I have this running joke* in my family about how I am totally psychic. I have made multiple accurate predictions. There are really funny probably-coincidences I can attribute to myself as psychic predictions, too. I’m not reading minds. It’s nothing like that.

*When I say I’m joking, I’m saying that there’s a 50/50 chance that it’s just a bit (I live for The Bit) or I actually believe it myself. There is no delineation between these two things. I live by Calvin & Hobbes rules. The fact it is funny to bring up frequently is the entire point.

Last night I dreamed about finding an exciting house perfect for my family. Unfortunately, renovations on the house turned out to be performed by scammers. The house fell into a river. The dream wasn’t very stressful; it was kind of funny.

Today I woke up to some external stimulus that had me looking at houses. I had forgotten the dream by this point. I saw one house listing that was really exciting! A good price, a good size. The downside seemed to be its rural location. I asked my online friends what considerations I should have in regards to rural life.

Through a chain of research, I eventually discovered this house is at risk of flooding. It’s unexpected for a house in the middle of the desert. But there’s no denying it: the house is uninsurable due to its flood risk.

I didn’t make the connection between my dream and the house at first. It’s awfully weird I was dreaming about houses falling into rivers before this weirdo chain of events though…right?

So yeah, I’m a psychic. I can’t say this psychic power is *useful*. I am psychic nonetheless.

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Bright Wall, Dark Room reviewed a 1989 documentary called “For All Mankind.” Interesting read!

For All Mankind demonstrates a playful self-awareness of its identity as a movie about making movies. Reinert cuts together footage of the astronauts peering through cameras, filming each other, and waving. The men of Apollo 8 hold up notebook paper signs reading “Apollo 8 Home Movies” and “Staring [sic] Bill Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman.” In other footage, a tape recorder floats through the module playing the fanfare from Richard Strauss’s 1896 Also sprach Zarathustra, best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

It can feel as if Reinert, who set out to make a movie about the moon, instead attempted to  make every movie about the moon.

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Crooked Timber shares a thought-provoking essay about managers and their waning power in the office, using the church as an example.

In the encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI made his fateful rejection of all forms of artificial contraception. As an attempt to exercise and shore up authority it failed completely. The realities of raising large families and dealing with unplanned pregnancies were far removed from the experience of priests and theologians. And the church’s evident demographic motive (the desire for big Catholic families to fill the pews) further undermined the legitimacy of the prohibition.

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Lawyers, Guns, & Money sound as annoyed by the semaglutide craze as I am.

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Rebecca Ferguson was reportedly harassed by a costar on set. The Rock wants everyone to know it wasn’t him and he will flex his biceps over it. (TSFKA Twitter) Way to make it about yourself, Dwayne!

In similar entertainment news, Jonny Lee Miller related his reaction to abuse of a woman in the entertainment industry. (The Independent) I appreciate his desire to not make it about himself.

“My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember feeling fury,” he says. “I actually wanted to be more proactive about it, but it was 100 per cent her decision and you have to swallow your male bulls***. I was gonna hire someone to f***ing…” He trails off. “But I didn’t. I had some connections.” I laugh, nervously. Miller does not. And Jolie told him not to? “Yeah. Because it would mean it becomes about you, right? And you wanting to prove how much you care – ‘No one’s going to f***ing do that to my people.’ But what you need to do is listen to your partner.” He smiles, warmly now. “Amazingly, that was the one thing I was able to get right. You know, I was raised by women. I have three sisters. And [Jolie] is a very smart lady. She knows what’s best for her.”

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Florida’s government is all like “let’s make measles great again!” (NPR)

Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has so far not urged parents of unvaccinated children at the school with the outbreak to get their children vaccinated, or to quarantine them. In a Feb. 20 letter, Ladapo left it up to parents to decide whether to send their kids to school.

It’s wild to me that one of the easiest, best, cheapest tools for public health has become so politically polarizing. I can’t think The People actually want this.

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I’ve been waiting to watch Poor Things, and now it’ll be on Hulu March 7th. (Variety) I feel like I have to make an addendum about how I fully expect to hate this movie any time I bring it up, because I am not planning to evaluate it fairly. idk man, I can be petty.

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Are you surprised to hear that Amazon is up to fuckery with the Roadhouse remake? (Ars Technica) They don’t want to pay the original screenwriter for the adaptation and rushed through AI voice work to make that happen. Any interest I had in watching a greasy Jake Gyllenhaal kickpunch his way through the titular roadhouse has vanished.

