Monthly Archives: January 2023

Eudaimonic happiness:

Happiness can be defined in many ways. In psychology, there are two popular conceptions of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is achieved through experiences of pleasure and enjoyment, while eudaimonic happiness is achieved through experiences of meaning and purpose. Both kinds of happiness are achieved and contribute to overall well-being in different ways. [ThoughtCo.]

Noted in “How to be happy, according to the longest-running study of happiness,” an interview with Robert Waldinger by Alison Flood, NewScientist (14 January 2023, paywall):

Alison Flood: How do you define happiness?

Robert Waldinger: There are two big bins that happiness seems to fall into. One is hedonic happiness. It’s like, am I having fun now? It’s a moment-to-moment, fluctuating experience. Then there’s eudaimonic happiness, which is a sense of life having meaning and being worthwhile. For example, you’re reading to your child before bed. You’ve read the same book eight times, but she wants you to read it again. You’re exhausted. Is this fun? No. But is this the most meaningful thing you could imagine doing? Yes. In our studies, we think about well-being a lot, which is more eudaimonic happiness than moment-to-moment happiness.

For all of the hubbub over the AI tool ChatGPT, this report sounds more interesting:

An artificial intelligence is set to advise a defendant in court for the first time ever. The AI will run on a smartphone and listen to all speech in the courtroom in February before instructing the defendant on what to say via an earpiece.

The location of the court and the name of the defendant are being kept under wraps by DoNotPay, the company that created the AI. But it is understood that the defendant is charged with speeding and that they will say only what DoNotPay’s tool tells them to via an earbud. The case is being considered as a test by the company, which has agreed to pay any fines, should they be imposed, says the firm’s founder, Joshua Browder. [“AI legal assistant will help defendant fight a speeding case in court“, Matthew Sparkes, NewScientist, 14 January 2023, paywall]

Will this result in more court traffic? Or will courts move faster because the AI lawyer never has the flu, or family troubles?

The social aspects may be underrated.

Emirati Minister for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Application, Omar Sultan Al Olama took part in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he mentioned a term new to me:

Olama discussed the future of decentralized finance, or DeFi, at the panel. DeFi is a form of fintech whereby individuals can conduct financial transactions such as loans without intermediaries such as banks, relying on technology such as digital financial databases. DeFi uses blockchain technology similar to that of cryptocurrency.

Olama called DeFi the “least regulated” sector in the crypto world. He added that DeFi could become a “bubble,” meaning it will crash after seeing a quick increase in value.

“We are going to see some bubbles in the DeFi space in the coming future that will require a lot of government intervention,” he said. [AL-Monitor]

I should think that fighting advanced computer criminals will become tougher when the usual law enforcement tools that depend on access to financial institutions’ databases become useless.

Autogynephilia:

Autogynephilia is defined as a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. It is the paraphilia that is theorized to underlie transvestism and some forms of male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism. [PubMed.gov]

Noted in “We could actually use a little more shame around sex,” Meghan Murphy, The Same Drugs:

While I am not suggesting we literally police the bedrooms of others, I am suggesting that being completely open-minded and non-judgemental of anything labelled “sex” is not a good thing. I don’t think it is a good thing that single women are expected to sell themselves to strangers on dating apps and social media. I don’t think it’s a good thing that Instagram is so full of pornography it is unavoidable, even to people like me who would prefer to avoid it. I don’t think it is a good thing that parents are bringing their children to drag shows where men in stilettos parade down runways, pausing to accept dollar bills in their g-strings. I don’t think it’s a good thing that the Pride parade has turned into a parade of fetishes, wherein furries, BDSM fanatics, and autogynephilic men have received the blessing of progressive politicians and the public alike to take their private sexual habits out onto the street, as if anyone needs to know what gets you off. And I definitely don’t think it’s good that a multi-billion dollar sex industry that sees hundreds of thousands of women and girls exploited and abused around the world is treated as a necessary form of free expression.

You’re all giving me heartburn, so I’m going to whip out this gun and fix it.

The attentive audience member will readily see the hands of the creators of Queen Of The Amazons (1946) in their work. They’ll be glimpsed up the backsides of the characters, who all seem to blow in the wind; mouthing the horribly limp dialog; padding the paper thin plot with African savanna populated by the exotica of lions, lions, lions, giraffes, monkeys, zebras, one quick shot of a hippo, and lions savaging the members of various tribes and one white guy; characters betraying no ambition beyond obtaining husbands, both Amazonian and domestic; and generally out to make a buck and not tell a story.

