Bajini: “It has been argued that the account
of the Baijini in the Aboriginal folklore are in fact a mythological reflection of the
experiences of some Aboriginals who have traveled to Sulawesi with the Macassans and came back.”
A Landing a Day — A blog, regularly
running since 2009, which must have been surgically targeted to be Right In My Wheelhouse:
In this formerly once-a-day blog, then pretty much a once-a-week blog and now an
every-other-week blog if I’m lucky, I use an app that provides a random latitude and
longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48). I call
this “landing.”
Project Backbone, an interactive globe
showing the physical infrastructure of the internet. We don’t tend to think of the internet as
having a corporeal existence, but it’s all around you if you look!
“Luddism does not deserve to be rehabilitated.
It was a medieval throwback, reactionary and primitive, a pre-Marxist labor convulsion closer in
spirit to the Khmer Rouge’s fantasies of agrarian restoration than to the universalist
solidarity of Eugene Debs.“
The Cercle Hermaphroditos
was the earliest known transgender advocacy group in the U.S.… see also
Jennie June, whose
article is if nothing else a fascinating window into the time before our modern
LGBT terminology was standardised
And, to finish things off, here’s an Artemis II quickfire round! First, this picture of
“Earthset” was the fastest i’ve ever switched to a new desktop background:
Ryan Gosling has entered that pantheon of actors where i will happily go see literally
anything he is in1, but it’s always nice when i wouldn’t have needed convincing in the first place, and as it stands,
i probably would have watched Project Hail Mary even if it had starred Neil Breen. (…Maybe
only once, though.)
Fundamentally this film is about bromance. Bromance between Ryan Gosling and a rock. And you never
doubt the chemistry once. That’s movie magic right there.
It’s remarkable how well Lord and Miller nail the big, cosmic spectacle, and that classic
Spielbergian sense of wonder, given that their only prior live-action director jobs have been broad
comedies. Maybe Solo rubbed off on them?
Alternatively, i had always attributed much of the “hype moments and aura” in the
Spider-Verse films to the directors and the animation team, but maybe these overworking
assholes do know what they’re doing after all…
At one point, the ship’s computer says the journey home will take around four years, and that really
took me out of it. Don’t they know Tau Ceti is twelve light-years from
Earth? Are they stupid? Why even bother having it take years if
you’re just going to ignore it?
Anyway, on the bus back i suddenly remembered that general relativity exists, and realised the movie
was smarter than me. Embarrassing.
I remember thinking while watching, “Wow, this score is crazy intense,” and then up came Daniel
Pemberton’s name in the credits. Of course.
“Time Go Fishing” may well replace “No
Time for Caution” as my music of choice to pipe through my headphones during takeoff on a plane. A
potential Oscar winner? I should bloody hope so.2
Sandra Hüller is shockingly funny in this. Maybe i’m just used to seeing her in roles like “Nazi
housewife” and “mariticide suspect”.
What i find most fascinating about Project Hail Mary is that this is a big, huge Hollywood
action blockbuster… where nobody throws a single punch! The climactic show-stopping scene is a
fishing trip. There’s not even a clearly defined villain; it’s just about
cool dudes trying their best to fix a problem.
And you know what? That’s what we need. I’m only the seven trillionth person to say this, but in
such pessimistic times, when we seem more than ever to be ruled by a mob of ignoramuses (ignorami?),
it was lovely to watch a film with an overriding message of hope. I suspect this and
Superman will mark a turning point in the cynical tide of pop culture.
TL;DR: 10/10, probably going to be my favourite film of the year, see it
on the biggest screen you can.
Genuinely quite honoured to see the Forest on the
FMHY list… that site has helped my
cheapskate ass out more times than i can count.
Canadian place names be like:
Rhodesville
Sainte-Marie-du-Saguenay
Bull Penis, Alberta
Kitchenpissing
Xɬθʷəyëm Gitzâa (formerly Adolf Hitler Island)
🫵️ YOU should go watch Project Hail Mary in Imax right now. I don’t care what you’re doing.
Get on the bus and buy a ticket.
Channel Surfer — what if Youtube, but linear television?
Very much in the spirit of Surf.city, which i used to have on my linkroll until it went
down.