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Engadget reports that the Apple Car has been cancelled. Word on the street is that they’d like to refocus on AI. I think of Apple as being one of the less-evil corporate feudalist lords simply because they want to keep our data to themselves (no privacy, but it stays in their walled garden), and you pay a premium for their devices and services to get that. I am not optimistic about how long that vibe is going to last.

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The New Yorker wonders if you can want an Oscar too much. Of course they’re talking (in large part) about Maestro, BCoop’s extremely thirsty plea for Oscars attention.

Also from the same source, a review of Dune 2 that makes it sound like I won’t love it for the same reasons I don’t love the first one. But how much can we trust The New Yorker on this when they talk so much about conlang and point to Lord of the Rings as a major source of our fascination when I got into conlang from a Klingon dictionary vastly predating the other properties they’re talking about? They barely mention Star Trek in passing, then spend a bunch of time caring about the Game of Thrones conlinguist (I might have just made up that word) who I am not especially fond of.

Speaking of Dune 2, Stellan Skarsgard talks about Austin Butler (Variety) like Brian Cox talks about Jeremy Strong (“have you tried acting?” to paraphrase), and I never get tired of this kind of story about over-enthusiastic actors with poor boundaries between work and reality.

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Odysseus plopped onto its side on the Moon and will be freezing to sleep forever faster than expected. (Ars Technica)

I have cardiac funkiness going on so I’m trying to reduce caffeine. Less soda, more tea (which has a fraction of the caffeine and other compounds to improve mood and balance things out). I suspect an overinvolvement of the vagus nerve thanks to quitting cannabis, since I’ve now had my thyroid tested (a previous source of tachycardia) and an ECG and everything looks fine. I’m still gonna get a referral to cardio to make doubly-triply sure, but in the meantime, Foggy Sara remains behind the driver’s wheel of life.

zzz

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Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon, which means that one of Rory’s stories is sitting pretty on a microSD card on the lunar surface. Unnecessary space litter? Kinda cool? Both? (Engadget)

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Did Da Vinci have strabismus, and did it help his art? (Ars Technica via Pocket)

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The Community movie script is “almost done” but Dan Harmon says every script is “almost done,” which I take to mean it’s not nearly as close as Donald Glover (and the rest of us) were hoping. (Variety)

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The Tumblr CEO woke up and chose transphobia out of fear of a car covered in hammers exploding multiple times and sending hammers everywhere. (TechCrunch)

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You’ve probably already heard Vice is shutting down (Al Jazeera English), continuing the extreme degree of media control that private capital is forcefeeding us. We’re definitely in a regression era. Still no bottom in sight.

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BookRiot shares eight “no plot just vibes” books. I just read “My Year of Rest & Relaxation” and loved how plotless it was tbh. I want to write a plotless book soon.

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A state and hospital system is jerking around a young quadriplegic who doesn’t want to be forced out of her state (and further away from her school). (NPR) In fact, the North Carolina hospital is suing this lass, who has extremely reasonable desires and needs.

It turns out I can’t get any movie-watching done when I spend my days at medical appointments, editing my book, and other things that require my full attention during the day. At night, I’m still watching Doc Martin, which is the greatest show ever made.

I’m still pretty tired and disorganized right now. I have to pull back on caffeine a bit too, so my mood is dropping more now than it did quitting weed. Is it just me, or is caffeine kinda awful to quit? Worse than weed, anyway. Headaches, *dreadful* mood, so depressed and sleepy and sluggish…

Somehow I’m also more anxious. Or maybe it’s just the depression being loud. I don’t know, my thoughts are no good.

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I’m working on a longer Jon Stewart Returns essay, but Comedy Central got very high viewership numbers from his return so he’s definitely not going anywhere. (Variety) Roy Wood Jr was smart to clear out.

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Excitingly, a novel drug for combating severe food allergies has been approved by the FDA. (NPR)

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In January, Tor published a book called Gothikana using AI-generated elements on the cover. (Publisher’s Weekly) They did a really good job making me want nothing to do with the book. I also don’t know if Tor is still on my bucket list publishers. I’m kinda over the whole thing.

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Colossal has shared the beautiful, eerie world of Alexis Trice’s weeping animals.

