Why I am likely to vote for Joe Biden this November

 You've most likely heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The term "imaginary superiority" arises very quickly, and that's key. If you think you know everything, that gives you little reason to learn more, or even think.

The problem with having Donald Trump as President is that there's nothing to figure out. A handsy real estate grifter who looks like Barney Rubble gone to seed doesn't have a very large bag of tricks, and it doesn't take a lot of vision to see through him. Yet anti-Trumpists often act like they're at the height of savvy.

I'm not optimistic about how successful a President Joe Biden would be, or even if he has goals I'd want him to succeed at. He's been running for the top office for most of my life, seemingly just for the sake of it. But at least if voters start to hate him after he's been elected, they might have to exercise some critical thinking in order to do so.

Luckily he didn't pick Gretchen Whitmer as his running mate. After the way she's been governing Michigan under COVID-19, that would have made it hard for me to pull the lever.

Go fish

 I've seen a clip of a seahorse giving birth. It was a little unnerving. Not because it was a male, as happens to be the case in that corner of the animal kingdom. You can't really tell the gender. It's just because it goes on so long, and so many embryonic fish come out at once.

But that's how it is among a lot of creatures. In fact for the most part parenting, the personal raising of young that you get to know, is limited to the higher vertebrates (i.e. mammals, birds, and reptiles.) To us, nature itself can be scary.

In the pages

The library is still not a place to spend time. Like literally, you can't. You can go in to return things you've taken out and are done reading, watching, etc. You can pick new items up. But once you're done with that there's nothing to do but leave.

One consequence of that is that I forgot their scheduling quirks. With a lot of holiday Mondays they close on Saturday as well to make it a three day weekend. Over the past year or so I had finally started thinking ahead to the next big holiday that might effect the schedule so I could plan around the closings. But when they close for a few weeks and then when they reopen their schedule is still mostly non-functioning, that makes it harder to orient yourself. 

Still, I'm glad the library system is there to get stuff to read and watch. One book I just finished is Peter De Vries's <i>Mrs. Wallop</i>. It's kind of a clever little comedy. A landlady is excited to read her tenant's newly published novel, but is put out to find an unflattering portrayal in it of a landlady character. Except that when she discusses it with him later he tells her the character is really a disguised portrait of his own mother. In the same conversation, she proudly tells him that her own son has been working on a novel himself. As it turns out, the son has some uncomplimentary things to say about his own mother. This doesn't make Mrs. Wallop happy, but her response is not quite what you'd expect. 

Also been reading a book called <i>Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s</i> by Cara Greenberg. Combining image and text, it tackles some of the same topics as Tom Wolfe's <i>From Bauhaus to Our House</i>, but Greenberg is more of a Bauhaus defender it seems. I'm neutral in the fight. Sharp design is a delight, of course, but everything gets complicated by real life.

Arachne

I don't know if I've highlighted the work of Sarah Sze on this blog before. She's a fascinating figure in contemporary art. Since she's talking about reinstalling a piece that was put away for nineteen years, I guess she's proven she's no flash in the pan.

One thing about her sculptures/installations is that a lot of them look ridiculously complex if you're taking count of each individual element. Look at the shadows that they cast and it's a different story. That must be one of the top things she thinks about, how everything will be lit.

You don't have the power

This morning I went to the laundromat and, despite the fact that this was most definitely within their hours of operation, they were closed. On the way I passed several traffic lights that were out, on foot and on the bus, but I when I got to the laundry I still didn't put it together. My first priority was finding another place to do the wash. After this was done I returned to the same neighborhood to wait for the bus home. That's when I saw the sign in an Asian restaurant door saying they were closed due to a power failure. Apparently this was quite widespread. Caused by a storm that happened yesterday. I lost power myself yesterday for like, a second, but otherwise was unaffected. So while the whole thing caused problems for me, I was quite lucky in another way.

The new view

As of today, apparently, when you log into blogger you see something like the above image. Which affords a kind of picture-book feel which I approve of. Better yet it appears that the formatting process has gone back to something much more intuitive. I'm not sure that I trust Google as far as I can throw it, mainly because just saying that is going to get me all sorts of weird search results. Still, I recognize these as positive changes.

Give the scum a gun and let the bugger fight

While I've seen John Boorman's Hope and Glory it was a long time ago. I know it's an autobiographical film about his childhood during the Blitz and World War II in general, that's about it. So I can say with some authority that even though Queen and Country is a sequel to the earlier film, you don't need to have seen one to understand and enjoy the other.

This is also a film around war, specifically concerning a training camp in the British army during the Korean War. It's late in the war, as references to Eisenhower and the coronation of Elizabeth II attest. That means that the horrors of war don't come into play as much. Bill, the Boorman stand-in, apparently is never shipped off, nor is his closest friend on the base. There is some, due to other soldiers having to fight in Korea, and also some traumatic memories from WW2, but it's not like you really have to strap in.

Three performances really stand out. David Thewlis always meets pretty high standards, and exceeds them here as a brittle disciplinarian of an officer, moreso than he initially seems. Caleb Landry Jones plays Bill's friend Percy, who is epically unsuited to army life. I wasn't much familiar with Jones, and he does working class Brit so well that I was shocked to learn that he's Texas born and Bred. And the Welsh actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards brings life to all her scenes as a nurse who starts out with one of the young men but really has eyes for the other. If you don't know her now you will, if there's any justice in the world.

Odd note. Bill mentions in a lecture to junior cadets that Korea is bitter cold so have families send jumpers, long underwear, etc. I may have heard this before, but it's never penetrated. As with many people, my familiarity with the Korean War mainly comes from MASH, which was filmed in the sub-desert of Southern California and thus made the country look like just one big wave of dry heat.