BLM Narrative Meets Data

Heather Mac Donald counters the current narrative with data.  Long but rewarding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=437&v=qbMkYZGFVw0&feature=emb_logo

Ban Democrats?

Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) has proposed banning the Democratic Party.  Why?  The Democrats were the party of the Confederacy, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan.  If all those Confederate statues have to go, how about the party that represented it?

My initial reaction was to see this as a gag.  However, if Democrats and their supporters are so eager to tear down Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson - all Democrats - then they should abolish the party that those men represented.  The Republican party was founded as an anti-slavery party.  Even after the Civil War, the Democrats didn't embrace the anti-slavery platform.  No, they instituted poll taxes, established the KKK, and enacted Jim Crow laws.  When Woodrow Wilson was elected to the presidency in 1912, he brought segregation to federal workplaces.  Huh.  So it wasn't segregated during the Taft (R), Roosevelt (R), or McKinley (R) Administrations?  From Lincoln's inauguration in 1861 to Wilson's in 1913, only 1 Democrat had been elected: Grover Cleveland.  Cleveland was a Democrat from Buffalo, New York, and somewhat milquetoast on the Jim Crow and voting rights issues.  Wilson's mother had been a southern belle and he was ready to bring Democratic Party values into the federal government.

If we are going to toss out all the good that Jefferson or Washington did because they were slave owners, how can we not cancel this party that supported slavery for decades and then oppressed blacks for at least a century after the Civil War?  The majority of the party history is horrendous.

Ban the Democratic Party!

Lethal Agent

Mitch Rapp is searching the war-torn deserts of Yemen for an ISIS leader who got away.  Of course, it is an election year in the US and the continued threat from ISIS is used to bludgeon the Alexander administration.  Senator Bartlett is the leading contender for her party's nomination and also a member of the intelligence committee.  Being in the loop provides her with information that could guarantee her nomination and election, if she handles it correctly.  However, it is clear that she is evil incarnate who only cares about acquiring power to crush those who oppose her.  Wow, maybe we could make her more one-dimensional.  Her entire staff seems to consist of a genius political consultant with a strong moral compass.  And he works in Washington?  Pulled out of Yemen, Mitch tries tracking the ISIS leader through a Mexican drug cartel that tried to smuggle anthrax into the US.  Carlos is a brutal buffoon who throws away the lives of his men without compunction.  His men seem only too happy to die for the cause.  Mitch comes across as less a super spy and more a super hero.  He wipes out a platoon of jihadis in Yemen, a score of drug thugs in California, and a dozen cartel goons in the Mexican jungle.

This is the 18th book in the series but the 5th written by Kyle Mills rather than Vince Flynn, who died in 2012.  This was probably not the best choice of book for an introduction to the character.  It reads more like a pulp fiction novel or maybe a first draft that needs a lot of fleshing out.  The handling of Washington and the campaign season was clearly outside Mills' field of knowledge and should have been tossed.  Write what you know.

Not recommended.

The Umbrella Academy

In 1989, 43 babies were born to women who - when that day began - had not been pregnant.  Billionaire Reginald Hargreaves adopted 7 of them.  As they grew up, most of them displayed extraordinary abilities and Sir Reginald dispatched them as a superhero team.  In 2019, the team has long since disbanded and only reunites now because Sir Reginald has died.  Only the surviving members attend.

Luther, Number 1, is a huge man with inhuman strength.  He had been the leader of the team though he has spent the last four years on the moon.  He was the most loyal to his father and never left home.

Diego, Number 2, is a knife-wielding vigilante.  When he throws a knife, it will navigate around corners to hit the chosen target.  He is mercurial and held a deep-seated hate for his father.  Unsurprisingly, he and Luther are often at odds.

Alison, Number 3, has the gift of suggestion.  If she tells someone a 'rumor' about themselves, that person immediately enacts it.  Thanks to her abilities, she is a successful actress though her personal life is a mess.

