Baseball…
(Perhaps Psaki was imagining beaning Peter Doocy, but not metaphorically this time.)
.@PressSec throws the first pitch at the Sunday @Nationals game!pic.twitter.com/N6h2xCT9OD
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@KJP46) July 18, 2021
The IOC insists that This Is Fine, really, trust them, they’re the experts here…
IOC aware of Japan scepticism over Games, hopes home success will shift mood https://t.co/LsdiAmANMx pic.twitter.com/DGIChriRzO
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 17, 2021
… The Games will be held without spectators and amid draconian Covid-19 safety measures, while the Japanese public remains largely opposed to the event amid a resurgence of infections and concern that an influx of international visitors could turn the Tokyo Olympics into a super-spreader event…
Organisers on Saturday recorded their first positive case within the athletes’ village, an area that the IOC had been hoping would stay clean as proof that the Games could be held in a safe environment. The Games start on July 23.
Critics of the Games in Japan earlier this week submitted a petition against the event that has garnered more than 450,000 signatures this month.
“The Japanese can have this confidence (of a safe and secure Games) and we will try to continue this dialogue with them, knowing we will not succeed 100%,” Bach said.
“But we are also confident once the Japanese people will see the Japanese athletes successfully performing in the Olympic Games then the attitude may become less emotion, for not saying less aggressive.”
… Or, for a palate cleanser: witness the quaint folk rituals of the Uncanny Valley!
Imagine what AI powered machines will be able to do in the next 5-10 years.
Boston Dynamics machines flawlessly and soulfully dancing in rhythm. pic.twitter.com/1PHmurRo1k
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) July 17, 2021
Baud
Robot dances better than me.
In five years, they’ll be intelligent enough to take the vaccine.
Quinerly
Good morning!
debbie
Great throw, jen!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:Sheeeeit… a gelded platypus dances better than me.
raven
Oh my a petition!!!!
mali muso
@rikyrah: good morning! I always love your cheerful morning greeting. ?
today is the last day of my two week vacation. Trying to decide how best to ration my last hours…
germy
(Well, not this “exact” robot, but same technology.)
Baud
@Quinerly:
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
Time to roll. Have a good day all.
germy
They tell lies to discourage people from taking the vaccine. What is their end game?
debbie
@germy:
I read the caption as “soullessly” and the dance creeped me out.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hope the shoulder’s better.
Quinerly
@Baud: ?
germy
@debbie:
Your caption is the correct one.
germy
Someone looked at her tax returns and came to a realization:
The Thin Black Duke
Good morning, folks. A lot of personal drama going on right now, but my latest essay cheered me up a little. I try to make the case as to why Henry Cavill is my favorite Sherlock Holmes.
Brachiator
I keep imagining a voice on the PA system (inaudible to human ears) shouting, “All right you bots! Quit goofing off and get back to work!”
germy
A guide to conservative commentators
https://spectatorworld.com/life/guide-conservative-commentators/
Amir Khalid
A random observation: I’ve noticed that equestrian sport pnly gets covered in US national media when the story involves Jessica Springsteen.There was a story about her making the Olympic team for Tokyo. And US national media typically never covers the swearing-in of firefighters, but it made an exception a couple of years ago for her brother Sam. Is there something newsworthy about that admittedly not very common surname?
Chief Oshkosh
@debbie: Yep. Creepy. And all the worse because it’s from Boston. Don’t think for a second that they won’t take over the world. Look at what happened with the MLB and NFL! Th’ bastids!
rikyrah
CBS News (@CBSNews) tweeted at 6:22 AM on Mon, Jul 19, 2021:
BREAKING: U.S. gymnast tests positive for COVID-19 days before Olympics opening ceremony https://t.co/0Xd285KHFE
(https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1417082420982132739?s=03)
rikyrah
Uh huh ?
The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) tweeted at 11:25 AM on Sun, Jul 18, 2021:
Military-grade Israeli spyware was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and the fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a global investigation finds. https://t.co/X0LbRPAy0l
(https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1416796398201278468?s=03)
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
I think it’s because they’re Americans. Most of the coverage focuses only on Americans. It’s tedious.
