- “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” (Netflix) - I’ve always had a strained relationship with postmodernism. Having been through the academic wringer of not just recursive what-if thinking and endless relativism, I’m not sure where I stand in terms of the whole everything is chaos and maybe nothing means anything (annoying, potentially obvious and exhausting) vs things can be controlled and ordered (desirable, potentially childish and altogether also exhausting). This is something that is quite possibly a non-binary choice between the Boolean of our ages. If you’re familiar with the premise of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” fine, but it’s clearly arbitrary, as are the characters and what could or should pass as a script if you can call it that. I keep on watching this and then I’ll stop. And then again weeks later. Can it be that bad on accident? Can something that is clearly setup to be funny just fizzle out in a very non-funny way that horribly? Does anything mean anything in our universe? Are we past meaning or was this made so fast and so bad that it can’t even contain itself? I wholeheartedly recommend this film not just because on the surface it requires zero brain synapses. It in fact requires loads to understand just what anything in our reality really is.
- Blender - It’s free. Somehow. It can do amazing 3d stuff. It is now about a million times easier to learn than it used to be as they finally after a decade when they redid the UI. I can pick it up about every four months or so and render a thing without a license, all open source. The community reminds me of a proper dedicated underground scene. Blender, you are just another notch in the bedpost of The Netherlands bed of historical achievement.
- Ghost on the fediverse - So the thing that makes this blog and newsletter is part of this federated wonderland where you own your data and can have it lots of other apps and communities and whatever magically whilst you still control it.
- “Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds” (Werner Herzog)
- Affinity - So all of them really. I got the whole damn suite and so should you. Been using it in anger and have to say warms my cockles this even exists as one time actually buy it software sort of thing all from a bunch of people in Nottingham owned by some Viennese thing.
- Bitter Branches “This May Hurt a Bit” EP - Members of Calvary, Deadguy, Lifetime, Lighten Up, Kiss It Goodbye, No Escape, Paint It Black and Walleye rip it apart with a melodic plodding that would make the Jesus Lizard proud.
- The Ganges with Sue Perkins - Croydon’s own takes on a goddess and a river at the same time in the usual aplomb and snark
- Weed whackers - Apparently known as a “strimmer” or something to that extent in the UK. I have a lawn now in a house I can’t live in. Long story. I grew up hating lawns because I had to mow them with a push mower. I’m over the bit how my parents got a riding mower as soon as I moved out. Or maybe not. Either way, grass is abominable. It is the worlds largest crop and yet is inedible and requires tons of work. You do the fucking math on that one. But there is a machine, a mechanise scythe really which allow you to decimate it. Take that lawn. And fuck off while you’re at it.
- Studio Famous - Tim Singer’s (Deadguy, No Escape, Kiss It Goodbye) graphic design work reminds me of that beautiful time of late 90’s early 2000’s hardcore when music packaging (remember that) was almost as involving and hard hitting as the music.
- Obsidian Copilot - It’s not bad, mainly free and with Ollama generally does the job really. You got your little chat thing on the side and it’s just about, but not quite Claude. Of course, generally model dependent, but hey, no subscription, etc.
