 |
| Stony Man, VAn 2021-7 |
“Refill”, directed and written by Luis Villatoro, from Ignorante Films, presents us with a young man (Jose Corales) living alone in a shed in Spain in
the mountains, getting regular visits from a flying robot saucier that gives
him an oral fix by hose.
He seeks to destroy it, and meets a companion (Daniela
Honzalez, from whom he might have the last child on Earth. What more to ask for?
 |
| Astrolabe |
“The Space Border that Could Seal Us on Earth”, with
Johnny Harris (17 min), July 23, 2021.
Johnny explains how the privatization of space, as
recently illustrated by Jeff Bezos at all, is creating a lot of orbiting space
debris, that once in a while collides.
If the cloud of space debris gets thick enough, it could set off a chain
reaction that prevents further development in space.
Harris notes there is little legal control or
liability enforcement now in international law.
Although one wonders if you could try different orbits
at different distances from Earth.
An orbit results when an object moves fast enough that
free fall keeps it at one distance from Earth.
 |
| M14 and M16 from Vietnam war era, Army museum |
Ryan Chapman, in April 2021, presented an explanation
of “The New Left of the 1960s: Deep Dives” (one hour)
He presents basic tension between “reform” v. “revolution”
as “liberalism” left too many people behind. Cultural Marxism tended to take
over revolutionary elements of the left (he starts with Stokely Carmichael) by
attaching itself to other identity groups besides economic class, especially
race and gender. At the same time, cultural Marxism thought it was separating
itself from the Soviet Union and previous Stalinism.
He lists several separate issues (race, gender, LGBT,
students) and notes that the Gay Liberation Front was much more “revolutionary”
than the Gay Activist Alliance which tended to replace it. Because (especially
among gay men) there is so much though to what one’s own values are in another
person, LGBT activism for me doesn’t fit well with collective philosophies (and
trans and non-binary are quite different from the rest of the community).
Generally, revolutionary groups tried to draw people into
collective awareness rather than individual self-concept. Identifying with a group is attractive if you haven’t
competed well as an individual.
He talks about the evolution of SDS, and finally notes
that the Weahtermen was one of the most dangerous of the movements, that we dodged
a bullet on them. Misunderstanding the
new Left allowed the polarization that has occurred since about 2014 – we are
living with the consequences.
News2Share offers a 23-minute documentary short film
today “Johnny Hurley: The Anarchist
Concealed Carrier Who Stopped a Mass Shooting”.
(You can watch the video on YouTube by clicking on the letters).
Katie Shepherd has a detailed report in the Washington
Post. On Monday, June 21, 2021, a veteran police officer, Gorden Beesley, in
Arvada, Colorado (a suburb of Denver ten miles to its north, actually in two counties)
was gunned down by a suspect later identified as Ronald Troyke, 59.
A bystander, Johnny Hurley, carrying a concealed handgun,
intervened and shot the suspect, as it was apparent that the suspect was going
to shoot more police officers. Then an
arriving police officer shot and killed Hurley, before realizing that Hurley
was a good Samaritan and not the original perpetrator.
Hurley is described as someone very dedicated to
protecting people.
News2share describes this video as a “documentary”. In the language of the film industry, it is “distributing”
the film, and (at least to my observation) is likely to expand in this area; now
it often licenses major footage (which includes that in this film) to other
news networks or documentary filmmakers, but I hope this means that Ford and
others connected to him and considering producing their own feature documentaries.
Wikipedia has articles listing killings by law enforcement in the United States by month, but no separate article yet for John
Hurley.
The incident illustrates the extreme difficulty police
can have with split-second decisions.
They are proportionally more likely to occur in poorer neighborhoods
with people of color, but this time that was not the case.
Picture: Arvada, CO, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution
 |
| The Army Values 2021-7 |
The new US Army Museum at Fort Belvoir VA show a
13-minute nearly 360-degree cyclorama film “Noble Deeds”, or “The Story of the
American Soldier”, showing the self-sacrifice of American soldiers over many
conflicts. The first scene is in Da Nang
in Vietnam in 1966 (I would be drafted in 1968).
