Revisiting Grunch of Giants

What killed the USA as we knew it was the Supreme Court legislating that money is speech and corporations are people. At that point, AI (phony intelligence) took over. If there’s such a thing as human intelligence that’s not just AI, we still have a chance of pulling out of this tailspin. But I doubt we’ll have nations as we know them today. Too impractical. I’m glad the US led the way, in celebrating its own demise amongst a small circle who actually get it, what’s going on. Most people are clueless, which has always been a challenge where democracy is concerned.

Interpenetrating diaspora nations, people of all nations mingling, touring, basing bases… that’s the reality on the ground, not pens with fences around them, although that’s the logical conclusion of the nation state mentality, quite psychotic, good thing the boomers won’t be with us forever (present company included).

I wasn’t suggesting the GOP intentionally instigated the USA’s demise. I’m alluding to a long history during which the Supreme Court went along with the railroaders, expanding the upgrading of slaves to full humans per 14th amendment (still not with voting rights in practice) to include promoting corporations to full personhood (still limited liability, still monsters) by the “same” reasoning / rationale. That all happened a long time ago, post Civil War. 

Then you have Citizens United opening all the power chairs to Corporations (dead, soulless, artificial beings with no conscience or consciousness — AI in other words — with superpowers endowed by law). That Business Plot (echoing the earlier failed attempt, frustrated by Smedley Butler) was completed by the 1980s and ever since it has been downhill for the vast majority, as silly humans fail to compute the consequences of their own actions. 

Like of course the nation-state system would never survive a corporate takeover. A takeover is a takeover. You live in the private sector today. There is no public sector to speak of, only a fake one. If you want to rebuild a public sector, go ahead, is what I’d advise and encourage people to do. But in the meantime, I don’t see anything but oligarchy, around the world. City-states. Nations are for children to believe in, like Santa Claus. I’m not being cynical. I’m OK with nations gone. I don’t have any religious conviction that any of them are still real.

Mapping Quadrays

Mapping Quadrays @ School of Tomorrow

Jane Eyre (movie review)

That I’m on some kind of Film Studies kick makes sense, given the proximity of MMU. I also credit my book club (“Mercado Group” if you’re into search), for always pipelining curated content. 

I always have a full queue. Last night it was the 1943 Robert Stevenson version of Jane Eyre, the one with Joan Fontaine (as the older “Jane”) and Orson Welles.

“Why play up the MMU angle when we can all watch this movie on YouTube?” asks one of my imaginary mental chat box bots. Because the DVD versions come with loads of Special Features, only some of which I’ve taken in at the time of this review (I also have a whole other version of Jane Eyre waiting, from yet further back on the timeline).

My particular curriculum (the one I develop, the railroad I work on) features Orson Welles through a number of segments, with a double underline for Martian Math, where science fiction and Synergetics converge. 

From War of the Worlds (and that fateful Halloween evening in radio land, back to Orson) we might segue to H. G. Wells and his corpus, including Morlocks (geeks) versus Eloi (politicians), my adaptation of The Time Machine for a contemporary audience.

Speaking of contemporary audiences, Jane Eyre has a plot line that resonates with its script, and behind the script, Bronte’s novel. Perverse religion oppresses the young Jane, an orphan, and through referrals, she gets trafficked into nightmarish situations wherein she remains essentially powerless.

As things got underway, I felt convinced I’d fallen through the cracks in not knowing this story, whereas at Princeton I knew my share of Brontë fans. But when we got to the “troll in the tower” subplot, an obstacle to the romantic interest, I started remembering to the point of déjà vu. Of course I knew this story, this nightmare dream.

Be that as it may, I’d never seen this movie, and I found it edifying in terms of my Film Studies / Film History focus (I’ve been at this for a while).

Anyway, I was alluding to 2026 headlines and dashboards, all about how the underprivileged get sold to the more privileged as sex slaves, or at least as servants. The degree of depravity depends on the subculture. Not everyone gets to be in presidential circles (or even C-suite).

Speaking up for the women was medical science to a small degree, underwriting a new kind of skepticism towards more established religious rackets and their codifications of the various pathologies, sometimes as templates for a religious life.

The revenge Jane has is her childhood tormentor, a brat her own age, grows up to be a total loser, hangs himself (she finds out in the end; not a major plot point), plus she’s able to restore her crazy guy to health and sanity (unlike the tower bitch), without that much damage to her orphaned self pride. 

In the real world, outside of fiction, vengeance would rarely be so sweet.

We know as the movie fades that Jane will likely get to see those great cities after all. Her guy is a man of means. Their child will know its parents.

More Lesson Plans from School of Tomorrow

The Glass Key (movie review)

The Hollywood, on Sandy Blvd, exhibited in miniature at Movie Madness

I texted David I was "working through the 'The's" at Movie Madness, meaning titles starting with the word The, which librarians know not to alphabetize by, as, as tokens go, "The" is too frequent to be a good hash table marker (lookup feature). Skip the "The" and go on to the next word in the title, is the rule of thumb. 

Sorting by too-common features is like sorting fruits into "round" and "not round". You can do it, but it'd be a jumble. And how "round" do you have to be to count as "round"? What's a "fruit racist" gonna be like?

The Glass Key is filed under genre "Film Noir" at MMU, in the Classics section. Their filing system is interesting, and the key to it is a computer lookup service, as the filing system is mainly just a "where to go" map. Every DVD has to be shelved somewhere; here's a coherent system. 

I agree: it's coherent as long as the computer is up and running (these days it seems to always be, Praise "Bob").

What I learned from this classic is (a) Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an established generator of trend-setting crime fiction (a John le Carré in his niche), his novels adapted to movies well, The Glass Key being one such and (b) Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, the pair of them, were a thing, like another Bogart-Bacall.

The Glass Key makes you keep track of quite a few relationships, chiefly siblings and offspring among two families, so somewhat Romeo and Juliet in that sense. Indeed, one family is blaming the other for the death of one of its sons, the one with the gambling problem. 

Alan Ladd is not actually a blood relative of anyone, but he's a main character nonetheless, and the sparks are between these two camps, the one with the murdered son, and the politically ambitious family seeking to run the town behind the scenes.

What's interesting is how characters are "on the spectrum" but by that, what "spectrum" do I mean? This film explores impulsive unthinking behavior versus planned out conniving. 

The "brusque brother" as I thought of him, chief suspect in the murder, Ladd his fixer friend, is impulsive but also a planner, and therefore less extreme w/r to said spectrum than the big dope beat-um-up type who gets suckered into doing the dirty work for others. 

Ladd is the epitome of a deep thinker and has a Sherlock Holmes super detective role. Veronica is starving for guys with brains (in short supply) and begs to join his thread (program). He declines pending permission from his parent process, which comes at the end (not to spoil it or anything).