(no subject)

[shadowkat]

I decided to read my correspondence list on DW, and kept nodding off or dosing off during it - resulting in a somewhat hallucinatory experience and indicating to me that I should go to bed early tonight.

Takeaways..

1. House of Dragon apparently decided to throw caution to the winds and basically jump through 30-50 some years in the space of 10 episodes with recasts and time jumps. I knew they did this already from co-workers who have been debating it in the cubicals behind me during lunch. Not the characters - they are debating whether the time jumps and recasting works or is too jarring.

2. Androids should stop worrying about being human, it's okay to be an android. This I agree with. Being human is highly overrated. Also foresee either a BSG rewatch or Westworld or EX Deus Machina watch in our not too distant future.

This makes me want to list off the things that have done androids well.

* AI - I was rather impressed by it. This was the Kubrick/Spielberg film.
* I Robot
* Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
* Westworld
* Buffybot
* Data on Star Trek Next Generation
* BSG
* Ex Deus Machina

Also the Murderbot series.

3. James Gunn is taking over the DC Franchise along with Paul Safrain. Mixed feelings regarding it. On the one hand, Zack Snyder and Nolan's DC verse was very dark and ahem, a touch more fascist than noir, and not necessarily in a satirical manner? On the other, Gunn's films make me think of a video gamer fan boy finding a video camera and going nuts with it - at times. I didn't like Suicide Squad. Did however like Guardians of the Galaxy. So who knows? Am somewhat ambivalent - since I'm not exactly fannish about DC.

Wish they'd hire a woman to oversee the franchise, but that ain't happening in my lifetime.

The comic verse like it or not remains very...male centric.

4. The difficulty with Peeing in Public.

I saw someone pee in public on my commute last week. It was an old man with a walker. He was about 10 feet of a bathroom - in Atlantic Avenue Train Station - but it would have required taking the elevator to the lobby, and finding the handicapped restroom, and when you got to go, you got to go.

It took me a minute to realize what he was doing. I did when I walked past him. I walked behind him and gave him a very wide birth. This was on the same day that NY1 aka Spectrum News was talking about the need for more public restrooms across the city. Note - it was on a public sidewalk, right behind BAM and right before the church, not far from the entrance to the Children's School of Music. Underneath scaffolding, and directly between two parallel parked cars. In broad daylight, at 4:30pm on a weekday. A woman in heels and nice clothes passed him before I did.

So, if you've seen this too? You are not alone.

5. Sleeping with Dogs or Cats - or how sleeping with dogs promotes healthy sleep (unless you happen to be allergic, then not so much)

While cuddly, it does not promote healthy sleep if you are allergic. I know this - because I am allergic. And as a kid I slept with my cat either under the covers or next to my head. (We didn't know I was allergic to cats back then - but I was suffering from allergies.) Years later I slept with my Aunts dogs - and ended up with bronchitis. It happened twice, and right after I visited her and her dogs.

Me: So what are my allergies?
Allergist: Dust, mold, tree pollan, cats...you shouldn't adopt a cat.

Several years later

Me: Am I allergic to dogs?
Allergist: Yup. Also cats. A touch more allergic to cats than dogs. But don't own either. And dust, mold, tree pollan, feathers, and cockroaches.
Me: This is insane.
Allergist: Want shots?
Me: Really not.

Sigh, the world is trying to kill me or drive me mad - one or the other.

Robots have it great - no allergies.

6. Prime Minister of Britain resigned after 49 days, and now they have a newly appointed one - not quite sure by whom. It appears to be by either the party or the Cabinet, but they weren't duly elected. Once again, the Brits have managed to outdo the US in regards to political craziness.
Apparently - Boris Johnson (I keep wanting to call him Yeltsin - they look alike) tried to throw his hat back in - only to have it thrown back in his face, so he recused himself or something along those lines. (I don't know - I'm getting this from various posts on my correspondence list. Even scans daily was discussing it. I have a lot of Brits on my correspondence list.)

At any rate - it makes me feel slightly better about the US's horrible political environment, which I'm attempting to ignore. We do at work. Our workplace is insanely politicized so by mutual agreement - no one discusses politics at work.

Comments

[atpo_onm]

Robots have it great - no allergies.

Except maybe to humans?

Heh... I recall this scene in the (later) BSG where one of the human-form Cylons was complaining bitterly about why he was stuck in this weak, largely biological body when he felt the previous Cylons that were made of metal were vastly sturdier!

Then there was a comment in a science fiction story I read many years ago where one (human) character was lamenting why humans didn't evolve stainless steel bones. The second character stated this was ridiculous, for how could metal grow?

To which the first character noted-- "How does stone grow?"

Good point.

[mtbc]

My impression is that, for Liz Truss, the MPs elected to the House of Commons chose a final two of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, then the party members chose Truss (the MPs had given Sunak more votes). This time it was (arranged to be) such that the MPs chose Sunak overwhelmingly enough that there was no further stage involving the party members.

Public restrooms are indeed important and many British towns are bad at them. Especially, they might want one to visit the town also on evenings and weekends (for local businesses' income) but lock the toilets closed at those times. It very much limits those who, for whatever reason, need frequent or sudden visits. I have indeed found myself urinating outdoors only after looking rather hard for any alternative. This month, I was quite glad to have narrowly avoided taking a long 6am bus ride from a station that turns out not to have any toilets open before 6am.