There is also a short in one of the museum rooms “Newburgh Conspiracy”, a plot by some military after the Revolutionary War in 1783 to take
over the government unless certain demands were met. An agreement was signed in New Windsor, New
York which would establish civilian control of the military. Given what
happened January 6, 2021 you have to admit that even that can be abused.
There is also a demonstration in a “red phone” room of
how a nuclear crisis might evolve, with a fictitious “Lariat Advance” by the
Cold War Soviets into western Europe, and how it was rehearsed constantly by
troops stationed in western Europe. There is a panel that talks about the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in 2011 under President Obama, and there is a different one that talks about "unit cohesion" in WWII, as being broken up during the Vietnam war by the policy of making deployments to Vietnam just one year.
“Where Is This Place?” aka “I Was Invited to a Country
I Didn’t Know Existed”, by Max Reisinger.
Max describes a trip to Azerbaijan ( sovereign county,
a former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, capital Baku, largely Islamic)
which he was invited to go on around the time of his 18th birthday,
with other young journalists. This all
happened about the time of his high school graduation and his skydiving lesson
(which “everybody” does: Trey Yingst,
Avi Schiffmann, Matthew Cappucci, Tyler Mowery, and a bartender/waiter at Freddie’s
in Arlington VA).
The itinerary took them through Istanbul, and some of
the content was displayed on Max’s “MaxTV” Patreon channel.
He saw lots of remnants of war, left in the field, and
I don’t know off hand the history. He meets the kids in the park. There is no religious tension, the practice of
religion seems moderate as in the US.
But he has to take off shoes to enter a mosque.
The city of Baku is spectacular with architecture, and
super modern and luxury hotels, one of them renovated from a castle.
Max's style here, while playful at times, looks toward the detail of a Johnny Harris video, or even the current reporting of News2Share (Ford Fischer).
Oh, yes, you had to be fully vaccinated to go.
Picture: Gobustan petroglyphs, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution
FabTV has a 17-minute preview trailer of “Dune”, which
Warner Brothers and HBO Max will release on Oct. 1, 2021.
I remember reading Dune, Frank Herbert’s novel, in paperback, shortly after it was published,
in the summer maybe of 1967, while I was in graduate school. I saw the first film in 1984, directed by David Lynch. I remember the Guild as a detached brain
inside a box.
Oh, if we had four planets we could freely travel among
in our solar system.
Dune seems to be the main one. Timothee Chalamet will play the young avatar
Paul Altreides, and the idea is a bit Smallville-like; he seems to be intended to grow up as a
savior of others. His mother Lady
Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) seems capable to challenging people with her deadly
devices like the gom jabber. I do recall
that the desert planet was the center of the system’s economy because of the “spice”
and that he sandworms were a threat – until Paul rides one.
Denis Villeneuve directs and has adapted the new
version to the screen.
Picture: Oregon Dunes, embedded, Wikipedia, click for attribution
 |
| Arts exhibit, Rafko Park, Leesburg VA, 2017-7 |
An appealing mathematician from Germany who runs the
Flammable Math channel reports:
“Mensa Told Me to Delete My IQ Video (My IQ Is Not
145)”/
He made the video unlisted. But he was also criticized for discussing the
Mensa test, even generally. He wonders
if this is a copyright issue, but if he talked generally about it, probably
no. Maybe there is a trade secrets or contractual
issue.
 |
| garden on 14th ST DC 2021/7 |
“What Exactly Is Post-Modernism?”, by Ryan Chapman,
Aug. 26, 2020.
Ryan describes two types of post-modernism, which
followed the “modernism” of liberalism (which in turn followed the
Enlightenment). It is interesting at the
outset that modern liberalism really does need some foundation in truth, that
is discoverable and stable and can lead to progress for everyone. One might even argue that conscious beings
must exist because mathematics is incomplete:
so mathematics needs local intelligence to make choices. But individualism of consciousness means competition, and some individuals fall behind, so there is always tension over equity.