Woodrow/asim
@The Thin Black Duke: Loved Cavill’s take on Holmes.
Loved. It.
hueyplong
@germy: It’s risky to impose a neat narrative onto something that seems so idiotic, but my guess is that doubling down daily on being opposed to every single thing the libz do is a goal of its own. They get their followers so bought in that it’s almost psychologically impossible to “change teams.”
So hardening the allegiance is the end game. It requires daily propaganda to either spin the reasonableness of the idiotic talking point or else distract in the form of a “Look what the Libz have done now!!!!” set of stories if the idiotic talking point is cratering. (Think caravans, which are portrayed assembling and marching on the border whenever needed.)
Without Fox and the other RW networks, this whole thing falls apart when they do things as stupid as the current COVID strategy.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Mic drop. Well done, sir.
The Thin Black Duke
@Woodrow/asim: Oh yeah. I’m hoping we get at least two more movies before everybody in the cast gets too busy.
rikyrah
@germy:
It was obvious ?
Republicans are all about the grift
Argiope
@Amir Khalid: My niece was briefly on the same showjumping circuit as Jessica, and my sister reports Bruce is one of the rare horse parents with middle class values. During one show that his offspring scratched, he was overheard muttering “well, that’s $300 I’ll never get back” or something similar. Unlike many parents on that circuit, he does not exhibit an overinflated ego or sense of entitlement. Most of them are rich and insufferable, at least once a certain level of investment in time, horses, trainers and equipment is reached. I kind of like that we mostly ignore sports that require that level of cash to get into.
raven
@debbie: Yea, they should cover Liechtenstein
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: I’m not sure they have an end game. TFG is a short term thinker. And as long as Tucker Carlson gets eyeballs on him, he wins
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Thin Black Duke: Fun essay. I shared on twitter.
ETA: Yesterday was my 365th day in a row of Duolingo Spanish. Unfortunately I’m still really bad at it, but I’m persistent. Sort of like novel writing. The story of my life
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
@Argiope:
For some reason, this makes me really happy. Thank you.
The Thin Black Duke
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks, m’lady.
raven
@Argiope: The Boss is solid
The Dark Avenger
@Amir Khalid: Her father is a guy named Bruce. As in Bruce Springsteen, one of the most famous musicians of the last third of the last century.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I have been at it for longer. I can read simple news stories but that’s about it.
ETA: I can practice enough to maintain my skill level, but don’t have time to dedicate to becoming more fluent.
debbie
@raven:
I’m sure you remember how coverage used to be more wide-ranging. It made the competitions more interesting.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
I don’t have Netflix and have never seen this Holmes series. I loved Cavill in Man of Steel even though I disliked the movie itself and thought that Zack Snyder had no clue as to how to depict Superman. I think the last thing I saw Cavill in was Mission Impossible. He was a great beefcake villain.
I confess that this interpretation leaves me cold. I don’t want an emo Holmes.
I had the impression from the original stories that Mycroft was actually smarter than his brother, but too lazy to want to do any field work.
And Americans understandably like to bash the British class system, but in the stories Mycroft is interested in “neither honour nor title” and only takes a modest salary for his work.
At first I thought the idea of a Holmes sister popping up out of nowhere was a dumb idea. It reminded me of how the Superman comics became cluttered with everything from Super cousins to Super dogs.
But Doyle himself kinda dropped Mycroft into the Holmes universe out of nowhere when he introduced the character in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.” And ultimately I don’t go for rigid canon for fictional characters. So why not a Holmes sister?
This sounds like a great take on the character, even though for me Jeremy Brett will always be the greatest incarnation of Holmes.
I might have to give Netflix a try.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Speaking of novel writing, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I really enjoyed The Wysman and am now working through The Wind Reader on my Kindle. And now I’m a fan and hoping you’re planning to tell us more about what happens to Jarka (because I admit I’m not totally happy with where you left him).
You’ve built a rich, complex world and society that has room for many stories.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My building is having a pajama party on Friday morning to watch the Opening Ceremony. At 5:55, there’ll be donut holes and coffee. Then at 7:45, they’re serving breakfast. Someone is going to teach us how to sing the beginning of Japan’s national anthem, and prizes will be awarded for the most elegant pajamas.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: You rock!
