahu has promised him his own personal settlement in Gazkraine.2
Mr Terrific is there. Who’s Mr Terrific? The greatest character ever, that’s who. Absolute cinema.
(8/10)
I forgot my Itch.io password in the move over from Windows to Linux, so the recent Steam sale was my
first time in ages playing the GOAT platformer. I’m proud to say i
finally beat The Farewell (and got the moon berry) legit. Fuck that comb room.
(10/10)
Yeesh. I wanted to like this — “autistic robots” is a favourite trope of mine — but my sense of
humour and its just did not get along. A great example of how every show on Apple TV+ just looks
fake. (3/10)
There was a moment when i thought this was going to deliver the most singularly insane twist ending
in cinematic history. It didn’t. So what we’re left with is a miserable film about horrible
fundamentalists kidnapping horrible college students and going up against a horrible
ATF agent. Kill me now. (2/10)
What a palate cleanser! Danny Boyle’s first film gives him the template he’d perfect with
Trainspotting soon after. Thumping techno tunes, a perfect mix of comedy and tragedy, and
Ewan McGregor’s boyish face. (Plus, an incongruously spacious sitcom apartment.) You simply
must see this, if only for the novelty of Christopher Eccleston with a full head of hair.
(9/10)
The vibes are immaculate; the story not so much. This is a lean two-hour-long 6/10 that’s begging to
become a plump and juicy two-and-a-half-hour 9/10.
That said, when the Four are heading to space in their sleek pulp-futuristic retro rocket ship, and
the Human Torch gets smitten with the Silver Surfer… there’s a lot i can overlook. A good half of
these points are just down to swish art direction and a
triumphant score: (6½/10)
Unfortunately, due to the Online Safety Act, i have decided to become an Annoying Privacy Guy. I
already use Linux, so i’m basically 50% of the way there — i just have to develop Opinions on
VPNs and Monero.
Wow. I’ve really done fifty of these, huh? (More than that, really — i didn’t start numbering them
until i was already a good few in.) Well, uh… here’s to fifty more.
Periodisation, the splitting of history into neat ’n’ discrete temporal chunks, is a time-honoured
matter of debate among historians. Where are the boundaries? Why are they where they are? Can
periodisation even work in a global context?
Today, i will answer none of these questions, nor even attempt to seriously tackle the subject. For
this is not a post about where the ages of man truly start and end. It is a post about how my brain
reacts when it sees a year number and thinks “oh, yeah, that’s in… uh, that part of history”. What’s
ancient? What’s mediæval? I dunno, but my subconscious sure does!
Left to right: the
Palace of Minos, King
Ur-Pabilsag, the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro
The invention of writing is as good a time to start the clock on “history” as any, so
circa 3500 BCE it is. It’s probably unfair to have a giant chunk
of nearly three thousand years — as long as the entire rest of history — all by itself, split into
nothing else, but when was the last time you saw an exact date in the negative four-figure
range?
This is the good stuff. I’ve chosen to start the clock not at the founding of Rome but at the
(probably semi-mythical) date of the first Olympics, because Ancient Greece has always been cooler
than Ancient Rome. (I can’t take a language where ⟨v⟩ is pronounced /w/ seriously.)
Left to right: the Vienna Dioscurides, Emperor Justinian, the Arch of Ctesiphon
I think most people generally have a decent idea of where the boundary between the Middle Ages and
the modern day lies — somewhere around the end of the fifteenth century — but the line between
antiquity and mediæval times has always been fuzzier, and i’ve never been sure where to draw it.
After Julian died in 363, his successor was the last to rule over the empire undivided, the
classical pagan relative tolerance of “anything but” giving way to the mediæval Christian doctrine
of “nothing except”. It’s hard for me to fully accept what historians call “late antiquity” as
firmly set in either era, so here it sits as its own weird little thing.
Left to right: an Aztec tlacochcalcatl, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Baghdad House of Wisdom
The rise of Islam as a conquering force cements in stone the end of any vestiges of the classical
era; where Christians start their calendar at the birth of Jesus, Muslims have their epoch at the
year that Muhammad and his followers fled Mecca for Medina, which seems a useful line in the sand.
Left to right: Columbus arrives in the Americas, The Night Watch, Akbar’s court
If ever there was a single date that parts The World Before and The World After, a horrible
axis mundi on which history turns, Columbus’ arrival in America was it. Two parts of the
world which had been isolated for millennia1
were suddenly, irreversibly welded together, bringing untold riches and untold destruction. So much
was gained, and so much more was lost. Entire cultures were snuffed out in the pursuit of sugar, and
from their ashes new ones grew. It’s hard to imagine what world we would live in without the
Santa María.
Left to right: the industrial revolution, Napoleon returns from Elba, the Meiji restoration
That’s not “1776” as in the American revolution, or even “1776” as in Adam Smith, but “1776” as in
the year James Watt sold his first steam engine. At the start of this era, Manchester was a modest
town of perhaps no more than fifty thousand people. By its end, it had ballooned to a heaving
industrial city of seven hundred thousand. That about sums it up: for all the wealth made
by colonial plunder, this was the age where humanity truly began to prosper.
My natural impulse was to start our current age of history at 1945: the end of the war, the start of
decolonisation, the thundering beginning of the atomic age… but, thinking about it, it’s all about
what feels like history. I’m not sure me and someone from ancient Greece would have much in
common to talk about — nor someone from mediæval France, or even Victorian London. But around the
1920s, a switch flips. They have cars. They have fridges. They have films, and radios, and fascists.
I get the sense that a Paris cabaret girl and i share a society, a common world and ethos, in a way
that people from before the war just didn’t. You could pluck her out of history and place her down
in 2025 and, though she may be shocked at first, she’d adjust within the week. The interwar period
is, to me, the beginning of “now”.
I’ve done some fairly interesting things this month, and had planned to write posts for each of them
— but, for whatever reason, none of them provided that particular spark to me. Maybe they just
didn’t seem that interesting to explain to you, the reader, or maybe i didn’t know what to say about
them except the obvious.
Nonetheless, it would be a shame for these events to pass into the annals of my journal without
telling you about them. So! Here’s a brief summary of my unblogged July thus far.
I toddled off to Shildon to visit Locomotion, the local
branch of the national railway museum. It’s the birthday of the railways, and thus boasts a
disproportionate selection of anorak arcana — alas, you can’t go in the trains, but you get
a pretty good look at the inside of Queen Alexandra’s royal train car, the erstwhile Birmingham
maglev, and, most proudly, Stephenson’s Rocket.
Locomotion also provides a lot to geek out about for any heraldry nerds.
Beamish1
has been newly crowned
Museum of the Year, so there was no better time to check it out. I hadn’t properly explored their new fifties town
yet — the chippie and the old houses are wonderful, but the record store, crammed up the stairs,
across an anachronistically modern mezzanine, and down a grey corridor, leaves much to be desired.
Nitpicks about balcony design aside, it’s as great as ever, and, somehow, well worth the £33(!!!!!)
asking price.
Finally, just yesterday, i went off to an Elbow concert hosted in a ruined mediæval priory by the
sea. Belting out “One Day Like This” in the fading dusk light with five thousand other people
standing on the same hallowed ground where monks tried to figure out where baby eels came from is a
top-ten human experience.