Random Daily URLs! Looks
like i have a new source to keep my eyes on… i wish this had an
RSS feed instead of making me input my email address, but we can’t
have everything in life, i suppose. (via the above)
Moss, a “painting toy” where every brush is its own weird
programmatic filter. Interface is a little obtuse, but maybe that’s the point? (via
Web Curios)
I actually thought some of the Nvidia DLSS examples everyone is butt-mad
about looked kinda neat, IDK. Clearly not ready for prime time, but if
they can tamp down on the yassification it might help break through the plateau of diminishing
returns on photorealism that the past decade of video games has been stuck on.
Wikipedia is available in over three hundred languages, and each one picks different images to
illustrate its pages for the same topic.
You can compare them here!
Making Software: A beautifully illustrated website that will, apparently, eventually be a book, but i don’t
know how the printed page could ever capture the intricacies of its animations.
There is no official web API for haptic feedback. Checkboxes,
however, do generate a haptic buzz on your phone whenever ticked and unticked… even if
they’re hidden… and even if it’s the computer doing the ticking.
Behold the greatest bodge in web-dev history.
If anyone else loves watching programmers argue about boring international standards as much as
i do,
here’s the maintainers of the tz database
desperately trying to figure out what to call British Columbia’s time zone when it switches to
permanent DST.
So many insane fucking things happen in this film, i almost forgot that the opening credits sequence
is Timothée Chalamet’s sperm racing to inseminate Odessa A’Zion’s egg, which then turns into a
ping-pong ball, which he hits. Everything about Marty Supreme further confirms that
Mr Chalamet is our generation’s only true movie star. 9/10
Watched over Discord voice chat with a friend, which i suspect is the ideal way to do it. Eric
Freeman, who plays our main character Ricky, makes some… how should i put it…
inspired acting choices every time he opens his mouth — this is a man whose eyebrows have a
mind of their own.
My only real complaint is that i just wish there was more killing. Over half of the film is taken up
by a clip show of the previous entry in the series, and though Ricky’s rampage is iconic enough to
make up for it (Say it with me:
GARBAGE DAY!!!!), i can’t help feeling there’s a lot of missed potential. 7i/101
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Look — there’s a lot to like about this. Jacob Elordi’s turn as Adam
Frankenstein is fantastic. But it’s overstuffed with so, so much pointless melodrama and bombast —
and coming from a director who claims to hate CGI, it sure did look like
the bloody Polar Express every time there was a fight scene! 5/10
Paul Verhoeven is single-handedly holding up the entirety of Dutch cinema with just his pinky
finger, and we must all thank him for it, otherwise there would be no respite from the endless
Hilversumslop. 7/10
Easily the most brutal film in the series, and none of the worst kills are even done by zombies!
Ralph Fiennes gives it his all, with a fantastic record collection to match. Jack O’Connell is one
to watch, too — the look on his face when he starts thinking
wait, shit, is this guy Satan? is pure cinema™. 8/10
I’m still not sure if this is a searing societal critique or a sad, puerile tantrum. I don’t know if
anyone’s sure. Still, i’ve got to give it a positive rating just for the insanity of the
animation on display. 6/10
I was going to watch internationally acclaimed Korean thriller No Other Choice.
Unfortunately, i was late to the screening, so i decided to watch a movie about an evil monkey
instead.
And you know what? It’s a damn good movie about an evil monkey! It’s clearly not the best film ever,
but it’s the best version of itself it could be. The decision to use a guy in a practical suit (with
some CG touchups) for the titular chimp paid off massively. I just wish
Noam Chomsky was here to see it.26½/10
Everyone who was a member of the Academy in 2018 should be slapped in the face until it bleeds for
not nominating Toni Collette for Best Actress. My stomach was doing ollies and backflips all the way
through — the family argument is more terrifying than anything supernatural could ever be.
10/10
What i find interesting about this is that it’s, like… a 1920s-nostalgia picture? Which is a concept
that’s almost incomprehensible today. Maybe that’s why the big show-stopping number has fuck-all to
do with anything else — but it’s hard to care when it’s that bloody good! 8/10
I tried writing a review of this, but when i looked back at the page, it was just “They don’t make
’em like they used to” over and over again? Strange. To paraphrase Vespasian: I think i’m becoming a
Dad.
Reading up on the production afterwards, it’s incredible that this is as great as it is. It seems so
meticulously planned out, and then it turns out they were just making it up as they went along.
