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Just a guy. Just a weird guy.

  • #0022 Foreshadow

    I’ve been watching Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage. It’s a weird watch for me because I usually have no taste for three camera sitcoms, laugh tracks, or Chuck Lorre.

    The most compelling thing about Georgie and Mandy’s marriage is that the show tells you upfront it’s doomed. Not hinted. Not foreshadowed. Declared. The title is definitive. It’s their first marriage. Maybe they end up with other people, maybe they get back together again, but this thing is ending.

    That’s the magic trick: instead of killing the tension, it creates it. Every sweet moment, every argument, every attempt at maturity is reframed by the knowledge that this is all temporary. It’s not a love story; it’s watching a slow‑motion car crash where both drivers are trying their best and still drifting toward a collision.

    The show leans into that inevitability. It’s observational. It’s the kind of storytelling where the characters don’t know what the audience knows. Dramatic irony.

    Then you have Audrey and Jim, the couple who are… fine. Not thriving. Not collapsing. Just two people who have decided that the friction of staying together is still less annoying than the paperwork of splitting up. Their marriage works the way an old lawnmower works: it sputters, it rattles, it shouldn’t still be running, but somehow it does.

    That contrast is intentional. Georgie and Mandy are young, hopeful, and trying to build something. Audrey and Jim are older, tired, and trying to maintain something. One marriage fails because it’s too early; the other survives because it’s too late to start over.

    Then there’s Connor. Despite being absolutely hilarious, he’s the Greek chorus of the show. He’s the one who says the quiet part out loud because someone has to. He’s not mean, he just tells the truth. He’s Sheldon if Sheldon cared about anyone else.

    Regardless, I find it refreshing to watch a show where I know the end but am excited to know how it gets there.

  • #0021 Board Games

    There’s something about board games. Maybe it’s quiet tension or shooting the shit while someone takes way too long on their turn. It feels more present than most forms of entertainment. It helps you enter flow state better. It demands your attention for it to work. You’re not half-watching.

    And yet, I rarely play them.

    Getting people together is impossible. Somehow coordination has become a nightmare, mostly because people have gotten obsessive about rationing time. Everyone needs to be available at the same time, in the same place (or at least committed to showing up somewhere). As people get older, schedules tighten, priorities shift, and suddenly organizing a game night starts to feel like planning a performance of Peter Pan.

    Then there’s the rules problem. Usually the person who wants to play knows the rules. They try to explain it, but people don’t get it that quickly. Some vaguely remember how to play, some skimmed the rule book five minutes ago, and some rolled in drunk. Teaching a complex game can take as long as actually playing it.

    The problem is some of the best board games are the most demanding. It requires tracking resources, points, phases, conditions, and a dozen other variables. The flow breaks as everyone double-checks rules, counts tokens, or rewinds a turn.

    Digital versions of board games do exist. They’re incomplete, clunky, or missing key aspects. Not every game gets an online adaptation, but it’s likely locked behind platforms that not everyone in your group uses.

    I have a monthly game of Terraforming Mars with some friends from school who now live across the country. Logistically, it shouldn’t work as well as it does. We’re juggling time zones, busy schedules, and the inherent clumsiness of everyone being down to struggle learning new strategy every time a new DLC drops.

    There’s something delightful about it though. Frankly, we just wouldn’t talk to each other all that much if we didn’t do it.

    It’s horribly inconvenient. But we meet up every month to do it. It serves the same purpose as Thanksgiving.

  • #0020 Betting Markets

    It’s interesting people have gotten sidetracked in fiction by betting markets. The tribalism of sports has gotten applied to fiction. People get attached to their favorite shows and feel compelled to fight for them.

    Take The Pitt. As we are one episode away from the end of the second season, the show has built a steady wave of momentum. As a result, it’s now entirely possible to wager on awards outcomes like the Emmys, turning what used to be speculative into something concrete.

    And the numbers are weird and funny.

    Right now, The Pitt is sitting in a position of overwhelming favoritism in several major Emmy categories. The market doesn’t just think it has a good shot. It’s basically inevitable. The same goes for Katherine LaNasa and Noah Wyle.

