Godzilla Minus One does not deserve their Oscar

Unpopular opinion? The Best Visual Effects Oscar win for Godzilla Minus One (G-1) is undeserved. G-1 was great for a movie for a budget of $15M, but isn't in the same class as The Creator, which was also made on a smaller budget by Hollywood standards. The Creator is far richer and more impressive, with proper depth of field and gorgeous scenes. 

Also, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (GOTG3) has a big  advantage. In GOTG3, a lot of completely CGI characters that are so well done, you forget they are CGI. In my opinion, both The Creator and GOTG3 are far superior films than G-1 in terms of VFX.  In particular, GOTG3 was robbed.  However, that wouldn't be so bad if The Creator won instead.  But to give the award to G-1 instead of either of those two? Yikes.

I have seen all three of these movies in the theater on the biggest screens available for each.

New Flag Design in Planning for Illinois

Back in August of 2023, the State of Illinois started the process to design a new flag for the state. From the announcement, I'm not sure if the process will take suggestions from the public directly.  Instead, there's going to be a relatively huge design committee, though.

Vexillologically speaking, the current state flag is not a good design. Problems include:

• A complex image directly pulled from the State Seal, where details are lost in the cluster and not easy to draw;
• As a result, the flag also has too many colors;

• Unnecessary, distracting, redundant and poorly placed text "ILLINOIS".

 

The only thing that makes this flag distinct when comparing it to other state flags is the white background.  Other than that, from a glance, you wouldn't know if this was the flag for Michigan, North Dakota or Vermont.

One interesting fact is that Illinois created anniversary flags. I think the answer for a new flag design lies in the Centennial flag.

This flag isn't perfect, but it's much better and more distinctive. I think this would make a great basis for the new state flag.  Here's what I would consider to change in order to adopt this flag as the new state flag:

• I don't think the star fields are necessary, as these represent other states and not Illinois itself; 

• The design looks like a missile (or even something rude) in modern aesthetics.

I would remove the star fields and move the white star to the center.

This concept is historic, unique when compared other states, easily recognizable on its own, and simple enough for grade school children to draw from memory. It also falls in line with the regional motif established by the Chicago flag; while offering more strength of design by being even more succinct.

It should be noted that Wallace Rice designed both the Chicago flag and the Illinois Centennial flag.

I'm super suspicious of Tom Westfall in Quantum Leap

 

I have no thesis or anything...I'm just super suspicious of Tom Westfall
byu/fcsuper inQuantumLeap

Possible resurrection of the landing page

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In the early days of the internet, landing pages were often little more than menus that website visitors use to navigate to different pages and sites. Software at the time also heavily relied on menu-based interfaces. Even the most expensive applications had very simple menus as their landing page, often called "main menu".

However, for decades, forcing users into a main menu or other landing page has been considered bad user interface design. Menus were moved from the opening screen to the top bar, bottom bar, and even along the sides of the window/screen. For a long time, applications would open directly into the application's workspace, where users would then navigate menus to open files. Similarly, websites commonly started directly on the content page, with navigation moved to the sidebar.

About ten years ago, user interface design started to shift back to special pages for operational activities such as opening documents. Let's call these collectively as "operations pages." Microsoft Office returned to the idea of a special page for operations in recent versions, though these pages are optional. Other applications also now have operations pages that are not optional.  (These are sometimes called splash pages.) The interfaces of these operations pages vary quite a bit from application to application, with many applications (including Office applications) trying to use all the extra real estate to provide some additional functionality.

Linktree

In 2016, Linktree came along and rebranded the old-fashioned landing page. It was created because social media websites don't allow their users to place more than one website in their profile pages. Linktree hosts a page that acts as a personal landing page for all of your various social media profiles. Linktree is a bit fancier than what was used in the 1980s and 1990s, but functionally identical from the perspective of the website visitor. From the perspective of the Linktree's customer, it provides some useful services for a fee (such as tracking visitor data).

There are now other Link in Bio hosting services as well.

WordPress

In 2023, WordPress is finally getting into this game with w.link. WordPress supports the creation of a landing page that looks very similar to Linktree's concept. The advantage of WordPress' solution is that users can self-host their landing page. Even with self-hosting, WordPress still offers some useful services for a fee.

