Now, enjoy this article by Aletha Adu and found on thesun.co.uk…
Weird stuff and shows how certain concepts -such as Jolly Old St. Nick!- change over time. Not all of them are super creepy, but some certainly are!
Here’s one of my favorites in that respect, from the article…
Saint Nick looks like he’s had a reaaaaallllyyyy long night!
Another weekend nears its end.
Not just any weekend, but the second to the last weekend of the year 2020. Next weekend will be the last one of December and the following weekend will be the first of 2021.
It shouldn’t come as any big surprise that people will very likely, in looking back at this year, call it one of the very worst ever and the reason is obvious.
COVID-19 likely began sometime in 2019, toward the end of the year, and most likely in China. It spread from there, the first cases believed to have made it to the United States sometime in December of 2019 and by March of 2020 it was clear we had a big problem, worldwide, with this virus.
There were worries, certainly, early in the year. There was plenty of downplaying by the Trump administration of the seriousness of the virus and, even today and even after Trump himself -and many, many in his cabinet- contracted the disease, they continue to try to minimize the situation.
Won’t matter all that much in another month as Trump, and the nightmare of his administration, is out on January 20th.
That’s the other big thing that happened this year: The election.
Despite the many protests issued, Trump clearly lost the election and it wasn’t even close.
While I welcome the end of the Trump administration and the beginning of the Biden administration and am certain it will restore a sense of normalcy that for many of us is desperately needed, let’s be clear: a change in power won’t suddenly make everything “right”.
Meanwhile, in the past couple of weeks we’ve had two COVID-19 vaccines approved, first the one created by Pfizer and on Friday the one created by Moderna. My understanding is that there’s a third vaccine in the pipeline ready to be considered for approval and, further to that, vaccines have already been administered.
However, in a typical Trump dysfunctional pattern, there is word that Pfizer hasn’t been told where to distribute some of the vaccines.
Sheesh.
Still, I’m hopeful each day that passes we’re going to get more and more people being vaccinated and, in time, we’ll finally move on from those who are “high priority” to get the vaccine to regular folk.
I’ve read that when some 70% of the population gets the vaccine, we’ll have effectively reached the level of “herd immunity” and should return to a more normal time, where we no longer have to keep our distance from people and wear masks and wash our hands.
The estimates are that we could get there by late Spring and/or early Summer.
It’s still a ways away, some six months maybe, but at least we have a target and that’s something we haven’t had for way too long.
I’ve written before that I believe I and several people in my family and employees in my family business had COVID-19 way back in late January and/or early February of 2020.
Even if I did, I will get the vaccine as soon as I can.
If indeed things “go back to normal” by the middle or so of next year, I have a strong suspicion the world, as a whole, will erupt.
In a great way.
I suspect we’ll see the economies of many countries -maybe all!- will have a sudden burst. Hopefully, jobs will quickly return and businesses, those who survive these harsh months, will have an incredible rebound.
I hope so.
2020’s been a hell of a bad year.
Maybe 2021 will be far better.
We deserve that much.
Just stumbled upon this article by Kevin Liptak and Pamela Brown and presented on CNN.com…
Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash
Yeah, we’re getting political again, so if that’s not for you, move along.
For everyone else, here’s the story’s first paragraph:
President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump’s aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn’s more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.
For those who aren’t familiar with Michael Flynn, he is a former Army Lieutenant general who advised Trump a brief time before leaving the office. He eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and, before he was sentenced, Trump gave him a controversial pardon. Lately, he’s been stating -alarmingly- that Trump should invoke martial law to retain his presidency and negate the results of the election.
Welp, it seems he brought this idea of martial law craziness into the Oval Office and its alarming as hell that Trump appeared willing to listen to this.
I get this mental image of a wild animal that knows the walls are closing in on him and is looking for any way to remain in power.
Given this article, it worries me what other sorts of craziness he may try from today to January 20th to preserve his power.
The irony is that since the election, Trump no longer seems to be engaged in any sort of actual governing, instead going on twitter and claiming all kinds of conspiracies involving the election and repeating, ad nauseum, that somehow Biden and his campaign “cheated” in its win.
By seven million more votes? And, if the Biden folks did manage such a massive voting cheat, how come they were ineffective in getting rid of the likes of Mitch McConnell?
Still, this article worries me.
January 20th, as I’ve noted before, can’t come soon enough.
