Aku Aku

Kim Jong-Il's blog

Kim Jong-Il's blog

XTRA: israeli club hipster website

Just ran across this crazy Israeli club information website: XTRA. I suppose it's juvenille of me to be so titillated by a garish eurotrash club-scene website just because it's full of flashing graphics, club-girl scenester pics, a legalize pot graphic showing an usama bin laden type lighting up and the entire thing is mostly in hebrew. I have no excuse, it touches a funny bone deep inside. This site has everything a zionist hipster needs. And here's one IDF soldier who could bulldoze my house any day, if you know what I mean.

I was somewhat surprised when I went to Israel/Palestine a couple of years ago to find that Tel Aviv is considered the Sin City of the Middle East. Lots of dance clubs and strip clubs. It certainly wasn't what I pictured in my mind before I got there.

all n. korean triplets seized by the government

What is up with these nutcases? Herald Sun: Korea's 'lucky' triplets seized

ALL triplets in North Korea are being forcibly removed from parents after their birth and dumped in bleak orphanages.

The policy is carried out on the orders of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-il, who has an irrational belief that a triplet could one day topple his regime.

Sheesh, this is like some bible story. What the hell is going on?!? This is just so -CRAZY-!!! One day, assuming humanity survives the century, we're going to look back at the mixing of government and religious/superstitious beliefs as the greatest single problem that has plagued mankind. Culturally accepted religious irrationality just has to go.

Review: Lady from Shanghai, The (1948)

Lady from Shanghai, The (1948)
This is one I added to my netflix queue after watching Gilda a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it was not as enjoyable as Gilda as a movie, but I did enjoy it as a historical document. There were plenty of outdoor shots of 1940's San Francisco that made it fun to spot and identify certain locations such as Empress of China restaurant and Li Po in Chinatown, Sausalito harbor and the old amusement park that used to be at Ocean Beach (torn down in 1972) called Playland (once home of the terrifying Laughing Sal). Despite that fun, overall I would have to say the film is probably my least favoriteOrson Welles or Rita Hayworth film so far.

Review: Atanarjuat (2001)

Atanarjuat (2001)
Also know as The Fast Runner. George Parker sums it up so well in his imdb review that I'm just going to quote his review almost in its entirety here:

The Fast Runner" is a pedestrian story of treachery among a tribe of primitive natives - in this case the Inuits of the arctic region of Canada. On the upside the film has an abundance of raw Spartan arctic beauty; haunting music and percussion; real native actors speaking what is presumably the Inuit tongue; and a fascinating sense of authenticity. On the downside, the film is viscous, long, esoteric, difficult to follow, and plays better as a documentary with the thin story of murder and deceit among peaceful people being buried under ice and snow as we watch the Inuit's simple day-to-day survival tasks and never see the more interesting activities such as a caribou hunt. In short, the film doesn't work well as either a drama or a documentary though it seems to try to straddle both.

I think I may have enjoyed the movie more than Mr. Parker, but his points are quite valid.

to weep in public is not of men

My friend Thomas Sullivan, a wonderfully talented and learned musician, has recently become enthusiastic about digital "film" making and has completed his first movie short. A tongue in cheek dramedy called Crying In Public. It's a 3 minute quicktime movie (15 megabyte download) which was completed for a film collective in Brooklyn called Day 60 which gives its members a theme and 60 days to complete a short piece. The theme last month was "crying in public".

Thomas wrote, directed, starred, ran the camera, did the editing and created the original score. I'm really surprised he didn't throw a big passionate kiss scene into the script, because his co-star looks very kissable. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

warm water cove

Warm Water Cove, a forgotten park located where 24th Street meets the bay, is often the scene of free outdoor bbqs with live generator-powered punk rock music. Come on down, a beautiful day for punk by the bay......
--Dav via Danger Hiptophttp://www.danger-island.com/dav/

pax americana

I received an email forward of an article written by Adrienne Larkin which describes a group called Project for a New American Century (PNAC, website at www.newamericancentury.org).

