Map of My Backyard

1) Whoa, the changes at Tumblr have meant a flood of people signing up for accounts at Pillowfort. I just went through a feed four times longer than usual.

2) We've watched four episodes of Starfleet Academy and are both pleasantly surprised by it. I confess I haven't been very enthused by the new crop of shows. In fact my favorite season was one that it seems most viewers didn't care for, which was S1 of Discovery. ( Read more... )

3) Looks like it isn't just late night shows that are winding to a close but talk shows and entertainment news. I can see why podcasts would be far cheaper to make and competing with the audience, but I do wonder if most can put out episodes as consistently as is done with larger productions. (I note, for example, that Access Hollywood has four hosts).

4) Not being a reader of Outlander, I had no idea there was a separate Lord John Grey series. A spinoff based on the books sounds great, and you'd think with the success of Heated Rivalry (it was a Jeopardy question this week!) that the timing would be perfect. Granted, a period piece with a large cast would be significantly more expensive, but it also has a built in audience via its linked TV show and books.

5) Watched Zootopia 2 and enjoyed it. I particularly liked how they worked in references to favorite things from the first film without having it slow down or detract from the story in progress. For us this was wolves starting a howl, and the appearance of the sloth. There were lots of little in-jokes (such as the Hulu menu) and things moved along quite well, with fun new characters to meet.

1) I wrote last year about the movie The Big Year, which was about birders trying to break a record in seeing the most birds that year. When I told my partner I was trying to pass 1000 wins at Solo on BGA he said, "So this is your Big Year." ( Read more... )

2) I confess I don't really follow the Oscars race or even nominees since I only see movies once in a while and usually well after they've been released, but I thought this was an interesting summation. I was particularly struck by the discussion of costs, and how chasing Oscar prestige outranks movie ticket sales, since so many potential contenders crowd into the end of year period. This almost guarantees many people will miss a number of them.

What was interesting about this survey is the data on how people have changed their opinions of last year's Oscar nominees. "Americans are much more likely now than they were last year to say they love "A Complete Unknown" (51%, up from 39%). They’re less likely to say they love "Dune: Part 2" (43%, down from 53%)."

3) On the same day in which NPR's 1A did a show on the value of acknowledging mistakes, someone also posted about The Ctrl-Z Award’ to honor researchers who correct the scientific record. This latter seems like a much needed antidote to our times (and can also be immeasurably helpful). I hope it does well.

RE: the 1A episode, here's a quote: "So, you know, theoretically, you could make a decision that was the wrong decision, but if it doesn't have a bad outcome, you're not even judging it as a mistake half the time. And that that's actually potentially the difference between a little mistake and a big mistake...we talk about this three act structure, what happened before the mistake, the mistake itself, and then how we deal with the mistake thereafter...It's not the crime. It's the cover up. Right? And that's an act three problem. But because people haven't gone through the process of saying, okay, what actually happened in act one, act two, and and now how am I gonna deal with it in act three? They make an even bigger one."

The fear of error is also talked about here: "what I see in the therapy room is sometimes it can take folks a while to really come around to admit to themselves actually that a mistake even happened because there's so much shame. It gets kind of locked up because as we've been discussing, as a culture, we do a terrible job of admitting to ourselves and to others that mistakes actually are how you learn. And so we get have so much shame that's wrapped up in it. And from that end, when there's shame, depression, anxiety, trauma, you know, are not far behind. So talking through mistakes, processing mistakes, learning not to avoid coming around to kind of, unpacking the Russian doll, if we stick with that metaphor, that's a huge piece of therapy." I can really recommend reading the episode transcript (you can also listen to the show).

4) What these incidents made me think of was fear on the Internet. "One of the phrases we like is curious, not furious. And so whether you're thinking about yourself, oh, I'm so angry at myself. Why did I do this? Or you see someone else make a mistake and you're kind of angry that they did it. The more that you can use curiosity as opposed to anger, I think we would all get along a little better. And then to your point, it's so helpful to talk with someone else. We believe you have to talk your mistakes to death. And it's helpful to write about them, sure, if you really don't have anyone with whom you can speak."( Read more... )

5) And speaking of mistakes, it's nice to have unexpected support even when you make them. ( Read more... )

1) At the grocery this morning and their clothing displays mirror the seesaw of our weather – puffy coats next to sundresses. It was so warm today than when I came back to drop the groceries off, I had to change into a t-shirt before I went out again, and it was barely 10 AM.