A few days ago I wrote about Projekt Red, the company behind the magnificent Witcher 3, problems with the release of their next game, Cyberpunk 2077. (You can read about that here)
I noted that the game, which has been in development for some seven years and which was heavily promoted and anticipated, was released last week and… things weren’t all that pretty.
My understanding is that the game works well on high/medium high level PCs and is pretty good on the XBox One X (which I have) but with “lower end” gaming machines like the Playstation 4 and XBox One it has a lot of problems.
While these issues are worrisome and one can’t help but think the company ultimately released the game to try to take advantage of the holiday season, I feel like many of the bugs and glitches will eventually be dealt with over the next few weeks/months and the game will stabilize.
However, due to all those problems, Sony has pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from their download store and offered refunds to those who bought it…
Sony Removes Cyberpunk 2077 From PlayStation Store After Complaints
I’ve heard that Projekt Red has also offered refunds and, frankly, the whole situation has moved from one of anticipation and hope for a game that is great to frustration with the company -though not in all parts- with releasing a game that clearly wasn’t ready yet.
As the saying goes, you have one chance to make a good first impression and Cyberpunk 2077 seems to not be doing this.
At all.
But as I said in my original post, I feel like the annoying -and often hilarious- glitches and bugs in the game will get smoothed over in time.
What worries me more are people who say the game itself isn’t all that great to begin with. Even those I’ve read in various posts here and there over the internet who haven’t experienced many glitches and have positive feelings regarding the game seem to agree that the game itself isn’t all that incredible, that it feels like what was promised was more than what was delivered.
As I said before, on the basis of Witcher 3, I had no problem pre-ordering Cyberpunk 2077 and have it already installed -but have yet to play it- in my machine.
I’m in no hurry to play it so maybe I’ll wait until more patches are released and the game’s bugs are better dealt with.
At this point, though, my hopes for the game have been considerably tampered.
A true shame.
I watched the film yesterday and, honestly, it feels like maybe I should wait until I see it again before offering a review.
However, given the film runs 2 hours and 30 minutes, I don’t know when I’ll get that chance. Besides, I think I got most of what the film was about but will acknowledge it is quite deep and it does, like the best of director/writer Christopher Nolan features, ask the audience to think and not just passively watch what goes on screen.
Having said all that, the film is essentially a James Bond movie -specifically the 1965 film Thunderball– mixed with time travel elements.
Indeed, as the hours passed following seeing the movie, the more and more I realized the movie’s basic plot was indeed a variation of Thunderball. Just for the hell of it, here’s the trailer to that film:
While not one of the best of the Sean Connery Bond films and perhaps the first one (it was the fourth made) to start showing a little wear on the whole Bond formula, Thunderball nonetheless is an entertaining large scale Bond film involving the theft of a nuclear device and Bond’s attempts to get it back before its used to start a nuclear war… and possible Armageddon.
The film’s villain, Largo, is essentially duplicated in Tenet’s Sator (played with menace -and an at times silly Russian accent, by the very British Kenneth Branagh). Sator, like Largo, is very rich and spends plenty of time on his very large and luxurious yacht. Like in Thunderball, Sator is intent on getting a device which could spell the end of the world, only in his case its something that affects time itself.
The movie features John David Washington as “Protagonist”, a no-name hero who, after showing he’s willing to die for his the right cause, is “recruited” into a shadowy world where time is fluid and can run backwards. The fate of humanity is on the line, and with the help of his right hand man Neil (Robert Pattinson in a sorta/kinda Felix Leiter role), they navigate the current situation and devise a way to stop Sator from ending the world.
To do this, they have to go through his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki, quite good) who is being held on a leash by Sator and suffers greatly from this.
The movie certainly has a Inception-like quality along with its James Bond theme, and there wasn’t a moment where I wasn’t enjoying myself.
However, after the film was finished, there were certain problems with the plot that, at least for me, reared their head. Sadly, when you deal with time travel, especially where various characters are able to do so at will, one begins to wonder why the hero or villain don’t just go “back” to where they can fix things so they succeed and their nemesis fails.
I don’t want to get into SPOILERS, but this is increasingly the case toward the film’s ending. While Mr. Nolan tries to explain away these discrepancies with talk of the Grandfather paradox and fate and history being “set”, the reality is that until time travel is a reality, there is no reason to think we can’t go in time and “reset” the past.
The Grandfather paradox, for example, involves the idea that if we can travel back in time and kill our Grandfather before he conceives one’s father, how is it possible for you (the grandson/daughter) to even exist to go back in time to then kill your Grandfather? Wouldn’t you cease to exist if you were to kill your Grandfather before your father/mother was conceived? But then how did you exist to be able to go and possibly do this to your Grandfather?