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The leads of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s live Netflix adaptation used to fight over napping room on the back of the Appa figure. That’s so adorable. (Variety)

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Face filters can be a fun way to visualize ourselves as we are not. I used to like seeing aging filters. I look exactly like my beautiful mommy, which is very reassuring. This lovely lady saw herself as a lady for the first time thanks to genderswap filters. Heart-warming, genuinely. (NPR)

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Morph will be nonbinary in the X-Men 1997 cartoon. (AIPT Comics) As usual, people will die mad about it. (TSFKA Twitter)

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“With a mass 17 billion times larger than our sun, this black hole is the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded, Australian National University said.” From NPR: Scientists have found a black hole so large it eats the equivalent of one sun per day

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Apple is going to make sure nobody can read our text messages except Apple, tyvm. Even when quantum computery stuff gets to be more a thing. (Ars Technica)

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It’s nice to see previous generations of creators acknowledge changing formats with respect. Martin Scorsese is actually listening to his daughter, I guess? I don’t think he’s growing a *lot* but he’s growing so much more than many of his peers, and that’s cool. (Variety)

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NASA is looking for people to live in its Mars simulator a while. Don’t get excited unless you have a master’s degree. (NPR)

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The actor dog (dogtor?) from Anatomy of a Fall is SUCH a good dog. YES YOU ARE. YES YOU ARE DOGGY. YES YOU ARE. (Variety)

I am so off-kilter. Has weed withdrawal gotten worse in the 2-3 week mark, or is something else funky going on? There’s so many things going on, except being productive. Maybe PMS. Maybe grieving. Maybe cutting back on caffeine. I don’t know, I’m barely alive right now.

It’s been a minute since I posted an SRF. I’m going to try to just include links that are “current,” but I might have missed updates on stories – feel free to let me know if I’ve got something old here.

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Mathematicians solve the “reverse sprinkler” problem. (Ars Technica) I didn’t know this was a problem, but it’s a pretty funny mental image.

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Lindsay Lohan is getting a St. Paddy’s Day Netflix romcom. (TSFKA Twitter) I really liked her Netflix Christmas romcom, so I’m excited for this.

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There’s going to be a “Roddenberry Archive” available on the Apple Vision Pro allowing you to walk around various Star Trek locations. (Reactor) If you can’t spend $3500 on the face brick, you are kindly invited to gfy.

(You can find pretty cool Star Trek ship-themed rooms on Steam, for free, if you have a plebeian face brick.)

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I like very-prehistoric times. For “Out of Darkness,” which is a movie about paleolithic nomads, they made a conlang for their actors to speak throughout the film. It sounds interesting. (Variety)

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There’s a GMO purple tomato that was created by mixing tomato DNA with snapdragon DNA. It’s a very pretty color and said to include some bonus healthy compounds that are sciencey wordy stuff. (NPR) They want to make people less afraid of GMOs, but I am not sure home gardeners are the people most worried about GMOs.

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Crypto lost a ton of its shine when its advocates realized it is, indeed, very very traceable, and thus not a great way to hide illegal purchases after all. Of course we are now getting around to expecting large crypto miners to report their energy use (Ars Technica), when we should really be looking at kneecapping AI-generated energy use imo. Really we should be hitting everything like this. It’s madly exploitative against humans and the planet humans need to live on. Like, it’s not the time for this, even if it wasn’t bland and mushy (commentary of mine off TSKFA Twitter).

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I still think Free Public College is a great idea, but people looked at the actual proposals from Warren and Sanders (Crooked Timber) and found that it would have pretty much just benefited rich kids as usual. Mostly because there was no real oomph behind the proposals. Entirely unserious. I guess this is the best the institution has had to offer leftist ideas in a while. :/

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Her Hands, My Hands reviews When Grumpy Met Sunshine.

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The director of Prey, one of my fav movies of 2022, is getting another Predator-franchise film. (Reactor)

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In Ohio, a pastor was housing homeless people at his church. The state said “absolutely fucking not.” (NPR) The pastor said “but it’s my religion!” The state said “okay but you have to do a bunch of renovation because we can’t have you doing something imperfect that we are totally disinterested in doing ourselves.”

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A Southern Nevada judge has been developing a court tailored toward working with autistic offenders. (NPR)

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Vaccines are rad. (NPR) There’s now an ebola vaccine that halves the risk of death, even if you receive the vaccine after becoming ill.

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Sneakily entertaining show that didn’t get traction is ending with four seasons + bonus episodes. (Variety) I watched the first season of Evil but fell off ages ago. It actually was quite good though.

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I always like Psyche’s articles, and this one introduces “rhetorical figleaves” to add to the concept of “racist dogwhistles.” Blah on the subject matter but it’s interesting.