Movie reviews

 A few recent watches and movie reviews with no spoilers. Hopefully.

-Geostorm

Neat idea. Excellent cgi. Action flick that is a lot of fun.

-Spiderman new one (I've stopped keeping track of the mcu universe)

This one is quite good. All about the value of friendship.

-Masters of the Universe

Why? 

-Coherence (2013) scifi

Surprisingly good low budget. Goes to show you what a good story and good acting can do. Highly recommend but do not read what it's about. The whole thing is wth is going on?

-Automata 2014

Banderas. Robot become sentient and humanize while humans dehumanize. I just saved you two hours.

Spider Noir mini series

Nicola cage as an aging spiderman. A lot of film noir originality. We watched in color but black and white also an option. Recommend.

Dr strange and the multiverse

Enjoyable.

Havent watched any avatar beyond the first. Any good?

Sisyphean thoughts

 There is no point talking about pointlessness. I also knew that this would happen. The exhaustion of reading and listening to what is going on in the world. Knowing about it in theory doesn't change the practice. We're in a collective funk. I'm trying hard not to let it affect me but it's easier said than done.

I'm not used to it. I'm used to being content and positive. I wake up in a decent mood and over the course of the day people will drag me down. I cannot talk about personal issues in public (everything with spouse is fine) but in part it's the chronic doom and gloom of people I interact with.

The term is "emotional contagion" although it doesn't quite fit. Two wars climate change the chronic sensationalism of governments...

I've been trying to take my mind off things with mindless movies or series but everything in fantasy and scifi follows similar storylines; none are uplifting, across the marvel universe, spiderman, strange new worlds startrek characters are not resolving much, they're too dark for me right now and it's the same supervillain is trying to destroy the universe or other universe while characters come and go. Can I just settle down with a fun crew? I need entertainment not a reflection of reality in space.

I was waiting for something that bureaucrats are supposed to resolve and it's back to hounding them. Yes. This part is worse for everyone.

A friend had a meltdown and I had to pull back. Strangers are telling me their tragedies when im not asking then leave once they're done venting.

Something was supposed to get done by today and wasn't. People are indifferent and thoughtless.

And the cognitivally dissonant thoughts of considering how much I have to deal with now including health issues I regret looking after my father. I would do it again, so those thoughts make little sense.

A little while back an acquaintance told me she's going on a cote d'azure Mediterranean trip with her family so I recommended some places to visit. Before my brain could tell my mouth to STFU, I overshared that I am living vicariously because until everything heals I can't travel.

She brought her travels to me and brought back a few trinkets. (There are some identifying things on it so I'll only post a little of it)

I was so speechless that i realized that after the unbearable sadism i encountered while caregiving, i had detached and numbed down. I had forgotten what a rak (random act of kindness) was and how to thank someone for it.

 It's gaudy, and i love it. It serves as a reminder that while society is descending into infinite greed, people like this are out there. Her gifts do not change my situation, but neither does everyone else's drama.

I have to remind myself of that.

Climate change articles

Here are some interesting articles on reciprocal fire management and climate change

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdmvr984yyo

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-02/europe-fires-fingerprints-of-climate-change/106967040?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/rainbows-climate-change-increase-myths-omen

And an article how seniors are being targeted

https://www.404media.co/inside-an-ai-tiktok-shop-slop-factory-that-shills-supplements-recalled-by-the-fda/

Waiting for ai

 I recently came across an article in which a car company had used ai chat instead of a salesperson to sell cars. A customer negotiated the legally binding price down to a dollar.

Sometimes funny but often utterly unusable. If i need to ask a more in depth question, it responds with answers that have nothing to do with my question.

I needed to figure something out and googled it. AI gave me the following response:

"I am the title of a flyer."

Existential. Why it isn't programmed to say this response is based on a flyer is beyond me.

Google used to work reasonably well a decade ago and continued to improve. Now numerous complaints about its lack of reliability.

After I published this post, I was looking for some shows to watch.

Startreks new show came recommended but apparently there are some episodes that are horror which I am not in the mood for. I asked a second question so I could skip the horror ones, (which episodes are horror in ST), it gave me horror scifi shows instead.

When i repeated that I was talking about startrek...AI actually blamed me for not realizing that this was the same question.

Helping monarch migration and a Fish doorbell

 Monarch butterflies are the only butterfly that goes on an annual migration.

