I cannot understate how shit Luc Besson’s Jeanne d’Arc film was. At least, in my memory. I know, I know; everyone’s got an opinion. These are my two cents. This movie really let me down.

The first teaser, which gave absolutely nothing away, was excellent. The cast was solid. I thought, cool, Besson is doing a period piece.

Wow, it was dog shit. Dustin Hoffman’s role helped. But barely.

It was up for international awards. Milla Jovovich went for a Golden Raspberry.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart

In August 1976, gold was $35/oz, close to its historical level. By October 1979, it was $380/oz, over 10× increase — peaking (for the 20th c.) in January 1980 at $668/oz.

20× return in 3.5 years.

Gold doubled again in value by December 2010, and again by January 2025 — to $2800/oz.

The all-time high, 20 October 2025, $4377.58/oz.

125× return in under 40 years.

I’ve seen it said: it’s not that gold has gotten more expensive. Its that the USD is debased as a currency against the dollar. The gold standard for USD ended in August 1971.

Well, that only took most of a year.

No, the just say “el pendejo”.

Diplomacy.

After 9/11, when the world weighed an invasion of Afghanistan, America could have skipped the invasion, taken the Al Qaeda leadership the Taliban offered up, and continued to seek O/UBL. A forensic investigation and specific arrests, extradition, trials, and convictions would have been much better than a disastrous 20 year war that accomplished two things: enriching military contractors and the impoverishment of a central Asian nation.

Diplomacy.

Deposing Saddam Hussein with the same type of pressure that, later, led to the ousters of Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Bashar al Assad. Some might say that 2003 created the pretext for the Arab Spring. I’d counter that time and tide created the conditions. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a pipe dream and an extension on the GWoT piggy bank.

Diplomacy.

Building a better, more sustainable future demands a move away from fossil fuels. Making driving, urban sprawl, warfare, agribiz, and Amazon packages into a socially toxic soup of ideas would have done wonders for green initiatives. Instead a turn away from the largest industries of the time was — and still is — regarded as heresy.

Team efforts.

When people see one another’s skills and can come to have confidence in and rely on each other, that builds bonds. Creative exercises are good ways to achieve this. Co-producing a play or video, painting a room, or making a meal (while not hungry, of course) could be methods that help kids to practice this. We take our kids camping and there are lots of ways for kids to work together and rely on each other. Also, opportunities to exercise independent competence and to do tasks that help the family.

Trauma bonding is a dicier strategy. Could work out. Could end in tears. It all depends how many times you want to have them survive a winter plane crash on a mountainside. By the third time, they’d probably catch on.

It was Boost for Reddit for me. Note: I hate the ads in Boost for Lemmy, but I still havent jumped ship or started to pay for ad-free. When I go on contract at work (I hope) it’ll be more possible.

e: wait, it’s $5, one time? Ok, I’m killing the ads now.

I want to support the platforms that look at people for their interactions, not their marketability. APIs were going to be dead at Reddit and I wasn’t willing to stand over the body with a knife in hand.

Fiction

• Ursula K. LeGuin

• Octavia Butler

• Margaret Atwood

• Tui T. Sutherland (J Fic)

• Suzanne Collins (YA)

• Lois Lowry (YA)

Non-Fiction

• Naomi Klein

• Margaret Atwood (Massey Lecture)

• Angela Y. Davis

• Tanya Talaga

• bell hooks

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

I’ve always blamed marketing.

For those who don’t know: Over the last 80 years, public relations, marketing, and ad agencies have spent trillions of dollars using Freudian psychology to engineer humans to believe three things:

• youth is desirable — aging is death

• sex is satisfaction — denial is death

• success satisfies desires — failure is death

This is why youthful, feminine humans are used to sell products. They appeal to women who are conditioned into supportive roles and appearing desirable and men who are conditioned into seeking satisfaction and conquest of the desirable. A youthful, sexualized image yields success. Sex sells.

The person you can thank for this is named Edward Bernays. He is the father of public relations as an industry and wrote the book “Propaganda” in — get this — 1928.