However, for users who are already self-hosting and don't need those additional services, there's no need to use Linktree, WordPress, or any other "Link in Bio" services. You can just make your own landing page with relatively few lines of code in an HTML file.

fcsuper's place

I've literally been using a landing page from day-one on my website fcsuper.com (since mid-aughties).  I'm sure many of my visitors over the years sneered when they arrived upon my original landing page.  My original landing page was ugly, but functional.

After seeing the concept of the landing page undergoing a resurrection, I decided it was time to refresh my own. My new landing page has been active for a few months. It was modernized to be flexible, allowing it to display correctly on both phones and computers. It's still very simple, but it has some previews of content. It has no ads (yet) and no tracking. It's literally just a menu of my personal web across the internet.

However, this has now led me to a new thought. Should I make two landing pages: one for my truly personal activities, and one for my career-related activities? I guess I'll figure that out soon enough.

"Love Actually" is the Nickelback of movies.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpMVFRKMg70/

Likely wrong, but verify your local laws to be certain

 

In the US, the rule for which lanes you are allowed to take on turns varies by state. However, the rule shown in this image is likely untrue in most places. Instead, more often than not, the right-of-way driver is allowed to pick their lane.

Of course, this post isn't legal advice, so check local laws to know the rule for your area. However, many people mistakenly believe their state allows them to turn when they don't have the right-of-way. A better rule is to always yield to right-of-way, regardless (because you never know what the other person is going to do).

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoAecNjOu5Q/

Facebook seems to be broken as a record of past check-ins and other events

In the past, I fairly consistently made frequent check-ins as posts to Facebook for places I visited.  However, it seems Facebook is increasingly deprecating this functionality.  You can still check-in quite easily, but old check-in posts are breaking.  The issue seems to be getting worse over time.  

Facebook was very reliable at one point.  You could look back through your timeline to see what you did, where you did it, and when you did it.  There was even UI that made it easy to choose a time period to peruse.  This was useful for so many reasons, not the least of which is planning for further activities in places you already visited, or providing information to others who planned to visit those places.  Let's also no forget the value of being able to stroll down memory lane.  

Here's an example of one such broken check-in.  It's a post in 2012 that simply says "Surprisingly good and unusual".  The information about where this check-in took place, including the town and other general information has been completely removed.

The posting is useless, other than to verify I did something with Allie on that day.  Fortunately, I also maintain a blog (this blog).  For this particular event, I was able to go back to the day in question and see that Allie and I visited Salem, MA.  I'm not sure which place in Salem is represented by this check-in, however.

I am also finding posts on Facebook where uploaded photos no longer display.  No amount of troubleshooting has restored those photos.  This seems to be particularly problematic for Life Events, where posts which contain one more more photos no longer show those photos.  (These are my own photos that I uploaded to Facebook myself, so it's not an issue of someone else controlling privacy settings or removing their account from Facebook.)  When you edit the post to see what's going on, Facebook seems aware that photos were included in the post because Facebook shows a loading window, but yet that loading window never resolves. When you reupload the photos to the post, you will find that you cannot summit the changed post. Facebook just errors-out on you when you try.

Additionally, even more recently, when I've checked-in at movie theaters for specific movies I'm about to watch, those posts are losing information about the movie.  This is happening for posts that are only a few weeks old, if that.

As of this minute, Facebook is not currently adding post to the Life Events page for any posts dated in 2023.

Given all these issues, and Facebook's track record of similar buggy behavior for other deprecated tools in the past, it seems prudent to no longer rely on Facebook as a record of my past.  This means I have to fall back on my blog.  It's a bit more work to create blog posts than Facebook posts, but at this point, it seems worth the extra trouble.

I've already started replicating past Life Events posts from Facebook on this blog.  

I've been on many business trips, and many of these are interesting destinations. However, I add personal trips as Life Events, yet I don't typically create Life Events posts for common business travel. 

It's not often...

It's not often that Allie and I talk about a movie we've seen at the theater for days afterwards, but that's exactly what's happening for both movies Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis. Maverick is a fun thrill ride and Elvis is a fascinating biopic. (From facebook post in July.2022.)

Found clickbaity video entitled "Stop the government from buying your home (the SOLUTION)"

It's hard to use a blog article to criticize a YouTube video.  I've tried before, and will keep trying.  I'm just not interested in the idea of making actual reaction videos (yet).  Anyway, sometimes I run across an op-ed that's so bad in my opinion but presented so slickly, it makes me want to respond.  "Stop the government from buying your home (the SOLUTION)" is one of those videos.  In this video, the presenter is someone who claims to be involved in real estate.  However, he provides opinions that ultimately seem to me to be questionable. 

