Current Watching

[Hot Pepsi]

Agree, the book about Ilus/New Terra was my least favorite, but it felt like it’s where the story needed to go.

In the audio reading of it - at least the version I listened to - the evil corporate cop has a kind of John Wayne accent. The show made him English, which seems to work better. Of course, in 200 years, there won’t be an England.


I tried to watch Six Underground. I couldn’t get through it. Just too stupid.

[hobbes]

Did you see that they’ve re-recorded it with the narrator from the other Expanse books? Audible allowed me to download the replacement for free. (Did we have this conversation before?)

[Hot Pepsi]

We did have this conversation and yet I haven’t got round to doing that. Too many other books to listen to. I don’t even remember what that book is titled. I’m glad they responded to their fans.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I tried to watch Six Underground. I couldn’t get through it. Just too stupid.

The film or yourself?

[Hot Pepsi]

Both, perhaps, but mostly the film. Actually, it wasn’t really stupid so much as the violence was just gross and I didn’t care about the plot. And I found the Michael Bayness of it - the rapid jump cuts, the noise, etc. - was giving me a headache.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Both, perhaps, but mostly the film. Actually, it wasn’t really stupid so much as the violence was just gross and I didn’t care about the plot. And I found the Michael Bayness of it - the rapid jump cuts, the noise, etc. - was giving me a headache.

Sure. I can only take a movie like that maybe once every six months tops. But there's something satisfying about watching someone who's the best at what he/she does, even if the result is trivial. The only thing missing here was Jason Statham, then it'd be perfect.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Keep S4 of "The Expanse" as a Christmas present to myself during quiet days.

I've started watching "American Gods" out of the blue, it's quite a weird series but I'm sticking with it. I did not expect to see an erect cock in a mainstream telly series but there you are...

[WOM]

I've never seen The Expanse, but I can tell you that I live quite near the Martian Embassy.

[Hot Pepsi]

I've never seen The Expanse, but I can tell you that I live quite near the Martian Embassy.

What is it in real life?

[WOM]

What is it in real life?

Scarborough Campus of University of Toronto.

[WOM]

Here it is again as the backdrop for a VW ad about 55 years ago. It's quite a cool building, inside and out.

[San Bernardhinault]

Because of all the chatter on here, I started S1 of the Expanse yesterday. Just watched a couple of episodes and I'm not quite grabbed yet.

[hobbes]

Keep at it. The pace builds through season 1. If you don't like it after 9 or 10 eps, it's not going to be for you, but it's worth giving it that much as the story lines need to shake out a bit.
Ep4 is the one where it starts really rolling.

[Hot Pepsi]

Scarborough Campus of University of Toronto.

Cool.
The intererior of the UN is really Toronto City Hall, IIRC.

Until you'd mentioned it, I'd forgotten that it is made in Toronto. I had it in my head that it was in Vancouver. Another favorite SyFy show, The Magicians, is made there, so I'd got them mixed up.

[Hot Pepsi]

Keep at it. The pace builds through season 1. If you don't like it after 9 or 10 eps, it's not going to be for you, but it's worth giving it that much as the story lines need to shake out a bit.
Ep4 is the one where it starts really rolling.

This is correct.

Indeed, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on in the early going. Like that whole scene where they're watching a guy do a "slingshot run" around the solar system doesn't make much sense at first. It helps to have read the books, but it makes sense if you follow it closely and/or google it.

Mostly, I find that I get a lot of hope from The Expanse, because it poses a future that is very easy to believe - not so much the protomolecule stuff, but the rest of it - and is actually pretty awful in so many ways, and yet it shows that people can endure and even find meaning and contentment in what seem to us like really crappy circumstances.

That also makes me wonder if people living in 1819 (or even 1819 BCE) would think our world was a dystopia. Well, I'm sure most BAME people would chose now over then and perhaps most women would too, not least of all because childbirth was so dangerous for both parties back then. But there's a lot to like about 1819 compared to now. The air and water were generally cleaner (not so much in cities, but in the country, at least), there was a lot of real wilderness left and more biodiversity. For those with the means and mind to travel or, at least, read books, every day could bring fascinating new discoveries in a way that our constant stream of information cannot really match. And despite all of our technological advances, many of us still work ourselves to death and we've got an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

[Wouter D]

And I have season 7 of Letterkenny to finish. It’s lost a lot of its bite and freshness and the set piece conversations feel a lot more like set piece conversations now as opposed to genuine one-upmanship. Still pretty funny though.

Ooh, I had totally missed that. Thank you kindly.

[Lang Spoon]

HP, 1819 would be hellish for us to spend more than a day in, even if we were living a haute bourgeois life. Even if you could get past the stink and the dirt, the spoiled food on your plate, the dental care, would give you the horrors.

[Lang Spoon]

I'd much rather have a glass of tap water now than from an 1819 rural stream.

[WOM]

Lang, if you're up for a good book, read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson about the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London. Utterly astounding work that goes into great detail about the..er...sanitation challenges of the time.

[Hot Pepsi]

HP, 1819 would be hellish for us to spend more than a day in, even if we were living a haute bourgeois life. Even if you could get past the stink and the dirt, the spoiled food on your plate, the dental care, would give you the horrors.

I know we couldn’t handle 1819 and I suspect people from 2219 would hate 2019. I was asking if people from 1819 would be very happy in 2019, or would they find it too ugly - in many ways - and too hostile to genuine human relationships. The point being, that despite the food preservation, the medicine, the hygiene, the dental care, the science, the education, the transportation, the advancements in human rights, the roads and the aqueduct, we’ve also given up a lot.


I too would probably rather drink from a tap than a rural stream in 1819, but it depends on which steam and what it runs through and which city’s taps were talking about. I would much rather drink straight from a lake in northern Minnesota - which I have done - than drink the tap water in Flint, MI.

[Sits]

I suppose it all depends whereabouts you look. In some of the genealogy I’ve done, I’ve ended up in total squalor, old people in the poor house, ancestors in asylums or jail, and three or more of or so of fifteen offspring in a family dying. Most of those all applied in one strand of the family, in what is now generally comfortable Oxfordshire.

Hot Pepsi - sorry I wasn’t meaning to undermine your point. The flip side is that many aspects of the distant past seem genuinely idyllic. I suppose it just depends where, when and which part of society.

[Balderdasha]

Four episodes into Dead to Me. I've met the toxic mother-in-law but there's still no indication of if she, or anyone else, is looking after the kids when Jen and Judy are driving around in the dark.

[Hot Pepsi]

My great great grandfather was rich and was a business partner of Proctor of Proctor and Gamble fame (or was it Gamble? I forget) in a printing technology business. But they fell out and then he got divorced in a time when nobody did that and didn’t leave much to his heirs. There’s a lovely Victorian house in Loveland, Ohio that was his. It’s still there, but it isn’t ours.

[San Bernardhinault]

I watched 6 Underground yesterday. Fuck me, it was monumentally stupid.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I watched 6 Underground yesterday. Fuck me, it was monumentally stupid.

Totally.