My Arts Editor commented that this one was not worth picking apart. Sure, it’s an anti- ivory-trade story, but it’s tension free. The lady’s fiancee is missing? Sure, she’s charging right out to find him in the wilds, with nary a worry in the world. Some poor Indian gets shot while telling her what the fiancee was up to? Pity about that, too bad. Safari staff get mauled by a lion? Ah, yeah. Amazon Queen’s going to marry your fiancee? Nyah. OH, OK, so she’ll marry another white guy!

The best parts are the crow (“Jimmy, go get the commissioner a match!”) and the poetry-composing cook.

Yecccccccccccccccch.

The late Tyre Nichols, killed in an encounter with police earlier this month, was a photographer.

In memoriam to his passion. He was more than a victim. His site is here.

I am left to ponder, weak and weary,
Morticia's response, will it be fury?
When the passing of her mate, Gomez,
Brings an end to his nightly roamez,
When his stately form stills,
Focusing all on his wills,
The final puckering of those lips,
Brings on those offal rips.
Will she caper in outre celebration,
Pouring out some bloody libation?
Will her pallor finally evaporate,
Forcing her to use makeup immaculate?
Or will the most immodest of displays
Result in her honest sprays
Of salted sorrows,
Fated for a dozen tomorrows?

The Addams Family 2 (2021) is the animated feature creature sequel to The Addams Family (2019), the animated version of the celebrated family invention of famed cartoonist Charles Addams. The first installment, which was an origin story of sorts for the family, positively celebrates the challenges of every day life and non-conformism by upping the ante and dancing a bit faster. Last time, we met son Pugsley and learned what will, eventually, make him a man’s man – it’s not his foil-work, unlike his dear ol’ master swordsman Dad, Gomez – and he made us his fan club; this time around, the imperturbable Wednesday will lead our little band of misfit toys to that one island. That one island.

That can perturb the sacred, walking pallor that is Wednesday.

Because when one has allegiance to the family that is Addams, its sacred secrets and unfortunate baldness – someone push Uncle Fester out of an airplane, please, as I hate his signature look, which has Nessie’s flipper prints all over it – its role in Western Civilization, and, most importantly, its scientific insights. Wait, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Their camper van vacation. No? I still like the camper van.

When someone, that someone, a peerless narcissist, suggests that he and his wife are the parents to the imperturbable, rather than Gomez and Morticia, well, chaos rears up, reads the DNA chart, and pauses its ceaseless vortex for that brief moment it takes for Wednesday to begin tracking down this feckless fiend.

And the rest is, as they say, mere detail. Such is the revenge of Wednesday.

Fun it is, but not memorable. Rather like the first of this series in that respect, but there is even less underlining of contemporary societal contradictions. And, so, The Addams Family 2 is doomed to a quick peak and then eternal obscurity.

Which I think they’d prefer, given the lack of their progenitor here.

Hydronic:

adjective

1. of or relating to a heating system for a building in which the medium for carrying heat throughout the structure is circulating water, especially when the circulation is aided by a pump. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “How to make your home more energy efficient — and get a tax break too,” Erica Werner, WaPo:

Radiant floor heat relies on a system of tubing underneath or incorporated into the floor of a house, which heats up when hot water is forced through it. (There are also electric and hot-air-based systems, but the water-based hydronic systems are most cost-effective and popular, according to the Energy Department.) These systems are more efficient than most baseboard or forced-air systems.

Ummmm. I live in a house built in 1938, but I don’t see any radiators. Too bad. I had the old boiler hauled out back in 2005 or somesuch. Drat.

The purple hair infection was, sadly, terminal. They had to bury Liz in a bath of acetate.

The Mirror Crack’d (1980) is another Miss Marple special from Agatha Christie, and recounts a murder on a movie set, as Hollywood invades a small British town. Suffice it to say that, while quite twisty, the storytelling is also a little brittle, perhaps brought on by the abrupt segues that seemed characteristic of the 1970s moviemakers, or perhaps the rather large cast. The lesson of this tale is somewhat atypical for Christie, as an unfortunate transmission of a virus by the murder victim, who did not know she was infected, results in the birth of a retarded baby.

A sad commentary on the realities of a world. Let not innocence stand in the way of sudden death, Agatha might be heard to mutter.

But, for completists, this is a bonanza, crowned by Tony Curtis and Elizabeth Taylor, bringing the glamor of a, by then, bygone age – and its seamy underside.

