Not since the Kenneth Branagh version of Wallander has a TV series put me so comprehensively to sleep. I love Scandi Noir, I love Kenneth Branagh and yet through four seasons I didn't finish a single episode. A Spy Among Friends is an espionage 'thriller' with a fantastic cast set around the penetration and defection scandal of Kim Philby. It should be a compelling story but I can't say for sure because it was like a rohypnol in a double Long Island Iced Tea. YMMV.
Bodies
Bodies starts with the same dead person in several different periods and pretty soon four detectives are investigating four strangely similar cases. It's the most BBC thing I've watched in years, I really enjoyed it.
Reacher Season 2
Season 2 takes on Bad Luck and Trouble. I wonder what they're going to do when they run out of books where Reacher has collaborators. His inner monologue is pretty hard to translate to TV. The first season went for a comedy sidekick cop to add in the humor and it worked pretty well. Season 2 is a lot darker and a lot less Reacher as a result. Hopefully they tack back and find a better tone for Season 3.
The Crown Season 6
The Crown putters to a quiet end. It was quite compelling to start with and got less so the closer it gets to the modern era. I think probably because it starts to overlap with events I remember quite vividly, and can't really compete with those memories. In the last episode we jump back to WWII era Elizabeth and I wish they'd done a whole series just on that. Maybe that will be a spinoff. While an interesting historical drama, the fantasy ending I'm looking for is more like this.
(All images included with ITHCWY reviews are the property of their respective owners and are used to illustrate reviews only.)
While waiting for the horror of Weekend at Bernie's vs. A Clockwork Orange in November there is time to contemplate another slate of job-outsourcing ballot measures. Just one for California and seven for San Francisco so it could be worse. Here goes...
California Proposition 1, Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure
Yes. This funds housing and treatment for the mentally ill, homeless and veterans in need. It also requires counties to put more of their existing funds into housing.
San Francisco, California, Proposition A, Affordable Housing Bond Measure
Yes. $300M in bonds to build, buy and repair affordable housing. Homelessness is driven by a lack of affordable housing. In addition to building more I'd love to see us cut more of the red tape, but this is a necessary measure to meet our existing obligations.
San Francisco, California, Proposition B, Minimum Police Staffing Amendment
No. I voted against minimum numbers in 2020, and I don't see a good reason to bring them back today. I also recoil at the thought of a dedicated police recruitment tax as this measure suggests. Funding the police is a very basic city service, as is determining the appropriate staffing levels at any particular moment in time. I'm not against recruiting more police at all, but this is a bad proposal.
San Francisco, California, Proposition C, Real Estate Transfer Tax Exemption for Properties Converted from Commercial to Residential Use Initiative
Yes. I voted in favor of this tax in 2020. Post pandemic San Francisco has one of the worst return to office rates and a huge decline in retail. We need to rethink what downtown is for and I love the idea of bringing in more universities and more homes. So this is a tax break that makes sense for now.
San Francisco, California, Proposition D, Amend City Ethics Laws and Expand Restrictions on Gifts to City Officers and Employees Initiative
Yes. Tougher ethics rules are needed. Can't find any reason to oppose this package. We have bribing of inspection personnel, theft of public funds, corruption in Public Works, that inspector who inspected his own building, etc.
San Francisco, California, Proposition E, Limit Police Department Administrative Task Time and Increase Use of Camera and Drone Technology Initiative
Yes. Apparently when SFPD decides to chase someone they crash 38% of the time, about twice the state average. This bill would let them chase more people and use drones and GPS taggers to do it. I'd like them to go on an advanced driving course or two, but if you can avoid consequences just by running away then we don't really have a law enforcement system. Maybe I'll regret this in a few years but it seems mostly common sense to me right now.
San Francisco, California, Proposition F, Require Drug Screening for Certain Beneficiaries of the County Adult Assistance Program Initiative
No. It looks like the recipients of most of these funds are not homeless and have plenty of hoops to jump through already. This seems like it would risk making their situation worse.
San Francisco, California, Proposition G, Declaration of Policy Urging San Francisco Unified School District to Offer Algebra 1 to Students by Eighth Grade Measure
Yes. This is pointless as it has no teeth and they're moving this way anyway. I still want to help make the pointless point.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
San Francisco and California March 2024 Ballot Measures #politics#sanfrancisco#propositions#election#california ITHCWY voter guide to the San Francisco and California March 2024 primary election propositions and ballot measures.)
January has been nearly all timelapse at ITHCWY. First up I have my annual New Year's Eve production, this time a portrait of the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Apparently the Port Authority and US Army Corps of Engineers have a plan to lift this stretch of shoreline by 7 feet to protect it from climate change. I also got a chance to visit Miami, and produced a timelapse of the skyline and the world's latest largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas. It's so big it can spell it's own name out using windows as pixels. This is the ship causing the climate change that necessitates lifting the Embarcadero. Finally some present day construction, two months of light rail track replacement on my street.
