This looks … like something I want to see. Obviously, I will see it when it comes out, but with some apprehension. I don’t think Indy 4 was quite the trainwreck people say it is, but it was certainly the low point of the franchise. Of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark is pretty much the perfect adventure film, so you can’t reasonably expect to top it very easily. Still … cautiously optimistic for this one.
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This is where your find short posts, like quick updates, interesting links or photos.
By the time we get to the advent, Christmas has already been rolling for a while. And while ‘tis the season to be jolly, it’s also a bit of a chore.
[M]ost big businesses — like Twitter’s advertisers — are global, and the idea of hate, to them, is laughable, because they’re trying to sell stuff to everybody, including the gay people (that’s 10–20% of the world), women (50% of the world), people of color (they’re 80% of the world)…everybody. […] They don’t have any room for hate whatsoever, because it gets in the way of business.
Every single Mastodon admin right now.
Britain is still a very governable country in which most people are not at anyone’s throat and wish, for the most part, simply to be governed competently; a country which has just changed its head of state after seventy years with barely a tremor of uncertainty. No, the problem is not us, it’s them: the Conservative Party. It is diseased. Twelve years of government, and the rupturing, self-lobotomising effects of Brexit, have conspired to create a party which has turned its face from the world and now experiences reality as a series of violent shocks from the outside.
One look at the mega-rich shows the futility of great wealth. Jeff Bezos, for example, goes on amusement park rides alone and makes brief trips into near-space, thereby only emulating a mid-ranking Soviet Union Air Force officer of 61 years ago. That's a pathetic return on billions of pounds.
Bergen’s black metal stalwarts Enslaved released another classic with 2020’s Utgard. They’re back with a new single, Kingdom, promising more great things to come.
One of my favorite bands, The Divine Comedy, is playing in Oslo tonight. I’ve seen them twice before, once here and once in Dublin, which was one of the great concert experiences of my life.
Neil Hannon, who is The Divine Comedy, has been remarkably consistent in his output, and being untethered from his contemporaries, has avoided the usual "middle age is approaching" slump. Furthermore, his side project, The Duckworth Lewis Method, a cricket-themed collaboration with Thomas Walsh, led me to discover the latter’s band, Pugwash, one of the great – and unfairly obscure – pop bands around.
The closest The Divine Comedy has come to releasing a dud was Regeneration, which was a stab at sounding more of its time. It remains one of the less-loved (Less-loved, mind you, not more-hated) releases, which is unfair, because it’s really good. This is the video for Perfect Lovesong.
This is a step towards totalitarianism, with every Russian, rich or poor, being demanded to make a choice: are you with or against Putin? There is no more room for neutrality or loyal opposition, caveats or concerns. Or else? Or else what he chillingly called a ‘natural and necessary self-cleansing of society,’ that he believed ‘will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to meet any challenge.’ […] Of course, another word for cleansing is ‘purge.’
Mark Galeotti writing for The Spectator, Putin’s totalitarian turn