Every so often I'll experience a story for the first time without having any knowledge of it going in. Most recently two stories that amazed me were Nimona and The Wild Robot . There's a perfect level of "knowing what it's about" before watching or reading something, and sometimes that perfect level is "I know it exists" and nothing more.

Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies, but its data visualization is awful.  Let's talk my data-presentation philosophy!

I've always been a big reader, and I fall into a few patterns of what I read. The main ones are "reading new books" and "comfort reading"; I do the same in other media as well. Sometimes, I'll happily re-read a book for the umpteenth time because that's what I'm in the mood for.

In modern life, we're used to little things failing: a computer program crashes, a phone battery doesn't charge as much, a wire frays, power goes out in a storm. People who have studied or lived through disasters have learned that these little failures can have massive unforeseen consequences. The TV show The Expanse has a wonderfully clear explanation of these "simple-complex systems".

Earlier this year, I learned that the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park are not actually Velociraptors. Their size, characteristics, and behavior were modeled on a real dinosaur, but "Velociraptor" was a cooler name. *Mind explosion noises*

I love movies. I grew up in a house with a large collection of tapes and DVDs and enjoyed watching movies from both the current time and older movies from my parents' generation. As I've become a parent, I often think "is this movie something I want to share with my kids someday?" Today is about the movies that I've looked at and said, "...Yeah, that can disappear from living memory." These are movies that I enjoyed as a kid or teen, but they have aged very poorly.

I believe that the Netflix show Cobra Kai would not have existed without the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle , via the show How I Met Your Mother . This post is the cinema / TV equivalent of "No F-15 without XB-70" .

Apollo 13 was in the news briefly this past week: Ed Smylie appeared in the Economist's obituary , having died on April 21 at the age of 95. Ed led the team of engineers that saved Apollo 13 and the whole won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their efforts. Apollo 13 probably my favorite space movie, despite a lot of competition, and I think the main reason is the love of the material and the particular competence on display: the astronauts are definitely in mortal danger, but it's not because they're making silly mistakes. I've mentioned a couple movies lately, including Top Gun and Battle: Los Angeles . Love of the material Space travel is really cool! I can't count the number of times that I've watched the scene of the Saturn V rocket launching in that movie and it still gives me chills. All of the people who have to work together on the launch, the rousing music, the sheer power of the Saturn V at liftoff...it's a great sequence. And even tho...

I'm going public with my answer to xkcd's challenge in #2184 "Unpopular Opinions: Unpopular positive opinion challenge: Name a movie that... You genuinely like (not "so bad it's good") Came out in your adult life post-2000, and Is rated below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. Randall (xkcd's author) came up with Terminator: Genisys which as of today has a 26% rating on the Tomatometer (critic ratings) and 52% on the Popcornmeter (user ratings). For me, it's... Battle: Los Angeles I do dislike that I can't use a colon to indicate my choice because there's also one in the title, and I'll admit to routinely abbreviating it to "Battle: LA". I genuinely like the movie (more on that below) Randall is only a year older than me and the movie came out in 2011 (I first saw it later on a streaming service) Below 50% on both Rotten Tomatoes ratings! Why I like it For starters, I've had a soft spot for Aaron Eckhart ever since I first saw Thank...

A little silly today: a comparison of the "Danger Zone" introductions of the two Top Gun movies (1986 and 2022) and PLEASE, let the shots breathe! When I first saw Top Gun: Maverick (on Blu-Ray via a library rental), I had a moment where I had to confirm that I'd rented the correct movie. And then I wondered why the modernized opening credits didn't grab me as hard as the original's. I would love to credit the YouTube video that helped me realize why, but I can't find it anymore so I'll work with some similar ones that don't illustrate things quite as well. Side-by-side (both audios, original speeds): https://youtu.be/NGRzqkMyTHs   Minor Items Here are a few issues that I'm pretty sure are not the reason why I bounced off the new version, but can't have helped. Timing I'm sure that the cinematographers were working under tight restrictions on what they could film and when they could film it, but the lighting is so much more dramatic in...