I have been watching / re-watching a whole lot of horror movies since the Pandemic started, some are more rewarding to rewatch than others. But I have found that a lot of the more recent indie horror movies show pretty well on my laptop with earbuds. These tend to have a muted color palette in the first place and a lot of quality sound design that I pick-up better that way.
I really like the VVitch, but more as folk horror which takes place entirely within the Puritanical worldview of the New World -- particularly the importance of the community of believers, and the dangers of the wilderness where one finds want and hardship, and the very real temptations of the powers of evil. What happens is completely predictable from a Puritan perspective. I also would give it a 4/5 because all of the production, acting and technical aspects are excellent; it just feels like the plot could have benefited from something more.
In Illinois we've found the announcement of a federal grand jury indictment to be sufficient to trigger self-removal to spend time with family.
But I think most of this line of discussion misses the main problem here. The UK has often for purposes suited to the moment innovated from the traditional Westminister system in ways that came back to bite later.
The particular change here is that the parties have delegated the ultimate decision of who will be PM to people outside Parliament. To make a poor comparison, it was as if the U.S. House of Representatives selected two or three candidates for Speaker of the House and then the Iowa Caucuses made the ultimate decision. It shouldn't be surprising that an outside, partisan, non-representative group might not select someone with the skills to operate within a deliberative body.
(Another innovation, the Fixed Term Parliament Act, set elections at five year intervals absent two-thirds support of MPs. It was repealed this year after causing a mess in 2019)
I have to disagree, when I was last at Disney World in February of 2020, Avatar was my favorite ride. It was quite an immersive lifelike experience riding one of those flying thingees. I could feel it breathing between my legs, smell the alien pollen, and feel the water spray from far-away oceans. Wait, what are we talking about?
Well, I took Mike's reference to age from the standpoint of America having a President who is 79 years old (and says he is running again), a Speaker of the House who is 82 years old and his senior Senator is 89 years old. I don't think he's saying Sunak is too young, Mike probably voted for a few Presidents in their 40s. Obama had less experience than Sunak.
But I disagree with the implication that its just a Tory thing. Starmer became leader of Labour after five years in Parliament. That's probably a combination of internal civil war involving Corbin, electoral losses, and MPs leaving for better paying gigs.
Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer, a major cabinet minister. OTOH, as matters currently stand Keir Starmer will seek to become prime minister for a Labour government the next election, having never served in a cabinet, and having first been elected to parliament in 2015 (which goes a long way to explain why he hasn't served in a cabinet).
I enjoyed the essay. If there had been room for more, I would have included a reference to David Hume, whose writings were highly influential in the Federalist Papers. Hume experienced convulsive changes in Scotland from 1720 to 1750 and was in a position to contemplate a new type of governance.
In particular, Hume's thoughts were influential on faction, the various kinds, and the harms they produce. From Hume, the notion was derived that a larger republic is superior to the small, because the power of "intrigue, prejudice, and passion" of faction is defused by the remoteness of power. By subsuming governance into larger institutions over larger territories, a great variety of factions must coordinate to wield power, thus limiting the harms from faction. There is no attempt to end faction, that is seen as impossible without despotism and even then faction isn't truly destroyed so much as concealed.
As of an endorsement tracker operated by Patrick Flynn, Sunak has 185 endorsements this morning, which is 51.8% of MPs. Nobody else has cracked 100 endorsements. According to the tracker spreadsheet, Sunak had support across various wings/groups of the party, and suggests that the main point of detraction is more personal. Johnson thinks Sunak's resignation as the most important member of his cabinet was the key resignation of the record 36 in a 24-hour period that sunk his premiership. Johnson pushed an anybody-but Sunak campaign that elevated (Remainer) Truss.
I know of one weird trick -- when forming the cabinet, select representatives of different constituencies of the party and engage in consultation in forming major policy initiatives. So weird, it just might work.
I think the other part of it is that Boris governed with a strong inner circle that irked other party members and Truss repeated this in developing the mini budget without herself possessing the benefit of a strong popular election mandate.