Ryan first describes French post-modernism, as an attempt to loosen up rationality and make it more fluid and more able to enlarge life. But the radical post-modernism of the far Left has become obsessed with placing people into groups and classifying them as oppressed or oppressors, something that needs to be fixed reparatively. He makes mention of "first principles" (covered by Tyler Mowery in his Writers Mind, video Episode 9). He makes a comparison between Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, interesting.
 |
| soccer field, Arlington VA 2021/7 |
“Never Too Late”, 5 minutes, short film by Roger Slate
in August 2016.
An attractive, college-age young man is shooting hoops
when another young man walking a dog comes by and makes friends.
Then we learn that the basketball player is HIV-positive
and tells his doctor that the protease inhibitors cause headaches and nausea. Then he has to tell his new boyfriend.
The film seems to come from southern California and is
fully American, but YouTube has some credits in Russian alphabet, which is odd.
.jpg)
Ethan travels from Kalispell MT to WA, but makes a
visit to Glacier National Park, which was still closed when I tried to visit it
in 1981.
He also hotwires his van to provide new air conditioning
from Walmart. He is enduring the Pacific
Northwest heat dome.
He winds up at the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington
state.
Picture: Highline trail near Going to the Sun road in Glacier, Wikipedia embed, click for attibution
 |
| NJ, from Freedom Tower 2015-11 |
“Why the West Isn’t Having Kids” or “Why the West isn’t
having children and Why Elite Men are having all the Fun”, from the New Culture
Forum Channel, May 19, 2021.
Petter Whittle interviews expectant married journalist Alexi
Kaschuta, from her studio (zoomed onto a flatscreen) in Romania.
They discuss assortive mating, and whether that is
inevitable and perpetuates wealth gaps among people. Well, of course it does. Heterosexual men want the most nubile women,
and conversely would-be mothers would want the most economically resourceful future
husbands. I remember all that from my
own heterosexual dating in 1971 (it’s in my short story “Expedition” in the
DADT III book). This is all basic George
Gilder stuff from the 1986 book Men and Marriage. The problem was, conservatives assumed forced
monogamy and fidelity thought that would help gradually redistribute wealth
more fairy on its own, and it didn’t.
As H Ross Perot said in 1992, “trickle down didn’t trickle”. But of course another problem is that people (like me) find cultural satisfaction by outflanking marriage altogether, which is one reason for the population demographics issue.
 |
| Pride NYC 2021 anti-gun group |
Ryan Chapman gives an lucid explanation of “The
Marxism Behind Leftist Identity Politics, Explained”, Feb 1, 2021.
Chapman explains how Marxism and communism arose as a
result of a failure of “liberalism”, which today might almost be called libtertarianism,
which left many people behind to fail personally. It was easy to perceive their labor as
exploited by those with more property and to consider them oppressed as a group
(workers). Colonialism and slavery (and
settlement of indigenous lands) provided an excuse to invent a similar ideology
for race.
Chapman also traces the Frankfurt School and the
writings particularly of Marcuse, to a system where society is divided into
groups of oppressors and the oppressed.
The idea is circular, as the oppressed get to define who is the
oppressor. Oppressors are considered
like witches and given false choices. Critical Race Theory arose with a substitution of race for economic class, but it is also profoundly collectivist, anti-individual, and demands that the individual become socialized through lived experiences of the group. This identarianism can create its own moral contradictions when dealing with gender and sexuality.
Chapman has shorter videos on May 28 and July 11
focusing just on CRT. He warns that
activism is a component of the theory, and it is not just simply something that
is taught as another ideology in academia.
The idea of anti-racism makes personal demands of everyone, and in
theory could override a country’s constitution.
 |
| NYC Pride 2021-6 Bryant Park June 27 |
“The Science of Being Gay”, from the Powered by Rainbows
Channel, with Dr. Matt Haslam.