Enjoy, but you may have to work at it.

Shaping the battlefield is a phrase used by analysts of Putin’s War, describing the attempt to reshape a battle field into a more favorable configuration by each side. It’s very common and, in politics, it happens a lot, from what I see, especially for statewide contests.

The Republicans are now signaling their recognition that there’s an existential threat in ranked-choice-voting, as Alaska Public Media is reporting:

Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has certified an application for a petition that, if successful, would get rid of the state’s ranked choice voting system and non-partisan primary.

Sponsor Art Mathias wants to go back to the traditional election, where a candidate from each officially recognized party has a spot on the general election ballot in each race.

Which is much easier for extremists. The ideological gap, if you will, between an extremist and a moderate example of their Party may be far larger than that between the moderate and the moderate of a different Party, and, if this is made apparent during the campaign, why, the extremist may not get the votes they’d otherwise receive in a non-ranked choice voting system.

Mathias reason for discarding a system made for moderates?

He said the new system forced candidates to hold their tongues, to avoid rankling the supporters of their opponents.

Sounds like unrepentant whining to me.

Look, shaping the battlefield, or changing the rules in less romantic parlance, is a perfectly valid maneuver, providing the changes don’t unfairly advantage one side or the other. That, in itself, can sometimes be a nasty little question, but I’ll not go into it here.

The real question here is not whether Mathias is just a whiner, or recognizes that he’s an extremist and is trying to cover it up. The question is whether Alaskans liked the experience of having available an option to select a moderate in the two 2022 state-wide races (in which Senator Murkowski (R) and Mary Peltola (D) won re-election and election, respectively), and took it.

I would say the same question applies to the left wing of the Democrats, but in Alaska the Republicans dominate, so it may not matter much.

And this may be one of the most important political maneuvers for the next five years, if it spreads out of Alaska. Win or lose, this is an excellent path for reclaiming seats from extremists.

Too bad this was the best headgear. I’d have preferred the title Evil Under Hats. Or maybe Evil Under Hairpieces.

Evil Under the Sun (1982) is a lightweight rendition of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stumbling into a murder, this time on a French vacation beachfront. Make no mistake, there are twists and gambits, passions and hatreds, but somehow it never comes to life. A is dead, B through F have reasons, even good reasons, to kill A, but in the end the bad guys would get away, if they just hadn’t made that one tiny error.

Meh.

Perhaps the problem is the scenery dominates the movie, fabulous cliffs and blue seas and men and ladies in scant, for the time, swimming clothing. But it all feels so bourgeois, as if it’s happening again and again on all the beaches local to this one, to the self-centered by the self-centered. Bourgeois? Yes, bourgeois, crimes of the bourgeois against the bourgeois.

It may be murder, but in some essential sense it feels like a peculiarly bourgeois crime, committed by newcomers to the class of bourgeois against its royalty, a ridiculous statement on its face, and, yet, a truth that renders the drama painfully socially provincial: no one really cares, but, perhaps, Poirot and his neurotic physique.

Perhaps the lack of Poirot-foil is brought to a sharp point in this drama, as Captain Hastings, the naive and jealous sidekick of Christie’s invention, is not yet present. In other of the Belgian’s dramas he’s the anchorline for Poirot, who is the racing yacht, holding the quicksilver detective in close contact with the working men and women who have suffered at the hands of some criminals’ mischief; or, sometimes, the reverse, as the lower-class criminal buffets the hapless heiress, relieving her of her ill-earned millions and even her life, much to her grief.

But in Evil Under The Sun, it’s not so much the criminals, but the entire social system under indictment, an indictment equal parts criminal and petty and boring. They all dance, but it’s all uncertain mincing and tights exhibiting dismaying seams.

Et ainsi ça se passe.

Found on AL-Monitor’s Why Tunisian InstaDeep’s $682m exit may not mark Maghreb’s turning point:

Yassir Ismail Idrissi, former Careem entrepreneur and co-founder of the Egyptian food supply startup Nomu, believes that this exit will not lead external investors to pump money into the region, “not because they don’t want to, but the hassle of dealing with the region’s grunting policies is not worth it.”

Grunting? I understand that exit means the enterprise has been sold, but grunting?