Klaus, Number 4, sees dead people.  He is so traumatized by it that he spends the majority of his time either drunk or drugged.  He dresses outlandishly, spending a good amount of time wearing his sister's skirt.

Vanya (Ellen Page), Number 7, has no powers though she is constantly seen popping pills for her nerves.  Hmm, that's peculiar.  She's been taking them as long as she can remember?  Hmm, what does this mean?  Oh, and her comment about an artist not 'blooming' until later life probably doesn't apply to her in any way.  Thanks to her lack of powers, she was never a member of the superhero team and didn't bond with her siblings.  She has been further ostracized for writing a tell-all book about the family.  She is a violinist in a local orchestra.

Number 5 has no name.  He had the power to teleport.  One day when he was 13, he decided to try time traveling and hadn't been seen since.  Until now!  Arriving during Sir Reginald's funeral, he still appears to be 13 though he claims he is 58.

Ben, Number 6, is dead.  The circumstances of his death are not stated but he does spend his time lurking around Klaus, because Klaus sees dead people.  Ben serves as a conscience to Klaus, trying to convince him to get sober.

Though entertaining in its parts, the overall show is disappointing.  The big story is that the apocalypse is only a few days from now and the team must prevent it.  Hey, that sounds fun.  Of course, they aren't a team; they are squabbling fools who haven't gotten over their childhood.  Worse, the very act of assembling the team is also the cause of the impending apocalypse.  Then there is the Commission, a time-traveling agency that keeps the timeline in order by assassinating people who threaten the 'correct' outcome.  All the blather about 'preserving' the timeline gets old fast and doesn't make sense anyway.

Despite failing to prevent the apocalypse, the show has been renewed for a second season.  This time, the team must prevent the apocalypse.  Oh, cool, something new.  Underwhelming.

Altered Carbon

It is the distant future and humanity has transformed.  Everyone is given a 'stack' at the age of 1.  The stack fits into the spinal column at the base of the neck and serves as a backup for the person.  If you die, just put the stack in a new body and you're up and running again.  This changed the view of the body to where it is called a 'sleeve.'  If your original sleeve is killed, time to re-sleeve but your new sleeve could be very different from your old sleeve.  If you can't afford a new sleeve, you might be spun up into a virtual reality to while away your time.  Or your stack might be left on a shelf for a century or two.  Of course, if your stack is destroyed, you're dead.  Thanks to this new technology, society has divided into two castes, the haves and the have-nots.  The wealthy, who are called meths (short for Methuselah) - can afford to have clones of their original sleeve and regularly backed-up their stacks so they are virtually immortal.  They live in palaces in the sky and view themselves akin to gods.

The central character is Takehashi Kovacs (Will Yun Lee), a man with a very complicated past.  The son of a Japanese mother and a Hungarian father, he became a member of an elite military force.  However, he went rogue and joined the rebels before he was finally killed.  His stack has been resleeved (Joel Kinnaman) and he learns it has been 250 years since he was killed.  He has been brought back by Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy) to solve a murder.

"Whose murder?" Kovacs asked.

"Mine," Bancroft explained.

Bancroft was found with his stack blown in his office.  Being a meth, his backup was loaded onto a new stack and inserted into one of his many clones available.  However, the destruction of the stack meant that his last memory was almost 48 hours before his death.  What did he do in that time that resulted in his murder or possibly suicide?

Kovacs takes a room at an AI Hotel called the Raven.  Poe (Chris Conner) is the proprietor, basically a projection of the hotel.  He becomes an ally to Kovacs though he is incapable of leaving the hotel because he is the hotel.  The setup reminded me of the holographic doctor (Robert Picardo) on Star Trek: Voyager.

Though the story is very engaging and the setting has a Blade Runner vibe about it, the series is dreary.  It has the feel of a soap opera.  Every scene has an undercurrent of doom.  It's one long tragedy that is interspersed with little tragedies and sprinkled with unhappy people.  The funniest bit in the whole series was when Det. Ortega put her grandmother's stack in a hulking, tattooed, bearded skinhead with a nose ring.  Impressive acting from Matt Biedel!  How else would he get to play a kindly Mexican abuela?