As in a video recently shown discussing the biology of
gender identity, this looks at statistical studies on sexual orientation.
Haslam claims there are myriads of genes that can influence
sexual orientation. He depicts it as
somewhat a mathematical effect, perhaps of set theory, the way the genes
aggregated together “measure” or develop a size (which could converge or diverge mathematically -- go ahead and prove the theorems). Nature really tries everything to find out what works in the long run for a larger community in aggregate.
What’s interesting is that he doesn’t mention epigenetics. It’s well established that in families with
more than one son, each son further down in birth order has an increased
probability of being gay. The mother’s
body reacts differently to subsequent sons during pregnancy. It is almost like nature’s way of optimizing
family size: have just enough children
for future generations to be stable and able to feed themselves. In more primitive societies, the gay sons are
supposed to behave “altruistically” and provide backup for essential functions
in the society or family. In liberal
modernism, the practical reality is that the gay sons are more likely to become
MGTOW, men going their own way. All of
this is particularly the case in higher income, higher IQ families.
He does cite a statistic to the effect that CIS gay
adults are about seven times as common as transgender (and non-binary)
individuals, and bisexual is actually about eight times as common.
 |
| Richmond statues 2020-06 Monument Ave |
Christopher F. Rufo presents a challenging 17-minute
video called simply “Critical Race Theory”, as of June 14, 2021.
Rufo presents its aims as revolutionary and communist,
where race has replaced economic class in parlance.
For example, he says that Ibram Kendi’s proposals
would, through the authority given to a ‘Department of Anti-Racism”, end
federalism and even private property and free speech; all experience would be
collectivized by race.
He presents the numerous reports of schools and even
workplaces forcing their stakeholders (students or workers) to attend sometimes
segregated workshops where they must classify themselves as “oppressors”. It is unclear to what extent this is actually
happening under the nose of society.
Thomas Nichols (IK) describes “The Frankfort School: From a Failed Revolution to Critical Theory” (25 min).
He describes the way logic and economic theory drove
society toward cultural conformity, at the loss of individuality.
The Institute moved around the world from the end of
WWI until after WWII when it moved back to West Germany.
The move toward critical theory became a pessimistic
evaluation of the inevitability of power structures.
He discusses the 1968 protests in France, which
encouraged the film from Bernado Bertolucci and Fox Searchlight, “The Dreamers”,
where Michael Pitt’s body gets challenged, to say the least, by the playful twins
he stays with, legacy review (March 21,
2018). It has an NC-17 version.
Wikipedia embed show Frankfurt school location today in Frankfurt, click for attribution
 |
| Go Gay DC flag |
“Powered by Rainbows” or “Rainbow Science Class” teaches
“The Science of Being Transgender”.
The video maintains that gender is defined in the
brain, and usually, but not always, matches the genitals. The brain MRI patterns of males and women are
very different, with non-binary mixed and much less common but still
happens. These seem to be caused by
epigenetics.
At about 9 minutes into the video the teacher (who says
he is a cis gay male) discusses the pronoun issue.
He discusses the ages at which puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery may legally done according to the medical community (and would oppose state laws that interfere with medicine). Puberty blocker treatment is reversible, he says. Visitors should know that often learning difficulties and ADHD often improve in teenagers when they start puberty (especially for boys). It doesn't sound like it is a good idea to use them except when really "necessary". Yet there are extremists (on the fringe Left) who want all teens to take blockers until they "choose" their pronouns.
I present these videos to allow visitors to learn
about the controversies and let speakers tell us the science as best we know
it. I am not “promoting” it.
Picture: GoGayDC may be reached on Facebook here.
In “New Mars”, a 19-minute film on DUST (May 21, 2021),
people have been living in underground caves for eons on Mars, having migrated
from Earth, which got destroyed. “They
were spoiled.”
One day, men and women are assigned to each other as
mates to go out into the terraformed world and repopulate it.