Harrison Ford fucked his knee during the train stunt and he just had to have a limp for the rest of
the film because they were shooting chronologically. Incredible. 8/10
Largely fails to rise above standard biopic mediocrity, but there are some surprisingly interesting
choices being made — setting it at one particular moment in Bruce Springsteen’s career helps ward
away the standard mile-a-minute “this is the entire life story of Blorbo Glump” biopic pacing, the
incidental music is shockingly good given the type of film this is, and, of course, Stephen Graham
is there. 5¼/10
I liked this overall — good, campy fun — and would recommend you go see it, since it doesn’t seem to
be getting much love at the box office. But…
It’s often said that streaming services like Netflix mandate that the dialogue in their shows be
written for slowpokes who are watching while scrolling through TikToks on their phone, and this was
the first time i got the sense that was going on. Joe Keery’s character is a talkative (if
charismatic) little bastard, and he often speaks like he’s trying to put the audio describer out of
a job, pointing out the blatantly obvious and repeating information we’ve heard a jillion times
before. You just wish Liam Neeson would tell him to shut up. 6/10
I think my copy just had uniquely crappy picture quality, but every frame of this looks like
someone’s last known photo. There is no good in this movie’s world. There doesn’t seem to be much at
all, really. Just unrelenting chaos and torture. So, you know, god forgive a family love each other
and have a shared hobby 🙄️ 8/10
Okay, i know it’s gauche to begin a link roundup with an image file just after i forced your
computer to load a Youtube embed, but i need to confirm that you’re seeing the same thing i am on
your screens.
We’re all seeing that, right? A robotics company called
“Satyress” that’s making centaur-shaped robots? I’m
not just hallucinating the most concentrated Xanthebait imaginable? You’d fucking better be
seeing it, or else i’m going to have start measuring my prozac dose in grams. Anyway. Link roundup
#59, link #1, complete. Here’s the rest!
Oculart is a website of strange interactive… things.
An beautiful isometric map of New York,
à la nineties and noughties city simulators. One of the more interesting applications of
image-generation tech i’ve seen.
Please ignore the smear of utility pole blocking the view.
When i was a child, old enough to be firmly planted in the UK but young enough that every day
outside a school’s walls was magical, my family would sometimes take the train up to visit kin in
Scotland. I got the window seat, of course — i still hold that those who genuinely prefer aisle
seats are suckers — and as i watched the Northumbrian countryside roll by, the sight of one
particular town always held my attention, what seemed to me like some kind of Turneresque utopia by
the sea. But we never debarked until Scotland was in sight, and this village thus remained a mystery
to me. Some days ago, i decided to rectify that. Welcome to Alnmouth.
Well — i say Alnmouth, and indeed so does the sign at
the railway station, a modest
and drizzly affair that gets a surprising amount of service due to its prime position on the East
Coast Main Line. One thing you must understand about the sign and i is that we are filthy, filthy
liars. This is Hipsburn, a teeny-tiny1
village about a mile inland. You can get a bus from here to there, or, indeed, to Alnwick, the other
town on the station sign and by far the more prestigious.2
But that would be boring, and i came here to touch grass, not listen to other people’s TikToks at
maximum volume, so it’s off along the B1338 i go.
As i approach the roundabout ahead of me i think to myself that i would like to retire in one of
these cottages, and maybe die there if my transhumanist sympathies should ever fail me. The
village’s last institution before it peters out into the countryside is
Alnmouth United FC, who are slumming it down on
the ninth step of the football
pyramid. I wish them well; my old hometown’s club recently folded and got locked out of their pitch,
so it’s good to see the local game alive and well here.
The Duchess Bridge, seen looking back towards Hipsburn.
From here things get squelchy. I rest for a moment on the
girdered pedestrian footbridge, which
clings on for dear life to its Victorian car-carrying counterpart, and gaze inland over the river as
it flows downstream and under my hooves. The marshy pastures all around, too salty for crops of
human worth, once fed oxen and other beasts of burden, but, in 2006,
their flood defences were deliberately breached, rewilding them and creating swathes of estuarine saltmarsh. I’m not holding my breath for otters
to show up — they’re crepuscular buggers, and i’ve come in the afternoon — but i do spot a relaxed
teal in the grasses. (I’ve always been more of a mammal fan, but it’ll do. Call it a home-team
bias.)
This bench would make excellent fodder for an indie album cover.