It’s a philosophical question, one which has no answer, but I would argue that if time travel were possible (which is an open question, to say the least!) then the idea of multiverses and alternate timelines has to be considered. Thus, you could kill your Grandfather which would change the timeline and mean you now come from a timeline where your Grandfather lived but now, in this new one, the lineage stops yet you can theoretically continue to exist.
I know I’m probably botching the explanation, but its the best I can do off the top of my head.
So, if i do believe that timelines can change, I obviously believe that nothing is set in stone once you move from one time to another. You therefore can murder Adolf Hitler as a baby and, while WWII could still happen, it will do so without Hitler’s presence.
Similarly, some of the things which happen toward the end of Tenet, to my mind, don’t have to happen the way they do. We could simply go back to other points in time to resolve or screw them up worse!
As I said, Nolan movies sure can make you think.
Overall, Tenet is an easy recommendation, a film that borrows the best of James Bond and marries it with some brain twisting time travel. It moves like lightning and is filled with surprises and big set pieces.
Yeah, an easy recommendation.
Beware… politics!
Yesterday, December 14th the electoral college formally certified Joe Biden’s win. There was no monkey business -though there were attempts!- and the process moved smoothly.
In the evening, Joe Biden, who has been remarkably restrained to this point, gave a speech following the electoral college win becoming official wherein he pointed out the fact that this was it.
It is.
Remarkably, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, hardly a friend of the United States, formally congratulated Joe Biden on his win.
Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy, the head of Republicans in Congress, and Mitch McConnell, the head of Republicans in the Senate, have yet to do so.
In-freaking-credible.
(POST-SCRIPT: Today, in the morning and the day after the electoral college made it official, Mitch McConnell finally announced and congratulated Joe Biden’s win. I suppose he’ll justify this delay by saying he was waiting for when the electoral college results were “official” but one wonders why he couldn’t do it yesterday, before Vladimir Putin. I guess its one of those things, right? On the plus side, for the most senior member of the Republican Party and head of the Senate to make this declaration all but puts the final nail in Trump’s re-election fantasies)
Further, Bill Barr, the head of the Justice Department and a man who has, in the opinion of many, disgraced himself for his multiple instances of seeming to be a defender of the President rather than a neutral party to justice, was either fired or resigned from his post, effective December 23rd.
Rats abandoning ship?
Given that Joe Biden won’t be officially the President of the United States until January 20th, I have to admit while it pleases me Bill Barr is gone, one worries about who may follow and what monkey business Trump will try to engage in with what will surely be another sycophant.
Given all that’s occurred to date regarding Barr, one wonders if maybe his resignation/firing might have been due to not wanting to do whatever new bizarre things Trump wants.
Trump, many suspect, is terrified of the day he loses power. He knows that when his Presidency is over, the floodgates may well open and he will be facing his many past transgressions, from shady financial dealings to possible tax dodging to rape.
While he can issue pardons -and there are those who expect a flurry of them- its unclear if he can pardon himself. Further to that, some of the legal issues he faces, particularly the financial/tax issues, are coming from New York and would be state charges. Presidents can issue pardons for Federal Charges, but not State Charges.
Needless to say, I think it’ll be an interesting month to come.
I think Trump will keep flailing and I suspect there will be those who will continue to try to help him out.
But come January 20th -which can’t come soon enough in my opinion- all that nonsense stops.
…perhaps it was underdeveloped to begin with?
By now, most people out there who are into video games know about Cyberpunk 2077.
The game is easily one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2020, both for the “cyberpunk” concept and the fact that the studio which made it, Projekt Red, were also behind the magnificent (IMHO!) Witcher III game.
At least my thinking went like this: If they do even half as good a job as bringing to life a dystopian future like they did with the fantasy world of the Witcher, then this game has to be a home run, no?
…well…
The game’s release was announced but then delays set in. Finally, the title was released last week…
And then the trouble started.
The game’s graphics turned out to be in some cases quite poor depending on the system used, expending older system’s graphic capabilities and, in some cases, causing crashes. So many complaints were lodged that the studio quickly announced they would release a patch right after the game’s release and were working hard on subsequent patches to fix the game.
This is disheartening stuff, that a studio would release a game in such demand without doing proper quality control to make sure it actually worked well with all systems it was meant to work on!
Sadly, it seems to get worse.