They’re each assigned to a farm with an earthlike
Soviet-style building to live in.
They’ve been chemically treated to increase sexual
attraction. All perfectly set up.
Wikipedia picture of Korolev crater, click for attribution.
.jpg)
“The Story of Action Park”, from Sept 29, 2020, a “Short Documentary” on the Fascinating Horror channel.
This was a theme park and water park in Vernon, NJ (in
the mountains in the NW near the Delaware Water Gap) that opened in Vernon NJ on May 26, 1978.
In retrospect, the park was known dangerous rides with
six deaths and many serious injuries over the years, because many guests were
physically able to perform on the rides well enough.
The company went bankrupt in the mid 90s and operated
without insurance in its last year before closing and being sold to a Canadian
company that made the park much safer.
I was living in Manhattan (between the villages) the
year it opened, last year, and sometimes took bus trips to attractions like
this. Good think I didn’t.
In Dallas (where I lived in the 80s) there were two
water parks in the mid-Cities, and one got bought out by the other.
Picture, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution.
“7 Earth-Sized Planets Around the Star ‘Trappist-1’” from NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, otherwise called “Trappist-1: Weirdest Habitable Worlds”
The fourth planet, D, may have an average surface
temperature of 55F and might be the most habitable (wiki).
The planets may be tidally locked like “eyeball planets”
with a twilight zone of milder temperatures.
The NASA article has a 3-D simulation view of the surface of
the surface of 1D (360 degrees oculus image) with red sky and snow, but this
may be closer to a pole or father from the twilight middle if the average is
warmer.
“Launch Pad Astronomy” in 2018 offered a 12-minute video “Could
Life Exist around Red-Dwarf Stars?” These
stars are enormously active with flares until the grow old, but they last a
long time. After hundreds of billions of
years, stable life could develop, far in the future, maybe with reincarnations
of us living on them.
Wikipedia comparison of Trappist-1 system to our solar system,
embed, click for attribution
 |
| Chelsea, NYC, near 7th Ave, June 27, 2021; Gay Pride was about a half mile away |
Louis Rossmann, owner of the Rossmann Repair Group, which
repairs MacBooks and similar hardware, does a walking tour of 7th
Avenue from 27th St, where his own shop is located, and he calls his
28-minute film “NYC: A Documentary of Urban Decay”.
He depicts, in almost every block, businesses that closed
for good during the pandemic and after damage during the George Floyd riots.
He (after recharging his phone apparently) offered a 48 bike
tour of NYC right after July 4 on his channel.
On Sunday, June 27, on Gay Pride weekend, I walked up to the
location of his business, and the area was deserted. The Fashion Technology center was across 7rh
Avenue. The march had gone down 5th
Avenue, and the people were in the Village, from 7th Ave all the way
to Washington Square Park, where there were a few incidents.
Rossmann often points out that landlords want much more to
rent a space than the market will bear right now. Particularly interesting to me was his depiction of the old Rivera cafe, in a triangular lot on 7th Ave about Sheridan Square. I had a very important conversation with a friend there over chocolate ice cream in May 1978 after going to see the play "The Fifth of July" nearby. The cafe had closed in 2019 (World Pride), before the pandemic. There is a big sign "Texas" above it.
 |
| Riviera cafe site, 2021/6/27 |
Rossmann also recently did a 3-week tour of the south, especially Florida, looking for places to establish new branches (or maybe franchise locations?) for his business. I think he could trademark his cat’s name, Mr. Clinton, as a franchise name, because the cat has such unusual charisma on his video channel, always talking and getting attention.
Single Spark Films, which says it is not the same as Single-Spark
Marist-Leninist Archive, posted in early 2014, the grainy film “Mao Tse-Tung:
The Greatest Revolutionary of Our Time”. He is also known as Mao Zedong.
