• essays,  resembles nonfiction

    I said what I said: Defiance as diversion in current pop music trends

    Ariana Grande has dropped “yes, and?”, which is a track that sonically draws from Madonna’s Vogue and visually from Paula Abdul’s Cold Hearted Snake, forming a generically pleasing bop that never quite rises to the sum of its parts but is nonetheless EXTREMELY catchy. The “yes, and?” video frames the song as an anthem for pop stars vs critics. (Youtube link.)

    On Celebitchy, my favorite celebrity gossip blog since Dlisted shuttered, Kaiser noted that it’s poor taste for Ariana to release a song dismissing criticism when she’s been on her worst behavior. I guess you could summarize what’s going on with this one sentence from the post:

    Ari started f–king a married man who had a wife and child at home, then Ari threw a huge tantrum when [the wife] openly bad-mouthed her.

    The lyrics do seem to be a direct response to that. Full lyrics on Billboard, but pointing here:

    your business is yours and mine is mine
    do you care so much whose dick i ride

    It seems to directly address issues that you’d think Ariana would prefer we avoid discussing. (Releasing a big pop song is always the best way to avoid talking about things.) I would like to add that the seemingly direct approach is just a sophisticated method of PR smokescreen.

    First off, the lyrics could also be referring to other parts of her famous love life; I suspect more people think about Pete Davidson in regards to Ariana and Dicks rather than her current paramour. Also, the chorus is focused on empowerment. So plausible deniability is strong.

    The video has an entirely different message. The implicit cyclical nature of Music Video Ariana performing her song, then turning to a statue, which crumbles so she can perform the song again, has the same atmosphere as a music box which we can wind and open to play for us whenever we want. By the ending, critics who bad-mouth her have let loose, rescued by the liberation of Ariana, who only exists to entertain and better those who criticize.

    Most of the criticism about Ariana lately has not been related to her music, though. She’s been filming Wicked and working on other projects for a while. She’s been making news in her personal life to the point that people who don’t pay attention to celebrity news might hear about it. But most people haven’t.

    Sassy, defiant messaging is one of the mainstays of pop music, where the tropes are manufactured to appeal to the heightened emotions of adolescence. It’s probably different kids who got hyped listening to Rage Against the Machine saying “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” but Ariana intends to hit a similar nerve. In order to control the narrative surrounding Ariana, PR has decided to summon defiance (with a twist of empowerment as a treat).

    “My life is none of your business, begone” is the attitude expressed here. It’s adjacent to Ariana’s real issues without directly addressing them: savvy PR in a performance borrowing elements from well-established pop hits that is meant to have us discussing Ariana in the same breath as Madonna and Paula Abdul. She is in ownership of her sexuality and liberated and cool, above all else, and fuck the haters.

    Considering “the hater” is a new mother left at home with her baby, is such a high-budget and finely-tuned responding salvo tasteless? Sure, if you put it that way. But Ari put it in a sexy way! With a hat!

    It’s also inevitable in pop music, which commodifies the entirety of a human in our hyper-capitalist era of everything-is-product. Taste is only relevant to the point that it doesn’t detract from the brand’s ability to generate capital. The permeability of barriers between individual and branding has become widespread in the social media era. Stars like Ariana Grande must sell herself as a product more expertly than anyone else, and the narrative she constructs is worth multimillions. Every single event, good or bad, must be a stepping stone that builds her value.

    One of the main methods of getting big numbers currently remains TikTok. Sassy, defiant lyrics from this song are guaranteed to be isolated and disassociated from Ariana’s affair, instead given associations like funny memes, cool dances, and relatable posts.

    Whatever commentators are saying on blogs, most people are going to be exposed to Ariana and this song in a way that makes it feel personal and intimate. Not about an affair that turned out kinda gross and depressing.

    Another pop star who benefits a lot from this model, especially TikTok, is Doja Cat. She’s well-known for her personal behavior, which this Rolling Stone article touches upon.

    On Friday, Doja Cat uploaded the selfie donning a shirt with the image of Sam Hyde, an internet-infamous edgelord with ties to both the alt-right and neo-Nazi movements.

    There are a boatload of stories about Doja’s behavior online that I won’t recant here; she’s such an online person that you can just do a search and see everything for yourself.

    Yet this is another case where the average person doesn’t know enough entertainment news to realize that Doja’s actual behavior is legitimately troubling; they’re much likelier to have heard of her social media posts where she fights and insults fans.