Ryan Cooper of MSNBC is another advocate of the platinum coin solution to the threatened Federal debt default. If you’ve not been paying attention, this hypothesized imminent catastrophe is the fact that the amount of money that can be borrowed by the Federal Government is limited by law, and when we run into that limit then the government cannot borrow more to, say, pay subcontractors, employees, and any other liability. House Republicans have so far refused to up the limit, demanding Democrats cut spending on a collection of institutions, such as Medicare, and thus letting the Republicans bypass the primary, preferred, and only legitimate way to change those programs: legislation. What they’re trying to do is extortion, as many have pointed out.

Incidentally, the House Republicans, or at least the House’s Freedom Caucus, think they should be able to pick and choose who gets paid in the meantime, but the President, the Senate Democrats, and quite possibly the Senate Republicans have all slapped the House GOP’s hand.

Cooper’s advocacy is for an outré counter-strategy called the platinum coin solution:

All this is why the famous platinum coin is Biden’s most legally defensible option, despite how silly it sounds. A 1997 law clearly grants the treasury secretary the ability to mint platinum coins of any denomination, in part with the intended purpose of making profit for the government through seignorage [WOTD here – haw]. If Congress says that the president must spend, cannot borrow, but can mint, then the way is clear for a legal stickler. Mint a trillion or two in platinum coins, deposit them at the Federal Reserve, and hey, presto, problem solved. Economically, it would be virtually identical to borrowing the money, and presumably at some point the ceiling could be raised and the coin spending replaced with normal debt.

More on the platinum coin solution is here.

Now, I’m no expert on this sort of thing. Arguably, no one qualifies as such when it comes to a financial strategy that has never been promulgated before. It’s worth noting that Treasury Secretary and former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen disagrees with Cooper, as he notes:

Yet administration lawyers apparently disagree. Yellen has further said the coin is a “gimmick” that “compromises the independence of the Fed, conflating monetary and fiscal policy.” This is a weak argument in context — it’s hard to see why a gimmick that allegedly erodes the (highly overrated) independence of the Fed would be worse than financial Armageddon.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), current leader of the GOP in the Senate.

In the end, though, I have to wonder if Cooper is trying to analyze the wrong problem.

Anyone who has been paying attention to President Biden knows the President’s strongest domestic concern is not a debt default, but, much to the consternation of the GOP, the House GOP itself. Biden regards their behavior as poisonous to the United States. He’s said this a number of times.

So how does one defang the serpent?

Not by negotiating with the extremists. It grants them legitimacy and a reputation for being effective. They are wild-eyed extremists, and letting them acquire a reputation for being part of the mainstream would simply encourage them to repeat this illicit maneuver.

So, instead, they are being isolated. They are told to follow the rules, they are virtually being told to grow up. For many, including myself, Biden is running the risk that the House GOP won’t abandon the extremists, and we’ll go into default, world-wide financial meltdown, blah blah blah. But Biden and his advisors may calculate that such a disaster is better than letting the inmates run the show – and then can be used to end the careers of the troublemakers. They may view this as a win-win situation – and it’s a position not without legitimacy.

In the end, I think the point here is to blunt the extremists’ influence, and to imperil their careers. Solve the default problem? Sure, that, too.

It’s just what you think: the Plantae version of Senator McConnell, See above for the human version.

But, really, it may be to chase the nut-cases out of the government. This may be part of the McConnell Reform Effort.

What!! you say?

Senator McConnell (R-KY), much as it pains me to say it, may represent the sanest segment of the current Republican Party. He’s certainly no fan of such lunatics as former President Trump, or Senators Scott (FL), Johnson (WI), or the Freedom Caucus. I, personally, think he’s displayed exceptionally poor judgment over the years, resulting in an arrogant, overweening super-majority on SCOTUS that is bringing public opprobrium on the institution, and an inability to write serious legislation when he’s in charge of the Senate. But, compared to the other inmates, he may be the most sane, and he seems to be competing with the far more extreme members of the GOP for access to the controls of the party.

And so I call it the McConnell Reform Effort.

And sigh.

Just give her a pipe and she’ll fit right in.

Them! (1954) is a highly competent story-telling effort grafted onto a nuclear horror meme. It all starts with the discovery of a little girl wandering the New Mexican desert by the police. Traced to a nearby vacation trailer owned by an FBI agent, the location of her family remains a mystery, as the trailer has been wrecked.

Sending the kid to a hospital via ambulance, the cops find a local store similarly vandalized, and the proprietor dead. One of the cops heads for the station, leaving the other to face the New Mexican night and its shadows.

It doesn’t go well.