[mtbc]

I should add, the Cabinet's a fairly fluid concept: broadly, there's no equivalent of Senate confirmation, and quite some flexibility in what the minor posts even are, a principal power of the PM is to hire and fire from the Cabinet more or less at a whim.

[shadowkat]

You are reminding me of a site tour I was on recently in which the poor project manager was desperate to get to a bathroom. She was 6 months pregnant. We ended up at a Dunkin Donuts begging them to let us use their bathroom - even if it was a gross mess.

The train station's restroom was closed. (Where we had the site tour.)

Finding a restroom can be an issue - I've a had a couple of times during the past year or so, that it has been for me in regards to IBS, and I barely made it to the toilet or inside my apartment in time.

It's unclear whether the Brits are happy with Sunak or unhappy with him. Except that he's conservative fiscally, not necessarily socially - although that's unclear too.

[mtbc]

Goodness, yes, pregnant women are another important class of user! It's quite an inclusivity issue, and IBS is an even bigger concern given how that can go.

Yeah, Sunak's fairly conservative socially, especially he's fine to tolerate being suspicious of or unhelpful to immigrants and minorities, despite his own background. He's not the most socially conservative, Braverman's probably more so, but, well, there were no good choices. But, given that Sunak just celebrated Diwali at Number 10, I guess he's at least somewhat religiously liberal!

[trepkos]

Peeing in public used to be not uncommon (for men) especially after a night out drinking ... usually in an alley though.
Rishi Sunak seems, at least, not has horrible as the last two, though much richer, and almost certainly will use his position to further his own ends like most Tory prime ministers since Disraeli.

[shadowkat]

Men do have an advantage in the public urinating department.

Annoying but true. I watched an ex-boyfriend do it behind a gas station once while I was traveling with him. I remember being annoyed - because I had to stand in line and get a key to the restroom inside the station.

So the new PM is conservative, albeit not crazy ultraconservative.

[yourlibrarian]

Had not heard about Gunn's appointment and rather concur with you. The difference I think in Guardians is that it still had to operate within the Marvel framework, so his wasn't the last word there. What it sounds like though is that he is going to become DC's Kevin Feige. So it seems to me that personality, hiring and organizational skills are going to matter a lot.

I also think it's odd how robots always want to become like us. There's a lot less talk about how humans want to become cyborgs (and it tends to horrify a lot of people). Of course given that mechanical life is inevitably going to be derived from human goals and foibles, I suspect it would take many generations for there to be a uniquely mechanical culture.

[shadowkat]

I'm wondering the same thing. Gunn's got himself into trouble in the past with Disney for politically incorrect joking on social media (which he apparently apologized for). But I think he may also have had the same issues Whedon did - in that Marvel's Kevin Feige ran the show, and he had to work within that framework and script. Gunn from all accounts prefers to run his own show.

He may actually work out for DC - since he gets along very well with "creatives" (ie. actors). That's 98% of it - getting along with the actors. Because to work - they need to attract top talent to direct and act in these things. You need people like Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., Ben Affleck, Charliz Theron, Angelina Jolie, etc to pull in mainstream audiences. (comic book audience will see them anyway, mainstream cares who is in it.).

Also you need top tier directors.

Agree on humans wanting to become cyborgs - that seems more likely and more the direction things are going.

[tellshannon815]

Candidates for leader were meant to have secured nominations from 100 MPs or more in order to proceed to final votes, had they happened. Although Boozo the Clown hadn't actually come out himself and publicly said he was standing, there were people backing him, claiming to have spoken to him and he'd said he would, then quite late at night the night before the deadline, he announced he wouldn't stand.

The jury's still out on whether he actually had enough support in the first place. He claims he had 102 supporters ready to back him so he could get on the ballot, but only about half that number had come out and publicly declared that, and a source from Sunak's campaign did an article for a newspaper here explaining reasons why they doubted he'd got quite as many as he claimed. I suspect we'll never know for sure.

[shadowkat]

British politics gives me a headache. Thanks for explaining though, I never have been able to wrap my head around the parliamentary system. The people vote for the MPs and the MPs vote for the Prime Minister? I'm wondering if this is how the US came up with it's electoral college system? Where people vote for a candidate, but in reality are voting for "electoral votes" per party candidate.

[tellshannon815]

We vote for our MP; if one party has an outright majority in the number of elected MPs (we have 650 seats currently, so 326 or more), that party's leader becomes prime minister. It's not usually as chaotic as it has been this year due to scandals and screwups by Johnson and Truss.

In the event that no one party gets to that majority, larger parties might try and form some coalition with other parties in order to get them there. Whoever was sitting prime minister at the time the election was called gets the first opportunity to try and form a government, regardless of whether their party actually got the most MPs (see 2010, where David Cameron's Conservatives got the most seats but not enough for a majority, but as Gordon Brown had been sitting PM, he was the one who had first right to try and form a government. Third party leader Nick Clegg felt that the party with more seats should be the ones to get that opportunity, and ended up making a deal with them.)

Party leaders are elected by the MPs and party members; this particular contest was a bit of an outlier because having come so close after the previous election which Truss won, the party didn't want to drag the process out again for as long and raised the threshold of MPs needed to back them in order to limit the number of candidates who could stand. If Boozo the Clown really had got as many supporters as he claimed and made it onto the ballot, it would have then gone to members for a vote, but as it ended up with Rishi Sunak being the only person who made it through the nominations stage, he automatically won.