    Reality Doja’s vocal idealogy is a problem to the degree that her PR — which often packages Doja like pop music, though she’s also a talented rapper — has no choice but to fold Pop Music Product Doja Cat into an especially defiant package. Chances are good that her social media posts insulting fans directly are PR the way that Ariana Grande announcing song titles wearing sweaters are. (UPROXX)

    The Doja Cat Team (because we really must see pop stars as the entirety of the machine surrounding them, as well as the individual whose face covers the brand) is embracing her public flaws and steering the narrative as they want. It’s better to talk about Doja fighting fans and releasing a song where she doubles down (with lyrics like “bitch, I said what I said”) rather than letting the conversation focus on Doja’s alt-right associations. (Youtube link.)

    The way that their Pop Star Branding handles the various “controversies” of their life is certainly tasteless, but there’s no other way for the product to work; it is part and parcel of becoming such a valuable brand. You can’t make the individual a better person, but you can amplify the most commercial aspects of them, which often means leaning into cathartic adolescent feelings for their mass-appeal and allowing virality to dissociate the artist from their actual issues. It’s a whole industry of turd-polishing set to a catchy beat. Oh my goodness, does the shiny turd have a catchy beat.

  • sara reads the feed

    Trolling my spouse, rewatching Dune, women who are bosses

    Day whatever, not even 8am, and I got a popup from Facebook about writing a misandrist comment, warning me about community standards. Whatever. Meta can’t handle my ~creative ~use of ~language.

    Pray for my spouse, though. This person has been putting up with me for seventeen years. And I really sincerely do everything I can to disgust him. I mean, I tell him the most unnecessarily graphic bathroom stories, using my full vocabulary and imagination – and hand gestures! – trying to gross him out.

    I can’t ever gross him out! He just stands there like “oh yeah” and offers sympathy if relevant. i’m like, “Did you just listen to the complete story that was EXTREMELY GRAPHIC about my bootyregion’s plight of the week?” or like “why doesn’t having my uterine cast wiggled in your face bother you?” and things like that.

    This guy is unflappable! One of my love languages in the past was/has been annoying people. I’m not gonna pretend it’s an endearing quality. I’m a youngest child, I learned that negative attention is usually as good as positive attention, and I have really tried to grow out of this with everyone except my husband.

    My world is a lifelong attempt to troll my husband into being grossed out, and he is such? a? good? sport? about? it? I think I get disgusting now and he’s just like “aww I love you too.” I just want to BOTHER him and he’s so UNBOTHERABLE and it makes it even more fun somehow.

    (It also means that he has been at my side during the most disgusting hospital incidents and nurses praised him for the care he gave me, which is just so romantic. I really don’t deserve him.) (I’m gonna go fart on his office chair and then tell him I did it)

    ~

    Having just rewatched Lynch’s Dune, I was absolutely astounded and delighted to read this overview of the half-screenplay Lynch wrote for its sequel. (Ars Technica)

    ~

    I’m in the mood to just rewatch stuff, not try anything new, but watching The Blair Witch Project yesterday kinda felt like a rewatch even though it was fresh. Amusingly, Dredd was a rewatch I’ve seen a *lot* before, but not in a long time, so it almost felt new.

    I sense I’m going to be going back and rewatching stuff from last year soon – maybe even things I’ve already reviewed. I think what I’ll do when I rewatch something I’ve already reviewed (and I don’t feel like I want to form a new take on it), I’ll probably just write a related essay, like I did with 9 to 5.

    ~

    On order to flag articles I wanna comment upon in Sara Reads the Feed posts, I *usually* just star them in my RSS feed reader, then go back to examine them later. Lately I’ve been doing a thing where I star posts that catch my attention in a “this is the state of the country/world/whatever” way, and then I do not end up posting/commenting because I don’t wanna actually think about it. This paragraph stands in the place of an article about a mass shooter, American gun owning habits, the erosion of our already dreadful justice system, prisons desecrating human remains, worsening child labor rights, and similar unpleasant information.

    ~

    On the bright side, surgeries for gender affirming care have a much higher satisfaction rate than any other surgery. (Assigned Media) Doctors would love to get some tips to help their patients with other procedures. This is actually, unsarcastically the future the gays want.

    ~

    Ars Technica shares details about an exoplanet with a “lava hemisphere,” which might be the coolest and scariest two words stuck together ever.

    Also from Ars Technica: You can now get “Those Games” by the guys who did Katamari’s remaster. Basically it’s the games in the mobile ads that look good, which you can never play, because the mobile games are not what they advertise. The Katamari remaster was one of my favs from last year so I do want this.