Meh.

Futureworld (1976)

Two years after the robot malfunction at Delos, the company has reopened with new safety protocols but visitors have been low.  To help restore confidence in the park, the company has invited the press to write honest articles or TV news reports that Delos is certain will be favorable.  Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda) and Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) travel together to the park.  They have a history though are not currently a couple.  Chuck had written a scathing article regarding Delos and is certain to be more skeptical than Tracy.  Prior to the trip to Delos, Chuck had a meeting with a former employee but the man is near dead when he arrives.  His last word is 'Delos.'  Chuck is going to dig deep.

Though Medieval World and Roman World have been reopened, Westworld remains closed as it reportedly saw the first robot kill a human.  Doctor Duffy reports that 50 guests and nearly 100 employees were killed during the malfunction.  Two new worlds - Spa World and Future World - have been added to the options.  Chuck and Tracy visit Future World which starts out with a rocket launch to a space station.  There are a variety of high tech games and opportunities to ski on Mars or walk on the moon.  And that mostly ends the park aspects.

Unlike the previous movie where the characters spent much of their time interacting in the historical setting while things slowly went wrong, this movie mostly abandons the theme parks in favor of crawling about the tunnel system beneath them.  Eventually, they stumble upon Harry Croft (Stuart Margolin), one of the few remaining human employees and someone who was working during the robot malfunction.  Harry knows his way around the tunnels and has access to every place.  Well, except for this one area.  Hmm.

As is painfully obvious by this point in the film, Delos is replacing high ranking or useful visitors with clones.  The newly created clones are instructed to dispose of their original.  Thus, we have Tracy vs. Tracy and Chuck vs. Chuck.  But it's an even fight since the replacements aren't superpowered robots.  Um, this doesn't seem like a good plan.  Gee, since Delos had drugged them and done hours of scanning on the unconscious targets, why wouldn't you just do that again and send the clone?  The mind-numbing stupidity of the plan immediately ruins the movie.

Yul Brynner returns in a dream sequence where he rescues Tracy from the red-clad med techs who scanned and probed her.  That was a weird and pointless tangent.

Mediocre.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Michael "Mickey" Haller is a defense attorney who works mostly out of his Lincoln Town Car. In fact, he purchased 4 of them in order to get a fleet discount and plans to rotate them out after 60,000 miles. His driver, Earl, is also a client. Mickey withholds half his paycheck to resolve outstanding legal fees. Very quickly, it is apparent that Haller is more than happy to defend anyone who can pay. His primary tactic is to plead out cases which is why he worries about getting an innocent client. If someone is innocent, only a not guilty verdict will do. Complicating Mickey's life are two ex-wives and an 8 year-old daughter. His first ex-wife, Maggie, is a prosecutor! He is amazed their marriage last as long as it did. His second ex-wife is his office manager and accountant. He "owns" a home with a great view - reminded me a lot of the view from Harry Bosch's house - but zero equity. It is almost a hand to mouth existence and he is hungry for a 'franchise' client, someone who can pay full price rather than the cut rate he offers most clients. Enter Louis Roulet, a wealthy realtor who is accused of sexual assault. Louis claims it is a setup, the prostitute knocked him out and staged the assault, hoping to cash in on Roulet's obvious wealth. Mickey thinks it just might be true. Could this be his first innocent client? He is certainly a franchise client.

The book is outstanding and very different from the Bosch series. Whereas Bosch catches the criminals who need to rot in jail, Mickey minimizes that jail time. Here is the other side of the coin. The book reads like a runaway train; there is no putting it down after a short time. Great book. Highly recommended.

