This might be hitting your inbox a little late today, and you can blame my cat. For the last three nights, she has decided that it's good and fun to wake me up sometime around 2AM and not let me get back to sleep until 5 or so. she insists I pay attention to her, by lightly tapping my arm with her claws outstretched. It's not quite a scratch, but it also isn't that. I'll pet her for a bit, but if I stop (because it' the middle of the night and I fell back asleep) she goes back to scratching me until I give her the attention she so desperately craves. So I'm a lil seepy. A Thing in my Possession: A Pinhole Eclipse Viewing Box So the total solar eclipse happened this week for a large portion of the US population. I hear it was real neat. I was in a zone that only got about 85% coverage of the sun, and even then it was really cool. I spent an hour last week making an eclipse pinhole viewer, using a cardboard box, some duct tape and a piece of a coke zero can. It wasn't exactly the method in this video, but it was pretty close. I know the eclipse glasses were everywhere, but I think the pinhole viewer is actually a cooler, and dare I say it, better way to view a partial solar eclipse. Eclipse glasses aren’t bad by any means, but the thing I don’t like about them is the very thing they are designed to do: block out light. You shouldn’t look at the sun. It’s a bad idea in almost every situation, even, or especially, during a partial solar eclipse. But if you are going to look at the sun, doing so through heavy filtration is a good idea. The sun is too bright, and the level of filtration you need is significant. Most welding goggles actually don’t have enough flirtation, because the sun is brighter than the plasma arcs that occur when welding. I think we’re so used to it, that we often forget just how dangerous the unknowable ball of fire in the sky that gives us all life really is. So eclipse glasses are good and cool. But a Pinhole viewer works a little differently. instead of filtering out parts of the light, the pinhole viewer uses all the light in a smaller quantity instead. It also creates a photograph of what the eclipse looks like with nothing between the light and your eyes. Photograph’s etymology means light-writing and that’s what you’re doing with a pinhole viewer. You create n image of what the sun looks like in exact moment you are looking at it. My pinhole viewer was so precise that I could actually see the clouds around the sun while it was peeking through them. And it was all in glorious color! I tried to take some photos of it with my phone, but they didn’t turn out well. I wish I had thought about it earlier and I could have built in a hole to slide my phone through. Oh well, there’s always next time. Poorly Organized thoughts On: Quitting a Youtuber I don’t want to slag on YouTubers too much, but I’ve seen a couple videos lately that made me so disgruntled that I had to shut them off. It was almost a visceral reaction. I’m not here to make this a callout, so I won’t name and shame and the two examples were on relatively small channels (although larger than my own.) The first example was a woman who was doing a book blog about some books she had finished recently and wanted to share some of her opinions of “mistakes” “feminist” books make. I was willing to give the video a try, because I like checking out smaller channels, but she started off with a condescending and inaccurate definition of what feminism means. Feminism is a complex and robust field, and I’m willing to accept a broad variety of intersecting definitions. But this definition was very specific and very incorrect. She then followed it up with her first example of a “mistake” that a “feminist” book she had read made. The example she gave of a mistake was a narrative choice about certain characters in the book, but the larger problem is that the book she used wasn’t even what I would call a feminist book. I wouldn’t call many books feminist, anyway because I like to think of feminism as a lens through which to examine any work of art, rather than a specific mode of creation or output, but within the very narrow and incorrect definition this youtuber outlined, it technically qualified. But the narrative choice in the book she described didn’t feel like a mistake to me; it felt like a choice. I haven’t read this particular book, but I also suspect that the choice was actually more nuanced in the text than this youtuber made it out to be. So at that point I checked out and did not learn what other “mistakes” “feminist” books make. The other example was more egregious because it included an actual factual error. The context isn’t important, but the content of the inaccuracy was that in 1935 a prize was offered in a contest. The prize, as described in the video was Fifteen Euros. This pinged my radar, because I know the Euro didn’t; exist as currency in 1934. I wasn’t sure exactly when the Euro came into existence, but I remember it happening, so it wasn’t in 1934. I did a very quick wikipedia search to confirm it was created in the 1990s. While I was there on wikipedia I also checked the wiki page for the subject of the contest, to see if maybe the video author was converting to modern money or something, but nope, the original prize was 15 British Pounds in 1934. Not Euros, and not adjusted for inflation or converted to a different currency or anything. I’m mostly fine with videos that tell people cool things. I don’t think they’re as interesting to me as videos with analysis or personal experiences, but I understand why they get made. But if you’re going to just recite a list of facts at me, you better get the facts right. You better believe I clicked the “Don’t recommend this channel to me” box on both of these. Stuff I'm Watching First, an update: I got Dick Miller replaced by a different Richard Miller on the IMDB page of that movie. Good things can happen, as long as you set your sights real low.
The Criterion Channel, the streaming platform of the Criterion Collection, announced a new feature this week, a 27/7 stream of movies on the platform. You can just click a button and be watching something unexpected. It's all the joys of turning on a random movie on cable some Saturday afternoon without knowing what it is before hand. There were some mild criticisms when the feature launched with no warning: the biggest one is that you couldn't see what movie you were watching. You also can't rewind back to the beginning, or save the movie for watching later. You can however pause it. So that's something. They did roll out a solution for the "whats on now" problem, by launching a companion website WhatsOnNow.CriterionChannel.com which is just a very simple page with the name of whatever movie is playing now. Personally I like the mystery and surprise of just tuning in and seeing what's on. I've even gone so far as turning it into a game. I start a stopwatch and see if I can figure out what movie is playing within 30 seconds. I can often do it in under 10. Of course I have a much broader knowledge of the films on the platform than most people, but I'm still pretty proud of my hit rate. So far I've won the game with the following films: Police Story Daisies Blood Simple (actually took slightly more than 30, but I should have caught it sooner) Mon Oncle Umbrellas of Cherbourg Gimme Shelter
All of which I have seen before, but most of which I don't mind revisiting.
There's a couple movies I haven't solved, but one of them was just starting and so captivating that I watched the whole thing. that move? The documentary Cane Toads: An Unnatural History. I had never heard of this movie, but the opening shots of people looking down on the camera (as if I was a toad?) and either shouting insults or singing praises was enough to get me hooked. This documentary is ostensibly about the cane toad, an invasive species brought to Australia with the goal of fighting sugar cane beetles. It was completely unsuccessful in that goal, but managed to breed to the point of ubiquity in just a few short decades. The movie is a series of interviews with people about their opinions and history with the toads, and these are some wild interviews. It felt like I was watching a lost Christopher Guest mockumentary, but it was all real (or as real as any documentary can be.) I learned about the toads, but I also laughed and was frightened along the way. More documentaries should aspire to be this good.
This week's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song of the Week is Who's The New Guy
Here's a picture of the cat that kept me up all night
