$180 … Deep Carve, Photo Image 360°, Black Ice case, three colors of inlaid epoxy … I’m not thrilled with this design and will pass on it.
Movies Watched -- The Nightingale (2018)
136 minute running time so way too long … this was like an Australian version of The Revenant, but this was written and directed by a woman. It’s set in 1825 Tasmania, I guess… the savagery is pretty, er, savage … non-stop raping and murdering and genociding of the local population (aborigines) … it hurts extra hard because the Bad English Lieutenant is a handsome bastard … it’s a revenge story … so brutal that it’s hard to sit through — it’s super raw. This was a John Farr reco. I can’t recommend it myself since it’s too long, repetitive, and a little weak in spots, but it gets a solid yellow rating for sure.
Me and my mate, we're partial to a bit of Irish cunny.
Movies Watched -- Aurora (2011)
In Romanian. 183 minute running time. Yes, you read that right: THREE HOURS LONG. Cristi Puiu made The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which I thought was brilliant and my favorite foreign language movie from 2005 … but I wasn’t thrilled with Aurora, mainly because it’s THREE HOURS LONG. Stars Puiu himself, and he mostly bumbles around and glares, that’s his great acting technique. He’s interested in how uncaring and indifferent bureaucracies are, esp. East Bloc ones. He’s interested in people who snap. Clearly he’s an interesting guy, but I can’t recommend this. John Farr did though.
Are you winding me up?
New Albums Being Promoted on Radio FIP in April 2025
Babx — Amour colosse (2025)
Black Country, New Road — Forever howlong (2025)
Black Flower — Kinetic (2025)
Blasé — Blablabla (2025)
Bon Iver — Everything is peaceful love (2025)
Echolalia — Echolalia (2025)
Gabi Hartmann — Into my world (2025)
Gabi Hartmann — La femme aux yeux de sel (2025)
Goya Gumbani — Warlord of the weejuns (2025)
Greentea Peng — Tell dem it's sunny (2025)
Hannah Cohen — Earthstar mountain (2025)
Merve — Platonik (2025)
Nyron Higor — Nyron Higor (2025)
Os Carbonos — Horse meat disco presents disco & boogie from Brazil, vol. 1 (2025)
Oscar Jerome — The fork (2025)
Poni Hoax — Greatest Hit (2025)
Siska — Holdin’ the vibe (2025)
Stella — Adagio (2025)
The Mercurials — Tend the Fire (2025)
Movies Watched -- Saint Maud (2019)
84 minute running time so the perfect length … this was a horror movie … it has the tell-tale ominous music and sound effect cues (annoying) … it’s not dumb horror though, it touches on lots of heavy stuff like religious faith and conversion, terminal illness, sexuality, mortification (self-inflicted pain), and mental health … the lead actress, Morfydd (MOR-vith, Welsh name) Clark, is very talented… she had to be since she carries the whole movie.
This was written and directed by a woman and men don’t fare very well in this … no positive male role models here for sure. The few men who appear are wimps or creeps (incl. G-d, lol). Maud is on her own for sure.
I have a green, yellow, red rating system for movies (go, consider, stop) and this gets a solid yellow rating. It’s not good enough to rate a green, but it’s also not bad enough to get a red. If you like horror (think The Exorcist), you should definitely see it. Thanks to John Farr for the reco.
Dick Brody wasn’t thrilled … his whole review is well-written and right on the money: “… the proximity of piety to fanaticism and fanaticism to madness … The story moves relentlessly ahead, never looking to the side, as if afraid to risk breaking the anticipatory mood of shock and fear … The more significant habits of [the horror] genre are the very ones that get in the way of the drama itself: the creation of effects without causes, the stoking of particular feelings with little practical substance or psychological insight to develop them … The burden and sublimity of faith—of Christian faith—that Maud bears is emblematized rather than explored, asserted rather than experienced.”
My little saviour…
How to Export Spotify Playlists to Excel
I discovered the free Spotify Playlist Analyser by Chosic today (no log-in required), and it’s an amazing tool. I instantly paid them $25 in thanks for creating it.
Every month I listen to ~1,500 new songs and had no way to keep track of them until I found Chosic. By listening to 18,000 new songs a year, I’m able to cover just about the entire listenable musical universe, I think.
Sure there are hundreds of thousands of new songs recorded every year (especially in recent years), but how many are worth listening to? One percent of 1,800,000 songs is 18,000 songs and I listen to that many every year so I’m probably not missing anything.