Sex vs. Gender

I watched a YouTube debate by Steven Crowder where he went to Austin, TX, and put up a sign that said 'There Are Only 2 Genders: Change My Mind.'  Amazingly, I disagree but only in a very small way.  I dispute his word usage.

Sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures

Merriam-Webster

Gender: 1) a subclass within a grammatical class of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms.

2) Sex

Merriam-Webster

The English language has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.  Whereas languages like Spanish gender most things as either masculine or feminine, English does not.  So, the house is neuter in English but la casa is feminine is Spanish.  The shoe (neuter) vs. el zapato (masculine).  This can get pretty weird with animals.  La rana (the frog) is feminine but a male frog would be la rana macho.  Gender is primarily a grammatical construct whereas sex is biological.

What if he had said There Are Only 2 Sexes?  As it happens, that is what he was arguing since he continually returned to biology rather than grammar.  He was using the #2 definition of gender, probably because that is the term used by those arguing in favor of a gender spectrum.  The use of gender rather than sex was clearly intentional.  Most people look at the terms as interchangeable and that is essentially true through modern usage.  However, it is clear that sex is a better choice of words for those arguing against the sex spectrum.  Not much spectrum at all if the topic is biology.

Nate and Hayes (1983)

Captain Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives on a beach with his crew.  They hack through the jungle and find their way to a native village to sell rifles.  The natives prove unwilling to pay and suddenly Bully and his crew must flee for their lives.  Only Bully escapes but he is immediately captured by his old nemesis, Ben Pease (Max Phipps), and a contingent of Spanish soldiers.  Awaiting his execution, he details the events that led him to his doom.

Sailing on the Rona 18 months earlier, Bully had transported Nathaniel Williams (Michael O'Keefe) and his fiancé, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove), to a South Pacific island where they will be missionaries.  Nate's aunt and uncle are already on the island.  They explain that Bully Hayes is a notorious pirate and blackbirder (slave trader) and that Nate is lucky to be alive.  During Nate and Sophie's wedding, blackbirders attack the island.  Left for dead, Nate awakens to find that his aunt and uncle are dead while Sophie and most of the islanders are missing.  He suspects Bully Hayes.  In fact, it was Ben Pease, Captain of the Leonora.  Pease is working for a German Count who is trying to secure a harbor for the German Empire in the South Pacific.  Before long, Nate and Hayes are allies determined to rescue Sophie and kill Ben Pease.

The movie takes place around 1870 and has an opening reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The scene where he cut the rope bridge looked like it was stolen from Temple of Doom but this movie came out first!  And Sophie being lowered into fire as a sacrifice also looked like a scene from Temple of Doom.  Hey, what's up with that?  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as Hayes but Michael O'Keefe is poorly cast.  His transition from naïve missionary to battle-hardened buccaneer is unconvincing.  In one scene he is a bumbling oaf and in the next he is an action hero.  Weak.

This is an entertaining but entirely fictional account of an actual person.  William Henry "Bully" Hayes (1827-1877) was an American who sailed the Pacific.  Though not technically a pirate, he was a conman, a thief, a swindler, a blackbirder, and a bigamist.  He did sail a ship named the Rona from 1866 to 1869.  Of note, he sailed with fellow blackbirder Ben Pease (1834-1870) on a voyage to China.  When he returned, he offered a story about Ben retiring in China and thus he was now the owner of the brig Pioneer.  Hmm.  He renamed this ship Leonora.

The movie reminded me of Tales of the Gold Monkey, which takes place in the same region only 70 years later.  Also, it aired in 1982-83, just when this movie came out.  Not great but fun.

Lost in Space

The Robinson Family are sitting around a table on the Jupiter 2 and playing cards in Zero-G.  They are all in space suits.  And then alarms sound and the ship crashes on an unknown planet.  Evacuating the ship, they find themselves on top of a glacier.  Moments later, the Jupiter 2 sinks into a freshly melted pool of water.  That can't be good.  It gets much worse, both the situation and the writing.

