Microposts
Watched: A Few Good Men 🎥
I’m trying the Micro.blog films feature, for more control than the Letterboxd RSS feed.
We introduced our daughter to The West Wing over the last few months, and needed more Sorkin. Also RIP Rob Reiner. It’s a great film. I’d give it four stars if this had them.
The world turns, and just like that, it’s a new year. Happy New Year, everybody!
I didn’t know creating a list on Letterboxd would add an entry to my feed, and thereby create a post on my blog. It was only meant to be a place to record the films we watched recently, prior to me writing about them. Oh well.
Incredibly, and contrary to my previous post, I remain unwhammed after shopping in the West End on the Saturday before Christmas. Wow.
It was busy, you won’t be surprised to hear.
It is the 20th of December, and incredibly, I have not yet been Whammed! Which probably just shows how little I go out.
I’m shopping in the West End today, though, so Whamaggedon seems inevitable.
Every time I try to share a link to GoodLinks on my Mac, the sharing app crashes. This applies to both Safari and NetNewsWire. Haven’t tried from anything else yet. I may reboot.
There’s something way wrong with this list from Variety of the 100 all-time best comedy films. There are hundreds of those lists, of course.
But this one has Airplane at only 62. 62! And then compounds the error by making number 1 be… The Naked Gun. A fine and funny film, to be sure; but not as good as Airplane. Certainly not 61 places better than it!
‘[W]e might have to wait two years for the conclusion’ I wrote almost six years ago.
The conclusion of The Book of Dust arrived the other day. I haven’t started it yet, and now I’m thinking I might go back and reread the previous one first.
Spent yesterday at the Battle of Ideas festival, from the Academy of Ideas. Lots of panels on various subjects around politics, society, literature, and more. I mostly went to literature-related ones. why has fantasy fiction become so popular? How fantastic is Jane Austen?
Going back for day two today.
Watched: Mission: Impossible 🎥
Went back and took a half-star off after posting, because of the betrayal. Honestly. It’s hard to get over that. I don’t really know why I went on and watched the second one last night.
Watched: Sliding Doors 🎥
I already posted about this, but I’m trying out Micro.blog’s new movies feature here.
What the hell was that ridiculous picture Letterboxd sent for The Italian Job? Nothing to do with anything that happens in the film. Guy in a chair with a machine-gun and a half-naked woman with a street plan drawn on her back?
Deleted from my post, but the Letterboxd link above has it.
180 pages in, and it’s only publication day. My local bookshop got my preorder in early and let me collect it.
Took the dustjacket off because it’s fiddly to hold.
Minute Cryptic - 25 August, 2025
“Forger’s initial on map - it shows treasure spot! Buried gold is fake…” (4)
🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣
I scored: 2 under par
I find this kind of horrifying: Denmark’s state-run postal service will no longer deliver letters. And I can see Britain’s Royal Mail going to same way.
It feels like we’d be cut off, in kind of a way. I mean I don’t know when I last sent a letter, but still.
I mean, Christmas cards!
I read Doc Searls’s piece, How about ASO, for Attention Surfeit Order?. I was sure I had used that expression, or one like it, on my blog. A quick search led me to a 2006 post about attention in various senses, which has ‘Attention surfeit disorder?’ as a subheading. The amusing part was that in that subsection, I referenced Doc Searls.
Continually making decisions is cognitively taxing. That’s why we gravitate to morality systems like religion, the Free Software Foundation, and CAMRA.
That line amused me in The Vegan Morality Policy by Terence Eden.
Obviously my last books post should have had ‘Cracked’ not ‘Carcked’ in the title. Fixed now, but visible forever in the URL.
The New York Times Connections is getting harder. Or I’m getting worse at it. That’s two Saturdays in a row I haven’t got any rows. I only do it at weekends, and not always then, but still.
What the hell is a ‘brad’? And ‘spike’? Come on. (I’d say more, but spoilers, you know.)
Wimbledon without line judges: do not appprove. Makes the court look weirdly empty; drains some of the drama; and puts people out of a job. Presumably not their actual occupation, their career, but still.
Bring back the line judges!