    Actually. Look at Noah Wyle’s odds:

    “It’s him… and then everyone else.” Just give him the Emmy now.

    Betting markets aggregate belief. They distill critic reviews, social media buzz, insider whispers, and historical voting patterns into a single, ever-shifting number. It’s consensus, but not even consensus of opinion. it’s consensus of what people believe the consensus is.

    The Emmy’s aren’t entirely predictable. Upsets happen. That’s why it dominates interest. Suddenly you can interact with the show you’re into.

    And sometimes, like with The Pitt, the answer becomes almost comically clear.

  • #0019 5-Star

    Five-star rating systems are everywhere, and most of them are useless.

    Scroll through reviews on any platform and you’ll notice a pattern: everything is either a five or a one, with the middle collapsed into irrelevance. That’s not because everything is either perfect or terrible—it’s because most systems fail to define what their stars actually mean. Without a shared methodology, ratings become vibes.

    So here’s a methodology designed to be consistent, intuitive, and honest. Of course it only works if it’s adopted by everyone.

    ★☆☆☆☆ — Broken or Abhorrent

    One star isn’t just “bad.” It’s a failure at a fundamental level.

    This is reserved for works that are structurally broken, ethically repellent, or so poorly constructed that engaging with them feels like a mistake. A one-star experience isn’t just unenjoyable, it doesn’t work. Everyone would come away agreeing that there was something that needed to be fixed about it.

    This rating should be rare.

    ★★☆☆☆ — Bad

    Two stars is where most negative experiences should land.

    A two-star work has recognizable intent and some functional elements, but ultimately, it’s something that sticks in one’s craw. Boring, sloppy, derivative, frustratingly inconsistent. You can see what it was trying to do, but it didn’t get there. Or maybe you can’t, but you can imagine someone had an idea that went disastrously wrong.

    Importantly, this category allows for nuance. Not everything disappointing is offensive, it might just not be good.

    ★★★☆☆ — Tolerable

    Three stars is the most misunderstood rating. I’ve often toyed with the idea that a four star system is better because it forces reviewers to take a side.

    A three-star experience is fine. It’s the movie you’d watch if your friends picked it and you showed up more-so because they were there than for the movie itself. It’s the restaurant you go to because it’s nearby and open. The book you finish without strong feelings either way, but hey, at least you finished it.

    It’s not memorable, but it’s not painful.

    This is the baseline for “acceptable.” If something earns three stars, it succeeded at being a functional piece of entertainment or service.

    ★★★★☆ — Really Enjoyed

    Four stars is where genuine enthusiasm begins.

    This is something you actively liked, something you’d recommend without hesitation (assuming normal circumstances). You were engaged, entertained, maybe even impressed. It might have flaws, but they didn’t significantly detract from your experience.

    A four-star rating means: I’m glad I spent time on this, and I’d do it again.

    ★★★★★ — Obsessive, Lasting Impact

    Five stars is not just “great.” It’s transformative.

    This is the rare experience that sticks with you. It’s something you think about days, months, or even years later. It reshapes your tastes, raises your standards, or becomes a reference point for everything else.

    You don’t just recommend it, you bring it up unprompted. You want to show it others so you can be vindicated in your own joy for it when they like it too.

    A rating system isn’t about precision. It’s about communication. Honestly, it’s dumb that companies use it to aggregate public opinion because everyone rates things by different standards. What information are you getting if someone takes a critical magnifying glass to something while others five-star or one-star everything based on an attempt at ethical behavior and quality control?

  • #0018 Foolish

    I’m a little irate. Robert Zemeckis for a long time has stood strong on the principle that Back to the Future is a complete and perfect story in it’s current form and that any reboots or remakes would have to happen after he passed plus the twenty-three years as required by copyright law.

    Well, I suppose more greedy minds prevailed. So we’re getting a recast BTTF and I’m absolutely gonna watch it and I’m absolutely gonna hate. it. This is The Rise of Skywalker all over again.

    For shame Zemeckis. For shame.

    Happy first of April.

  • #0017 Neutral

    An interesting phenomenon. At least when AI was in its infancy, it told users what they wanted to hear. It’s getting better, me-thinks.

