Neither could we, but we stuck with it anyway.

I think No Country translated well to the screen. And Burn After Reading is filled with unlikable idiots but I think it’s hilarious.

This movie at least had the teenager I could root for, but overall, there wasn’t enough comedy or on-screen gravitas and fascination to offset the unlikability of most of the characters.

The car chase aspect, specifically the use of hills, was the most interesting part to me.

As part of our currently nightly movie streak, we watched One Battle After Another.

Dicaprio, Penn, Del Toro, etc. A (very long) dark comedy-thriller about far-left terrorists and white supremacists.

Neither me nor my husband were a fan of this one at all.

-Didn't like or sympathize with almost any character (other than the teenager).

-But I also didn't find it that funny or interesting, and no character really captured a scene.

In a movie like No Country for Old Men, I didn't particularly get emotionally attached to any character either, but they're all super interesting on-screen, especially the villain. Penn plays a villain here (Colonel Lockjaw) that is both menacing and goofy, but while the writing and acting of Hans Landa in Inglorious Bastards really nails that combo, I didn't feel that way for Lockjaw. It was more jarring.

Overall acting was fine, given the quality of the actors. But no role was particularly memorable. Nothing really stood out for the cinematography or the musical score, and I didn't particularly like the writing. And several aspects seemed unrealistic in what feels like it's trying to be a fairly realistic movie.

I suspect the main issue is that on one hand, they want to capture that kind of dark-funny nihilistic vibe that several Coen brothers movies have (e.g. Fargo). But they don't quite want to fully commit to that nihilism either, and instead really do want us to emotionally attach to several of the characters here, and straddling that line didn't work for me.

You know what there aren't a lot of? Horror musicals.

Anyway, I watched "Sinners" last night, and enjoyed it more than I expected. My husband and I are currently in a movie-a-night mode after a long stretch of zero movies. Here's a quick review.

Sinners is getting a lot of hype because it was nominated for a record-breaking16 oscars. Of course, with Hollywood quality deteriorating over time, an oscar nomination isn't really what it used to be. There's some oscar-inflation, basically. And there's often a huge disconnect between what critics and insiders like vs what the public likes, especially in this highly polarized environment.

Set in1930s Mississippi, Sinners is a stylized action story about the supernatural. It's one of those elevated type of stories, where there's 1) what's happening at the surface level for entertainment, and 2) what themes those actions are meant to represent. But it didn't get as heavy-handed as I expected. Well-executed themes can deepen the entertainment, whereas heavy-handed or misaligned themes can dampen entertainment, and for me the combo was neutral-to-positive.

The music and the directing/cinematography are truly incredible. Like, outlier masterpiece level, 10 out of 10. There's a huge blues component, and the visuals are just constantly surprisingly good.

My biggest complaint is the action in the third act. That's the only aspect that detracted from its entertainment value for me. Physical fights and gun battles don't work with a consistent set of rules or power scaling. As a result, the fights feel very unrealistic, and the outcomes feel determined by where the plot needs things to go, rather than maintaining the illusion of cause-and-effect (e.g. it distracted me enough to pull me out of the immersion, and I felt the writer's hand strongly at play). Overall fight choreography is like a 4/10 here.

Thus I consider it a flawed masterpiece. Really glad I watched it for its music and visuals and overall plot concept, but was sufficiently distracted by third act details and execution.

Big fan of the Bill of Rights.

All ten of ‘em.

You seem confused about the purpose of my post, acting as though I disagree with you.

That’s the funny thing. It’s so small. Almost all the anger is about optics.

Also, I’d wager a guess that the 49k limit (which increases over time to like 70k) is probably about the realistic demand for Chinese EVs in Canada in the first place. It’s not like there’s an enormous million-person line of demand for Chinese EVs.

Canada lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs to similar levels of a few years ago (up to a limited number, and still 6% tariffs rather than zero).

US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products.

In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about.

It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes.

A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."

You ever read a book in one sitting? I did that with the 1979 sci fi novella Electric Forest by Tanith Lee last night when going to bed. Ended up getting to sleep a bit later than intended because of it.

Anyway, here’s a review.

