Various Tasks

Upgrading my version of the DMTC Master Cast List. Hope to soon start upgrading the online version of the list soon.

Making incremental changes to my Breaking Bad semiotics book manuscript. Discovering I need to rewatch "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" AGAIN! So, multitasking by upgrading the Master Cast List and watching "Breaking Bad" simultaneously.

Ramping up exercise. Took first post-heart-attack ballet class today. Took Zumba as well.

Two Problematic Movies

I saw two movies this weekend that I didn't really like all that much. Passed the time well enough, but....

Red Sparrow

This was like a dumb movie pretending like it was a smart movie. Weird, disembodied sexiness from Jennifer Lawrence. It was a nice, sadistic touch to have Charlotte Rampling in the movie, though.




Disney's Wrinkle in Time

This was like a dumb movie pretending like it was a smart movie. Weird, disembodied physics from Oprah.

The Great Martian War 1913 - 1917 (2013)

From imdb:

On the eve of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of WWI, this mockumentary - employing "archival footage", and interviews with "historians", "researchers" and those directly involved - tells of the Great Martian War (1913-1917), which supplants what looked to have been an imminent great war between Germany and the rest of Europe. The Germans asked their adversaries for help when the Martians invaded Earth via a remote field in southern Germany. The Martians went on the attack first in Germany, then moved west throughout the rest of continental Europe, with the ultimate threat of crossing the channel into Britain. The Martians also took their fight into the waters around Europe. They employed animal-like machines in their battles, the human race which coined the respective machines as "herons", "lice" and "spiders" most closely resembling such animals, each which had their own seeming purpose in the war. The presentation of the ebbs and flows in the human defensive against the Martians discuss what, in hindsight, looked often to be the Martians' luring humans into a longer term goal. Ultimately, the war officially ended when human discovered what was an Achilles heel in the Martian offensive, but ultimately not without great consequence to the human race. Researchers in present day still study the war, with one such researcher, Lawrence Mark, examining the recently found diary of Canadian First Nations soldier Gus Lafonde by his great-granddaughter, Kim Lafonde, most specifically with regard to some Martian code which Mark, in using the code to decipher Martian writing from the time, posits that the Martians had a greater plan than what was initially thought.
—Huggo

St. Pat's

Steve Bannon Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself

It's time to end Facebook:

The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.

A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.

Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”

And it turns out Robert Mercer is from Albuquerque:

A powerful but previously obscure online data mining firm bankrolled by Albuquerque native Robert Mercer has been thrust into the media glare following revelations that it harvested Facebook user information to help propel Donald Trump into the White House in 2016.

Robert Mercer, a Sandia High School and UNM graduate turned New York hedge fund titan, reportedly plowed $15 million into Cambridge Analytica, which helped both the Trump campaign in the U.S. and the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom. The Journal profiled Mercer and his Albuquerque connections in November.

According to Forbes magazine, Mercer donated $24.6 million to the Republican Party in 2016. He has reportedly invested $10 million into Breitbart, the conservative news site. Financial journals place his net worth at from $900 million to more than a $1 billion.

Cambridge Analytica claims to use secret psychological methods to help mine online data that can be used to reach and influence potential voters. But now the firm’s aquisition and use of Facebook data in the 2016 election is drawing scrutiny from Congress, state and federal investigators and the British Parliament.

According to to a bombshell report in the New York Times on Saturday, Facebook initially downplayed knowledge of Cambridge Analytica’s work to influence the election, but on Friday suspended the company from its network.

...Mercer and his politically-connected daughter, Rebekah, initially backed the presidential candidacy of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016. But they eventually supported Trump as the nominee.

If you think it all seems a bit much for a reportedly low-key guy who was once a member of the car club at Sandia High, you’re not alone. Deanna Cooper Koloc, who graduated from high school with Mercer, told the Journal last fall that she enjoyed catching up with her old classmate at their 50th reunion in Albuquerque three years ago.

“I was excited to see him at the reunion because he was one of the students I remembered well as part of a group I identified with, and I found him very pleasant and interesting to talk to,” Cooper Koloc recalled in a Journal interview last year. “We were both interested in hearing about mutual friends, and exchanged the sort of chitchat that always occurs at high school reunions. I’m glad I didn’t find out until later about his political leanings. I admire Bob for his accomplishments but vehemently oppose his politics.”

Mercer attended the reunion with Rebekah, who later introduced to Trump to Bannon. The father-daughter duo took an alumni tour of the Albuquerque school, attended the reunion dinner and reminisced with his old friends just like regular folks.

According to the 1964 edition of “The Crest” – the Sandia High yearbook – Mercer was active in extracurricular activities. The yearbook shows the bespectacled student as a member of the school’s chess, auto and Russian clubs.

An Albuquerque Journal article from the same year shows that Mercer – who later went on to become a pioneer in artificial intelligence and computer science – had a promising mathematical mind. He took top honors for New Mexico in the 1964 national high school math contest.Mercer attended the reunion with Rebekah, who later introduced to Trump to Bannon. The father-daughter duo took an alumni tour of the Albuquerque school, attended the reunion dinner and reminisced with his old friends just like regular folks.

According to the 1964 edition of “The Crest” – the Sandia High yearbook – Mercer was active in extracurricular activities. The yearbook shows the bespectacled student as a member of the school’s chess, auto and Russian clubs.

An Albuquerque Journal article from the same year shows that Mercer – who later went on to become a pioneer in artificial intelligence and computer science – had a promising mathematical mind. He took top honors for New Mexico in the 1964 national high school math contest.

Arming The Homeless With Shotguns

And if some of those shotguns get used in convenience store robberies, well that's your free market for you:

A Michigan candidate for US Senate has proposed arming homeless people with pump-action shotguns in an effort to reduce crime.