The footage starts in 1949, when the Chinese
communists have thrown out the “Japanese imperialist” But soon the hostility was toward all
western, especially US, capitalism. Mao
believed that the Soviet Union, under Khrushchev, was slouching toward
capitalism. Maoism became the Chinese variant of Marxism-Leninism. The film mentions some historical experiments, like the Paris Commune of 1871.
The film mentions The Long March and the Great Leap Forward before it covers the Cultural Revolution which started in 1966 and was particularly punitive of the intellectual “elite” who could not work with their hands.
Personal identity was to be achieved only in the mass,
not the individual.
What effective propaganda!
Wikipedia embed of the route of the Long March, click for attribution.
“3 Climate Change Solutions that Could Actually Happen”,
from the Climate Change channel.
The three listed are as followsL
Replace HFC refrigerants with natural ones (HFC’s were
introduced to replace fluorocarbons in the late 1980s to protect the ozone
layer, but HFC’s are greenhouse gasses. This
might affect appliances (refrigerators) sold in the future but the video doesn’t
explain in detail how other refrigerants would work.
Emphasize particularly on shore wind turbines.
Encourage individuals to switch to plant-based
diets. Agricultural subsidies for meat
farming should stop.
The tone of the film at the end is blunt, and mentions
taking to the streets.
R134A container picture, Wikipedia embed, click for
attribution.
 |
| NIH, 2015 |
“Was COVID Created in a Lab?
Here Is What We Know”.
OK, Johnny Harris simply lays it out. The biggest risk for natural spillover was in
southern China. Wuhan is in central
China, and has one of the three virology labs in the world that does
gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
The other two are in Chapel Hill NC and Galveston TX.
And we have never found an intermediate animal host with
SARS_CoV2. Harris does discuss the anti-Trump political climate that kept the mainstream media from taking the lab leak idea seriously, and aptly criticizes WHO's recent visit, and Peter Duszak's "conflict of interest" (and oddly, "skin in the game" in a negative sense). He says the species jump from a wild animal is still a reasonable hypothesis, despite circumstantial evidence. He also says he could not have made this video a few months ago and kept it to stay up.
Harris doesn’t mention the specifics of how furin cleavage
happens, which, while it does happen in coronaviruses, seems to have happened
in an unusual way with this virus, according to some experts as in a recent
Wall Street Journal article. That’s Chris Martenson’s video May 4, 2020.
This video needs to gain some traction.
"What We Learned from the UFO Report", June 30, 2021, on
Unveiled .
The video maintains that 1 out of 144 reports was
identified as a balloon, but the others are totally unexplained. They find it hard to believe any rival
country (China, Russia) has this technology.
If it were aliens, who did they get here and deal with
the speed of light? Worm holes?
The buzzword is “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
 |
| Austin, TX, 2011/11 |
“Click, Print, Gun”, a March 2013 documentary from
Vice Motherboard, by Erin Lee Carr, also having the alternative title "3-D Printed Guns".
The film traces the work of Cody Wilson near Austin,
Texas to develop the capability for manufacturing guns by 3-D printing. But the license to do so is tied to a
particular location, he says. His
company is called Defense Distributed.
There have been bills in Congress (as Sem Ed Markey
has just introduced for the 117th) to ban 3-D printing of weapons
and even distribution of blueprints. These could lead to more Internet censorship issues because the information itself is normally lawful.
The film notes the political climate of the time,
after the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut.
 |
| Design |
“MATH + QFT” – “The Bridge Between Math and Quantum
Field Theory”, by Quanta Magazine.
Quantum Field Theory is less rigorous than mathematics
(which cannot prove it is “complete”), but its use adds to what we know about
mathematics, probably most of all topology in higher dimensions.
Gravity is expressed in a field that allows the mass
of objects to have effects at a distance.
 |
| NYC 2021,6 |
Buried Hatchet Productions presents a short horror
film “Motion Detected”, March 2, 2021, directed by Vincent Dormani, acted by
his (apparent) brother Frank Dormani.