Soon, a father & daughter team of entomologists from the Federal Government show up in response for calls for assistance. With their help, the local New Mexicans finally find a huge mound, and in it is … well … monsters.

Nuclear monsters.

They’re eradicated, but where there’s one mutation, there can be more, and a nationwide search yields another infestation under Los Angeles, missing children, and the ongoing challenge of bad special effects.

But that last is the worst of the movie, and badly done monsters is something of a tradition in the industry of the time. The rest of Them! is absolutely nothing to sneeze at: tight, logical, and plausible plot, a minimum of gender discrimination, and excellent acting and sets. It was really a pleasure to watch.

If you like monster movies from the era prior to the advent of computer graphics, Them!, despite its fairly odd title – yes, I know the little girl uses it – is one of the best of that category.

Not all physicists are tongue-tied.

I'm thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal – the top prize in Mathematics – for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers. https://t.co/RJQ7eP8n8x

— Congressman Bill Foster (@RepBillFoster) January 20, 2023

Rep Foster (D-IL) forgets to mention that MIT Professor Santos’ work in black holes is a wonderful metaphor for what the good Professor is doing to the Republican Party – sucking them down a black hole of dishonor.

Image source: ScienceBlogs

In a moment, you’ll be asked to judge the Executioner’s technique. Please use the criteria of efficiency, cost, and – no, D’Artagnan, that’s not a kaiju. Shame on you for distracting us while trying to save the malcontent!

The Four Musketeers (1974) is the simple and straightforward continuation of the first of the series of Aramis, Portos, Athos, and D’Artagnan of Gascony. Suspicion of Milady’s origins has D’Artagnan in her bed, where he discovers she was indeed condemned, and is also Athos’ ex-wife. With the endangered Constance, who has insulted Milady, safely tucked away in a convent, the Musketeers engage in various adventures.

Meanwhile, the ladies are either helpless, or having to sacrifice their virtue to avoid having to, ah, sacrifice their lives to the marital gods. Freedom is, for the most fortunate women, dearly bought; the less fortunate simply don’t have any.

But then, the men are subject to the whims of the King, of God the Cardinal, and, lurking in the background, incurable illnesses and a medical profession incompetent in much of its efforts. The parallels are unemphasized, but present. My Arts Editor, unfamiliar with the story, fully expected one of the good guys to find a miraculous way to survive imminent death, so when that death did prove implacable, it’s yet another reminder that, for all the life and vivacity of the story and, especially, Athos’ particularly energetic style of fighting, the dice of the Gods play’s heavily with the lives of everyone in this story.

But it remains fun, and is a worthy successor to The Three Musketeers (1973).

When it comes to the cryptocurrency situation, it’ll be interesting to see in five years how the following report is viewed – an announcement introducing the Great Turnaround, or the introduction of the Clown Show of the Last Act:

In an attempt to eradicate trade transactions in fiat currencies, Russia is working with several countries to launch a stablecoin backed by the global monetary asset, gold, but this move could reportedly pave the way for the establishment of a new global economic order.

Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of the Indian financial services company Zerodha, sounded the alarm about this undertaking led by Russia and Iran and noted that if this trend picks up, then it could establish a new global economic order.

Zerodha is the largest, most popular and technologically advanced stock broker in India that works on a low-margin, high-volume model that allows the company to charge a very minimal amount per transaction due to its generally high trading volume.

“Iran and Russia to issue a new stablecoin backed by Gold. Damn, if this picks up could be day 1, event 1 of establishing a new economic order everywhere. No idea why it’s getting no oxygen from the global press,” Kamath said in a tweet Monday. [International Business Times]

Because, well, this is Russia and Iran using Western technologies, if only inspired. Because the two countries together don’t have the international prestige and wherewithal to swing this project.

As the potential for corruption and grifting using cryptocurrencies comes into focus, why would anyone paying attention to international events even consider playing in this sandbox?

So this is just a weird little clown show, in my view.

FAFO:

A reader writes concerning the fencing in Musketeers:

Good take Hue. Thanks for sharing that.

Whats your opinion on the physicality of the sword play vs. the Errol Flynn/Stewart Granger/Zorro films? I would think it was a realistic portrayal.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any Errol Flynn movies since I began fencing. Zorro with Banderas was quite athletic and, if not entirely realistic, a great deal of fun; I do recall seeing an installment with, I believe, Basil Rathbone as the bad guy, so it was probably the 1940 THE MARK OF ZORRO, and while not nearly as athletic as Banderas, I seem to remember thinking it was really good stage fencing.