    ~

    Kristen Stewart says she won’t do anything else until she finances the biopic she plans to direct. (Variety)

    The way she talks about female storytelling piques my interest, though not without a knee-jerk urge to criticize. I’m feeling burned out on boss babes like Gerwig and Robbie. I don’t think Kristen Stewart is a neat comparison to them, though. Her queerness is something she can’t seem to hide to please the male gaze as much as the aforementioned women, and I just really sympathize with her awkward….everything. Maybe she’s a better comparison to Elizabeth Banks, who is a bit of a boss babe, but so messy that it’s interesting.

    It’s actually really cool to see KStew growing into her own as an artist and looking at projects that let her express her matured sensibilities. Also I’m still completely in love with her and I want her poster to hang on my wall so I can practice kissing.

    ~

    Lily Gladstone’s grace in handling complex conversations surrounding Killers of the Flower Moon is something to behold. (Variety) She just seems like a thoughtful, generous person, and it’s nice to see a grownup out and about on the awards trail.

    ~

    Valve seems to be changing its stance on fan projects. (Engadget) They don’t want TF2 ported to Source 2 and they asked Portal 64 to cut it out. Bummer. My Valve-loving aspirational game developer 13yo is going to be really disappointed.

    ~

    They’re removing the dam on the Klamath River. That’s gonna be a big change through the area, I think? (NPR)

  • sara reads the feed

    A short feed read: Chidi Anagonye, and the world doing world stuff

    We are going to learn that a lot of language and art generators not only steals from people, but relies upon Mechanical Turks. I mean there are literally a bunch of people in something that (hopefully) looks like a call center hurrying through work touching up your essays and pictures in those seconds between pushing a button and getting a result.

    Labor exploited to exploit stolen artwork.

    When someone uses something currently advertised as AI, it will not enrich them. It will enrich the tech companies. It will make everyone more vulnerable.

    The claim that these complex algorithm models are ~the future~ and inevitable are MARKETING. That’s it. It’s marketing to cover up the exact same nonsense humans are always trying to do to each other. We cannot change the fact humans are always trying to take advantage of each other, but if we’re the kind of person positioned to exploit instead of being exploited, we can simply choose not to be that guy. I don’t relate to the big boss with his cigar telling people to work through holidays; I relate to scrappy heroes doing the right thing even when it’s uncool.

    We face the Chidi Anagonye issue when it comes to necessities like food. We cannot escape the entire food chain so we aren’t complicit in human rights abuses. Maybe we choose veganism to avoid killing animals; instead, unprotected migrant labor gives us almond milk. It’s an ongoing devil’s bargain of life that we can *only* navigate systemically (and I am always optimistic we will find ways to improve).

    But there is literally nothing forcing us to use AI to generate art, text, or ideas. You can just choose not to do it. You can just be the scrappy cool hero of your fantasy novel saying, “I am gonna carry the Ring to Mordor even though the eagles don’t wanna carpool and it means walking my feet off!” You can just choose not to exploit other humans on this matter.

    And stay out of self-driving taxis.

    ~

    Amazon used a lot of words to explain why they don’t care about consistently employing people in a country where employment is tied to human rights. (Variety)

    our industry continues to evolve quickly and it’s important that we prioritize our investments for the long-term success of our business, while relentlessly focusing on what we know matters most to our customers. Throughout the past year, we’ve looked at nearly every aspect of our business with an eye towards improving our ability to deliver even more breakthrough movies, TV shows, and live sports in a personalized, easy to use entertainment experience for our global customers. As a result, we’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact. As a result of these decisions, we will be eliminating several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization.

    ~

    My biggest fear about the next election is honestly immigration. Trump has extremely fascist hopes for deportations (including for legal citizens) (Rolling Stone)

    ~

    France has a new openly gay prime minister who is also Islamophobic. So there’s that. (NPR) Ironically waving sad rainbow flag.

    ~

    I didn’t hear *anyone* talking about the Secretary of Defense going missing?? (Lawyers, Guns, & Money)

  • sara reads the feed

    Giant ancient shlonger, an excuse to eat candy, and a ban on eating dogs

    My anxiety has been on a rampage for a couple days. I have really severe money-related anxiety, regardless of the reality of the money situation, and I have discovered I absolutely cannot rationalize my way through stress surrounding it. I have to see myself being anxious about money and just say, “That is an anxiety problem.” And then treat it as such.

    This ties into business generally. I keep trying to edge back into working on publishing matters, but the emotional burden is so intense. It’s a minefield of triggers turning me insensate. A real issue.

    I emailed around looking for local therapists who do EMDR, since it was recommended to me specifically as a treatment that might help, but I have not had any luck.

    On the bright side, I can safely say the level of my anxiety has nothing to do with the precarity of my money situation. It’s just one of my brain’s favorite hits to play when I’m freaking out. I have a few categories of Brain’s Greatest Hits off the anxiety playlist: I’m So Fat, I’m a Bad Mom, We Are Going to Lose Everything We Have, My Husband Secretly is Sick of Me, etcetera.