    My evidence as to why we know AI told people what it wanted to hear is the South Park episode about it. (Peer review it, cowards.)

    Still, my example as to why it’s improving is a single data point. The pessimist would call it “anecdotal evidence.” The optimist would call it “a case study.” Well . . . here it is.

    I wondered how legitimate the claim was that the block chain and AI were stressing the world’s resources. I’ve taken a new strategy with AI to test it. I’ll ask the form of the question leading to the answer I want to hear. I’ll ask the form of the question leading to the answer opposite of what I want to hear. Finally, I’ll ask the form of the question that is my closest approximation to an open-ended, neutral question.

    So here’s the case study. (Or anecdotal evidence if you’re an ass.)

    The Question Designed For Me to Get the Answer I Don’t Want to Hear

    What is the theory behind AI depleting resources?

    –Google AI’s response?

    The Question Designed For Me to Get the Answer I Wanted to Hear

    AI depleting resources is fake, right?

    And The Question Designed to Be a Neutral Inquiry

    Is AI depleting resources?

    So . . . my conclusion is that AI is getting more objective. Though we should ask it in three different ways to be sure.

  • #0016 Compass

    The most recent book i read was The Golden Compass. It was a part of the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman. The book came out in 1995 and there was a movie that came out staring Nicole Kidman and Sam Elliott in 2007. I remember that movie distinctly because I was working at a movie theater at the time and the ad played constantly on the monitors (they also let me take home one of the posters because we had hundreds of them).

    The book is decent. The theme seems to be mostly about the advantage of having knowledge and how it can benefit society or be used to harm society in either the advance of knowledge or one’s own endeavors. There are a couple sequels. I’m interested to finally get to them, because when I first visited this book, it didn’t hook me enough to stick with it. I’m a little more hooked now.

    I also know there’s an Amazon series that covers it all. I’ll probably get to that to. I’m aware the series has an Atheist bend to it, because I believe the plot of The Amber Spyglass involves god being the antagonist and the main characters killing him.

    I guess we’ll see.

  • #0015 Derivative

    Do you ever think about the two movies that came out the same year that were basically the same movie? Armageddon and Deep Impact? Olympus is Down and White House Has Fallen? How do those happen? Why doesn’t copyright law intervene?

    I mean the jury is out, Armageddon won.

    Still, it’s interesting to wonder why so many movies capture the same exact idea at the same time. Humans often get on the same wavelength in relation to the public oeuvre and that’s clearly the reason. Still, it does feel suspicious that two movie studios arrive at the exact same plot at the exact same time.

    I’m no conspiracy theorist. I recognize that I see patterns that no one intended. It’s still weird though right? It’s just a good reminder that there are always deeper things at work than we’re presently thinking of.

  • #0014 Duty

    It’s a weird feeling. If you are a true fan of fiction, you want to consume it as the author intended it. If there’s a movie, you want to avoid bathroom breaks, pausing to get snacks, or breaking for the next day because you’re just too tired to finish. Fiction is supposed to be a collaborative effort.

    Still, there’s a lot of fiction out there and we’re only human. Also the means of consumption and the amount of content we need to consume has only made us more distracted. It’s silly to let the conventions of history bind us for the sake of tradition.

    So I chop up movies now. I watch them in bits. The second I get distracted in my leisure, I move on, because it’s my leisure. I’ll usually leave myself a note to come back to it, but if I don’t, it’s find. Follow your whims, that’s my new philosophy.

    I’m sick of treating fiction like work. I’ve treated it like that for a long time. That’s not the point. The point is to relax and explore new ideas and be entertained. It took the market being flooded for me to realize that.

  • #0013 Valentine

    Valentines Day is weird. It’s colloquially known as the day of love, but your parents give you valentines, we make kids at school give each other valentines, sometimes work gives you valentines.

    And then you feel like an ass if you didn’t have one for them. Plus the added thing that you feel like you’re missing out if you’re single.

    The origin is complicated and involves a martyr that performed marriages on christian soldiers against the will of Roman leadership. It also probably replaced a pagan holiday.

    But this is a media blog! So here’s the most famous valentine in media by my measure.