Movies Watched -- There Is No Evil (2020)
In Persian. 151 minute running time, but it’s four separate stories and only the first one is any good, so you should just watch that one and quit while you’re ahead. This was a recent reco from my buddy John Farr.
It’s a political movie from Iran, criticizing the brutality and inhumanity of the regime currently in power there, a place where prisoners (both political and otherwise) are routinely executed by the State … the first story is the only good one and you can skip the others, since they are lame, or heavy-handed, or weakly acted… sort of like made-for-TV stuff, just second-rate. But the first story is good.
SPOILERS. There’s a middle-aged pudgy guy who’s a real sweetheart, rescuing stuck kitties, being patient and tolerant with his annoying wife and bratty child, being patient and kind with his aged mother-in-law (or mother?). He’s a really meek and mild guy living a good, decent, middle-class life in Iran. But there is a sense all along that something isn’t right, and in the end you discover he’s a hangman. It’s well done.
It was like the filmmaker had one good story to tell but couldn’t sell a 45 minute movie, so he had to pad it out to 2 and half hours, which just ruined it. Anyway, I don’t recommend the movie, and if you do see it, you can stop after the first story, which is called “There Is No Evil.”
Deborah Young agrees: “… the four tales suffer from being narratively uneven, making the film’s two-and-a-half-hour running time seem long indeed … yet the first untitled episode about a man who works at night is a perfectly balanced and crafted little jewel that stands out in Rasoulof’s filmography.”
Not going on green, why?
Count In Locate Cost to Net P&L in DAS Trading Platform
Hard to find checkbox… Setup > Other Configuration > Trading Setting … scroll down until you see it.
What The Hell Happened To Canada?
I recently flew into the Toronto airport and was stunned to see that nearly everyone I saw was Indian (sub-continent, not Injun). It appears that Canada has taken in millions? of Indian immigrants recently. I’m going to have to do a mini deep dive on this:
“Number of immigrants arriving in Canada in 2024, by province or territory of residence”
Interestingly I never saw an immigration officer when I arrived at the airport, I just scanned my passport and did a facial scan and waltzed through to collect my bags. It was weird, sort of like an open border.
“Indians Immigrate To Canada In Record Numbers”
“Indian enrollment at Canadian universities rose more than 5,800% in the last two decades, from 2,181 in 2000 to 128,928 in 2021, an increase of 126,747 students.”
“This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.”
“Since the last federal election in Sept. 2021, Canada has welcomed roughly two million new citizens. They come from more than 200 countries and territories, with more than half being born in India, Philippines, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, the U.S. and France.”
Two million new “citizens” who can vote, holy cow…. Guess what they’re gonna vote for?
Sounds like Canada screwed up really badly and there’s going to be hell to pay.
Quick Impressions of China After a Decade Away
I left China in July 2015 and just returned from my first visit there after nearly a decade away. My impression is that the Chinese will do fine despite Trump’s idiotic “trade war.” The mood felt pretty bleak in China, but the Chinese still work like dogs. A popular term I often heard there was 卷 or “grind.” They are still grinding. They will always survive, no matter what.
The Chinese are digitally isolated behind the Great Firewall. You can’t access the global internet from there, which I find incredibly frustrating, and the man on the street usually has no idea what’s going on in the outside world, other than what he is told via official media.
The surveillance state has advanced so far in China that I am positive that there could never be a “street level” protest mounted again. Not that the people appear to have any desire to protest or overturn the government, but if they ever did, it would easily be nipped in the bud.
Another factor is that the Chinese people are completely dependent on their cellphones. You can’t even take a cab any more in China without having a cellphone. Every monetary transaction down to the tiniest purchases are done via cellphone. I assume every transaction is monitored in real-time. There can be no popular uprising in China given the combination of physical street-level surveillance (ubiquitous cameras with facial recognition technology) and real-time location monitoring of all financial transactions.
Electric cars are now ubiquitous in Beijing (there were next to none when I left in 2015). There are dozens of car brands that I don’t even recognize. I assume that Tesla’s global market share would quickly move toward zero if there were open competition. Fortunately for Musk, he is protected from real competition outside of China.
I enjoyed my visit. The Chinese people still have a good sense of humor and are friendly… of course it helps that I speak Chinese. The people remain hard working, smart, and practical. I couldn’t live there again because of the Great Firewall and the Surveillance State, but it’s a fun place to visit.