The current events are interspersed with flashbacks that don't really explain the present situation but hint at some things.  Obviously, this will make more sense as the series progresses.  For an initial episode, it's mostly annoying.  That's a small complaint.  Stuck on the frigid glacier, they would need something to provide heat so Judy swam back into the ship to get a battery.  On her way back, the water froze solid so that she was a couple feet from the surface.  Well, that's impossible.  I guess the science advisor sucks.  Next, John and Will Robinson go hiking to get some magnesium to melt the ice and rescue Judy.  Yeah, that's a bad idea but, as we've already determined, the science advisor sucks.  Also, the distance across the frozen wastes to the magnesium is obviously too far to be practical but it does make for an impressive vista.  John, who is a military man, brings a child who will only slow his pace.  Sigh.  While digging out the magnesium in a cave where they have seen burning magnesium, John pauses repeatedly to talk to his son.  Of course, this delay is just long enough for the glacier to crack and Will to be whisked away down an icy tunnel.  Great job, dad.  Meanwhile at the crash site, mom is unconscious because her leg was broken during the crash and its worse than it looked.  So bad that Judy - still frozen in ice - had to talk Penny through an operation on her mother's leg.  Failing to follow his father's orders to stay put, Will manages to get trapped in a tree to avoid an alien robot just as a forest fire starts.  Sigh.

John (Toby Stephens) is mostly a bumbling idiot.  He really doesn't know what to do and repeatedly defers to his know-it-all wife.  In the flashbacks, it is shown that Maureen had intended to only take the kids on this interstellar move while John stayed on earth.  The flashback explaining why he wasn't left behind will likely appear in a later episode.  Judy currently hates her father, though I'm not sure he is her father.  She's black while the rest of the cast is white.  Doubtless this will be explained in later episodes.  Most of the flashbacks show that John was usually absent on account of military deployments.

Maureen (Molly Parker) is hard to like.  In flashbacks, she does some sort of shady deal to make sure Will's failed test scores are altered; if the writers are as bad as it looks so far, this deal probably led to the catastrophe that destroyed the Resolute and left the Robinsons stranded.  That she sought to take the kids off-world without their father looks really bad.

Will (Maxwell Jenkins) is a kid.  He seems all right if a bit nervous.  Unlike the rest of the family, Will failed the tests that would allow him to emigrate from earth, thus his mother's shady deal.  He came up with the magnesium plan which shows he has a knowledge of chemistry.  Does not appear to be the prodigy of previous versions.

Judy (Taylor Russell) is the oldest of the Robinson children.  As the show progressed, I liked her less.  She has advanced medical knowledge.  She was cheated with the magically freezing water but, once frozen, she started dispensing her wisdom.  Hey, who's frozen in ice here?  She lives in a universe where water freezes differently and foolishly got stuck.

Penny (Mina Sundwall) is the blandest of the Robinsons.  However, she is also the only Robinson who doesn't screw up.  She doesn't make stupid mistakes or stupid decisions.  Thanks to writer neglect, she is the smartest, most supportive, and most reliable character.  Her passivity allowed her not to do really stupid things like the rest of her family.

Doctor Z Smith (Parker Posey) only appears in the last few minutes of the premiere.  As the Robinsons are evacuated to the Jupiter 2 - which is just a pod on the immense colony ship Resolute, she flees from a robot - exactly matching the robot befriended by Will on the alien planet - that is slaughtering colonists.  She stops to 'help' a wounded man (Billy Mummy of all people) but just steals his jacket.  The jacket says Dr. Z Smith.  She uses the built-in ID card to access a different Jupiter pod to escape the unfolding disaster.

I am partly tempted to watch more episodes to see how much worse it gets or, less likely, see if it improves.  IMDB rates this stinker of an episode at 7.6 while the series as a whole is 7.3.  More reviews may follow.

