Now it's jut Kirk and Sulu who are left.

I've only been there a few times in my life, but I've been there since the pandemic. The bathroom was deep in the basement and would cost a fortune to get up to code.

By Jesse Wegman

I heard an interview with the author on NPR end of last year or early this year. I have a little interest in the American Revolution and it sounded interesting, so I checked it out from the library. 

The biography tracks Wilson from his youth and studies in Edinburgh to coming to the colonies and setting up shop as a lawyer, pre-Revolution. His practice grows and eventually he's a well paid, well sought after attorney. He's one of the few signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He helped draft the founding documents and was responsible for the "We the people of" part of the preamble. He was also partially responsible for the 3/5ths compromise and the electoral college. There a lot of repeated messaging about his character flaws, I think to explain why he's "forgotten". He did a lot of land speculation, constantly borrowing large sums of money and was on the run from creditors towards the end of his life. The messaging paints him as an important and sympathetic character and yet also an asshole. 

The interview made it sound like he was forgotten, but the author goes on to explain in the epilogue that he was researching the electoral college and kept coming across this unfamiliar name, but then references other works that detail Wilson's life/work.


Not particularly recommended unless you are into constitutional law, the founding of the nation, etc...

--tg

4 episodes in...meh. The writing isn't great. I'm not that fond of any of the cast...except James Spader. He's the best thing in this. I barely remember WandaVision and Avengers Ultron and this picks up on those story lines so I might be a little more engaged if I cared to be. There's a lot of stupid going in in the writing. i think other stories have done a better job of presenting various entities living in a virtual construct. This is dumbed way down for the kiddos, but then has dialog like "no one wants their back door infiltrated unexpectedly" (or something to that effect)...

I'll keep watching, but mostly cause I'm caught up on most other shows.

--tg

--tg

A documentary mostly about Civilringz, who I knew little about having not really followed his story, but working towards the singular Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album, which is a wild tale from any angle. This was well done overall, preserving the music, integrating Shi Yanming in a way that he can brag about it a lot, a good snapshot of the Wu-world, which is difficult to comprehend from the outside. There's some good candid RZA footage, stuff from his Europe tour and trip to the pyramids in Egypt. 

D00M recommended if you like music documentaries.

(06-25-2026, 12:28 PM)Drunk Monk Wrote: Sense and Sensibility

It's about the tech elite's big ideas and plans for the future. The subtitle is "AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity" If focuses on their main ideas - the Singularity, Effective Altruism, longtermism, transhumanism, space migration, and rationalism. He deftly exposes the huge logical flaws in all of them. Some of those flaws were already obvious to me, or I already knew about them, but some were new. He's a pretty good writer, and it read well. Clearly a lot of people who pride themselves on being logical are anything but, and believe a lot of nonsense.

Recommended if you want to know more about that stuff. I've heard it goes well with Gil Duran's "The Nerd Reich" which I plan to get to at some point.

Another C-drama starring Tian Xiwei, the lead actress in Pursuit of Jade. Here she plays a dual role - an evil lady of the imperial court and a night soil cleaner peasant. Yeah, no doubt they’re gonna cross paths soon. I just watched the first episode out of curiosity and Tian quickly grabbed my attention as a villainess. I will watch more. There’s less the a dozen eps up now but they’re dropping new ones every week, surely trying to capitalize on the success of Pursuit of Jade. It’s all about Tian for me.

Stanley Tucci enlists two young thieves to steal the Mona Lisa from Louvre. It’s kinda cute, but kinda dumb. Harmless. Absurd. Lots of questionable twists. Kinda falls flat really because most of the cleverness is just bad writing. There’s almost some chemistry within the thieves. A heist film that is completely implausible. Stacy made popcorn. I brushed Yuki. 

Not D00M recommended.