As bad as releasing a game without proper quality control over how it plays on various systems is, this can be fixed with time and with various patches.
What is more concerning are people’s reactions to the story presented within the game.
There were players who noted that, while the game allows you to pick and choose between various different character “types” to play as your Avatar, after the first 20 minutes or so of gameplay these various Avatars prove to have no real impact on the story told… basically, you wind up playing the same game after 20 minutes regardless of your Avatar.
Or, to put it even more bluntly: Your Avatar doesn’t matter.
So why bother giving players the option of creating a unique Avatar?
Worse still, the game that follows has all kinds of glitches on its own, bad A.I. (again, according to several players) and an underwhelming overall story.
If the players are right, these things won’t be easily fixed with a patch.
I can’t help but wonder if with Cyberpunk 2077 history is kinda/sorta repeating itself.
Bear with me here…
When Game of Thrones, the HBO series, first came out, it was an incredible hit. The show benefitted, for at least four or five seasons, from being able to adapt the books of G. R. R. Martin. However, when the producers ran out of Mr. Martin’s books and the stories within them (the final two novels are yet to be released), the show took a sudden downturn, eventually ending in a way many fans of the show found terrible.
With Witcher III, Projekt Red were able to adapt the stories and novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski. However, with Cyberpunk 2077, these same people didn’t have the benefit of adapting any previously written stories. In fact, with Cyberpunk 2077, as was the case with the later seasons of Game of Thrones, they were creating something “new” and, perhaps in both cases, it proved to be too much for them.
I hope not.
I pre-purchased Cyberpunk 2077 solely on how much I loved Witcher III but I have to admit, these early reviews have me concerned.
I’ll eventually play it, when I have the free time.
Though I really hope the critics are proven wrong, I very much fear they may be right.
POSTSCRIPT (12/15/20):
I’ve been looking around some more on various commentary posts and, I’ve noted, there are many people who are pushing back against those who are labeling Cyberpunk 2077 a bust.
The pushback falls into two areas: 1) There are those who say they have older systems and have not experienced problems with the play of the game, that the graphics may have minor glitches -if that- but the gameplay is good. 2) There are also those who say the complaints against the game itself are exaggerated as well, that the game is fun -though there are those in this camp who also note that maybe it isn’t quite as ambitious as it could have been- but that the complaints are exaggerated.
Again: I have the game, I’ve already loaded it into my XBox system and, soon enough, I’ll give it a try.
Frankly, these later comments -and pushback- encourages me.
Perhaps the game was a victim of too high expectations and isn’t quite the disaster many have posted to them it is.
Over on theguardian.com Alexis Petridis offers a look at Bee Gee Barry Gibb, 74 years old and the last remaining Gibb brother…
The Bee Gee’s Barry Gibb: “There’s fame and there’s ultra-fame – It can destroy you.”
As someone who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, I was all too familiar with the meteoric rise of The Bee Gees, mostly on the wave of Disco and the film Saturday Night Fever…
Here’s the thing: As monster a hit as the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was, as popular as Disco was, there was an incredible backlash that happened only a couple of years after its zenith.
I recall a professor in High School or College mused that the death of Disco was inevitable the moment the parents (the older generation) showed up at the Discos and the younger crowds decided they no longer wanted any part of it. But there were other issues as well, and some feel they might have related to homophobia or perhaps the too “out there” styles of that time.
I don’t know.
As I said, I grew up in that era but I was too young to go to Discos and by the time I could go to clubs, Disco was long gone.
But, as with all things, there comes a re-evaluation over time and I suspect people hold the Disco era in far better/nicer terms than they did in the later 1970’s and into the 1980’s, when there was a sense it should not only be buried, but incinerated before burying.
Which brings us to the above article. Barry Gibb, as I noted, is the last remaining Gibb brother. Maurice and Robin, the two brothers who along with Barry made up the Bee Gees, and younger brother Andy Gibb, are gone. Andy Gibb, who had at least one big hit with the song Shadow Dancing…
…was a cocaine addict and would die at the too young age of 30.
Brothers Maurice and Robin would die years later, and they too had problems with addiction.
What’s saddest regarding this article is that not only does Barry Gibb still feel the hurt of how people turned against their music (the author notes he is surprised people like the music now) but how his relationship with his brothers in turn soured as their success grew.
Barry Gibb notes that he was essentially not talking to his brothers when they passed away, and I can’t imagine the pain that must cause in him.
Once someone’s gone, whatever chance at closure is gone as well.