    The fact I only took a couple three days to work through this protracted panic and realize it *is* just a panic is actually kinda record turnaround though? It’s encouraging to see growth in myself. I am not yet where I want to be.

    In the absence of EMDR for now, I sincerely think I just need to work slowly, but persistently, work on mindfulness with my support system, and maybe even write up a few affirmations to remind myself of what’s going on when my head’s too muzzy to distinguish Brain’s Greatest Hits from Actual Reality.

    ~

    Lawyers, Guns, & Money shared a really interesting article about the quality of AI writing essays. It’s so good, I don’t want to summarize it or bury it. It’s not very long. Give it a read, Trek nerds.

    ~

    A new publication asserts that the Cerne Abbas Giant may represent Hercules (Ars Technica).

    A major attraction of Dorset, England, is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a 180-foot-tall figure of a naked man wielding a large club carved with chalk into a hilltop. A pair of historians offers a strong case that this figure was originally meant to represent Hercules from Greek mythology, perhaps to inspire West Saxon armies, who could have used the site as a muster station. […]

    “It’s become clear that the Cerne giant is just the most visible of a whole cluster of early medieval features in the landscape,” said co-author Helen Gittos, an early medieval historian at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian. “I think we’ve found a compelling narrative that fits the giant into the local landscape and history better than ever before, changing him from an isolated mystery to an active participant in the local community and culture.”

    There are whole levels to how much I love this. First of all, because I love getting a sense of prehistoric civilization. It’s really easy to imagine calling some artists together to work on a giant penis dude to get the Saxon armies hyped. Imagine showing up to your muster station on day one of the new battle against whoever you’re fucking with this time, and y’all have this giant art piece to inspire you.

    Sincerely, it makes me feel so vividly in the time-and-place. Knowing that they were decorating these spaces with a ~mood~ in such a way makes me think of, like, conventions in Las Vegas.

    Also, lol penis.

    ~

    A bit of frippery perhaps. A doctor on People Magazine suggested super-sour Warheads for interrupting panic attacks. It sounds silly, but I can actually understand what he’s getting at here. People seem to misinterpret it as “eat candy and forget about your problems,” but I think this is just a literal interruption to a maladaptive chemical feedback loop.

    Sour to induce whatever chemicals sour induces (maybe we register it like pain? adrenaline? dopamine?), and then inducing different facial expressions will also change the chemical process in your brain… Yeah, I see what he’s getting at. It’s using candy like medication.

    And it’s not denying whatever issues are at hand, either. Like, panic attacks aren’t necessarily about something immediate. You can have a meltdown over a trigger when nothing is going on. Or maybe you’re panicking over a fair issue, but the size of the panic isn’t appropriate. Snapping yourself out of it with a Warhead isn’t a bad idea.

    This is the kind of frippery I enjoy.

    ~

    Dog meat is officially illegal in South Korea. (NPR) Although this seems like an easy win from an animal welfare standpoint, I’d like to offer another perspective: dog meat is a food associated with lower income communities, rural areas, the like. I think it’s kind of a hardship food that has grown traditions around it, as often happens.

    While we’re celebrating dog safety, I hope there is also no rush to increase policing on socially marginalized groups. Changing traditions takes time. And I think it’s kinda universal in all countries that more cops in poor neighborhoods is a bad idea.

    The bill would make the slaughtering, breeding, trade and sales of dog meat for human consumption illegal from 2027 and punish such acts with 2-3 years in prison. But it doesn’t stipulate penalties for eating dog meat.

    The bill would offer assistance to farmers and others in the industry for shutting down their businesses or shifting to alternatives. Details of outlawing the industry would be worked out among government officials, farmers, experts and animal rights activists, according to the bill.

    “Details are going to be worked out later now that we’ve passed the law” is always worrying. I guess it’s normal. But I’m normally worried about government compassion for the people it governs.

    ~

    This column by John Cassidy in The New Yorker makes me wanna yark.

    Simply put, they greatly improve the welfare of countless Americans, including some of the neediest ones. In many ways, indeed, keeping the jobless rate low and the labor markets tight is the most effective and cost-efficient welfare policy there is.

    Actually, welfare is the best welfare policy.

    Democrats are so wrong-headed by insisting on the marriage between work and human rights. Not everyone can work. Work should not be perilous. Life doesn’t have to be this hard. I’m steamed.

    This is the stuff they’re gonna shove down our gullets leading up to the election. We’re supposed to be motivated to vote Blue by this human-hating capital-loving nonsense.

