Photography Icons - Icons made from photography

1) Your Perception Of Time Is, In Fact, Warped is an insightful essay about why "Everyone from Boomers to Zoomers is mystified at how the passage of time has sped up, and feels disoriented by the strange velocity that’s colored how we’re living through the 2020s." ( Read more... )

2) My prep for the Ohio trip continues, with most of the places responding to confirm dates and times, some more easily than others. Two remain unanswered despite my making several calls. One clearly uses an AI system which twice told me it was forwarding my confirmation request only for no response to come and, today, a message from it prompting me to call again. ( Read more... )

3) I also had to get a new phone, which seems like a model example of enshittification. ( Read more... )

4) However this new phone is lacking so many things my old phone came with -- worst of all, no Fitbit app. ( Read more... )

5) I read Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries, #8) by Martha Wells and was rather disappointed with it. ( Read more... )

1) I have been mildly interested in Jennifer Ashley's Mrs. Holloway series. But I particularly liked Death in Kew Gardens. ( Read more... )

2) I was charmed by the documentary Big Dreams: Little League World series 2024. I'd heard of the series before but knew little about it, not being into baseball (and my resident baseball superfan not having any interest in it). I had it on our list because I thought he might like to see it but he was indifferent. What I liked about it, besides the fact that it's the only such contest that can truly be called a "World" series, was that the kids are so open. You just see everything on their faces, and they're also so kind to one another. ( Read more... )

3) Also to my surprise, I have been enjoying Countdown to Doomsday ( Read more... )

4) One thing I'm not sure I want to rec is House of Hammer, which was one of the more disturbing things I've seen this year. It's distressing to hear that "Charmies", fans of Armie Hammer from Call Me By Your Name fandom, engaged in coordinated attacks against the women he harmed. The documentary is a little too social media for my taste, but it does a good job of collecting different people to interview about the criminal acts of the Hammer men going back several generations. Proof that Epstein simply knew his target market, not that what he did was unique. ( Read more... )

5) Posted my latest set of fanwork recs, including what is probably going to be my favorite story of the year, Sunrise in Exile.

1) I cancelled HBO Max because there's too much stuff I'm watching and I'm not keeping up with anything on there except Lanterns. Would like to continue with it, as it's leading in all sorts of interesting directions, but I don't want to keep subscribing for another few months just to see its run in real time. I'll have to catch up on all my Max viewing next year.

2) Speaking of other subscriptions I haven't been watching enough, our return to Paramount+ now that Daily Show is back led me to see a promo for Supergirl. I can see why this movie didn't do well. ( Read more... )

3) Speaking also of TV, this exploration of reality shows' impact on TV contained some very interesting bits (even if it's a TV format I very rarely see):

"Survivor 50 would go on to be nominated for Outstanding Reality Competition Program at the 78th annual Primetime Emmy Awards. So did The Traitors, Dancing With the Stars, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Top Chef. The Traitors is the newcomer of the bunch, but the format has already produced approximately 89 seasons across 40 global territories. (It depends what you count.) Ironically, it has become rare for a scripted show to make it beyond three seasons."

4) I was stuck in the car waiting the other day and happened to catch a RadioLab broadcast about population growth and what has become population decline. ( Read more... )