Unexpected Good News: A Movie of Weir's "Project Hail Mary"

The trailer just dropped today, with a release date of 3/20/26.  link here  You go watch now.

My review of the book (from 2021; has it really been that long?) here.

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked.

"Oppenheimer" (the movie) Dissected

When Oppenheimer came to theaters, I was looking forward to a glorious movie and a glorious theater experience.  In short, the shiny new theater I picked presented such a customer-hostile environment that I walked out before even buying a ticket, and bought a copy of the disc a few months later.  Then I watched it, and was appalled by the lack of character development on the interesting historical figures, while the director instead chose to linger for a third of the film's runtime over a dull, neurotic girlfriend.  In short, this film was a beautifully made complete waste of time and right now that disc is wasting my shelf space, but only because I haven't yet thrown it out.  I haven't written a review until now either, because the film's lack of cohesive content made commentary difficult.  There really wasn't much to say about it beyond a simple "don't bother" delivered months after it had left theaters, so I didn't bother.  Giving this thing any kind of n-stars movie rating would be akin to reviewing one of those semi-funny AI generated Star Wars / Miami Vice mash-up videos.  Sometimes interesting visuals, but really nothing beyond that.

Anyway, here's a writer's take on the film, and it's not pretty (link, just under one hour).  If the hour length  gives you a case of the TLDWs, here's her summary:

• Unnecessary Complexity
• Inconsistent Pacing
• Inadequate  Context
• Failure to Establish Thematic Framing

Whew.  The poor woman actually watched the damn thing three times (that's nine hours!) to bring us this analysis.  I wish there was an obvious link from her review video for some sort of coffee fund donation, because that kind of dedication deserves more recognition.

Drink the Water

The precautionary boil water notice has been lifted, as detailed at WOYS's blog.

I'm still going to run it through a filter though, and you might consider doing the same.

Drilled is Killed

In more good news, Gov. DeSantis signed off on the "Kill the Drill" bill yesterday.  Initial news at The Times, but watch The Times' main page for more details in the coming week.

TLDR: An oil exploration company was seeking permission to drill in the Apalachicola River basin, about 50 miles upriver from Apalachicola Bay.  With the downstream three counties' economies largely dependent upon this river and bay system remaining clean for seafood production, recreational fishing, and general tourism, it's not hard to see how any spill would be catastrophic.  Given the paltry upside to finding small deposits of oil in the river basin, drilling in this area is not a worthwhile risk.  The state legislature and governor agreed, and have blocked the proposed drilling.

Whew.  Onward to less hare-brained things.

More True Than Ever Around Apalach

While things are generally going into the portapotty all around the world, there's a specially scented problem with the water here in Apalach.  However, we may have turned the corner today with the state's AG beginning an investigation.  Time will tell.

Full story here at WOYS.

About That Antarctic Station...

 Last Saturday was the BBC's mid-winter transmission to the British antarctic research station (yeah, missed it again, sigh).  Whether or not you caught it live, you can catch up with various peoples' recordings of the proceedings at The SWLing Post mid-winter tag here.

Anyway, back to the main point of this post.  The Halley VI antarctic station is a tad... unearthly looking.  Here's an interesting video covering its workings, along with mentions of several other nations' stations, and some speculation on future lunar outposts.  A lot of these ideas would work for college dormitories as well.  Interesting, forward-looking stuff that's well worth your 11 minutes.  Also, here's the Wikipedia page on Halley VI as well.

All for today.  Unless something else remarkable happens.

I probably ought to adapt this design for hurricane season around here.  Wind resistant and already up on pilings, there's a lot to build on from this base design.  I wonder how much one unfinished fiberglass module would cost?

A Pretty Good Idea

Fishing shirts for hiking, over at Section Hiker.  Kind of obvious, but I needed this pointed out.  Well, day before yesterday was the summer solstice, so I guess that I have a good three months to spray mine down with permethrin.  Really is a good idea though.

Spaceballs 2?!?!

A definite maybe for 2027.  Mel Brooks has been known to tell jokes and pull pranks before, but this is looking pretty solid.  Teaser trailer here (with a cameo by Brooks himself), and a mention on Wikipedia here.

I give it an 80-20 chance of happening.  But wouldn't it be great to have a reason to go to a movie theater again?

Water Woes

You can read all about the sorry state of Apalachicola's municipal water system here at The Times.  (Here's the main page.  You may find newer updates as this blog post ages.)

Ugh, smells like rotten garlic.  The sooner this gets resolved the better.

Dance the Night Away

From over at today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal,

Yeah, just makes you want boogie all night long.  Especially when finals week was coming up and you're behind two weeks on homework assignments.

News Retro-Flash (i.e., Old News): NOAA Weather Radio Issues

NOAA's weather radio service was out of order about a month ago.  Details here.

TLDR: Minor problems during multiple server upgrades.

An utterly mundane cause, but I heard some of the darnedest speculation on why things were down during this gap in service.  Glad to have both this glitch and all the nonsense that it kicked up resolved.

Onward with your Saturday evening.

A New-ish D-Day Documentary

I say new-ish, because it's 11 years old.  Explains Bayou Renaissance Man at his blog (where he directs to a newly posted youtube video of the documentary in its entirety):

Back in 2014, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France, Jean-Christophe Rosé produced this 90-minute documentary for France Télévisions.  It uses archival footage that was remastered and colorized, and is probably one of the best sources to understand what the run-up to D-Day involved (with training and other preparations) and the reality of combat on that day.

You can see my Dad very near the start at 1:50 in, and the footage is used again at the 15 minute mark.  He was a combat engineer who landed on Omaha Beach, Easy Red, somewhere in the third wave.  Anyway, here's the link to the documentary.  Total run length is an hour forty.

I didn't have a tag to fit this post, but it calls for a new one: history.  I'll be using this going forward, and will be adding it to a few older posts as I come across them.

Sobering

On the eighty-first anniversary of D-Day, This Day in Aviation has a special post.  The first image is the famous ramp-just-dropped photo from Normandy.  The rest show field upon field of stark white gravestones.

Watch vs. Warning

The National Hurricane Center defines this as follows:

A warning means conditions are expected whereas a watch means that conditions are possible.

However, I prefer a somewhat more graphic representation:

And with that, I bid you a hearty welcome to The Season.