This group formed in 1997 touted a plan to force a Pax Americana on the world through the use of military force (Like the Pax Romana), and the plan starts with an invasion of Iraq. The interesting thing about this is that it provides a roadmap explaining the real reasons why the USA is invading Iraq right now, and the plans for the region and the planet after this war is won.

The founding members of PNAC? Vice President Dick Cheney. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. Jeb Bush.....

I couldn't find the article online, so I posted it here. It's short, read it.

Honestly, I withold judgement if a Pax Americana achieved through the PNAC roadmap is a good thing or bad thing. But I think the a roadmap to the true motives of this war is something we should all pay attention to.

Update: I've found another editorial concerning PNAC: Blood Money. I hope John Stewart gets ahold of this. The Daily Show seems to be the only intelligent news commentary these days that is capable of reaching the American Cattle (oops, I mean Public).

Review: Amarelo Manga (2002)

Amarelo Manga (2002)
My housemate Cheu is working with the San Francisco International Film Festival this season and she has brought home many VHS tapes of the films sent to the committees. Tonight I caught the last half of a Brazillian movie called Amarelo Manga (Mango Yellow). This is the second Brazillian movie I've seen, so I'm now under the impression that all movies from the world's fourth largest country will be brightly colored, darkly plotted, wild and passionate. Bring'em on!

This one seemed to tell the stories of a small intertwined group of voracious and lascivious ne'er-do-wells. It apparently is centered around the sensual awakening of a timid and pious wife of an adulterer, and the scenes of her getting her freak on will probably be burned into my mind for a week or two.

I think I'll wait to see the first half until Mie and I can see it together, as I think she'll really enjoy it...

Incidentally, when looking for photos to attach here (imdb didn't have one) I ran across this weird little photo set showing some of the makeup effects used in the film: FX, I like the fingers.

Review: 8 Mile (2002)

8 Mile (2002)
Sean rented this video tape the other night. Watching video seems so 1980's in the age of netflix.com. Anyhow the movie was OK for predictable hollywood crap, but I really dug the attention paid to the setting: Detroit's not so nice parts of town. I think the director and cinematographer did a great job of making the Detroit ghetto atmosphere feel honest and real.

Designed By a Tree

I love this concept of creating a font which is carved into a tree and then updated yearly by capturing how the tree has modified it by growing.

 

 

 

Food Delivery 2021

Ran across an interesting project which at initial glance is about food delivery called Free Food. As I explain below, that's free as in speech not beer.

The creator of it, Noah Levenson, has a pretty good intro video:

Given the project name, at first I thought it was about getting food that would be thrown out distributed to hungry folks, but watching the video, it became clear that this is more about being able to order food directly from verified local restaurants on a decentralized trust network and avoiding the (almost criminally) inefficient middle man services like DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc. The README for the project explains the goals well and has a quick run down on why the middle man food "delivery" apps/services are so bad.

Using a decentralized network (think BitTorrent more than BitCoin) it allows for restaurants owners to verify their ownership of a particular local restaurant and publish their menus. This protects against the type of unauthorized listings and other fakery that the middle man services engage in, so you know you're dealing with the real restaurant. Hungry people can find the menus of nearby restaurants and place orders. Reference implementations of the diner and restaurant clients are shown, although I didn't see the source for them available. Presumably the restaurant uses its existing delivery staff for the delivery, or you can pick up.

This is an interesting project, particularly because it's potential goes well beyond just restaurant delivery. Really any resource that can benefit from decentralized (no valueless middle man required) localized (relevant to you, where you are now) discovery can benefit from this type of system. In theory a delivery drivers could advertise themselves as resources and the system could do the matchmaking. Since the network is decentralized this would mean they wouldn't have to share their fee with a middle man network provider.

I'd definitely give this a shot if it started up in my area. In the meantime there is a better sort of food delivery service that I've been using lately and have been quite happy with. It is called Club Feast (use my referral code dav1 if you try it out!). While it still is a middle man service, they have a twist on it that should benefit both the restaurants and the delivery drivers. It requires you to order your meals hours in advance (it used to be the previous day but in the past month they have been able to move it up to same day). This allows the restaurant and delivery network time to optimize the food preparation and the routes. It is a subscription service, which means you sign up for a certain number of meals a week and pre-pay for them as credits. It lets unused credits stack up and you can pause, so it is fair to the subscriber. The meal credits themselves are $7 each, so the meals are inexpensive although limited to what the restaurant decides to make available for $7. There are tons of options though so that has not been a problem for me in San Francisco. It seems like a great win-win-win compromise for the restaurants, drivers and customers, although I would love for a journalist to investigate and report on the actual outcomes.