I carry on down the “Lovers’ Walk” (a popular term for scenic walkways in the eighteenth century, a
sign assures me), wedged between piny hillside and sandy water. This is perhaps not the scenery that
England would like to advertise to the world: a cold, grey, winter day, where the nominal path is
liquid with mud and the river seems permanently half full. Nonetheless, this part of Northumberland
is one of our “National Landscapes” —
né·e Areas of National Beauty — and i find it sublime even in the most miserable weather.
As i edge closer to the town, a chorus of tweeting, chirruping birds grows louder and louder. I
attribute it to the flock of wigeons across the river, but, passing by the boating club and getting
(relatively) further inland, its loudness refuses to fade. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to
be the back garden of a holiday cottage!
Back down to shore and through the dunes, now. “Danger: River estuary. No bathing,” complains a sign
from the council, which is a shame, because unless i want to backtrack it’d be the only viable way
to reach the landmark that dominates Alnmouth’s skyline (to the extent that it has one):
Church Hill, a
cross-topped hillock ever impending in the distance.3
It is said that it was on this wind-blasted top that, in 684 CE, Saint
Cuthbert was elected to be Bishop of Hexham. It is also said that two otters would come and warm
Saint Cuthbert’s feet after he had stood in the freezing North Sea and whispered his nightly
prayers, and that animals regularly helped him with his housework, so take these things with a grain
of salt.
At last, i make it to Alnmouth itself, and i regret that i have little to say about it other than
that it is nice. There are many nice places in Northumberland, usually ones not
located over a coalfield, and though i find them all pleasant, i confess i sometimes have a hard
time telling them apart. I take a short break in
a café whose
windows, in this weather, make the outside world look like a still life by Mr Magoo. I savour every
sip of their hot chocolate. It tastes like the ones grandma used to bring home from Spain. I would
have liked to stay longer, but as it is, it will already be dark enough by the time i get back to
Newcastle (let alone my actual hometown) that they will be holding candlelit vigils for the
slain Iranian protestors by the Monument. So, as one does, i leave for the beach.
The walk over takes me across the manicured grass of the local golf club, who i’m again sure are
very nice.4
I hang back from the frothy Atlantic, conscious that touching it will likely freeze my bollocks
off5, and focus on the sand beneath my feet, its consistency akin to that of… well, sand. Specifically,
it reminds me of the play sand that gets everywhere and which every parent surely regrets ever
buying for their child. It is soft enough to sink in my steps, tough enough not to immediately
fizzle and flood back into the hole left over. The Dutch call this taai, especially
when it comes to the texture of food, and it has always bugged me that there is no decent English
equivalent.
Trudging back to the Lovers’ Walk over the estuary flats, i spot something that mystifies me.
Gossamer shifting sands, light as silk, sailing and shimmering with the force of the wind. When i go
over to stand amidst them, they are so thin that i feel nothing on my ankles but the wind. I imagine
myself as a sort of low-rent Lawrence of Arabia.
The last place i take note of is a small hut on the land of the boating club. I saw it on the way
in, but thought nothing of it at the time, figuring it served some private purpose. But… it’s
awfully empty, and there’s noöne around, so… it can’t hurt, can it? I venture towards its nigh-black
planks. Crude painted lettering on an old oar over the door calls it
the ferry hut; inside, this old shack has been converted into a miniature museum of the village’s history — its
people, its ferrymen, how it fared in the war, all told through laminated books and picture frames.
I wish i lived in a town that had as much respect for itself as this mere village of five hundred!
Not having brought enough cash for a substantial donation, i settle for a slightly guilty signature
in the exhibition’s guestbook, and carry on my merry way home, pleased as punch. I think to myself:
I’ll have to come back.
Yes, it’s true. The Horny Awards — the annual celebration of the best things of the year — have
outgrown the plant-pots of The Garden, and have thus been moved to
their own page, which you can visit here. See you there!
I spent so much time as a little kid listening to They Might Be Giants’
Here Comes Science, and as my brain’s synapses reminded me recently, it turns out that
“Why Does the Sun Shine?” is still a fucking jam.
A fascinating profile of the Vatican’s official astronomer.
Quoth: “Scientists at the observatory are liberated from the secular scholar’s pursuit of
tenure, grant money, and commercial investment; moreover, the Jesuits, having taken a vow of
poverty, have extremely low living costs.”
