Only four posts all month long, and one of them is “sorry I haven’t been posting much this month?” Hmm. Backsliding, apparently.
On the shows-to-watch front, Murderbot remains excellent, the “RockLady” anime was a delight, the “Girlilla” and the “Ninja+Assassin” anime much less so, and I still need to work up the oomph to finish off Apocalypse Hotel. Never mind picking Macross Delta back up again…
The co-op and the solo Satisfactory games are coming along nicely. My goal during this vacation week (look at how sneakily I worked that in there) is to finish off the nuclear power plant, and if I do so soon enough I’ll do a photo tour to show it off.
Other than than, life’s ticking along okay. Peace and quiet are most of what I want in this life lately, as long as I can continue to afford the cost of living. Which, of course, is not a guarantee even in good times… which these really aren’t. Ah well.
It takes a lot to convince me to fork out for adding a streaming service to the roster nowadays, considering I long ago cut D+ and whatever they’re calling HBO’s service this week out of the budget. Especially when the service in question is tied to the “fruit logo” financial ecosystem.
But dagnabbit, I really love the Murderbot series of novels & novellas from Martha Wells. And everything I read & watched about the upcoming show convinced me to give it a try.
The title? Makes me wonder if someone in the band has been reading Japanese light novels lately, going by sheer length alone. The music? Very, very solid, the product of a band doing what they want to be doing in this moment to the best of their ability.
I bounced off of most of the previous full Garbage album, No Gods No Masters, so I went into Let All That We Imagine Be The Light with considerable trepidation. Not many of my most recent new music purchases have panned out terribly well. (Note the lack of reviews here since, oh, 2023…) For instance: The less said about Apocalyptica’s recent attempt to return to the well bearing the sign “Metallica songs to cover,” the better.
If you’ve ever liked a Garbage album then I have an easy time recommending this one to you. It’s ten songs of varying but mostly average length with dense, almost crunchy at times, production values and Shirley Manson in what could best be described as “having run out of fucks to give but not to say” mode.
Seriously, if f-bombs are going to bother you, this may not be the best music purchase option.
Every song on here is at least good, and a few are marvelous. The high point for me is “Radical,” which also happens to serve as the title track (after a fashion). I considered it just-okay on first listen, bumped it up to pretty-good a couple of listens later, and at this point (a week after initial purchase) I’ve locked in a 5-star rating and I don’t see that going anywhere any time soon, given that parts of it have been in the earworm rotation of my psyche for days now.
With that said… not that I know anything about what satisfies pop sensibilities nowadays but I don’t see anything on the album becoming wildly popular outside of the band’s existing fanbase. There are no “club hits” hiding in the track list, there are no barn-burners or simple anthems for folks to nod & sing along with. This is meaty & meaningful stuff that you’ve kinda gotta be in the mood for going in.
Still, it’s a pretty damned good record overall, and I’m glad to have it in the library.
There are so many reasons to despise the state of “generative AI,” and 404 Media highlights one more absolutely depressing and distressing reason: It’s intellectually kneecapping a generation of schoolkids and hobbling the teachers who try to impart learning unto them:
They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching.
Read the whole thing at Teachers Are Not OK, if you’re in the headspace to deal with feeling even more grim than usual on a Monday morning in this timeline we inhabit.
In the small stack of mail this afternoon I found a missive from Medical Insurance Provider. They wanted to let me know that people who suffer from my condition should look into taking medication for another, causally related condition.
Which is great information, except I’ve been on the medication in question for five solid years now. You’d think that before they sent me a physical letter (that could’ve been an email) they might have checked their database, since they know literally everything about my medical situation.
Oh well. At least this isn’t like the previous “hey did you know” letter in which they gave me points to consider when approaching menopause. Which… seems medically unlikely to be a problem for me, all things considered.
I’m keeping up with a handful of shows this season, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm ranging from “I can’t wait for the next episode” to “well, I might as well see how this reaches a conclusion.” With a month and some-odd left to go in most of these show’s runs, it’s time for some thoughts.
(Note that I’m leaving out the long-running, continuing Apothecary Diaries, which remains one of the finest shows of this decade and looks destined for all-time-classic status. We love Maomao in this household.)