In a far future world where humanity exists on hundreds of planets, most people are genetically engineered to be beautiful, and not just the wealthy, but everyone. However, some rare accidents happen.
Magdala was born crippled and ugly in a beautiful world. Given up by her prostitute mother to a state-run orphanage, she was mercilessly bullied by other kids. Now in her 20s, she works a menial job, lives in a tiny apartment, and has no friends or partner. She has considered plastic surgery, but it’s too expensive, and for her full-body condition it wouldn’t be enough to fix the issues anyway. Thus, she lives in a perpetual state of loneliness and melancholy.

Then one day, a scientist shows up and says he can make her beautiful. And as a reader will expect, it certainly does come with a catch. What follows is a generally social-intrigue type of plot, where beautiful-Magdala has to do various things for her benefactor.

Overall, I’m glad I read it, but cannot really say I liked it. I’ve been meaning to read more of this era of sci fi.

The prose was quite good. The opening premise was interesting. I genuinely couldn’t really predict where the plot would go. A few individual scenes were great.

But I did not particularly like the characters, nor did I view them as making understandable choices. Of course, plenty of characters in fiction make bad choices, but when well-characterized, those bad choices are understandable, like we see the cause and effect, we know the character enough to be like, “yep, they’d do that.” I mostly didn’t feel that here.

I did not like the details/choreography of the one action scene (I mean, if you have exactly one, then do it really well), nor did I like the epilogue.

Back in 2018-2020, I wrote a lot about how the upcoming issue of fiscal dominance would contribute heavily to populist politics.

For example, 2020:
"Populist politics then become more commonplace, and while some strands of it can be quite rational based on countering prevailing policies that are rightly viewed as needing reform, there are also more dangerous or extreme strands that begin to emerge as well, particularly if those initial and more rational strands go unaddressed. Policymakers historically face the choice of doing something to alleviate the financial burdens of the broad population, or risking outright revolution."
https://www.lynalden.com/fiscal-and-monetary-policy/

During eras of fiscal dominance, the state tends to take more control of the economy, tends to restrict capital movement, and tends to limit personal freedom, whether it's a right or left government. And they drum up as much public support as possible with a narrative.

But witnessing it playing out first hand has still been a sight to behold. I could jot it all down on paper but then admittedly have still been surprised at times as it keeps playing out. And we see both left and right varieties occurring.

For folks who want to keep government pretty limited where possible, these past six years have been absolutely wild to watch in practice. So many people forget the basic principle that any power you give your current government, a future government that you don't agree with can use that power against you.

The poles of right and left keep drifting outward, and the horseshoe theory of politics is on full display as the two populist extremes are closer together than the moderates of each side are (but then ironically, some of those moderates also unite to oppose those extremes as well). So many people lose their minds and go full communist or full fascist. And then some normal things get labeled as extreme, so people who just believe in a handful of principles that were normal a few decades ago are like out in the wilderness now.

And the centralized algos certainly contribute to it. As someone who has been active on social media for a long time, 2025 really stuck out to me, at least as much as 2020 did. I see people reorienting their positions so rapidly around new things in a sort of mass groupthink, I see people retweeting so many things that support their view despite being obvious AI slop or clearly false or out of context with just a 2-minute factcheck. Some real populist momentum waves build, and then centralized algos give them rocket fuel. Both the main wave, and the reactionary wave on the other side, are fueled by the algos for maximum engagement.

When I interviewed @nprofile1q... at the Oslo Freedom Forum back in 2024, he focused on algos affecting not just what people can say, but what people think. And in the year and a half since then, I think that has very much played out.

There is an enormous premium these days for being able to recognize the algo's influence on you, and to continually factcheck and emotion-check yourself, take a breath and step back, touch grass, get sun, and assess what your foundational principles are.

I think fiction can build understanding on certain topics in a way that nonfiction struggles with. It’s the closest approximation of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Additionally, it can entertain us while we get something from it, making us consume more of it.

Fantasy and sci fi can also explore certain ethical dilemmas or concepts with our real-world biases removed. Topics related to politics, religion, etc can be explored more easily in fictional versions than the real ones people are already used to or have opinions about.