2) Had a nice piece of luck as well. The grocery was running a $10 coupon for $100 or more of purchases. I had to drop my partner off at work this morning because he had an all-day thing, and in the rush forgot to take the grocery list. So as I was putting stuff in the trunk I remembered I'd forgotten his celery. Went back and decided to pick up a few more things since I had the $10 coupon now. Got to the register and realized someone had left that same coupon sitting in the machine when they left! So I got the $10 off and still have my coupon for next week.

It amazes me how people don't bother taking their coupons. It's usually for things they're buying anyway and a free item is not unusual. And this was literally $10 in cash sitting there, when groceries are so expensive! I didn't even know what it was at first, just saw that someone hadn't taken their coupon and figured I'd look to see if it was something I could use.

3) Also on the grocery front, I have recently become addicted to Sumo oranges. Came across them during a sale, and got just one bag because they're pricey. Came back home with 3 the following week.

Oranges have never been my favorite, even though we had incredibly good ones growing in our backyard growing up. These are the closest I've gotten to those. I never end up eating only one.

3) As part of marchmetamatterschallenge, I have been going through my tv_talk comments in case I discussed much about a show (mostly, no). However it was a good reminder about a great many shows I watched which I liked and would recommend, but might not think of if someone asked me.

Some of these were strong throughout, and some long running ones have some weaker seasons but still worth watching. In no particular order, just as they came up on my entries: ( Read more... )

4) One of the things reviewing all these past posts made me aware of is how much more TV I'm watching, but overall with less enjoyment. Every so often I hit a show I would really recommend, but usually they fall into the "ok" category or I just nope out of it a few episodes in.

I think the changes in TV have a lot to do with this. ( Read more... )

1) marchmetamatterschallenge has begun! I'm particularly excited this year since I will finally come current with my meta archiving. I'm already finished with 2024 and should finish 2025 by tomorrow. One thing I hope is to do more writing this year.

2) The February CheckIn at everykindofcraft has gotten a lot of responses. It's interesting to hear all the different ways that people have learned these skills.

3) In less good news, a bunch of RSS feeds seem to have stopped working. The AO3 vids feed hasn't updated in weeks (so unlikely to be AO3's recent issues), and 4 feeds from Tumblr have stopped as well, though it seems only 2 have been updating lately. It's definitely not the feed service, because at least 3 other feeds I have set up have updated within the last few days. I'm wondering if Tumblr is somehow blocking RSS feeds now?

I also feel like there are people's posts that I have missed though I am less sure about that.

3) I was waiting for a cashier and there were 3 women and 2 small girls ahead of me. The two little girls were racing around everywhere, grabbing things and then having them put back by the women. It was all taking some time, and the squealing was getting on my nerves. But then one grabbed an Easter Bunny and told her mom she wanted it.

The mom asked the cashier if it was solid or hollow, and was told it was hollow (which seemed most likely to me given its size and price!) The little girl then asked what "hollow" was, and her mom struggled to explain it, finally saying "It has a hole inside it." The little girl then said "I'll put it back and get another." We all burst out laughing as her mom then tried to explain that the bunny wasn't defective, it was just the way it was made.

4) So it looks like Paramount will fold HBO into its service. I expect that will put paid to its bundling with Disney services, though it does make it more likely we'll keep Paramount+ around post-The Late Show cancellation. At this point the U.S. looks like it's going to have 3 major streamers, a number of secondary streamers (in which I include Peacock) and a vast number of tiny streamers.

5) Never posted here that I finished the latest season of Strange New Worlds. Thought it somewhat better than earlier seasons, despite the way it started, though I find it a bit jarring to see TOS episodes essentially revised for use here. The finale seemed a cross between Rey at the end of the Skywalker saga and ST:TOS's Lazarus episode. ( Read more... )