A young man comes home from a business trip where he
has gotten warnings from his home security company. As he goes through the video, he sees various
ghosts coming into his place at 9 PM each night.
Then the security mini-console says that a virus was found
in its firmware, and to restart the device.
Nevertheless, some entity is after the young man (7
minutes).
There is sort of am embedded story within the footage.
 |
| NYC outdoor dining at Pride 2021-6 |
Freddie Sayers of the Unherd Channel conducts a
60-minute panel discussion “Has Lockdown Changed Us Forever?” I’ll count this as
a “movie” for purposes of this blog.
This discussion comes from the UK, which has delayed full
reopening until at least late July because of the Delta Variant.
Freddie notes at the beginning that people have
accepted a “reduced way of life” personally and may have to accept a more
collectivized, authoritarian society.
One speaker immediately talked about forced separation
from loved ones for very long periods.
Another speaker referred to “what nature could do to
us?” Or was it Communist China? There was mention of China’s culture of
absolute “compliance”. One speaker and then Freddie note that Covid suggests
what a “war with China would look like; we’d lose.”
One speaker notes the shock that the churches closed
down. We are at the "Death knell of the liberal order". The World was already a strange place at the end of 2019. They were also concerned about "back and forth" lockdowns. And finally believing that a new moral order (constraining individualism and personal agency) may be coming.
 |
| Angelika Film Center, Fairfax VA 2019-10 |
“How to Break into the Film Industry with WGA
Screenwriter Dominic Morgan”, as interviewed by Tyler Mowery.
Dominic comes from northern Ireland, apparently, and
came of age near the violence and shelling.
He describes his entry into the field, with a deal where he was assigned
to write another person’s concept and idea as well as his own, and then to
travel to Brazil and learn what the people affected by the drug trade were like. All down to earth.
He says if you have an agent, you need to produce one
or two good pieces a year to keep their attention. What sells is a portfolio of
screenplays, possibly interrelated and some of them smaller, not a single
blockbuster.
The interview mentions Michael Hauge’s screenplay
structure, which is a little more complicated thant the Harmon story
circle.
My own “do ask do tell” book series at one time
generated three long screenplays (one was called “Make the A-List”) and tended
to be long with several critical transition points rather than one (where
getting what you want costs you something).
They were based on the world as it was in early 2000’s, immediately post
9-11. Their length and complexity might be more appropriate for a mini-series. More recently, I’ve written “Second
Epiphany” which presents the material, well, from a space ship environment,
where the backstories fit into various parts of the script, more or less.
I am looking into simpler stories to make that are
more in line with normal expectations.
The problem is that the philosophical conflicts, while genuine and maybe
captivating to some, require a lot of expository background before they become understandable.
Tyler offers a “Writer’s Mind” YouTube series, half of
it free, half of it requiring Patreon support. One of his most important episodes, about “personal
high agency” (#16) is on the Patreon portion but is set up by earlier free
videos like “First Principles”. Tyler also offers a course on Practicalscreenwriting.
.jpg)
“Eden”, directed by Kristian Bakstad (12 min), new on
the Dust channel, presents us with a Scavenger (Christoff Lundgren) exploring
desolate earth-like planets alone in his spaceship. He encounters a planet looking
like Pluto or Triton (Wikipedia embed above).
He goes inside an abandoned mine and first finds a
woman (Brandi Alexander) as if he could restart civilization Adam-and-Even
style (but no garden). But then he is
led to a Mad Man (Mackenzie Gray) who seems only to lead a religious cult. Inside a “Box” however there is some
mysterious stone artefact.
“Is There Life Inside the Gas Giants?” from Unveiled,
June 21,
The upper atmosphere’s of gas giants like Jupiter are
thick enough that complex life forms might float (like jellyfish) or even “swim”
(which could become predators hunting floaters).
There is also a question as to whether there is too
much “entropy” for life to organize as it did on Earth.
What’s more interesting is what happens as you fall
into the atmosphere, and eventually reach a layer of liquid hydrogen and even metallic
hydrogen.
