Vanth

This and Project Hail Mary were my two mainstream to-watch list leads. PHM didn't disappoint, I hope this one lands too.

Dog Soldiers (2002), watched after YouTuber Rocklin Graves did a video on it and it felt like a good light werewolf movie to match my mood. No "elevated horror, metaphor for grief" stuff here.

It is what it says it is. Soldiers and werewolves. There's blood, there's deaths, there's a solder fistfighting a werewolf, there's some nice catch phrases, there's badass fight scenes done with low-budget indie passion. It's not going on my rewatch list, but happy to have caught it once.

Key difference from most other modern werewolf films is that you get to actually see the werewolves. There's some quick editing during fight action, but plenty of chances to see the full werewolf design in frame.

Only if it's Sisko on the Star Fleet side and he gives Dr. Who the Q treatment.

A catapult, a ballista, a trebuchet, they're real sloppy with their siege weaponry.

Today's Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is this topic, apparently.

Haven't seen it yet but suddenly seeing everywhere the recommendation for The Furious. By the same studio that did John Wick. 80s style flick where the martial arts action is the point of the movie and everything else is a vehicle to highlight the fighting.

It recently won a decent award at a Chinese film fest so that's probably why it is suddenly popping up on my radar. I hope this movie is as good as all the hype.

There are other 2025/2026 movies with the same name, so look for the one from Lionsgate studio and with Xie Miao in the lead role.

(Raised Catholic)

Interesting, raised with the idea of eternal existence was a terror to me. Obviously eternal hell was an awful idea, but even an eternity in heaven too. Thinking of never-ending subservience to a god that rained down horrors and demanded his followers do terrible things, it didn't make me feel any better when I was told my imperfect human brain couldn't comprehend the actions of a "perfect" deity. So getting to heaven meant my mind would have to so fundamentally change to be happy with this god that I would no longer be Me. That was the existential horror to me and it was a great relief to deconstruct in my teens years.

Zuckerberg offered employees access to permanent desks, a symbolic gesture that unintentionally illustrated how expendable many of them had become.

Ouch, I worked at places like this around the '09 crunch. Fresh out of college and I was absolutely anchorless in my career, unable to find a human manager who knew my name and would recognize me day over day. This sort of shit is going in the pile of counters to "(millennials/Z/Alpha) just don't work as hard or show loyalty to their jobs anymore".

Project Hail Mary. For adapting a very long book, I thought they did a pretty good job. Still over two hours long though.

I don't think it will have the staying power some critics are saying. Too superficial, too American monoculture to last long, I think.

Then they are making the business decision to accept more business thry Expedia, etc, at the cost of being misrepresented and having to deal with the fallout. Their choice.

They contract with Expedia, etc, knowing how those middle-men are representing them.

Hotels contract with Expedia. They can choose not to.

Hotels are paying the price... for using AI tools they know are making inaccurate commitments to customers.