It was assumed that it's multigenerarional but to my own astonishment, it's one butterfly that lives 8 months making this impossible thousand mile journey to Mexico or California. The returning butterflies take about three generations.

Thanks to lightweight GPS tags scientists were able to discover this. The public can participate by putting stickers through monarch watch on their underwing.

Obviously planting swamp milkweed is another valuable resource. Only plant they eat and no other.

Nature is astonishing.

The season for the fish doorbell in the Netherlands is over but come next season anyone can participate to let fishies through a canal door so they can migrate and breed. I would have posted it sooner, but saw no fish on the underwater camera and then forgot.

https://youtube.com/shorts/vgTo4fJNsHQ

For next season:

Turner sunsets climate change

 As a child like all other children I loved dinosaurs, painted rainbows and admired very rare beautiful sunsets.

Mostly boring sunsets. Sol dropping down without much color in the surrounding atmosphere. My generation rarely saw them and when I first came across Turners work I assumed he was simply part of impressionism fascinated by adding color. Art books rarely talked about anything beyond technique and analysis.

Turner painted sunrises/sunsets obsessively. (1750s)

Turners obsession came during the first industrial revolution. A time when Fossil fuels and particularly steam technology changed the colors of the sky. Back then pollution wasn't much of a concern.

For the last decade I'm seeing individuals all over the world take pictures of rainbows all over the world and something I enjoyed for its beauty and rarity I no longer do.

All these incredible sunsets and rainbows mean increased particulates in the air. Increased through moisture and a lack of settling onto the ground during the day.

Sahara dust windstorm pollution active volcanoes wildfires contribute to this phenomenon especially around evaporating lakes and rivers. Basically soot dust chemicals sea salt ash etc.

Another factor is Co2. Creating heat domes. Humans thrive at 200 to 380 ppm. We're at 420 ppm at the moment. It's one of the reasons our population grew. Dinosaurs thrived at 700 co2 to 2500 co2 ppm. That level would have been toxic to us long term and lasted for 150 million years. Most likely due to supervolcanoes brought about by tectonic plates shifting.

I was watching a relatively recent interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he was governor he couldnt convince anyone; no one cared about smog or pollution, but when he exaggerated that babies were dying he was able to get enough public support to get his bill passed.

I've mentioned before, while obviously important to me and my readers most people don't care about biodiversity, mass extinction but affect health noticeably and we probably would have had better success in preventing this.

P.S. forgot this good article on rainbows

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/rainbows-climate-change-increase-myths-omen

Climate change heatwaves chernobyl

 This is a brief post on a very big topic and my frustration with current events.

Working in other countries gave me an appreciation what a gigantic and complex system we live in and on and how little we know and what affects one continent will affect another eventually. Can't be American or euro centric here.

Europe has just been through an incredible heatwave that shouldn't happen at all in June (not even in Spain) and especially not for an entire month.

My friend vacations in Croatia every year and told me that two years ago the ocean was cold on top and warm on the bottom and continues the opposite of what it should be doing.

The reason why I'm not fond of ancient or prehistoric geology/history is because we can only guess what truly happened and there is too much opposing research.

The Sahara was an ocean 30 million years ago. A quick search did not reveal what turned an ocean into a desert and hiw long it took.

What were dealing with now is a combination of tectonic plate movement, ocean currents, weather patterns, heliophysics (how the sun influences us) and little to no idea how all these systems interact and are connected.

If we don't know that, we don't know how we can fix it.

This is a simplified map of ocean currents.

These are just ocean currents. The AMOC an Atlantic current has slowed down. How significant that is is unknown.

There is no question that the speed of current climate change is anthropogenic, but cataclysm have happened in the past. The ancient Egyptians are the perfect example. The verdant nile was no more, a successful civilization disappeared. Many theories abound.

This time we are focused too much on Fossil fuels. I don't think thy are the sole reason and the only solution.

What concerns me is Chernobyl. There is an ecosystem again because nature fills a void. The animals aren't thriving they are suffering short lifespans, illness mutations. The fact that green frogs are now black to adapt to radiation means that this has happened before. Not man made radioactivity but radiation has triggered some gene to produce melanin. Amphibians have been around for millions of years. Did they deal with a cloudless sky and radiation from the sun?

There is a reason that genetic contingencies exist on a hostile planet.

Food for thought and science.