Watched this last night. Didn’t realize it was based on a novel by Robert Harris, I’m a big fan of his Ancient Rome novels.

A couple related movies on youtube:

• Inside the Third Reich: Rutger Hauer as a nazi again, this time as the architect Speer, based on Speer’s autobiography (which was arguably pretty self-serving) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWMzzzoBtzs
• Speer and Hitler: the German version of Inside the Third Reich, I think, haven’t seen it yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cReqkNG-r0U
• Die Wanseekonferenz: a re-enactment of the “final solution” conference mentioned in this movie. Horrifying, though they’re just sitting around a table most the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URSNN5mnI2g

I don’t really like posting Nazi movies but apparently it’s something we need to start thinking about again.

So Maggie Smith (RIP) was best known these days as one of those Harry Potter wizard teachers and as that old lady in Downton Abby and a bunch of roles like that. But she played many roles and won several awards before that. For this movie, she won an Oscar for Best Actress.

But I think this is one of those movies that tells you a lot about that period of time. It gets complicated bc it’s supposed to take place during the 1930s and it was filmed in the late 60s. Also, the movie is based on a play which was based on a book and apparently the movie takes more after the play than the book, which are all different from each other… And there seems to be some kind of British irony thing going on here that I have a hard time tracking.

Like, there’s this old lady who says she’s in her prime. And she acts like a free spirit but she’s literally a fascist who admires Mussolini and Franco. And her best pal is an artist who grooms and molests the middle- and high-school aged girls under her care. See, the thing about irony is that it relies on the communicating parties having a common ground of understanding that can be relied on to differentiate from the ironic statement. So I’m constantly trying to decide: they’re saying it’s a BAD thing to be a fascist or a child abuser… right? Or are they playing a straight “teacher who changed my life” story, like Dead Poets Society later did, or Goodbye Mr Chips did back in the day? Both of the morally questionable characters kind of have a comeuppance… but not really?

Anyway, if you’re a highschooler or an undergrad looking for a movie to write a term paper on, this is a great candidate.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spain-friars-killed-injured-monastery/

https://elpais.com/espana/2024-11-10/detenido-el-autor-del-ataque-que-dejo-a-siete-monjes-heridos-en-el-monasterio-de-gilet.html - El País is considered a newspaper of record, the automated translation isn’t too bad.

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Couldna said it better myself.

Luckily I got a chance to watch it a couple days ago before they all disappeared. I’d forgotten how formulaic Elvis movies are, the last time I saw one was like 20 years ago. It was a lot of fun though. When he sang “Only Fools Rush In” to his girlfriend in the presence of her grandma, it was kind of touching. There were definitely parts that were a product of their era, though.

Alas! A lot of full movies on dailymotion have been deleted… Including this one…

They didn’t lose the election for Harris.

Right… I don’t think there are enough Arab- and Muslim-Americans in PA to swing it, and she needed that to win the election, even if she had won MI. I suspect it was her failed messaging on the economy that made the difference. But we don’t have final numbers yet so it’s hard to tell.

The article is a lot more nuanced than the headline. Arab- and Muslim-Americans knew that neither candidate cared about them, and the article explains various ways that affected their thinking.

Just watched this movie; it’s solid. Willie Nelson and Jim Belushi co-star! Not familiar with Tangerine Dream, but their soundtrack is far out, gives the movie a Blade Runner feel. (though Blade Runner came afterwards…)

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Unpopular opinion: Kamala was a solid candidate.

Biden was headed to a humiliating defeat. Another couple debates, and maybe he loses NY and CA and we have a Dukakis- or Mondale-level annhilation. Kamala stepped in and ran a solid campaign on very short notice. Trump didn’t even have time to come up with a good nickname for her! She kicked his ass in their only debate, and he was literally too scared to do it again.

In the end, she lost by a couple hundred thousand votes in 3 states. She was wrong about Gaza and the economy, but PA, MI, and WI are credibly winnable in future elections. Kamala was not a garbage candidate.

What If: Beavis and Butthead were born in Türkiye.

banned me from the store “for life”

Awesome! I hope you refused to honor it unless he put a poster on the front door with a picture of you and a ghostbusters-style “no” sign around it.

Hmmm… “A Passage to India” takes place during the Raj (which is when the Crown took over from the East India Company) but a lot of the attitudes and issues are the same

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087892/
• the novel on Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/61221

Similarly, “Conduct Unbecoming” takes place right after the Crown takeover. But hey, it’s free on youtube:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzE8HkRrz0
• description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduct_Unbecoming_(1975_film)

Finally, you could look here:

• https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?keywords=east-india-company

It’s like calling tech support and having them say “works for me! try reading up on the problem” and hanging up.

Unpopular opinion: blaming the voters is counterproductive. It’s important to understand why they voted (or abstained) the way they did.

Yes, some percentage of voters are indeed racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. But hypothetically, another percentage are people who were unhappy because of economic reasons and felt they were presented with two bad options:

• an unreliable candidate who acknowledged they were unhappy
• an unknown candidate who said they were wrong and should just be happy

Is this hypothesis correct? I don’t know, but just assuming the voters are ignorant, or just saying that leopards will eat their faces, isn’t productive.

Hmm… I’ve dealt with elderly relatives, and it can be hard to tell when someone’s no longer capable of doing something… so I have a bit of sympathy for him there. It’s possible that a year ago Biden was up to the job and really was the best chance at defeating Trump. And he gets credit for stepping down when he did. However I’m a little more skeptical of his sticking VP Harris with the job of solving the border crisis, which is a notoriously unsolvable problem.

I suspect that given 3 months to jump-start a campaign, NOBODY could have won this election against Trump. Biden was headed towards Dukakis and Mondale levels of defeat, and Harris at least brought it to a couple hundred thousand in 3 states. (I wish I could post my argument to “unpopular opinion”, but apparently they prohibit political posts.)

I mean this respectfully. The character Everett True is known as someone who tells the truth even when it’s not popular.

FTA:

…for at least 20 million U.S. households, there is good cause for disillusionment. The method the federal government uses to calculate real incomes tends to capture the economic realities of higher-income people better than those of working-class and middle-class Americans.

To be fair, she had little more than a weekend to come up with her campaign messaging. She was made candidate like 3 months before election day.