Yeah, and I think this is an odd thing about British leadership elections. The final vote was made by roughly 200,000 Conservative Party members, over half of whom live in London or the South of England. This system does not ensure support in parliament for the leadership -- I think Jeremy Corbyn did not have a majority support of Labour in parliament. (Truss did receive 31.5% of the votes of the parliamentary party to go to the final round of voting as the second place candidate)
"Frank’s life ended on April 15, 1915, dead at age 41 from chronic alcoholism. Survived by his wife, Grace, Figgemeier was buried at Calvary Cemetery and Mausoleum in St. Louis.
Ironically, the one-time invincible ace of a team known as the Prohibitionists joined the tragic fraternity of former major leaguers who drank themselves to an early grave."
This is the point where one wants to ask how old the reviewer is, but really the question is how old is the reader. I was in high school when the original came out, and it was a crowd-pleasing movie for a group of teens that couldn't agree on what to rent. It's a charming mix of comedy and horror. I think I must have watched a little of the remake on TV, and it looks like it puts it foot more firmly in the horror camp.
(The eighties had a lot of comedy/horror: Ghostbusters, Beatlejuice, Witches of Eastwick, Once Bitten, and even most of the slasher movies were played for laughs, particularly the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise)
I was surprised that the National Park didn't have an information center with background on that history. The Cuyahoga caught fire in '69, and the next year was the first Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency was formed.
We pretty much stuck to the National Park, our favorite location was the Brandywine Falls, pretty nice for this time of year.
I've watched a majority of these and probably all which I'll ever see (I don't have HBO), and would rate them:
Bride of Frankenstein: 5/5. Watch this almost every year, it's the best Universal Horror movie in terms of cinematography, story and characterizing the monster as a tragic, sympathetic, yet violent person. Personally, I don't think the Henry / Pretorius relationship stands up as homosexual, certainly it's not a positive one if that view is taken.
The Devil's Backbone: 4/5. Haven't seen this since it was first released in America. I should watch this again.
Army of Darkness: 3/5: Not a big Raimi fan, but can't say I'm not left amused.
Kuroneko: 4/5: Good, but not as good as Onibaba by the same director, or Kwaidan which also has historical settings for its stories.
I would have be paid money to watch Spawn or Starship Stormtroopers.
I think I didn't quite get the VPs though. When I saw two of them were attributed two different inauguration dates, I assumed that was stood out about them, and strongly suspected that Fillmore had been sworn in twice as well, but it wasn't commonly mentioned. As far as I'm aware nobody ever said anything nice about Fillmore but his mother and Michael Cain.
The common piece seems to be Presidential inaugurations that were scheduled at a later date:
These inaugurations were officially scheduled by law to be held on a Sunday, but were moved to Monday out of religious considerations:
*James Monroe (2nd term)
*Zachary Taylor
*Rutherford B Hayes
*Woodrow Wilson (2nd term)
*Dwight Eisenhower (2nd term)
*Barack Obama (2nd term)
This inauguration was rescheduled to the next day due to inclement weather:
*Ronald Reagan (2nd term)
These are inaugurations performed one or more days after the death of the sitting President:
*Millard Fillmore (became POTUS on death of Taylor, sworn-in the next day in House of Representatives)
*Chester A Arthur (local judge performed initial swearing-in, but two days later a formal ceremony was performed in DC with the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS)
*Calvin Coolidge (local judge/dad initially swore him in, but formal ceremony held 18 days later in DC before federal judge)
There are several Vice Presidents who took office on the same day that the sitting President died or resigned. The three mentioned above were sworn in on a later date. However, Tyler was also sworn-in two days after the death of William Henry Harrison. I'm not sure of the nature of the technicality here, but it might be that Tyler didn't think he needed to be sworn in after having done so as Vice President.
What about Zachary Taylor, he was inaugurated on Monday, right? (Monday, March 5, 1849) I actually thought of this theory after Tuesday's hint, and saw that the first and last Presidents listed were inaugurated on Tuesday, the third President I checked was Taylor and abandoned it. He died on Tuesday?
I'm stumped. Maybe someone can carry the ball further, but two things stand out. Taylor died a little over a year after taking office so its unlikely that what they share in common is an attribute of their presidency. Fillmore (Taylor's VP) and Arthur were never elected to be President, so its unlikely to be something about their election. I assume the trivia is something independent of the Presidency, like being left-handed, which I now learn Wikipedia has a specific entry for and that's not it.