Civil War 2020

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

The United States has a particular history that has shaped it to be what it is today.  Some of that history is good.  Some of that history is bad.  On balance, it is more good than bad and has resulted in the most benevolent and selfless nation the world has ever seen.  A lot of people don't see it that way.  As luck would have it, Orwell provided a road map for them to use: Control the past.

Columbus discovered the new world.  Vilify him and tear him down.  Done!

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Discredit him and tear him down.  In progress.

George Washington won the Revolutionary War and served as first President of the United States.  Maximize his faults and ignore his achievements.  In progress.

James Madison is the Father of the Constitution.  Discredit him.  On the to-do list.

If you can recast the Founders as villains rather than heroes, you can then discard what they wrought.  How can you revere a Declaration that was written by slave owners?  How can you live under a Constitution that was drafted by a bunch of elite white men, half of whom owned slaves?  Tear it all down!

But Frederick Douglass used the Declaration and the Constitution to bolster his abolitionist oratory.  How can you say that all men are created equal when slavery exists?  To be true to the founding documents, slavery had to end.  Then tear down Frederick Douglass!

Martin Luther King referred to the Constitution and the Declaration when he said the Founders signed "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."  The Founders had outlined great and noble ideas but did not live up to them.  Nor did many generations afterwards live up to those ideals but progress has been made.

In 1967, Rudi Dutschke proposed a strategy for subverting society by infiltrating institutions.  He called this the long march through the institutions.  The long march is essentially complete in the United States.  The media is almost wholly owned by the left.  Higher education is controlled by the left and churns out ignorant youth who gladly tear down statues.  Most agencies in the government at every level are controlled by the left; is it any wonder that government has mostly stood aside as chaos has gripped the nation.

Lincoln warned that the United States would not fall to a foreign threat.  If we fall, it is because we destroyed ourselves.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln

Are we on the brink of America's second civil war?  Maybe.

The War on Statues

Here stood a statue of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became a noted abolitionist, writer, and orator.  Clearly, this is a great blow against police brutality!  At this rate, the war on statues will soon be defacing the Martin Luther King monument in Washington DC.

Mount Rushmore Speech

Headlines declare that President Trump gave a dark and divisive speech that amounted to a culture war bonfire.  Whoa!  Well, I'm going to have to see this speech!

In the speech, Trump honored the presidents represented on Mount Rushmore.  He offered a brief biography of each and why he is honored.  He also proposed a new monument, a Garden of American Heroes that would host many statues of great Americans.  Gee, that sounds cool.  On the other hand, he denounced those who were tearing down or defacing statues across the country.  He announced the arrest of a ringleader who tried to pull down Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square.  He proposed that this was a cultural revolution and that the vandals want to overthrow America.  He also observed that the vandalism was taking place in localities governed by Democrats.  Ah, there's the divisive line.

Trump also hits on the ongoing defamation of America in the school system, something I have brought up in numerous blogs.  The good is minimized and the bad is highlighted.  Kids are taught to loath their country rather than love it.  The only way to view the speech as divisive is to view the vandals and their supporters as equal to those opposed to vandalism.  There is no reason to respect vandals who clearly hate the country and are unwilling to use the democratic processes available to them to change it.  The vandals have been clever.  By starting with Confederates who defended slavery, a considerable portion of the country was unwilling to speak against it.  Then they moved on to those who were slave owners.  It has progressed to where an abolitionist has been defaced and a statue of an elk was destroyed.  Whatever this movement claimed to be, it has gone off the rails.

"In the vicious culture war that is dividing our nation, President Trump has taken the side of the United States."

Scott Johnson, PowerLine

The Witcher

The story opens with Geralt the Witcher (Henry Cavill) fighting a massive, spider-like swamp monster.  Once he has killed it, he takes part of the corpse to a local town for bounty.  It is quickly apparent that Witchers are strongly disliked by ordinary folk.  It is strange to see how hostile they are to someone who could easily slaughter them.