This movie hangs on the fact that dealing with the owners of your Airbnb showing up and needing to stay there is way harder to deal with than the actual end of the world. This is totally true and pulled off in a masterful and cringeworthy way. I loved Sam Esmail's Mr Robot and there are similar vibes and shots at work while leaving the world behind. I think it's supposed to be more explicitly about race, but nearly every line would work without that dynamic. The social awkwardness here is universal. The ending is great as well. Highly recommended.
Level 16
Level 16 is about a residential school for girls who will get adopted soon. Of course something darker is going on and it's pretty dark. It's super derivative but nicely done and worth a watch.
Rebel Moon – Part One
Rebel Moon has an incredible visual style, a disturbing bad guy and some off-brand lightsabers. The dialog is clunky and I have already forgotten the plot. I'm sure I'll watch the second part and maybe it ends up going somewhere but this installment is just pulling the gang together in the style of the first few minutes of an A-Team episode with a decent SFX budget.
Music
Lazy
I love a lot of Baby Queen. This one is an anthem for my current Saturday morning.
TV
Doctor Who 2023 Specials
I drifted out of watching Doctor Who at the start of the Jodie Whittaker / Chris Chibnall era. It has always been an uneven program with some silly concepts occasionally punctuated by enough sci-fi genius to make it all worthwhile. With Chibnall that equation changed for me and it just seemed boring. I was pretty excited to see that Russell T Davies was back at the helm and the four specials were pretty good, an unexpected encore for David Tennant and Catherine Tate and a brief introduction for Ncuti Gatwa. I'll be tuning in next year to see how Davies and Gatwa do once out of the confines of Christmas Special land. I couldn't be happier that the TARDIS is recognizably the machine from my youth even if it is filled with questionable ramps. What was great about the 80's TARDIS is that it was bigger on the inside but only a little bit. You have complete control over time and space and you just move the walls over a foot to fit in a hatstand (I know, there was more behind another door, but that rarely came into play). I really hated the steampunk control room and I hope it never comes back. My fondest wish for the program is that the Doctor drops his sonic screwdriver down a wormhole and has to start relying on his wits a bit more. An occasional plot device has become almost the only plot device and he's a Time Lord not a superhero Anyway, fingers crossed for the next series.
For All Mankind Season 4
For All Mankind is getting into middle age, but it's still a great series. This installment is all about an uneasy Mars base and the future of space exploration. Also some moonshine.
Slow Horses Season 3
Slow Horses just keeps getting better. A must watch series.
(All images included with ITHCWY reviews are the property of their respective owners and are used to illustrate reviews only.)
Timelapse of Miami from South Beach. One cloudy night and then a nice sunset. At the end you can see a night departure of the Icon of the Seas, the new largest cruise ship in the world.
My poor street has had the works over the past few years. PG&E upgraded the gas lines. Then everything got ripped up for new water mains. We got two new poles. And then new sewers. I'm a little surprised the houses are still standing.
Over the last couple of months the train tracks for the L Taraval have been replaced. They're only two years younger than me, but I'm happy to report that they looked in much worse shape. Here's a time lapse of the whole process:
You'll see that they opened a chasm right in front of my garage early in the project and the plan called for it to be almost the last hole to fill in at the end. I'd be more excited if the L Taraval went anywhere useful. When I moved into my house it stopped right in front and then whisked you quickly downtown. Since then that stop was removed, and then the L terminated at West Portal to make room for M and N people and has been replaced by a bus for the duration of the pandemic and track replacement service.
With perfect comedic timing we also just got a letter from PG&E saying that they now need to dig everything up all over again. Probably we need medium rather than high pressure?
I have a tradition of making a time lapse of San Francisco on New Year's Eve. This year I focused on the Embarcadero:
The time lapse opens with a view of the Bay Bridge from Cupid's Span in Rincon Park. Then behind the Ferry Building for two departures and one arrival. Next is a view of downtown from the middle of Pier 7. From there some Embarcadero proper from the perspective of the glass tiles looking towards the Exploratorium and then looking across the street at Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid from Pier 35. After that we have the Richmond Bridge visible behind Alcatraz and Angel Island and the SkyStar Wheel in its new home, both shot from the end of Fisherman's Wharf. Finally the Golden Gate Bridge with some brave swimmers in the foreground at Aquatic Park. This is just past the Embarcadero but I broke the theme a little to get all three bridges.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Embarcadero #timelapse#video#sanfrancisco Time lapse of the Embarcadero in San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2023, from Cupid's Span to Fisherman's Wharf.)
Catfood Earth 4.40 includes the latest time zone database and also some fixes for the locations, volcanoes and weather radar layers. If you use any of that please update.
I'm slowly replacing myself with an LLM. Currently I'm on Rob 2.1 which features a fine tuned version of GPT 3.5, retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and some prompt tuning. You can chat with it in the comments. Don't worry, it's not blogging yet, the aim is to start sending it to some meetings.