Kirill's path is an interesting one, as he started out opposing the Russian invasion of Crimea as a threat to the Russian Orthodox Church's position in Ukraine. Ostensibly as the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', he shares Putin's goal of extending Moscow's cultural influence among the countries claiming descent from the medieval Kievan Rus state. But war heightens national identity and causes blowback.
In 2018, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was recognized as independent with the Archbishop of Constantinople purportedly informing Kirill that ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Ukraine had effectively been lost by the war. Moscow severed ties with Constantinople. Many Orthodox communities in Ukraine remained loyal to the Moscow, but a slow drip away due to Kirill's alienating remarks became a full fledged desertion following the 2022 invasion. All has been lost and the pretense of shared commonality destroyed. Kirill will be remembered by the fruits he has grown.
One of the reasons Washington was successful with intelligence was he encouraged his officers to foster their own spying operations/networks so long as they shared with him the intelligence. Decentralized ops, encouraging individual initiative are successful American features of war.
But the British lost for a lot of other reasons, including not having enough men to pacify the colonies, alienating non-affiliate Americans by their occupation, particularly the Hessian mercenaries, and performing poorly in a war of movement (which can be attributed to hostile natives and poor intelligence).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Ordinary Times’ First Annual Halloween Watchlist: Week 3”
I have been watching / re-watching a whole lot of horror movies since the Pandemic started, some are more rewarding to rewatch than others. But I have found that a lot of the more recent indie horror movies show pretty well on my laptop with earbuds. These tend to have a muted color palette in the first place and a lot of quality sound design that I pick-up better that way.
"
I really like the VVitch, but more as folk horror which takes place entirely within the Puritanical worldview of the New World -- particularly the importance of the community of believers, and the dangers of the wilderness where one finds want and hardship, and the very real temptations of the powers of evil. What happens is completely predictable from a Puritan perspective. I also would give it a 4/5 because all of the production, acting and technical aspects are excellent; it just feels like the plot could have benefited from something more.
On “Boris Johnson Drops Comeback Bid, Rishi Sunak Poised For UK PM”
In Illinois we've found the announcement of a federal grand jury indictment to be sufficient to trigger self-removal to spend time with family.
But I think most of this line of discussion misses the main problem here. The UK has often for purposes suited to the moment innovated from the traditional Westminister system in ways that came back to bite later.
The particular change here is that the parties have delegated the ultimate decision of who will be PM to people outside Parliament. To make a poor comparison, it was as if the U.S. House of Representatives selected two or three candidates for Speaker of the House and then the Iowa Caucuses made the ultimate decision. It shouldn't be surprising that an outside, partisan, non-representative group might not select someone with the skills to operate within a deliberative body.
(Another innovation, the Fixed Term Parliament Act, set elections at five year intervals absent two-thirds support of MPs. It was repealed this year after causing a mess in 2019)
On “Avatar Has No “Hasta la Vista, Baby””
More seriously, perhaps the movie would be better appreciated if seen as an advertisement for the theme park he would create.
"
I have to disagree, when I was last at Disney World in February of 2020, Avatar was my favorite ride. It was quite an immersive lifelike experience riding one of those flying thingees. I could feel it breathing between my legs, smell the alien pollen, and feel the water spray from far-away oceans. Wait, what are we talking about?
On “Boris Johnson Drops Comeback Bid, Rishi Sunak Poised For UK PM”
I think colour over there works differently than our color.
"
Well, I took Mike's reference to age from the standpoint of America having a President who is 79 years old (and says he is running again), a Speaker of the House who is 82 years old and his senior Senator is 89 years old. I don't think he's saying Sunak is too young, Mike probably voted for a few Presidents in their 40s. Obama had less experience than Sunak.
But I disagree with the implication that its just a Tory thing. Starmer became leader of Labour after five years in Parliament. That's probably a combination of internal civil war involving Corbin, electoral losses, and MPs leaving for better paying gigs.