Still, the music remains and, one must note, it is still remembered and, in many parts, cherished.
A sad article, certainly, but at least there’s that.
Sometimes you stumble upon an article and it just… wow.
Over at i09.gizmodo.com, we have this article by Beth Elderkin:
The Mystery of Illinois’ Short-Lived Cookie Monster Mural
The mural in question:
Basically, what we have here is a joke mural, showing the Cookie Monster as being some kind of hero to the Soviet Union. A funny, pretty well done mural…
…but…
Read the article, I implore you! I’ll spoil a little of it below but truly you should read the article to get the full story.
Anyway, someone who claimed to own the building the mural was painted on contacted an artist and commissioned this mural. The artist was paid but told to paint the mural quickly which, after they planned it out, they did. This was NOT an easy task. The mural was large and required three people to paint it.
Thing is, once the mural was done, the REAL owner of the building contacted the artist, furious that he had painted on his building and threatening to sue, or worse, call the police for vandalism!
The artist explained what happened and offered to paint over the mural for free, but the owner of the building, apparently not wanting any more to do with the artist, did so himself.
The mural is gone, but clearly this was some very elaborate-and expensive!- practical joke done on the owner of the building.
As for who actually hired the artist, and why choose this particular theme/picture, I hope one day we find out!
Weird how things work out, no? A few days ago I reviewed a film called The Hunt (you can read it here) and yesterday I catch the William Friedkin directed, Tommy Lee Jones, Benecio Del Toro, and Connie Nielsen starring 2003 film The Hunted.
Other than the fact that we do have a person “hunting” -and being hunted!- by another person, these films have very little else in common. Here’s the movie’s trailer:
Those familiar with director William Friedkin no doubt are familiar with his two best known films, The Exorcist and The French Connection. Those who are really familiar with him know he made two other pretty damn good films beyond those, Sorcerer and To Live and Die In L.A.
But, like just about any creative soul out there, there are hits and there are misses and Mr. Friedkin has certainly had a few films that are simply not up to the caliber of those I mention above.
I would put The Hunted on that list but would quickly add that just because it doesn’t quite reach the level of “prime” William Friedkin doesn’t mean the film is bad.
In fact, I mostly enjoyed The Hunted for what it was, a for the most part straightforward action film which pits Mr. Jones and Mr. Del Toro’s characters against each other.
The plot goes like this: Aaron Hallman (Benecio Del Toro) was trained along with many other U.S. military men by L. T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones) to be a merciless, shadowy killer. He does his job only too well but in the hellish conditions of the Serbian war, he cracks.
Stateside, he brutally kills two hunters and the F.B.I., including agent Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen), contact the now retired Bonham to help them hunt and capture the man responsible for these killings. They don’t know it, but Bonham recognizes the characteristics of the kill and suspects the person responsible is one of his trainees.
Bonham is an interesting character. He claims to have never fired a weapon (and, indeed, in the movie he never does) and while he trained people in how to kill, he himself claims to have never actually done so. Further, he now lives in a remote mountain cabin and appears uninterested in harming anyone or any animal (he helps one early on) despite the fact that he possesses the knowledge and skills to do so.
Though reluctant to join the F.B.I., Bonham does so and soon confirms the killer is one of “his”. He tells the F.B.I. to stand back and goes on the hunt for the killer, soon coming face to face with him.
I don’t want to get into spoilers here, so I won’t discuss more of the plot but it is very straightforward as I said above. Unlike some of the better Friedkin works, this one doesn’t have layers of meaning below the surface. The movie essentially plays out like a variation of the first Rambo film, First Blood, only the “bad” guy in this case is the one with the PTSD.
The action is for the most part well done but toward the film’s climax things got a little wonky. It seemed like there were scenes missing here and there. For example, one sequence has Bonham jumping on a train and in the background you can clearly see the police with drawn guns moving toward the train, yet at no point before that moment are they behind the train! Further, when Bonham heads out for the final confrontation between himself and Hallman, there are odd sequences interspersed, of the F.B.I. flying around the general area (it seems very unlikely these two wouldn’t notice helicopters near them) and the way Bonham tracks Hellman also seems a little disjointed. Further, it strains credulity that both Bonham and Hellman have the time -and are not bothered!- while they create weapons to fight each other. This is particularly silly in the case of Hellman’s weapon… I’ll say no more!
Still, as I said before, the film is for the most part an entertaining if not extraordinary action film which benefits from the charisma of the leads.
Not spectacular, but recommended nonetheless.