Would a robust Free Food network be better than Club Feast? Perhaps? CF optimizes a somewhat different problem, but perhaps that could be layered into FF as well? Is there additional value CF could bring that benefits from its centralization? Not really sure. Some things I am sure about are that both of these are better than the dominant centralized apps, and that Free Food really needs to change its name, and the paltry amount of tests in `libfood` is scary 😂.

 

An Ode to Roblox as a Gathering Place

I haven't spent a lot of time in Roblox, even though both of my kids have spent significant amounts of their time and my money there, but this essay about how it compares to those places where teenagers hang out and create their own space away from the rest of the world really resonates. It makes me want to give it a try again.

Some choice excerpts:

On his first experience in Roblox:

In one of the very first games we played together (a work-in-progress safari game, the link to which I have since lost), V became a zebra, and I was a lioness. We ran around a broad plain populated by other animals, trees in the distance, low clouds overhead, and the buzzing of insects on a 2-minute loop. The chat was full of messages from prey to prey, predator to predator. V was almost immediately killed by a cheetah who then got in the chat to say, “Overyone come to pr,” “theres meat.” Summoned, I did so, and as I ate the still-living digital body of my friend in the company of a stranger in the shape of a wild dog, I thought, “Oh. This is special.”

On the game creation tools:

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Roblox Studio is the Toolbox. Other game engines have assets stores, but none of them feel like this: a rollicking, copyright-fucked, messy, virus-filled, unsortable pile of labor and of love.

On the long tail of forgotten worlds (games) waiting to be stumbled upon:

But the things I am making in Roblox are not what are unique or compelling about Roblox, and the same could be said for most of the big games that populate the platform’s front page. Instead, what is so special here are the millions of bizarre little worlds, all networked together and waiting (mostly empty, sometimes for over a decade) to be dropped into and explored with friends.

On the "brutal" monetization situation:

As a developer, you can monetize your own games in a variety of ways, from the above-board (tip jars! cosmetics!) to the scammy. Developers earn 70% of Robux spent in their games, which is a pretty standard cut for an app store/developer split. However, getting USD back out of Robux is a different story. The payout exchange rate drops to $0.0035 USD per 1 Robux, meaning the takeaway in real world currency is roughly 24.5% of any in-game commerce—a brutally extractive exchange rate.

Fighting Date Rape With Nail Polish

Now that Bill Cosby got an early release from prison, my friend Paul brought my attention to the company Undercover Colors that developed a clear nail polish that allows you to check a drink for drugs by dipping a fingernail into the drink. The nail polish changes colors if drugs are encountered.

Brilliant! And love that it was founded by NC State students (didn't to school there, but did participate in their rugby club as a townie).

 

It looks like the product has evolved slightly to a more typical strip test kit though. I supposed the manufacturing costs proved too high? Hopefully they are still working on the more subtle version.

Post Pandemic Predictions

I started compiling this list before George Floyd was murdered, and its triteness bothers me now so I'm just going to post it and move on.

In no particular order:

• Masks largely stay culturally accepted in flu and allergy seasons from now on in the USA, but will always carry a political connotation so some groups will never wear them and mock those that do, but like punk rockers have always mocked people in suits.
• 15 years from now, a common trope will be determining how old some young adult is by what basic K-12 subject they seemed to have completely missed. "How old is Alexandra? Well she can never remember what a gerund is, she must be 27-28."
• It'll be seen as the inflection point for polyamory going mainstream when the released masses just can't get enough of each other 😂.
• 2021: long hair on dudes is back in fashion.
• The artist live stream phenomenon is too beloved to simply disappear, but outdoor live music venues are going to see a boom. There might even be a combination of the two.