    ~

    The Navajo Nation objects to human remains interred on the Moon. (NPR) Frankly, I agree. I kinda don’t want humans chucking random junk up there, period. Why in the world do we feel we have any right to littering the Moon with commercial payloads?

    I believe in human expansion into the stars someday, but right now we’re only capable of doing it in the ways we know how: disrespectfully, exploitatively, and commercially.

    ~

    Breivik is suing Norway for human rights abuse (AJE). This was a mass shooter from a few years back. This incident really shook me.

    I am opposed to solitary confinement. If he’s in solitary confinement, that is a human rights abuse. But this sort of thing shows me that I do have limitations in who I think is human. I’m like, does a man who hunted teenager have human rights? The answer should be yes if I were idealogically consistent to the end, but here we are.

    My most American stance is that someone like Breivik (not even all mass shooters, but ones like Breivik) should not occupy any societal resources or time at all, and it’s unfortunate he ever got off that island to be put in solitary confinement. Whatever happens to him after that is hardly a tragedy.

    Breaking: I am a petty human like the rest of y’all.

    ~

    Margot Robbie is happy to see Harley Quinn mythologized and reinterpreted by Lady Gaga (Variety). I am too.

    I’m thinking more broadly about Robbie and Gerwig’s career goals, though. From Robbie in this article:

    “We want to make more films that have the effect that ‘Barbie’ has. I don’t know if it has to be ‘Barbie 2.’ Why can’t it be another big, original, bold idea where we get an amazing filmmaker, a big budget to play with, and the trust of a huge conglomerate behind them to go and really play? I want to do that.”

    I’m sure they would. Gerwig and Robbie have made it clear that their goal is to win at this system we have right now. They’ve identified their gender as the only thing standing in their way of winning at this system.

    I thought Barbie would make a legitimate run at the awards seasons, but it kinda looks like Pretty Things – the “feminist” movie made by men about a dead pregnant woman who becomes sex-crazy after having her fetus’s brain put into her body – is going to take a lot of the awards I expected Barbie to get.

    Losing to some guy making some weirdo movie about his idea of a sexy weird woman is probably going to validate their worldview – that it’s hard being a woman. It also validates my worldview, which is that the system is a wreck, they’re wasting their time trying to be good at an abusive system, and I hope they are happy with the work itself because how you spend your days is how you spend your life and the work might be the only reward they get.

    Well, and a gazillion dollars. Being a white blonde woman in a man’s world isn’t without benefits. People wouldn’t beg to be picked if it wasn’t good, yeah? And I’m sure Gerwig and Robbie are making enough money to buy their own validation at this point?

    ~

    Thank goodness Peter Jackson understood The Lord of the Rings. The studio wanted him to kill off a Hobbit. (The Guardian)

    I think the level of studio intervention in the Hobbit movies is why they’re so terrible. Everything is rushed, the studio got its wants, nothing makes sense with the canon, and the movies aren’t popular.

  • Diaries

    Words I don’t understand

    Ikigai is a Japanese word without a direct equivalent in English, though I suppose it could be considered the spirit of life, what makes life worth living, the quality of it all. I read about it in an interesting article about robots for assisting dementia patients. (Wired) Not in basic life tasks like hygiene, but in improving the general experience of living for people who have major cognitive impairments. Treatments for things like dementia often involve regressing into happy memories, but some researchers want to help folks enjoy their present and future for as long as they have it, and that means improving ikigai.

    Until the last couple years, I had a good life. I have been successful. There wasn’t anything to complain about. But I was struggling internally, and it felt like all the good stuff happened around this giant gaping bleeding wound that would never heal. I could never forget about the giant gaping bleeding wound. I’d have loads of fun, experiencing beauty and the regular gamut of emotions, while also constantly gushing blood. It feels like it would be easier to say life was fine – even good – but I had poor ikigai.

    This ties into my other favorite word English doesn’t translate directly: bildung. Bildung is the German concept of self-growth, a journey of becoming better and more yourself through time. You may have heard of the bildungsroman, which is like a coming of age novel.

    In order to improve my ikigai, I needed to have a whole bildung, and that was kinda the first half of my thirties. I feel so much happier than I’ve felt before. I’m not all the way healed, but this seeping hole is crusting over and getting scabby. Could I think of a grosser metaphor for something pleasant? Life is messy and gross and good.

    I’ve also been thinking about quality of life through one’s declining years. I’ve been the hospice for several sickly, aging animals now, and although I haven’t yet needed to care for an aging relative (knock on wood), I contemplate it because age is coming for all of us eventually (hopefully). I think about how little children don’t remember much of anything. But we try to give them great experiences and so much joy within the cognitive limitations of childhood. If we lovingly embrace our aging elders, even through the heartbreak of knowing this is a regression rather than a progression, could we also enjoy each other better, longer? Could we all have better ikigai?