"
Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer, a major cabinet minister. OTOH, as matters currently stand Keir Starmer will seek to become prime minister for a Labour government the next election, having never served in a cabinet, and having first been elected to parliament in 2015 (which goes a long way to explain why he hasn't served in a cabinet).
On “A Scottish Vision of America”
I enjoyed the essay. If there had been room for more, I would have included a reference to David Hume, whose writings were highly influential in the Federalist Papers. Hume experienced convulsive changes in Scotland from 1720 to 1750 and was in a position to contemplate a new type of governance.
In particular, Hume's thoughts were influential on faction, the various kinds, and the harms they produce. From Hume, the notion was derived that a larger republic is superior to the small, because the power of "intrigue, prejudice, and passion" of faction is defused by the remoteness of power. By subsuming governance into larger institutions over larger territories, a great variety of factions must coordinate to wield power, thus limiting the harms from faction. There is no attempt to end faction, that is seen as impossible without despotism and even then faction isn't truly destroyed so much as concealed.
On “Boris Johnson Drops Comeback Bid, Rishi Sunak Poised For UK PM”
As of an endorsement tracker operated by Patrick Flynn, Sunak has 185 endorsements this morning, which is 51.8% of MPs. Nobody else has cracked 100 endorsements. According to the tracker spreadsheet, Sunak had support across various wings/groups of the party, and suggests that the main point of detraction is more personal. Johnson thinks Sunak's resignation as the most important member of his cabinet was the key resignation of the record 36 in a 24-hour period that sunk his premiership. Johnson pushed an anybody-but Sunak campaign that elevated (Remainer) Truss.
On “Liz Truss Resigns After Only Weeks as UK Prime Minister”
I know of one weird trick -- when forming the cabinet, select representatives of different constituencies of the party and engage in consultation in forming major policy initiatives. So weird, it just might work.
"
I think the other part of it is that Boris governed with a strong inner circle that irked other party members and Truss repeated this in developing the mini budget without herself possessing the benefit of a strong popular election mandate.
"
Yeah, and I think this is an odd thing about British leadership elections. The final vote was made by roughly 200,000 Conservative Party members, over half of whom live in London or the South of England. This system does not ensure support in parliament for the leadership -- I think Jeremy Corbyn did not have a majority support of Labour in parliament. (Truss did receive 31.5% of the votes of the parliamentary party to go to the final round of voting as the second place candidate)
On “Such Is Life on the West Side”
Too wet, then die. The end of your link:
"Frank’s life ended on April 15, 1915, dead at age 41 from chronic alcoholism. Survived by his wife, Grace, Figgemeier was buried at Calvary Cemetery and Mausoleum in St. Louis.
Ironically, the one-time invincible ace of a team known as the Prohibitionists joined the tragic fraternity of former major leaguers who drank themselves to an early grave."
On “Ordinary Times’ First Annual Halloween Watchlist: Week 2”
This is the point where one wants to ask how old the reviewer is, but really the question is how old is the reader. I was in high school when the original came out, and it was a crowd-pleasing movie for a group of teens that couldn't agree on what to rent. It's a charming mix of comedy and horror. I think I must have watched a little of the remake on TV, and it looks like it puts it foot more firmly in the horror camp.
(The eighties had a lot of comedy/horror: Ghostbusters, Beatlejuice, Witches of Eastwick, Once Bitten, and even most of the slasher movies were played for laughs, particularly the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise)
On “Weekend Plans Post: A Quick Return to 2020”
Randy Newman on the Cuyahoga:
"Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can't make you burn"
"
I was surprised that the National Park didn't have an information center with background on that history. The Cuyahoga caught fire in '69, and the next year was the first Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency was formed.
We pretty much stuck to the National Park, our favorite location was the Brandywine Falls, pretty nice for this time of year.
"
Hiking around Cuyahoga Valley NP today, brought some matches to test the river. A bit on the cold side, but the colors are incendiary.
On “Ordinary Times’ First Annual Halloween Watchlist: Week 1”
I've watched a majority of these and probably all which I'll ever see (I don't have HBO), and would rate them:
Bride of Frankenstein: 5/5. Watch this almost every year, it's the best Universal Horror movie in terms of cinematography, story and characterizing the monster as a tragic, sympathetic, yet violent person. Personally, I don't think the Henry / Pretorius relationship stands up as homosexual, certainly it's not a positive one if that view is taken.
