I’m always interested in science-fiction shows with a unique premise so this series seemed like it would be a good fit. It’s an episodic collection of stories about a small town where strange things keep happening because of the research facility in it. Unfortunately this wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. It uses simple and predictable elements like time travel and alternate realities to tell emotional stories about the characters without caring about how the strange phenomena work at all. As my wife notes, it’s a very sentimental show that only uses the sci-fi phenomena as plot devices. It’s not bad at what it does but it really annoys me as a fan of science-fiction.
The story goes that this was originally supposed to be developed by Disney who then backed out due to its LBGT themes and so it eventually made its way to Netflix. Unfortunately this also meant that it lost Disney-quality production standards and any kind of quality control because the end result is a drab looking, mediocre film. The antihero theme is all played out by now and there is nothing at all original about a cute sidekick who is actually overpowered. The only interesting part is the worldbuilding as it’s set in a kingdom that is culturally attached to knights and swords but actually has advanced technology.
Again, lots of cool announcements this month, so much that I had to pick and choose among them.
Probably the most shocking news headline this month, if you’ve been paying attention at least, is that the tilt of Earth’s orbit has changed due to how much groundwater has been pumped out. The angle of the planet’s rotational axis regularly shifts over time due to a variety of factors including the movement of molten rock, changes in atmospheric pressure, changes in the mass of glaciers and ice sheets and so on. This new study shows that extraction of groundwater over the past two decades, mostly in western North America and northwestern India, too has moved the tilt. It’s difficult to say exactly how this affects everything else but it’s a sobering reminder that the actions of humans have major unintended consequences.
Another important announcement is the neuronal wiring of a female common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been fully mapped. That’s about 130,000 neurons and includes plenty of other information as well. The upshot is that scientists who want to conduct experiments on the brains of fruit flies can theoretically now do so on a fully digital, simulated version rather than a real, live fly. Already there are people using it to simulate a fly eating and there will no doubt be many more such projects. We shouldn’t expect this digital twin to perfectly simulate the real thing but it should be obvious what an incredible boon this will be to researchers.
There’s so much news about AI lately and so little of it is about how it’s been put to use in practice. This news about how generative AI has been used to help develop a new drug to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is therefore welcome. This is an Nvidia puff piece so there should be an appropriate amount of skepticism. Still it’s educational to read up on how the company’s suite of AI tools was used to search for molecules a drug could target, generate drug candidates based on those molecules and simulate how well the candidates would bind to the molecules. The next step is to move on to Phase 2 clinical trials, meaning human patients have already been administered the new drug to test how well it works.
Next is an article about a wide-ranging survey of hunter-gatherer societies, seeking evidence about the longstanding belief that in such societies men usually do the hunting and women do the gathering. Searching through accounts from the 1800s to the 2010s and covering 63 forager groups throughout the world, the survey found that women participated in hunting activities in 80% of these groups. This puts paid to the old myth, still perpetuated in popular culture but mostly disdained by modern anthropologists, that men roamed far and wide in pursuit of prey while women stayed close to home.
Then there’s this paper that comes to a rather obvious conclusion: how much a person favors or disfavors inequality corelates with whether they are high status or low status. Through simulated experiments with and without a veil of ignorance, the researchers found that those who landed in high status positions were happy with inequality and the opposite was true of those in low status positions. They also found that their opinions change in accordance to changes in their social status. It turns out that people are self-interested. Who knew?
Finally here’s an article about a mysterious exoplanet with a very high albedo, that is it reflects 80 percent of the light from its star. The planet in question is known as LTT9779 b and its high albedo is especially surprising because its radius is slightly larger than Neptune, which in ordinary circumstances is so big that it would be considered a gas giant. Using data from the Cheops space telescope, astronomers now believe that the planet started out as a gas giant but has lost mass over time. Now it has atmosphere composed of a silica-like material and titanium. Just picture it, it’s a planet covered by clouds made of metal vapors. Even science-fiction authors couldn’t make this up.
This is probably one of the great Malaysian films, being a historical epic that was at its time the most expensive production yet made. Pretty much every Malaysian will have learned the story which should be considered one of the country’s founding myths. This cinematic version has the great Malay hero Hang Tuah being forced to choose between loyalty to his ruler, the Sultan of Malacca and his love for the titular princess. I was skeptical of this being any good as I don’t have high hopes for Malaysian films but it actually exceeded my expectations. Director Saw Teong Hin leveraged the limited resources at his disposal to create a film that isn’t a literal representation but a stylized, mythic one that is perfectly suited to the legend.
Federico Fellini is of course one of the grandmasters of cinema and we’ve pretty much watched all of his greatest films already. This was one of the holdouts, being quite famous yet is not as highly regarded. It was his film feature film shot in color and the director sure went all out with it. There’s very little plot in it and almost every frame is a dream vision of surreal images, eccentric characters and fantastical sets. It’s exactly like an animated film except that it’s all real life. At first, I didn’t care for how random and spurious everything in it is, but the film grew on me when I realized how much thought and care went into every aspect of the production. In the end, I loved it and I applaud its theme of a not very attractive middle-aged woman seeking to liberate herself.
Back when I was actively playing nearly every one of the historical Total War games, an entry set in China’s Three Kingdoms era seemed like an obvious no brainer. So when Creative Assembly finally announced it, I was so happy and looked forward to it so much. The problem is that they left it too late but by then I was thoroughly burned out of the series. Even now after having left it alone for years, I’m finding that while it’s quite satisfying to start and struggle through the beginning of a campaign, actually finishing one feels far too daunting for me. I’ve simply played too many of the Total War games over the years and despite the many innovations in this title, in the end it still feels like more of the same.
Even if it weren’t important enough before, this documentary became practically required watching after the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning last year. I kept putting it off because I felt that I’d already read up enough on the events. Finally watching it really helped establish in my mind just how long the entire Euromaidan protests lasted and how difficult it must have been to sustain that level of commitment in the face of every obstacle the government put in their way. At the same time, this documentary feels insufficient and incomplete. It strictly restricts itself to the protests centered around Maidan Nezalezhnosti and to the perspective of the protesters. There’s nothing at all about what was happening elsewhere in Ukraine at the time or of about the politicking behind the scenes so when the protesters finally win, it’s an abrupt and almost inexplicable shock.
