Hardly the technological revolution of our time. But today I realized I was seated really far from the order status board at Starbucks. My eyes are quite good with glasses (1), but not that good. So I took a pic of it with my very midrange Pixel 8a, zoomed in, and read my name.

I remember posting a few years ago that I was looking forward to this, but cell phones were still inferior to the naked eye most of the time.

Of course, everybody could have carried opera glasses starting a century ago. But one's daily carry has limits.

I like to note these small milestones because I tend to miss how much has changed in our lifetimes. Despite how dystopian technology can be, I feel a bit cheated that we haven't gone from the Wright Brothers to the Moon. But some seriously crazy shit is going down, and cool little stuff too.

(1) People without glasses, particularly people who had vision surgery more than ten years ago, are often surprised that I can see stuff they can't. Look, I definitely remember my own "oh I don't need glasses" phase. But cheap glasses are nowhere near as dorky as they were THIRTY YEARS AGO 👻. Just grab an eye exam, under insurance if you're lucky. Make sure they write down your IPD (Intrapupillary Distance). And then just hop on Zenni. Don't be a boomer and get suckered into vision store prices.

Also there's contacts if you're vain. I get it. I'm totally vain.

This was Best Picture Weekend, courtesy of the Philadelphia Film Society. It's a great service, although it would be much improved by respecting high holy days, by which I mean not overlapping with the Super Bowl. All they had to do was screen Sunday's movies starting as early as Saturday's.

True, that would interfere with an actual holy day for some, but am I wrong in thinking that some attendees possibly missing one Sunday service is a lesser crime against inclusion?

Anyway, I've seen everything except Train Dreams now and here are my thoughts:

Marty Supreme is a helluva ride. Full of wonderful performances. Also a movie about a narcissistic asshole. But the ending arguably makes it someting more. And I saw it with someone who's been on the wrong end of several narcissistic assholes, and they loved it. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge the fun. I have a silly spoiler-tastic fan theory which I'll share later, after a cat pic.

The Secret Agent is arguably a better car movie than F1, and the camera only lingers on cars for a few minutes. But it rambles a bit, and opinion was divided in our party. I liked it, mostly for getting at the day to day absurdities of life under corrupt authoritarian rule. But it doesn't deserve Best Picture. It's certainly no I'm Still Here.

F1 is Brad Pitt's Top Gun: Maverick. There's no way it deserves to be best picture. It is a fine exemplar of the sports movie genre, and people who love cars will find themselves very well taken care of. We get two women whose story is not just about a man. There are a few lovely moments in which the director allows themselves to show us the great variety of motoring experience, both racing and non-, beyond Formula One. I wish there had been more.

I watched two-thirds of Bugonia on TV with my sister in Tacoma. I napped through part of it, but it's not fair to lay the full blame for that on the movie. Bugonia is another Yorgos Lanthimos — Emma Stone joint. Speaking as someone who loved Poor Things: Bugonia is fine, but I don't regret watching it on a TV. I enjoyed the ending.

I saw Sinners back when it was in general release. What a trip! The dual performance from Michael B. Jordon is impressive. But a certain speech on the political economics of vampirism really put it over the top for me. They cleaned up on nominations and I would not be at all displeased if it wins Best Picture. It is interesting that this movie doesn't feel the need to have any sympathetic white characters, although it does have sympathetic asian characters. I think we can take it, for once.

I also saw Frankenstein earlier in the year. Confusing the man with the monster is a tired joke, but here they blur in a new way. Strong cinematography, strong acting as well. May our creations be half as humane.

Hamnet is a beautiful, heartbreaking film. Feminist takes on Shakespeare are haunted by Virginia Woolf's riff on the topic ALMOST A CENTURY AGO 👻🤣,  and for good reason, but that space has been explored. Chloé Zhao gives him a wife who is an equal power, and his failings are those of a man ridden by a dream, not a man who takes women for granted. In the end he shows himself to have been present all along. Something in my eye dammit.

One Battle After Another is two hours and 42 minutes. And I didn't begrudge a single one of them! Like Marty Supreme it is a helluva ride, but it has more to say. I realize it's a Pynchon adaptation, and I haven't read the book, but I think Paul Thomas Anderson was also trying to will the revolution back into being and connect it with the present moment. I think I'll watch this movie again at some point.

... And that brings us to Sentimental Value. Which is basically the same movie as Hamnet. The same big idea: self-actualization itself has an empty heart, but can redeem itself by connecting art back to the personal. I was paying attention all along. I know it's painfully obvious to say it reminds me of Ibsen, just because there are Scandinavians in rooms. But there are Scandinavians in rooms, and I do enjoy that.

Who should win? I'd say... Hamnet, actually. Followed by One Battle After Another, or Sinners. No big surprises there. These are good movies. But I don't think there are any clear-cut jaw-dropping room-clearing slam-dunk never-seen-anything-like-it best goddam-movie-of-the-decades this year. Not like last year, which gave us I'm Still Here and Nickel Boys. Hell, even the deeply problematic Emilia Peréz was a fascinating watch. (It helped that I didn't know its flaws going in.)

But the prize went to Anora, because Anora was a tour de force of filmmaking itself especially given the budget available. And the Academy has a soft spot for that.

So... who will win this year?