The Devil's Backbone: 4/5. Haven't seen this since it was first released in America. I should watch this again.
Army of Darkness: 3/5: Not a big Raimi fan, but can't say I'm not left amused.
Kuroneko: 4/5: Good, but not as good as Onibaba by the same director, or Kwaidan which also has historical settings for its stories.
I would have be paid money to watch Spawn or Starship Stormtroopers.
On “Presidential Monday Trivia”
I think I didn't quite get the VPs though. When I saw two of them were attributed two different inauguration dates, I assumed that was stood out about them, and strongly suspected that Fillmore had been sworn in twice as well, but it wasn't commonly mentioned. As far as I'm aware nobody ever said anything nice about Fillmore but his mother and Michael Cain.
"
The common piece seems to be Presidential inaugurations that were scheduled at a later date:
These inaugurations were officially scheduled by law to be held on a Sunday, but were moved to Monday out of religious considerations:
*James Monroe (2nd term)
*Zachary Taylor
*Rutherford B Hayes
*Woodrow Wilson (2nd term)
*Dwight Eisenhower (2nd term)
*Barack Obama (2nd term)
This inauguration was rescheduled to the next day due to inclement weather:
*Ronald Reagan (2nd term)
These are inaugurations performed one or more days after the death of the sitting President:
*Millard Fillmore (became POTUS on death of Taylor, sworn-in the next day in House of Representatives)
*Chester A Arthur (local judge performed initial swearing-in, but two days later a formal ceremony was performed in DC with the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS)
*Calvin Coolidge (local judge/dad initially swore him in, but formal ceremony held 18 days later in DC before federal judge)
There are several Vice Presidents who took office on the same day that the sitting President died or resigned. The three mentioned above were sworn in on a later date. However, Tyler was also sworn-in two days after the death of William Henry Harrison. I'm not sure of the nature of the technicality here, but it might be that Tyler didn't think he needed to be sworn in after having done so as Vice President.
"
What about Zachary Taylor, he was inaugurated on Monday, right? (Monday, March 5, 1849) I actually thought of this theory after Tuesday's hint, and saw that the first and last Presidents listed were inaugurated on Tuesday, the third President I checked was Taylor and abandoned it. He died on Tuesday?
"
I'm stumped. Maybe someone can carry the ball further, but two things stand out. Taylor died a little over a year after taking office so its unlikely that what they share in common is an attribute of their presidency. Fillmore (Taylor's VP) and Arthur were never elected to be President, so its unlikely to be something about their election. I assume the trivia is something independent of the Presidency, like being left-handed, which I now learn Wikipedia has a specific entry for and that's not it.
On “Patriarch Kirill Can Go To Hell”
Kirill's path is an interesting one, as he started out opposing the Russian invasion of Crimea as a threat to the Russian Orthodox Church's position in Ukraine. Ostensibly as the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', he shares Putin's goal of extending Moscow's cultural influence among the countries claiming descent from the medieval Kievan Rus state. But war heightens national identity and causes blowback.
In 2018, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was recognized as independent with the Archbishop of Constantinople purportedly informing Kirill that ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Ukraine had effectively been lost by the war. Moscow severed ties with Constantinople. Many Orthodox communities in Ukraine remained loyal to the Moscow, but a slow drip away due to Kirill's alienating remarks became a full fledged desertion following the 2022 invasion. All has been lost and the pretense of shared commonality destroyed. Kirill will be remembered by the fruits he has grown.
On “Why Putin Has Already Lost His War in Ukraine, Even If He Wins It.”
One of the reasons Washington was successful with intelligence was he encouraged his officers to foster their own spying operations/networks so long as they shared with him the intelligence. Decentralized ops, encouraging individual initiative are successful American features of war.
But the British lost for a lot of other reasons, including not having enough men to pacify the colonies, alienating non-affiliate Americans by their occupation, particularly the Hessian mercenaries, and performing poorly in a war of movement (which can be attributed to hostile natives and poor intelligence).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.