NASA ultraviolet image of Jupiter, click for attribution, p.d.
Astrum presents “What NASA Discovered on Ganymede”.
That is the largest moon in the Solar System, larger
than Mercury and Titan, and the largest of the four “Galilean” moons of
Jupiter.
However it’s density is much lower than Mercury’s.
The Moon has an unusually deep ocean layer dozens of
kilometers deep, with a hundred times (or more) as much salt water as Earth’s
oceans. And there are several unusual
ice layers.
But Ganymede is also the only moon in the Solar System
with its own magnetic field, which might be produced by tidal forces. Because of the extreme depth of the ocean, in
comparison to Europa’s, it is considered unlikely that forces from the interior
would create enough energy to trigger simple life.
Wikipedia diagram:
Galilean moon Laplace diagram, click for attribution (animated gif).
Zachary Denman walks his beat as the social distancing
and mask police in “Communist State”, a dystopian short film, only 6 minutes.
The sky is orange.
Some London streets are deserted.
Others have people pretending to be happy.
He says the point is to make life easy, while killing
self-expression.
Picture: Piccadilly Circus in London, SoHo, Wikipedia embed, I visited it in 1982
 |
| Ohio near Mt Vernon, 2012 |
“In the Woods We Can Be Together”, directed and
written by Ryan Schneider, posted in Oct. 2018, is a “long short” at 41 minutes
but a good example of straightforward storytelling of a gay male short-term relationship.
Alex Little plays an appealing, clean-cut, non-nonsense
med student living in an immaculate apartment near a state park in hilly
southern Ohio. He likes to run every morning, and one day he passes by a tall
construction worker played by Taylor Riebel.
The encounters repeat, and soon conversation begins. Riebel doesn't like social media or exchanging numbers, and wants the interaction to stay local, in the real world.
The med student is gay, the construction worker is straight,
usually, but strongly attracted to intact men. The discussions of medicine lead
to a kiss attempt. Riebel backs away, but
comes back to the park and eventually the pairing continues. It eventually leads to, well, Little’s apartment.
The Riebel decides he wants to go to college himself
and escape his world, and moves away, leaving a memento.
The film was shot entirely on an iPhone 8 Plus, with
some glare once in a while.
So is this a good example of straightforward screenwriting?
“China’s
Freedom” or “Things You Can Do in China (You Can’t Do in America”, posted June
13, 2021, by the Living in China channel, run by a young man from the UK, similar
in spirit to the Barrett Channel.
In a
relatively small city in China’s interior, he shows you can drink in public
(you can’t in the US) even though you can’t carry weapons (you can often in the
US).
He also
notes that the public spaces are very clean (like Singapore’s).
He also
notes there is almost zero street crime.
But there is
no “freedom of reach” with political speech. Chinese society demands more mandatory
socialization of everyone. He doesn’t
mention the social credit score. Or the difficulty
of many people in transcending and moving out of rural poverty.
Wikipedia picture: Guangzhou skyline, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution
 |
| NYC, Chelsea, 2016-9 |
“Occupy Me”, (2017, 15 min) directed by Adam Fitzgerald, present two
gay men in a quick “stage play” about who has power in their physical
relationship. It stars Jaspar Binning and Max Rhyser.
The film has shown in film festivals in Madrid, North
Carolina, Out on Film Atlanta, Inside Out Toronto, Qflix Philadelphia.
The title literally says what the issue is, and this
is all definitely about cis masculinity.
Since the video is age-restricted, I’ll embed another
one where a therapist talks about the topic.
 |
| Rehoboth Beach, DE 2021/6 |
The “Working Together” Riddle, a problem that ought to be solvable by "common sense".
This may play out like the classic high school algebra
“word problem”.
The important idea is to identify the indivisible work
unit to solve for.
This test problem sounds like it was designed for
intentional communities or communes that try to get by without any fiat currency
at all.
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| tofu warehouse at Twin Oaks, VA, 2012 |
