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On Critics

 I managed a movie theater from early 2007 to late 2013. During that time, I saw the industry go through some major changes, such as transitioning from film to digit and running ads in newspapers to strictly online.

During the early portion of my time at the movie theater, we would hold special screenings for newspaper movie critics. For anyone a few years younger, the newspaper used to have an entertainment section where the local critic would write up bite size blurbs about the upcoming films to help you make a decision on what to see. Once theaters stopped running showtimes in the paper, the papers got rid of the critics, and they transitioned to blogs or online publications.

I used to get really upset with critics who would tear apart a movie I liked. These folks were paid to have a good opinion! How could their taste differ so much from mine? Then I started at the movie theater and I got to see the first batch of local movie critics and it all made sense.

These weren’t my people. The people employed by the newspapers looked and acted in a way that I couldn’t even imagine sharing a meal with them, let alone taking their advice on ANYTHING. It was a real eye opening experience for me. I realized that just because someone is paid to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean they are qualified, nor do I have to agree with their results.

Earlier today, I was reading an interview with Kurt Wimmer, director of the latest Children of the Corn film. I was reading through some online stuff regarding another film he directed, Equilibrium starring Christian Bale. I remember really enjoying this film, but I don’t recall much about it. As I was doing a bit of a deep dive into the movie, I saw this quote by Wimmer”

Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven’t.

It made me smile. I remembered the stuffy, pretentious movie critics that would file in on a Thursday morning and how unpleasant they were. Mr. Wimmer is right, I definitely wouldn’t party with any of them and I wouldn’t take their advice either.

BRANDON WRITES

24 Mar 2023 at 17:56

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

 I’d two thoughts while trying to listen to Songs of Surrender, the baffling re-recordings of forty of U2’s songs, or, rather, while skipping through just to the songs that I actually know.

The first thought was that these revisitations are pretty terrible, and I’m utterly confused as to why they exist. There’s nothing especially inspired in the noodling around, and for much of it Bono seems to be way too self-consciously making sure to sing at a different pace or rhythm than in the original recordings, as if that’s somehow interesting enough in and of itself. It isn’t.

The second thought was remembering that Achtung Baby came out during the four months I lived at the Lawson YMCA in Chicago.


Writing those words, I had to go check that this possibly could be correct, but it definitely wasn’t Rattle and Hum (I was in college or on a break from it) and it definitely wasn’t Zooropa (I’m pretty sure I was back in upstate New York). Achtung Baby, though, came out in November 1991 and for the life of me I can’t remember being in Chicago, of all places, essentially in the winter, of all seasons.

What clinches it, though, is that my time in Chicago also included the release of Barton Fink, which came out in August 1991. This suggests that my four months there in fact were August through November.


There really are only six things I remember about those four months living at the Lawson YMCA.

  1. Going to see Barton Fink, exiting the theater feeling like I didn’t know where I was, and returning “home” to a dingy-ish SRO with narrow hallways that only could make me think of a shotgun-wielding John Goodman yelling, “I’ll show you the life of the mind!”

  2. Having in my possession, while I was there, a manual typewriter, which certainly did little to lesson the weirdness of having seen Barton Fink and returned to a dingy-ish SRO.

  3. Somehow ending up in a weekly chess game with a resident a few floors down from me, when I don’t really play chess, like, at all.

  4. Visiting the Billy Goat Tavern based entirely on it being the origin of Saturday Night Live’s infamous cheeseburger sketch, although the fact that it also had served as a Third Place for reporters helped.

  5. It only occurred to me while writing this, but I also remember going to get Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls while I was in Chicago, and the weird thing about this was it makes me wonder if I’m wrong that I bought Achtung Baby in Chicago at all.

  6. Going to get Achtung Baby, unless, per the above, I’ve completely botched what few memories of Chicago I have, but there’s no question my brain wants me to believe that I was still living there for its release.


Living at the Lawson YMCA in Chicago for four months in 1991 was something of an unplanned thing, as what I’d been doing up until that point was riding Greyhound from the east coast, on one of those plans where you can ten tickets to use over a given period of time.

The only other stop I even remember is a side trip to Port Sanilac, Michigan, where someone I knew from college lived. The only things I remember about that part of the trip are the amount of Boone's Farm we drank, and going to see the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood which only prompted my friend and I to imagine instead a version that was about Marian.


Achtung Baby effectively was my last U2 album. I came to U2 with Unforgettable Fire, and I sort of retroactively consider it, War, and Joshua Tree to be my canon U2 triptych. Achtung Baby sort of stands as the weird, unexpected bastard stepchild that I love somewhat irrationally.

Anyway, there’s no connective tissue here, just a memory ramble randomly and incidentally prompted by listening to a terrible album of U2 covering its own songs in mostly inexplicable ways.

It makes a certain, if unexpected, amount of sense that “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is the only reimagining on Songs of Surrender that I can stand. Once upon a time, prior instances of my homepage talked a bit about slack, as defined, specifically, by the Oxford English Dictionary.

In critical path analysis, the amount of time by which a particular event may be delayed without delaying the achievement of the overall objective

By this definition, I’d claimed, I considered myself a slacker. What I’ve never determined, discovered, or defined was that overall objective.

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Bix Blog

24 Mar 2023 at 17:15

I Re-Joined Twitter

 

I’ve decided to re-join Twitter. I miss an awful lot about it and I might leave Mastodon too.

Yes, you read that right. I’ve decided to re-join Twitter. There’s a lot of stuff I miss from the social network - the community, the threads, the hot takes. the fun.

I feel like Mastodon is becoming way too serious…it needs more of those fun-time Twitter folk. Because I intend for Twitter to be my primary social network, I’m thinking about putting my Mastodon profile out to pasture too.

But what lead me to these decisions? Well dear reader, that’s a looooong story. So I decided to do a video about it instead of writing War and Peace.

Watch my explanation →

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Kev Quirk

24 Mar 2023 at 15:43
#

Yesterday I finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford and Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I'd recommend both. Chiang is great. I think I need to read more by him.

Colin Devroe

24 Mar 2023 at 15:38
#

We don’t use AWS for that much, but costs just about doubled last month with more CDN usage. I tweaked some settings to try to bring it down a little. 💰

Manton Reece

24 Mar 2023 at 14:30

I Won't Buy A YubiKey 🔗

 

I won't buy a YubiKey

by Garrit Franke

In this interesting post, Garrit talks about why he wouldn't buy a YubiKey and I get where he's coming from.

Read Post →

I own 3 YubiKeys that I have for personal use. There’s one that I keep connected to the USB hub on the desk in my study, another that I keep in my work bag, and a third that I keep in the safe at my mum’s house.

That third one is registered with both mine and my wife’s Bitwarden accounts. So I know that no matter what, we can always get into our password vault’s. Two of the YubiKeys (including the backup one at my mum’s) are the NFC version, so we can use them with our phones.

Like Garrit, I use Bitwarden’s built in TOTP multi-factor tokens for most things, as I think it’s a good balance between security and convenience. Yes, it can probably be compromised, but it would have to be an extremely knowledgeable and motivated threat actor. So the risk is worth it for me.

Aside from Bitwarden, I also use my YubiKeys for certain important accounts where I don’t think the risk of having the MFA token in Bitwarden is worth it.

So, for me at least, there’s a use for owning a YubiKey (or 3), but I totally get where Garrit is coming from, and I think it’s a fair conclusion that he’s drawn.

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Kev Quirk

24 Mar 2023 at 14:02
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