Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
Day 80: I’ll say a little more in a separate post, but in brief, Barbie is excellent. The less you know going in, the better, but even if you’ve been reading reviews and articles about it, there’s so much in here that will surprise you. If you’re even remotely curious, it’s worth your time.
33/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1990 Hugo Best Novel
Still as engrossing as when I first read it, many years ago. Far-future space opera on a huge scale, but presented through a series of vignettes shared by members of a band of pilgrims (if this sounds rather like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, be glad you got a good education in classic literature) heading toward what seems to be an unpleasant fate for all of them…and possibly billions more. Amusingly, while I knew that this was part of a series (originally two books, then four) because I have all of them on my shelf, I’d forgotten that the next book is not so much a sequel as the second half of a single story. Good thing I can just head upstairs and grab the next book to keep going!
NOTE: Given Simmons’ descent into right-wing politics, including Islamophobia and publicly attacking Greta Thunburg, he has earned a space on my “milkshake duck” virtual bookshelf, collecting those authors whose work I discovered, enjoyed, and might still enjoy, before later realizing that they are what I consider to be rather horrible people.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tom Cruise may be something of a bizarre personality, but he and the people he works with sure know how to put together a great, big, ridiculous summer action movie.
While I’d watched the trailers a while ago, I must not have paid that much attention to them, as I didn’t realize (remember) that both Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff were in this; both of whom, of course, I’m most familiar with from the Marvel universe. Both are fun additions to the franchise; Atwell as a thief who gets pulled into the general shenanigans, and Klementieff as a henchwoman whose absolute glee at the destruction she causes is wonderfully infectious.
The action set pieces, as promised, are a blast. There’s a car chase that even got my wife (notoriously unimpressed by car chases) invested, and a huge set piece on a train that was as close to literally nail-biting as I’ve seen in a long time. And the Big Bad for this film (and the next, since this is a two-part story) is a clever approach, and rather perfectly topical.
The M:I movies may not be “great cinema” — but (with the exception of the second in the franchise) they’re reliable fun, and easily one of the stronger action franchises going right now, and this one keeps it all moving quite handily.
We realized after seeing the Laika exhibit at MoPOP that there were two films we hadn’t seen yet, so we watched this one today. It’s a fun film, quite cute, and had us snickering pretty regularly. Nothing amazing story wise, but the artistry and craftsmanship of Laika’s work is always worth watching (and fun to see things on screen that we’d just seen on exhibit).
32/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Originally published as six eBook novellas, this series tracks a single plot line — a natural disaster on a non-Federation planet and the resulting aftermath and recovery — through decades, from just before TOS’s “Where No Man Has Gone Before” to just after the intro of Star Trek: Generations. It makes for a neat look both at the Federation’s long-term approach to working with non-aligned planets (after all, how often have we seen an adventure and then never heard of the planet or culture again?), and how the core TOS crew evolve over the years. This is helped by each novella being written by an author specifically chosen for their expertise in a particular era of Trek history. Definitely one of the stronger Trek omnibus stories I’ve read.
It took less than 24 hours for me to delete the Threads app from my phone.
Hate groups Libs of TikTok, Moms for Liberty, Gays Against Groomers, and PragerU are already on Threads and harassing people. Apparently PragerU even already has a blue “verified” checkmark.
I’ve updated my bio there to say that I’m not using the service, and put up a post similar to this one telling people why I’m leaving and where to find me.
It had already given me a bad first impression, as there is only one feed and it’s all an algorithmic constant stream of crap from obnoxious randos and (so, so many) brands, with no way to filter it out to just the people you actually want to follow or get a chronological view of posts.
And there’s no way to add alt text to images, so accessibility is obviously an afterthought, at best.
Threads does not get my recommendation. If you choose to explore, good luck and stay safe.
Day 62: Geeky flirting at its finest. My wife finds me the best shirts!
Here’s a fun little entry in my small and random collection of Trek stuff: A set of four drinking glasses issued by Dr. Pepper. They all have TAS artwork on the front, some technical or biographical information on the back, and have a copyright date of 1976.
This set was found by my brother at a garage sale or antique store (I don’t remember exactly) a few years back and sent to me as a present. They’re great! Though they’re definitely display pieces, as I don’t want to risk damaging them…or the possibility of their using some sort of funky ’70s-era lead-based paint or some such thing.
Thanks to this simple Twitter archiver, I’ve just added my Twitter archives to my website, and added a link under the “Worth Reading” header menu item (though whether or not they’re actually worth reading is debatable).
While I wasn’t one of the most prolific users out there, I had my share of silly, serious, inane, or thoughtful things to say over the years, and it would have been a shame for them to have entirely disappeared. So I’d downloaded my data before deleting it and locking down my account, and have had it sitting on my computer waiting to find the right way to get it online somewhere. Nice to have them visible again.
(I actually have them all also imported into this WordPress blog, but the tool I found to do that imported them all as their own specific post type intstead of adding them as standard posts, which means they’re not easily visible. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to either covert them to regular posts or incorporate this other post type into the rest of the blog. For now, though, they just sit in the database.)
31/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Hopepunk and Afrofuturist stories in the world of Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer. A really good set of stories, written with a lineup of coauthors. There wasn’t a story here that I didn’t enjoy. While not strictly necessary, I do recommend at least watching the Dirty Computer “emotion picture” before or along with reading this for a little more background on the world and its characters. And, of course, Monáe’s Dirty Computer album, along with the rest of her albums, is excellent.
