Cory Doctorow: Palantir is looting the UK’s National Health Service, under cover of the Big Lie: “There is no alternative.” [pluralistic.net]
Five ways Israelis have changed, after 5 months of war. [kpbs.org] — Israelis believe the world has turned its back on them. They have no sympathy for Palestinian suffering; they believe the Palestinians want to kill every Israeli, and that there is no potential partner for peace among the Palestinian people. Israelis are preparing for a longer and harder war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Horrible as this war has been so far, I fear it’s just getting started.
I loved all five of Frank Herbert’s Dune books and enjoyed the first Villeneuve movie, but I can’t get motivated to see Dune 2 in theaters.
First, I would need to rewatch the first Villeneuve movie, which I am not particularly in the mood for. Then, I’d need to sit for nearly three hours for the second movie.
What happened to intermissions? Really long movies used to have intermissions. Bring back intermissions!
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans kpbs.org
I like my windows the way I like them
Many people have multiple overlapping application windows open on their screens while working. But I’ve always maximized whatever window I’m working in.
When I need to have two windows open, I tile them vertically, with no overlapping pixels. I rarely need more than two windows open onscreen at the same time.
I use a 27” external display for my Macbook. The 27” display is my primary display. I keep the Macbook open next to it. Sometimes I’ll throw an application window over to the Macbook.
I use Cmd-Tab a million times a day to move between applications and windows. Sometimes, rather than tiling windows, I just Cmd-Tab rapidly between them.
I’m always interested in hearing how other people work.
(I’m fine with food touching on my plate, but I eat one course at a time, finish one course, then move on to the next. Main course, then veggie. If there’s a potato course, it’s main course, then potatoes, then veggie.)
We Talked to the Guy Who Wore a Vision Pro VR Headset at His Wedding. He did it for the meme. futurism.com
This is funny: How Do Dudes Pee? An Earth-Shattering Reveal
I need a nickname. Help me choose one:
- The Bandit
- Big Mitch
- “Mitch” is already a nickname, you nimrod
- Nimrod
I’m having a tough time getting started this morning, so please enjoy this video of Jerry Reed performing “Eastbound and Down,” the title song from the immortal 1977 cinema classic “Smokey and the Bandit,” featuring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed and Fred the dog.
Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida highway patrolman known to Reynlods’ father, who was a police chief in Florida. Reynolds’ father was also the inspiration for the word “sumbitch.”
Much of the dialogue was improvised on-set. Reynolds said director Hal Needham’s original script, handwritten on legal pads, was terrible. Needham was a first-time director and previously worked as a stuntman, as did Reynolds early in his career.
Reed wrote the theme song, “Eastbound and Down,” in a couple of hours and played it on acoustic guitar for Needham, who immediately stopped him. Reed thought Needham didn’t like the song and offered to rewrite it. Needham replied, “If you change one note, I’ll kill you.”
Gleason suggested adding the character of Junior to the movie. “‘I can’t be in the car alone,’ Gleason said. ‘Put someone in there with me to play off of.’”
The movie was a breakout role for Sally Field, who previously played virginal characters: as teenage California surf-girl Gidget in the eponymous TV series, as a literal nun in “The Flying Nun,” and as a severely mentally ill young woman in the TV movie “Sybill.” In “Smokey and the Bandit,” she struts around in tight jeans, flirts bawdily with Burt Reynolds swears and flips police the bird.
I think wearing a big cowboy hat inside a Trans Am is perhaps impractical.
Sources:
Smokey and the Bandit - Wikipedia
Smokey and the Bandit (1977) - Trivia - IMDb
Sally Field - Wikipedia
Hell of a great speech by Biden last night.
His Presidency is in many ways like Harry Truman. That’s high praise and I mean it.
Coming Of Age In The World Of Pay-Per-Minute Porn. A 2010 essay by Dave Pell. He’s not just talking about porn, but about the addictive quality of the whole internet, which has, of course, changed drastically since the essay was published. Still worth reading though.
“… the strange and fascinating creature known as the American teenager – as we now understand the species – came into being sometime in the early 1940s.” A 1944 LIFE magazine photo essay.
There is a time in the life of every American girl when the most important thing in the world is to be one of a crowd of other girls and to act and speak and dress exactly as they do. This is the teen age.
Los Angeles Rabbi Sharon Brous: Since Oct. 7, “many American Jews … understand themselves differently. There are people who have never stepped foot in a synagogue and who would never take their family vacation to Israel, who … are talking about being a part of this people in a way that even takes them by surprise. We have been changed by this moment.”
That describes how I’m thinking and feeling.
I’ve thought about this interview often and was surprised to see just now that it aired Nov. 17. So long ago? Can that be right?
… being a journalism grad student right now must feel like studying paleontology in the hopes that when you graduate you’ll find a job as a dinosaur.
— Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, “What Are We Dune 2 Journalism?”
The This American Life podcast shares “a series of phone calls to a man in Gaza named Yousef Hammash, between early December and now. He talks about what he and his family are experiencing, sometimes as they are experiencing it.” This American Life
It’s easy to lose sight of humanity when the devastation in Gaza and suffering in Israel are related as cold numbers. But it’s heartbreaking to hear Hammash and his younger sister tell their stories matter-of-factly.
He tries to get his sisters to safety and finds himself
managing a camp of 60 people in Rafah, including his youngest sister, who is 8 months pregnant. Every day there’s talk that Israel will launch a ground assault in Rafah. Yousef and his sister make a plan for her to give birth safely, but it doesn’t go according to plan. And all 60 people in the family are looking to Yousef to tell them where they should go next and how to stay safe.
A friend reminds me of this scene from “Escape From the Planet of the Apes” (1971). Of course, Kim Hunter’s line delivery is very good, but I also love her earlier “Are you fucking kidding me?” face.
My friends and I were 10 years old when the movie came out. The ending slayed us.
And yes that is Ricardo Montalban.
“Does the other one talk?”
… instead of passing a privacy law or regulating data brokers, Americans get a sort of regulatory simulacrum designed to distract you. Most recently that popped up in the form of hysteria about TikTok privacy, as if TikTok’s privacy abuses aren’t a broader symptom of our corrupt failure to protect consumers from a vast and unaccountable network of ethics-optional surveillance and monetization.
The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending. Franklin Foer at The Atlantic with an in-depth report on the resurgence of anti-semitism on the right and the left.