The series follows three characters: Geralt of Rivia, Ciri (Freya Allan), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra).  Though all appear in each episode, it isn't until the 3rd episode that it becomes clear that their timelines don't match.  Yennefer's induction into an order of magic predates Geralt's adventures by 30 years or more.  Soon after, Geralt attends the wedding of Ciri's parents, placing him about 15 years ahead of Ciri.  This would work much better if people actually aged.  It seems that Yennefer stopped aging when she achieved her mage status and Witchers are long-lived thanks to their mutation.  However, other character who recur don't seem to have aged either.

Geralt's story is mostly episodic as he fights the monster du jour.  He is infamous as the Butcher of Blaviken but also famous thanks to the songs of Jaskier the Bard (Joey Batey).  By the end of his series of adventures, his timeline has caught up to Ciri's.  Geralt tends to be laconic and has a deep, gravely voice that is very unlike Superman.  His eyes are yellow and his hair is white, leading to him being called the White Wolf.  As an aside, avid fantasy readers will surely have noticed the similarities between Geralt and Elric of Melnibone.  Elric also has white hair - he's an albino - and is called the White Wolf.  Michael Moorcock was probably not thrilled about Geralt of Rivia.

Cirilla "Ciri" the crown princess of Cintra finds herself on the run in the first episode when Cintra falls to the invading forces of Nilfgaard, a dark and murderous nation.  Before she sets out, she is told to find Geralt of Rivia.  Her adventures are nothing but a headlong flight from one peril to the next.  However, she does manifest powerful magic in times of stress.  If she knew how to use these powers, she would be formidable.  Her story has the weakest character arc though it is the thread that ties the others together.

Yennefer starts as a hunchback girl in a backwater town.  However, she has some innate magic talents that bring her to the attention of the local version of Hogwarts.  Involuntarily enrolled, Yennefer is not a very good student but, when she does have successes, she demonstrates unusual power.  Upon completion of her studies, her body is transformed into a beautiful woman.  Of the central characters, she has the most interesting character arc.  She is uncertain what she wants and where her loyalty should lie.  Magic is described as chaos that must be controlled and balanced; it is clear that Yennefer has had difficulty finding that balance.

The greatest weakness of the series is the setting, especially after Game of Thrones.  When the nations of Cintra, Aedirin, Sodden, Temeria, or Nilfgaard are mentioned, it is hard to have any notion of them.  There is no apparent difference between them in language or culture.  Nor do we have a map to place things.  Really, beyond Nilfgaard being the Mordor of this world, it was hard to fathom the politics with the sole exception of Cintra.  With all three stories now synchronized, perhaps that will be resolved in season 2.

All in all, it is an enjoyable show and worth watching.  Thumbs up.

Columbus removes Columbus

The city of Columbus, OH has removed a statue of Columbus.  Gifted to the city in 1955 by Genoa, Italy, the statue has been declared to represent "patriarchy, oppression, and divisiveness."  I have always seen him to represent exploration and discovery.  Agree to disagree.  Anyway, by the given logic, it is time to rename the city of Columbus.  Maybe also rename Columbia University, the District of Columbia, Columbia, SC, Columbus, GA, Columbus, NE, Columbus, TX, and many, many more.  Let the insanity roll on.

As an aside, guess the party affiliation of the mayor of Columbus.

End of CHAZ

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) has been reclaimed by the city of Seattle.  Mayor Durkan declined to reclaim the area at the time it was occupied in early June.  After a series of shootings, the mayor still did not reclaim the area.  However, on June 28, the protest came to her house and Councilmember Kshama Sawant was among them.  Well, that changes things.  First, Sawant needs to be rebuked for this breech!  Now that it has impacted the mayor herself rather than merely her subjects... um... the citizens of Capitol Hill, it is time to clean up the area.  And with no help from the state or federal government, the CHAZ is gone.  She could have done this at any time but chose not to.  Across the country, the rioting and looting is happening with the tacit approval of the local governments.  Look where the worst of it is and then check the party affiliation of the mayor.