Going by "filmmaking itself," it's a bit of a toss-up this year. Sentimental Value is clearly the most meta- when it comes to filmmaking, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best-made film.

But going by the nominations, it seems clear One Battle After Another or Sinners will take it. And in recent years, all else being equal the expanded Academy has tended toward diversifying the pool of winners. For a change. So I'm thinking Sinners will walk away with Best Picture.

However, I must point out that I still have not seen Train Dreams. If I fail to see Train Dreams before the ceremony, it will definitely win Best Picture.

Here is a ridiculous cat picture, followed by a spoiler-tastic fan theory about Marty Supreme.

OK, ridiculous Marty Supreme fan theory:

There's a rich asshole in the movie. He is Marty's nemesis. Marty largely gets the better of him, until he doesn't.

But there's a speech at the end that's completely out of its time and place:

"I was born in 1601. I'm a vampire. I've been around forever. I've met many Marty Mausers over the centuries. Some of them crossed me, some of them weren't straight. They weren't honest. And those are the ones that are still here. You go out and win that game, you're gonna be here forever too. And you'll never be happy. You will never be happy."

Of course, Marty proves him wrong. Well... sort of. He wins the game but renounces the life of a showgirl narcissistic bullshitter.

But after the movie ended, R. looked up the guy who played the rich asshole. It's Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank (which I'm not really familiar with), aka a tremendously successful businessman and general winner in the lottery of life. I mean, the man has Emirati dual citizenship for business reasons. He's been accused of fabulous frauds. He and his wife are infamous for dodging responsibility for a boating accident. And speaking as a WASP... he has the WASPiest possible patriarch-at-Thanksgiving face and he knows how to use it. Ugh, this guy.

So a day later it hit me: this speech was not in the script. Kevin O'Leary was ad-libbing. He was telling the simple truth. Kevin O'Leary is a vampire, born in 1601.

It explains everything.

My coworkers used to dabble in mechanical keyboards. Some of them claimed they could stop anytime they wanted. My friend C made no such claims. I don't think I ever saw the same keyboard twice. It's possible some of them were just alternate keycap combinations.

I, of course, grew up on mechanical keyboards, but I've put it behind me. I love my Macbook, the low travel keys are fast and the lack of CLACK is perfectly CLACK-ceptable, honestly.

So when I randomly spotted this cheap knockoff mechanical keyboard with one missing key for $5 at Goodwill, I thought: what the hell. A CLACK or two just for a laugh. First one's practically free...

CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK

Oh dear. I think I really like the CLACK.

This is going to be a problem, isn't it.

Gee, this thing weights a ton.

Elevators are great art. They work on so many levels.

Did you hear about the Gen Z BDSM shop? It's called executive function.

I was going to buy a parcel of land, but it was kind of a lot.

How do you make fuckin' s'mores? With damn crackers.

Today I called my son by my cat's name. That's right - I failed a CATCHA.

I'm pitching a reboot of Pinocchio set in Brooklyn. It's called "the only living toy in New York."

People who think Mandela died in the 80's aren't from an alternate universe. They just have terrible death perception.

Honestly, it's not the prettiest tree posted on OnePo this week. But our block has a real humdinger of its own.

This second photo does a good job of capturing how much this tree dominates the frame in person as well.

Tesla's sales are down 13% globally in Q1, compared to Q1 of last year.

It was worse in China, and in most of Europe.

I want to celebrate, but this still leaves me wondering about the math. If sales tanked worse in most countries, then they may have improved somewhere else to balance at 13%.

Guess where "somewhere" is gonna be... guess what country we don't have sales numbers for yet 🤣

There are other explanations though, the Model Y just got a refresh that some people were waiting for. That bump won't last.

So I am still hopeful that Americans will be either too smart or too dumb to buy a Tesla!

Independent journalist Molly White has a solid take on where to go from here. She's taking a break from telling the often hilariously ugly truth about crypto nonsense to talk about more important things. Audio also available.

I'm sorry to see the news everyone. Things did not go well in my state or in America. This will be a four years for a rebuilding, involvement in your community, taking care of yourself and your loved ones and not doomscrolling. Making a difference in other ways. Finding cracks in the brick wall of division. And aiding those who are especially harmed by the new administration's behavior.

So: breathe. Recharge. And if you can't, let me know how I can help.

Some have noticed a brief outage earlier today. That was me, moving OnePo and friends to a new server, running a new long-term-support OS.

We're on Debian 12 Linux now, for those who care about such things. Supported until mid-2028! A genuine, democratically run community project!

In mid-2028 I may even be able to upgrade in place, although it's usually a good practice to redo these things from time to time.

This all went much more quickly than it might have. Like... two hours of knocking around? Tops? I had minimal trouble moving my nginx, certbot, postfix and opendkim configurations over as-is.

[Knocks on virtual wood]

I also got a slight price cut out of the deal.

Still running on Linode. I considered moving to AWS Lightsail, but Lightsail is just a less convenient clone of Linode for people whose bosses insist on AWS, and I'm not one of those bosses. Except when I'm at work. Linode offered shiny-modern Debian 12 as a standard option, and the ability to just swap my existing IP address to the new server as soon as it was ready to go. Bamfl!

I'm keeping the old server around, powered off, for one week juuuuust in case I missed something.