Weak Points in the Critical Apparatus
There’s a class of artists that the critical apparatus has always had a problem with. These are artists who, regardless of medium or genre, are:
- Broadly Popular
- Consistant
- Prolific
- and this last one is the real key: not complex in the ways the critical apparatus is set up to value
And mostly we live in a time where we’ve figured out how to talk about this and we don’t sweat High vs low art thing as much.
But every now and then one of those artists will release something that banks into the broader culture at a weird angle. And the critical apparatus kinda just throws their hands up in the air and says “it’s fine, I guess? You already know if you want it, why are you hassling me?”
Movies from Last Year I Finally Saw: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Most of last year’s big (or at least big-adjacent) movies “finally” hit streaming towards the end of the year, so I’ve been working my way though them and then writing them up here, back injury allowing. Previously, previously, previously, previously.
Wait a minute, they fucking fridged Rebecca Ferguson’s character? Absolutely not.
Lightsaber Hot-Take Follow-Up
Following up on last Monday’s Hot Takes on Lightsabers: Last week’s episode of The Bad Batch? That’s how you pivot a story around a lightsaber powering up. A perfect example of “oh snap, it just Got Real.”
(Also, are you watching Bad Batch? You should be watching Bad Batch)
Saturday Stray Thoughts
No one ever looks back at their life and thinks, “I wish I had spent less time petting cats.”
Monday Snarkblog
I spent the weekend at home with a back injury letting articles about AI irritate me, and I’m slowly realizing how useful Satan is as a societal construct. (Hang on, this isn’t just the painkillers talking). Because, my goodness, I’m already sick of talking about why AI is bad, and we’re barely at the start of this thing. I cannot tell you how badly I want to just point at ChatGPT and say “look, Satan made that. It's evil! Don't touch it!”
Here’s some more open tabs that are irritating me, and I’ve given myself a maximum budget of “three tweets” each to snark on them:
Wherein Cory does a great job laying out the problems with common core and how we got here, and then blows a fuse and goes Full Galaxy Brain, freestyling a solution where computers spit out new tests via some kind of standards-based electronic mad libs. Ha ha, fuck you man, did you hear what you just said? That’s the exact opposite of a solution, and I’m only pointing it out because this is the exact crap he’s usually railing against. Computers don’t need to be all “hammer lfg new nails” about every problem. Turn the robots off and let the experts do their jobs.
I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx | Ars Technica
So wait, this guy had a fully working stack, and then was all “lol yolo” and replaced everything with no metrics or testing—twice??
I don’t know what the opposite of tech debt is called, but this is it. There’s a difference between “continuous improvement” and “the winchester mystery house” and boy oh boy are were on the wrong side of the looking glass.
The part of this one that got me wasn’t where he sat on his laptop in the hotel on his 21st wedding anniversary trip fixing things, it was the thing where he had already decided to bring his laptop on the trip before anything broke.
Things can just be done, guys. Quit tinkering to tinker and spend time with your family away from screens. Professionalism means making the exact opposite choices as this guy.
No Longer Driving Or Surviving
Haas: Guenther Steiner leaves as team principal after 10 years - BBC Sport
After pretty much every episode of Drive to Survive, I would ask, “how does he still have a job, again?” And I guess Gene Haas though the same thing.
I’m picturing the producers of the Netflix show weeping, trying to figure out if they can still have him show up for absolutely bonkers interviews even if he’s not “technically” on a team anymore. Their biggest challenge since Ricciardo lost his seat.