    I’m probably using the word wrong, but I just like the concept a lot right now.

    ~

    Although I’ve been feeling more peaceful and healed, I feel I’m missing out on supporting my family financially. I’m doing stuff in that direction slowly, trying to amp myself back up for more work, but I tried last year too and kinda slipped so I feel less confident about my ability to get my feet under me. Heck, I also tried to get my feet under me for a yearish of college and slipped at that too. They have been gentle small slips as I attempt gentle steps, but it’s not been too encouraging.

    I used to get a lot of pride and self-worth out of bringing ample bacon home for my family. I’m no longer confident I can do that, and it’s really not just a blow to my ego (long since faded–like I said, I’ve been healing) but also it makes me feel really uncertain about myself. I always supported myself since I was 18. The last year or two, I have not contributed as much as my spouse. It’s scary! And I honestly feel like I don’t deserve this time to reorient myself, like I am not pulling my weight.

    We don’t mind living a smaller life, mostly. We aren’t hurting. We aren’t having lavish vacations anymore, but I don’t think it markedly changes the quality of life for me! Like all the stuff I used to go out and do and spend money on was as much stress as positive influence, on the good end of things, and I appreciate the less-stressful life at home that has allowed me to flourish in new creative directions.

    Normally I remember this and I’m good. The most productive thing to do is just focus on getting better at working again in healthy ways, and really put my energy into that, not so much beating myself up for what I can’t do compared to my past. The past is the past. Yanno?

    I’ve been feeling a jolt once in a while lately. Like a cold splash or an electric shock. Like I just woke up 7-8 years ago, realized I hadn’t released a book in months, and have an immediate panic attack. I used to release almost monthly. I was always searching for new opportunities, making connections, marketing, straining through books. The life I’m living right now was my fear. I would have seen myself as utterly worthless. It took years of growth to get to a place where I stopped valuing myself based on external factors at all, and started realizing I have inherent value, but sometimes it’s like…all that growth just vanishes in a blink and I’m scared and bleeding again.

    What am I so afraid of? Taking it easy now doesn’t mean all my past accomplishments stop counting. And my current non-financial accomplishments are so meaningful. Moving away from a capitalist sense of value has been really important for me.

    I almost feel like this is a sign I should shake myself around a little and step up my effort on working–in healthful ways, of course. Indulging fear won’t help me, but I gotta get motivation somewhere? I really do work every day. I write plenty. But I think I need to really focus on finishing the twelve thousand unfinished projects sitting out there. I feel so much better whenever I have something to show for my efforts.

  • Diaries

    Some 2023 statistics off Sara’s Letterboxd

    Earlier I ranked my top 10 movies from 2023, but here are a few other fun stats from my Letterboxd about the year’s movie-watching habits.

    My first film watched was 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s funny because I ended the year thinking I was due a rewatch. Apparently I’m on an annual cycle with this one?

    The last film I logged in 2023 was my second viewing of What Happens Later, which made me cry happily all over again.

    Since I watched over 200 films, Letterboxd made note of some important milestones.

    On the other hand, there were three movies that I rewatched more than others, logging each of them three times on Letterboxd.

    • Bottoms was one of my favorite movies of the year, and it had the most rewatchability. It really has that “I have to make xyz watch it now” factor.
    • I rewatched Nimona several times right when it came out because the queer and family-friendly message resonated, but it’s hard to watch movies with my kids at the same time. It’s in my top 10 for the year for sure.
    • Mandy was the dark horse of rewatches. I blasted through it three times early in the year when I was on a horror binge. The vibes are so absolute, it consumed me. I think I’m due to revisit it.

    Comedy and romance ended up being the main genres of my year, with 114 and 74 films respectively logged. It’s no surprise. I really took off watching romcoms after Halloween.

    That said, I gave the highest ratings on average to animated movies and action/adventure.

    Since I have Letterboxd Pro, I have a lot of interesting statistics that aren’t worth recapping here, but probably very representative of my interests as a human being. Here’s a screenshot of one highlight. There’s a lotta words, so click to embiggen, or you can just go look at my stats on Letterboxd.

    Basically I like movies that are very exciting, genre, and juvenile that have Meg Ryan in them. Maybe not all at once.

    The last statistic on the page is one of the more interesting ones. It’s a list of popular 2023 movies I haven’t logged yet.

    • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the first, and I don’t know if I’ll finish watching it until the sequel comes out. I found it pleasant to watch but it didn’t grab me the way the first one did. It’s hard to get invested knowing it’s got a cliffhanger, too.
    • Two movies are related to Attack on Titan, which is a cool property (I’ve read a couple manga and played the AoT Fortnite event) but I don’t plan to see the movies.
    • I have no desire to see the Eras Tour movie or Oppenheimer.
    • I’m still waffling on Pretty Things because the aesthetic is great but the story sounds awful.
    • I haven’t paid any attention to Past Lives or The Holdovers. I wonder if I should watch them?
  • sara reads the feed

    Peloton makes Christopher Nolan sweat, May December is exploitative comedy maybe, and labor rights as usual

    I mentioned a while back that I got a $15 balance board off Amazon and I love it. Guess what? It’s mostly fixed my hip pain (at least the way that matters to me right now). I can stand at my desk for hours. When my hip/back starts aching at all, I climb on the balance board.

    My guess is that it’s just engaging all the muscles I normally don’t engage standing and sitting around, and that’s enough to stabilize my hip. Or whatever. The first week or so, I felt that achiness that indicates muscle growth in all sorts of weird places, like the adductors, obliques, and even my *deltoids*? (I think because my arms have to stabilize me against the desk to use my computer.)

    Whatever I was missing in my routine to alleviate pain, the board has helped way more than using the treadmill at my desk and going for walks and stuff. It’s awesome.

    Typing honestly isn’t my favorite on the balance board, just because it makes me so tall that I can’t raise my standing desk any higher and it’s not ergonomically ideal. But I’ve been using it a lot for gaming. My combination is padded standing mat + balance board + slippers with supportive soles, and I can stay standing for hours.

    ~

    My favorite chuckle of the morning came from Christopher Nolan complaining that a Peloton instructor shit-talked Tenet during a class (Variety), unaware Nolan was in the class. Hysterical. Nolan’s response was (paraphrased) “How dare you? Criticism shouldn’t be instinct but a job.” Meaning he thinks nobody should have opinions on movies where he might hear them unless they’re a critic.

    I still love Nolan’s directorial style, but the last couple years have made it clear he’s intolerably precious. He’s among the guard of Hollywood who feels entitled to the movie community’s time. He feels the movie community should have gates and keepers. He thinks that he should have a certain number of big screens for a certain period of time. He thinks the masses should keep their opinions to themselves, as someone who only gets these budgets because the masses tolerate him.

    I think Nolan is a giant wiener who should accept nobody *needs* to take movies as preciously as he does. And he should accept that being a household name means everyone has opinions on him. He can’t reshape the world to his demands no matter how many times he stomps his feet; the world is not made of executives kissing his rings for providing profit-generating content. Nolan needs to learn to Deal With It.

    I like art to be rowdy and messy and full of unprofessional people and so Nolan’s preciousness has officially made him a target of my playful mockery. I hope he never knows another peaceful Peloton class. Fucking Peloton! They hurt his feelings! What a precious little wiener. lmao.

    ~

    Kate Hudson keenly noted that romcoms are hard to make now (The Hollywood Reporter) because, ultimately, studios aren’t investing in good writers. The headline is about actors, but she says it’s because studios aren’t getting writers that write movies worth big-name time. Hudson is surely longing for another Nora Ephron, much like Meg Ryan, and it’s just nice seeing folks remember that writing matters once in a while.

    ~

    I am not disturbed by the man in Las Vegas attacking the judge. (NPR) Did you watch the video? He tried to make himself vulnerable in a plea for leniency based on his overall behavior, and she crisply, patronizingly said something like, you need a taste of punishment, byyyeee. I just think it would take a real strong person not to lose their shit over this.

    I don’t know what he did to land in the court. Maybe he’s a horrible person. But I just don’t think that people with the power to toss humans into the meat grinder of our carceral system with the sneering dismissal of a middle school math teacher should be *surprised* if they get an unpleasant reaction. Do you know how violent the entire prison system is? Do you know what’s going to take over this man’s entire life for months/years to come, and probably has already done a mess to him?

    I’m not violent personally; I just find it a willfully ignorant position to act like judges are vulnerable lil innocent babies when they are knowing, powerful participants in a vicious system. This man looked so desperate to me. America puts way too many people in desperate positions.

    ~

    Vili Fualaau, the victim of Mary Kay Letourneau, doesn’t like May December. (IndieWire)

    When I watched the movie, I thought it was more broadly cribbed off the type of abuse in the Letourneau case, not about the Letourneau case specifically. Shortly thereafter I learned that some lines were directly taken from an interview with Fualaau and Letourneau, and the lisp that was so central to the female characters also came from the real-life abuser. It’s not as much a mosaic as I thought. It’s much more direct, like Velvet Goldmine.