Reengineering us to believe that a mid-40s single, black, mother of three who works two jobs and volunteers in the community on Sunday into the most desirable human image and we would have an entirely different world.

This world is based on the Paris Hilton sex tape.

Sounds like Beirut all over again.

I was in a Canadian school zone today and thought that the posted speed, 40 km/h, should simply be referred to as “fast.” It’s 1.6× the speed of a four-munute mile and 10× walking speed. It’s fast.

Stroads would be fast-and-a-half.

Intercity highways, ie. “back roads,” would be double-fast.

Expressways, 2.5 fast. Triple-fast and beyond is certainly too fast.

The point is: anything that is fast is doable on a bike. Faster than that should be on rails or have a professional, full-time operator — not anyone who can pass an eye exam, and hold a No.2 pencil or click a mouse 40 times.

Fast is fast enough. If you need to go fast, go alone. If you need to go far, or faster than fast, go together.

For anyone who hasn’t listened to ALL of the lyrics from that song, go. Do it.

Off the top of my head:

• Pan’s Labyrinth (CGI augments excellent practical effects)

• Ghostbusters (1984)

• The Cell (CGI augments excellent set and costume design).

• The Abyss (1989)

• Interstellar (had to check if this was CGI).

With research: Speed and The Edge of Tomorrow are fun. Also, I am annoyed at myself that I forgot Aronofsky’s the Fountain — a beautiful, painful film.

Practical scenes with mentioning:

• That one scene in Chinatown, “they lose their noses!”

• That one scene in Boogie Nights, “I’m a big bright shining star.”

• That last arrow in Throne of Blood

Two out of these three are movies I keep coming back to.

Welp, guess I can’t avoid the Thing for much longer. Unless, of course, I can.

I’m not much for horror. But, it’s also sci-fi. I’m torn.

On a scale of 0 to Event Horizon and Alien (1979), I assume the Thing is beyond even these.

Makes you wonder whether the calculations serve anyone other than the top 0.1%.

Their portfolios bring up the average for the US because some swinging dicks decided that a (temporarily) decisive strategic advantage in faster calculators makes the graph look “good.”

Meanwhile, people are hungry, getting furloughed, evicted, bombed, arrested, bound, gagged, and shot in America. Democratic institutions, the fundamental raison d’être for the American experiment, are undermined, bulldozed, disregarded, or blown up.

That’s fine, they say. That’s who and what they VOTED for. That’s the mandate, they say.

Horseshit, I say.

Psilocybin sparkle.

Now I’m confused. I thought it was 50% grey. Wikipedia has a lot more middle greys.

Know what works better than boycotts? A general strike. Stop the economy in its tracks. Have a clear, articulated goal. No leadership. No one to arrest. No one to identify as a troublemaker.

The trouble, when systemic, is the system. A boycott is meant to strike at an individual or group of allied organization(s). A general strike is the last level.

Governments tend to be allergic to general strikes. Their reactions are heavy-handed, thoughtless, and reactionary. Howard Zinn recounts several in A People’s History of the United States. But, when primed and done well, it is a demonstration of political will unlike any other. It is a change agent.

I was in Guatemala in 2015 for the one-day general strike that led to the arrest of then-President Otto Perez Molina. His party had been funnelling tax revenues into a slush fund. Look up #noletoca and #LaLinea. He was removed from the presidency, tried, convicted, and served time.

Another easy answer would be Six Feet Under. This show has the most beautiful finale.

The most expensive thing ever built and maintained is the International Space Station. At $160B over its lifetime, the ISS is a model for the excessively wealthy.

True, it is not primed for self-sustaining flight, and the quarters are very cramped, but a space-faring über-rich individual has to have a Plan B in case they’re not on the same continent as one of their “end of days” bunkers. Those start at $1 million and can run upwards of $300 million.

About the same time as the first private space station comes into service, we will also find that the rocket and tandem-independent space shuttle will also be feasible. Necessity is the mother of invention.