When it comes to Granger I’ve only seen SCARAMOUCHE, and, yeah, while the movements are a little exaggerated, it does look something like what fencers do.

Syncope:

Syncope (SINK-a-pee) is another word for fainting or passing out. Someone is considered to have syncope if they become unconscious and go limp, then soon recover. For most people, syncope occurs once in a great while, if ever, and is not a sign of serious illness. However in others, syncope can be the first and only warning sign prior to an episode of sudden cardiac death. Syncope can also lead to serious injury. Talk to your physician if syncope happens more often. [Johns Hopkins Medicine]

Noted in “For decades, she endured brief blackouts. Then a scary one hit her.”, Sandra G. Boodman, WaPo:

“Is she about to chuck a pie at us?” thought Constance. “Ah, she’s such a vindictive woman!”

The Three Musketeers (1973) is the Michael York & a cloud of stars version of the old and venerable tale. This is the most comedic version of the old tale that I’ve seen, ranging from broad farce to subtle presentation of an English Duke completing an assignation with a French Queen in a laundry in the basement of the French palace, and includes such touches as capturing the offhand mutterings of characters, the disposal of slops and worse out the building windows onto passing traffic, that might be suppressed in a more dignified retelling of the story.

In terms of the story, there’s little enough out of the ordinary: D’Artagnan is dispatched to Paris by his sword-master and former Musketeer father to seek fame, fortune, fighting, and women. He encounters Rochefort and is insulted by Rochefort’s disdain for D’Artagnan’s Gascony homeland; later, as he attempts to arrange a duel with Rochefort, he inadvertently schedules duels with the eponymous trio of musketeers. Interrupted by the Palace guard for brawling, they and D’Artagnan pummel the guard and befriend D’Artagnan. From Constance to the Queen’s assignation with the Duke, and her gift of a rememberance to the Duke, and then Cardinal Richelieu’s devious request for a masked ball at which the rememberance should be displayed, it’s all here, executed with flair, dash, and the occasional bit of clumsiness. As a fencer, I appreciate the clumsiness, it enhances my self-esteem.

This is what I grew up on, and its carefree approach to heroism is a lesson in itself.

Still, it shows its age a little bit. Constance is distressingly helpless, and the disparate lives of the various classes can be appalling for those audience members not conscious of the utility of fidelity to social realities in period storytelling. And if you need your heroes to be ridiculously buff and testosterone-ridden, go elsewhere for your entertainment. Michael York, playing the lead, might be described as ripped, but he’s built like a collection of toothpicks, and he’s not the only such actor.

It’s too light-hearted and, to be frank, shallow to recommend, but if you haven’t seen it, if you like sword-play and quick wit and plain silliness, and have a couple of hours to while away, this might be a candidate for your time.

From CNN/Business:

First, it was disposable cameras. Then it was low-rise jeans. Now, Gen-Z’s latest “vintage” obsession is the flip phone – that mid-1990s era phone that has suddenly become oh so popular with millennials. …

Actress Dove Cameron, who rose to fame on the Disney Channel’s “Liv and Maddie” show, said in a November interview that she had switched to a flip phone. Spending too much time on her phone and looking at social media “is really bad for me,” she said.

Eschew timesucks, folks. Give yourselves time to think.

JD Sword and Jeff Dellinger noted in passing on The Morning Heresy:

Posters for artist Demi Lovato’s new album, Holy Fvck, have been banned by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for being “likely to cause serious offense to Christians.” According to CNN, the ASA received “complaints from four members of the public.” You know, out of the nearly 67 million people in Britain.

Surely there’s a religion out there that takes holy offense at any form of censorship?

The biggest natural pair of eyes in movies. No, I don’t know about the cap. Yes, that’s milk.

Carry On Cleo (1964) is the story of the Roman Empire at the time of Julius Caesar, his assault on Britain and Egypt, his relationship with Ptolemy, Marc Antony, and all the test, the Vestal Virgins, the slaves, and all the rest.

Told with bawdiness, puns, and no consideration for what’s possible and what’s not, Carry On Cleo is part of a 30-odd long series of movies covering various topics with a tongue in the cheek and a wink. Nothing is sacred nor profound, and the rest is, well, silly.

As we watched the pretty English lasses endure the leers of English cum Roman men, however, my Arts Editor said, “I should hate this, but it actually isn’t making my teeth itch.” Is there any better praise?