    I do feel like May December is yet another act of abuse against Fualaau, effectively; it’s insane we live in a world where others’ stories are fair game for profit-making schemes. The fact that May December is one of the most tasteful and respectful iterations doesn’t matter from the viewpoint of the man it’s about.

    It’s crazy to think he’s been dealing with this public scrutiny of his life for so long. Letourneau truly robbed this person of any opportunity to be innocent, and the various sordid retellings make creators complicit in this theft.

    As for my position as a viewer who loved the movie, I don’t know. I already deal with this dilemma in all sorts of media that I routinely enjoy. True crime is riddled with people who don’t consent to their involvement; the industry is built on furthering trauma against victims. I think it’s normal for humans to be sordidly curious. I also think all humans have deep deep flaws, and maybe my conscious willingness (and enthusiasm) to engage with media that makes entertainment of others’ pain is one of my worse ones.

    That’s not satisfying commentary, I know. But I think it’s true all at once that May December is great filmmaking, and an act of abuse against Fualaau, and a sign that I like juicy stuff even when it hurts people. The fact the movie itself may ask us how similar we are to Portman and Moore’s characters in our complicity with this situation is so much of why I liked it.

    There’s also a lot of conversation right now as to whether May December should be regarded as comedy. (Variety)

    ~

    It’s interesting to hear that use of hearing aids (NPR) can lengthen life span, since hearing loss can worsen cognitive *everything,* isolate the individual, and send them to an early grave.

    I don’t need hearing assistance (yet?) but I do use glasses, and have done so since elementary school. My eyes aren’t that bad. I can get around a house fine without glasses, and if I’m not attached to seeing details or reading captions, I can watch TV.

    But I noticed if I go without my glasses for a while, I kinda fully disconnect from the world. I just start drifting. I don’t respond as strongly to anything. I can imagine how losing hearing might cause a more profound drift unless consciously combated.

    ~

    Reading about the old Vectrex console was an absolute delight for me yesterday. (Ars Technica) It makes me wonder how different gaming might look if we’d focused on vector-based rather than point-based design.

    ~

    Al Jazeera English notes this is a big year for elections and democracy is kinda on the ballot everywhere.

    ~

    In 1905, Lucy Parsons wrote her feelings about the problems with labor in capitalism, which I could have written nowadays 120 years later. I’d surely have more fart jokes though. Read it on Panarchy.

    Every person who is rendering no good to humanity is useless, no matter how hard he works. Head work and hand work are equally hard and equally useful if rightly applied. All men, rich and poor, are working at something; perhaps one at useful labor, the other at useless labor. Nevertheless they are each and all using their energies at some occupation.

    Men work because they cannot hold their physical and mental energies in check without causing themselves pain. But we have made work disagreeable because we have allowed conditions to obtain which force us to continue to work after we are tired, or at something for which we have no taste, take no interest in and have no adaptability for.

    For this reason we lose pleasure in work and it becomes irksome to us; for this reason, often what we do is done in a slovenly manner and the community loses thereby. The selfish scheme called “property rights” has superseded human rights and created four times more useless work than is required to produce and distribute all the comforts and luxuries of life.

    All these useless workers are either capitalists or the allies of capitalists. In this class of workers whose sole business is to sustain the “rights of property” can be classed the lawyers, jailers, police, bankers, insurance companies, agents and nearly all bosses in all branches of industry; add to these those who cannot get work and those in prisons, and we get some conception of the vast hordes that must be supported by those who perform useful labor, and these must devote their entire life’s energies in keeping up the “rights of property,” a thing which they have neither a share nor interest in.

    And this condition of affairs makes paupers, suicides, thieves, cut-throats, liars, vagabonds, hypocrites, and unsocial beings generally.

    Who, pray, are benefitting by all this waste and confusion? The few, a mere small percentage of the population of the world. All the remainder submit, because they think “it always has been so and it must always be so.” The work of those who have a conception of a true society of the future, must devote all their efforts toward disabusing the people’s minds of the ancient falsehoods. It can be done. Many other hoary lies have passed away, so will this one, too.

    As a side note, eleven miners are trapped in Zimbabwe. (AJE) These are subsistence miners working in unsafe unregulated mining sites. It seems to make it easy for the owners of the mines to mostly shrug when things happen. The owner sent a team to rescue folks, but they say they can’t get in because of unsafe ground. The ground was already unsafe and they let the subsistence miners go. Anyway, just thinking about labor today. My heart goes to the miners and the families and hope rescue operations proceed smoothly.