Brian Ellison, who is running against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow, says homeless people are “constantly victims of violent crime” and providing them with firearms would provide a deterrent.

Ellison, a Libertarian who is expected to be the party’s candidate in the November midterm election, said he had settled on pump-action shotguns for practicality purposes.

“Frankly I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol,” he told the Guardian, “but due to the licensing requirements in the state we’re going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is.

“Getting them pistols is probably next to impossible. The pistols need to be registered, people have to have addresses.”

Carrying a concealed pistol is illegal without a permit, Ellison said, “whereas open-carrying a long gun is completely legal”.

Matthew points out:

That particular candidate is part of the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party. (Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you they exist) Apparently they're causing quite the stir in the party, which I'm all for. This shotgun plan sounds like it's coming from a good place, but it will most likely lead to homeless people getting harassed and shot by cops even more.

Ron in Reno sends this:

"Personal Shopper"

Tonight, I watched "Personal Shopper" on DVD, a scary ghost story. The 2016 film is directed by Olivier Assayas and stars Kristen Stewart. It's a wonderful time to be alive and not be a ghost - the Assayas/Stewart partnership is making the world's best films, this decade:

Banana Peel

Trump Runs the White House Like a Third-Rate Dating App

Made me laugh.

Zumba, Tonight

I recall my cardiologist responding much like the rabbi in “Fiddler on the Roof”: “Dancing? Well, it’s not exactly forbidden.” So, off to try some Zumba!

I moderated the pace for myself. I was starting from a long period of no exercise. No need to push it.

I tolerated the exercise pretty well. Better than expected, and better tonight than a month ago. I recall on February 16th, even with oxygen, I got winded just walking to the end of the hall, and back.

With my instructors Barreto Brothers Zumba. Andres the DJ was kind enough to play my favorite Zumba tune!:

"Black Panther"

There is nothing I find as annoying as a (name any one of them) Marvel Comics movie: opaque, incoherent, and lacking human interest. "Black Panther" is nevertheless mildly-interesting and probably the most-coherent of the Marvel Comics movies. It's a low bar, and so far, none of the others have approached even that modest achievement.

I met Joe the Plumber at the IMAX Theater. I hushed him when he started talking and laughing loudly. I think he's pissed, because he stalked out just before the movie's end, and simply vanished.

Finished Watching "The Wire"

It's funny, I was having a sense of deja vu watching some of Season 5. I think I may heard buzz about "The Wire" back in the 2005 time frame, and may have seen some of the episodes back then. Of course, I didn't know the people, so I didn't retain the story, but at least I was dabbling in it.

I liked the series a lot. A real sense of place - Baltimore. "Breaking Bad" lifted some stuff straight from "The Wire," such as testimony at the addiction group meetings with Bubs. I liked some of the characterizations too: Omar, of course, but other folks too, like Daniels, Freamon, Levy, and especially the cold, cold Snoop.

Fortunately, No One Believes Anything House Republicans Say About Anything

The whitewash commission folds:

Democrats will probably release their own report on the investigation, a reflection of the rancor that has defined the House investigation for months.

At one point, Republicans even discussed putting up a physical wall in one of the committee's secured rooms to divide Democratic and Republican staff members. The plan was abandoned, according to sources with knowledge of the idea, a decision that had more to do with logistical concerns than any cooling of partisan animosity.

Lawmakers repeatedly accused one another of breaching confidentiality rules by leaking bits of closed-door testimony to skew public views of the evidence.

And the committee spent more than a month consumed by controversial allegations, advanced by Republicans and rebutted by Democrats, that federal law enforcement had improperly eavesdropped on a former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, shortly before the election.

Gina Haspel, Trump's Choice to Lead the CIA, is Bush's Chief Torturer

Of course:

The 31-year-old Zubaydah begged for mercy, saying that he knew nothing about the terror group’s future plans. The CIA official in charge, known in agency lingo as the “chief of base,” mocked his complaints, accusing Zubaydah of faking symptoms of psychological breakdown. The torture continued.

That “chief of base” was Haspel.

ICE’s Spokesman Refuses to Endorse Trump Administration Lies, and Resigns

Good for him:

The now-former spokesman, James Schwab, told news outlets late Monday that his resignation stemmed from statements by Homan and Sessions that potentially hundreds of “criminal aliens” evaded ICE during a Northern California raid in February because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned the immigrant community in advance.

Schwab said he pushed back on that characterization — but said ICE instructed him to “deflect” questions from the news media.

“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the story. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

Times Are Tough Under The W-X Freeway

I'm Kind-Of Like This Guy These Days

Why should I pay attention to the antics of worthless scum in Washington, D.C.? Live your own life, your way:

Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan.

He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.

“It was draconian and complete,” he said. “It’s not like I wanted to just steer away from Trump or shift the conversation. It was like I was a vampire and any photon of Trump would turn me to dust.”

It was just going to be for a few days. But he is now more than a year into knowing almost nothing about American politics. He has managed to become shockingly uninformed during one of the most eventful chapters in modern American history. He is as ignorant as a contemporary citizen could ever hope to be.

Them Rocks Is Heavy

Another busy night at all the British henge sites as staff work all night to move the stones forward by an hour.

"Thoroughbreds"

Billed as a black comedy, but really almost too bleak to be a comedy. Life among the Ice Princesses of Connecticut.

The Hippo In Southern Mexico

Not where it should be:

Authorities say they're worried about a hippopotamus that is roaming loose in a swampy area of southern Mexico.

Nobody knows where the animal came from, but hippos are not native to the country. The hippo appears to have been living in a pair of ponds near Las Chopas, in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

...The hippo was first spotted by local media near a garbage dump in January. Residents of the town have come to love the animal so much they have nicknamed it "Tyson".