links - documentaries, twin peaks haters and more links
My local cinema is doing a Wiseman of the Month season over the next year, showing the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman. He's an American director, who's work mainly focused on American institutions such as high schools and the New York public library.
Shortly after I discovered him because of this season, I read the news of his death. A comic writer and artist I follow, Michael DeForge, wrote a tribute to him (via Pateron, but I think it's an open to everyone post). He also linked to another article on the filmaker by Esther Rosenfield. I still haven't caught any of his films, so I can't give any opinions, but reading about them has made me very keen to watch them.
I've been thinking about walking more... Here is a link on a walker and one about walking across Massachusetts.
I've always liked the coast path logo
Personally I daydream about walking parts of West Wales on the Pembrokeshire coast path.
I listened to The cows are mad, a BBC sounds podcast about mad cow disease (or Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)) on the recommendation of a friend from work. It's interesting to learn more about something I vaguely remember from childhood: the outbreak of this disease that took place in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. Over four million head of cattle were slaughtered in an effort to contain the outbreak, and 178 people died after contracting vCJD through eating infected beef [1]. The podcast looks at efforts to investigate the outbreak, how the government tried to respond. This podcast also links the paranoia, fear and distrust of the government resulting from this outbreak to later scepticism around COVID and vaccine safety, conspiracy theories and distrust of authority.
Prion diseases are terrifying!
I got to this Usenet archive of posts on twin peaks, via The Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus, which I found via sweetfish.sites checkout counter.
It's very fun to read people's theories as they're watching the show! I find the annoyed opinions particularly funny - if Rich Rosen thought the original series was a wind-up, I wonder if he ever watched The Return.
That's what I've grown to really "like" (read the word "like" with as much drooling snarling sracasm as you can muster up) about Twin Peaks. Here we have a very significant difference between the way Jacoby originally heard the tape and the way the (supposedly) same tape sounds when played back later by other people who have purloined it. Is this really significant? Will it actually ever matter to the course of the plot? ... OF COURSE NOT!!!!!!!!!! It's a gaffe, a kluge, a fuckup, a stupid ineptoid klutzed up mucking about by people who really don't care whether they insert inconsistencies into the plot line that prompt anyone using their brain (who might be watching and expecting that a thinking person's program is being developed here) to say "Hmmmmmm...". Rich Rosen, 5/27/90
I googled Rich Rosen and found out he has a wikipedia page due to his notoriously high volume posting on early Usenet! The volume of Usenet postings he produced led to rumours that he was an AI program produced by Bell Labs to increase the amount of Usenet traffic and thus augment AT&T's long distance telephone revenues [2]. Which is pretty funny now we actually have AI bots swarming the internet.
And finally, another link post: I enjoyed Cortrinkau's link post, especially the reminder about Ofrim (a child doodlers from the middle ages whose drawings have survived to the present day) and the general concept of Tadpole people (a style of early childhood drawing common across cultures). It's very cute.