There's a lot of conflation of information and opinions in this video.  In my opinion, this leads the video to support a conclusion that really doesn't amount to much.  This is a very disappointing presentation.

As someone who grew up in low-income housing, I find the presenter's comments about government-directed affordable housing to be rather nonsensical.  He pulls some very specific and extraordinary examples of supposed failure and presents these as if they are the norm.

Worse, the presenter comments about specific problems for some affordable housing projects in NYC as if they are general to all affordable housing projects in NYC, or anywhere in the US.  Ironically, at least some of the problems he ties to affordable housing are actually pretty common in NYC, even in the most expensive skyrises.  

Hell, the presenter even conflates affordable housing with eminent domain, as if every effort for affordable housing by government requires the use of eminent domain.  This simply isn't true. 

The presenter's solution is to rely on developers, but in a way that appears to ignore local democracy.  A major portion of this video shows a developer talking about process for a real estate development project.  Nothing talked about by the real estate developer seems unreasonable. The process for real estate development includes the sited steps in order to protect the interests of the people already living within the city and provide adequate support for new denizens.  Further, the presenter completely ignores the fact that such projects also sometimes require the use of eminent domain. 

To me, this video feels like watching a "60 Minutes" hit piece more than something that's actually factual and useful.  Worst still is that the title of the video appears to be pure clickbait, as this video doesn't address how to actually stop the government from buying your home.  A more accurate title might be "One idea on how to address housing shortage over time."

Confusion about why audiences of Star Trek and Star Wars were alienated in recent decades

 

Chris Gore is an America writer and founder of Film Threat magazine.  I remember him when we was on Attack of the Show on the now defunct G4 cable channel.  The video above, titled "How To Alienate The Audience - Chris Gore", is a recent interview where he discusses how modernization of story franchises alienates audiences.  In my opinion, he badly misses the mark.  His argument is that franchises shouldn't be modernized, instead they should be told in the traditions within which the story originated.  His examples (vague references to Star Wars and Star Trek) are based on either his own opinion about style or bad examples of storytelling in general.  But, instead of recognizing bad storytelling as just that, he incorrectly links his examples to a generalization about modernization of franchises. 

Gore first talks about the movie adaptation of Lord of the Rings, in which he admits he's not read the original books, but he is a fan of the Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.  While I agree that great choices were made in the production of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, I disagree where Gore tries to extent his argument to all franchises that are based on older source material.

For example, I don't agree with his reference to Star Trek reboot's use of Beastie Boys music.  His snide comments seem to suggest he is too close to the subject matter.  The Beastie Boys song is an intentional period piece choice that represents what a major character is experiencing.  As such, it's no more out-of-place or dated than any Disney animated movie with a musical number that does EXACTLY the same thing.  Why is 20th Century rock/rap taken so much less seriously than 20th Century faux-classical music?  

Maybe some Sci-Fi fans are turned off by this music choice in Star Trek reboot. However, this rejection may have more to do with established and predictable expectations for Sci-Fi movies more so than what makes a good Sci-Fi movie.  Why are some dismissive of music in a Sci-Fi movie that isn't written by Danny Elfman, Alexander Courage or John Williams?  Even in the original Star Trek series, non-traditional music was used for particular scenes to capture a particular emotion for that scene, so I would challenge Gore's argument on this point as well.  There's nothing inherent to the Star Trek franchise that precludes rock/rap music. 

Gore then states his issues with the quote "It felt only natural to us that an adaption of the author's work would reflect what the world actually looks like."  His issues with this quote reinforce to me that he is confusing bad storytelling with the concept of modernization of franchises.  Well, as I mentioned above, bad storytelling is not the same thing as modernization of a story franchise.  Modernization can include bad storytelling, but you don't necessarily make a story bad because you've modernized it. 

Basically, what works for Lord of the Rings may not work for other story franchises.  Retelling stories in difference periods from the original works often necessitates updation.

Maybe Gore would benefit by exposing/re-exposing himself to Joseph Campbell works about storytelling of myths and how each Age needs to retell stories for that Age.  We don't need to tell stories to preserve them indefinitely for future generations.  We should tell stories so that they make sense for us today.  Future generations will determine if or when a story becomes timeless.