I’m not working on Jarka right now, though Dilly (along with Tuc) is the central character in THE TRICKSTER. Prince Beran appears in DEEP AS A TOMB at age 16 if you want to see more of him.
Right now, I’m finishing up work on a book about a glassmaker.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brachiator:
Mycroft was indeed smarter than his brother. The Benedict Cumberbatch version plays that up considerably. I remember a bit of dialog where Sherlock complains that growing up he always felt slow and stupid, and Mycroft tells him that he was slow and stupid.
I’ll have to read the essay now, because the portrayal of Mycroft in Enola Holmes marred for me what was otherwise a really enjoyable film.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
I have soured on the Olympics, largely because of the rancid US television coverage, which insists on focusing on Americans, heartwarming human interest stories and trivial nonsense. I remember one Olympics when NBC focused on an American competitor who came in fifth in some event and who never really had a chance and who had never been particularly outstanding in the event. They barely had time to mention the winners before cutting away to commercial.
It’s not a good sign that we keep getting stories about athletes and officials coming down with Covid-19.
Baud
If you don’t like NBC’s Olympics TV coverage, I believe you can stream any sport you want online or with NBC’s app.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: I find the coverage pretty fluffy too. I tell myself it’s the only moment in the sun for these athletes and their parents are probably thrilled so I shouldn’t be crabby. But it’s an uphill battle
Frank Wilhoit
(Why don’t people realize that it is always possible to program a “wow” demo?)
When I try to “…[i]magine what AI powered machines will be able to do in the next 5-10 years….”, all I get is THERAC-25, over and over and over and over and over again, until the inevitable decommissioning of all technology because there is no one left to maintain it, even on a cargo-cult basis. The (the) tragedy of humanity is that we can invent toys, but we have a total emotional block against processing the implications of possessing them or the consequences of using them.
BC in Illinois
About the dancing robot . . .
Julia Ioffe asks:
Made me look at the dancing differently. What’s amazing for a robot would be pretty stiff and lame (“white”) for a human.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@The Thin Black Duke: Good essay. I said in #41 that upper-class-twit Mycroft “marred” the film for me, but that’s too strong. I was surprised and irritated at the choice, but I can see what you’re saying about the point of the character for purposes of the story telling. It accentuates the loneliness of Sherlock, and Enola even more so since she has to operate within the bounds of being a Victorian woman who is not even expected to have any thoughts in her head.
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: Wow. Thanks for the insightful analysis. One thing I have to address, though: Cavill isn’t whiny. ( I love Downey, but he is needy) That’s why I appreciated his spin on Holmes. The Great Detective is lonely, but he is also at peace with himself. His is a bruised masculinity that acknowledges pain, but still has the confidence to enjoy a good joke and open enough to allow himself to be open enough to feel passion. Thankfully, this Holmes isn’t a Victorian Mr. Spock.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It also makes these people so toxic no one outside the Wingnuts will tolerate them. There is a reason they are being compared to mind control cults.
VOR
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Agree, Mycroft was the smarter brother but he was content to live in the shadows and not seek credit. Sherlock was public, visible. I disagreed with the interpretation of Mycroft as a closed-minded, rigid figure. I did like Henry Cavill’s Sherlock very much. And MBB is a rising star who is well worth watching.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
About the Olympics. I’ve found that if I can find beginning to end coverage of an event, that’s a lot more enjoyable than the standard US entertainment approach: follow only sports where there’s a probable American medalist, only show the American competing, and otherwise fill the time with fluffy biographical stuff. I’ve also long-suspected that the coverage is delayed and those bios appear when the network already knows the American got the gold.
I watched some of the Olympic trials cover-to-cover on NBC’s website. Sometimes it was hard to track down, but pretty much every event was there somewhere. There’s something about watching the drama of the whole story, who surprisingly makes the finals and who surprisingly doesn’t, and all the other micro-stories, that really works for me. And I’m normally a person who spends zero time watching sports.
Unfortunately you have to pick and choose your events that way because of things like eating and sleeping. If NBC does the same, allowing me to see entire prelims and finals, then I’ll likely watch some men’s and women’s gymnastics, diving, and track and field. Maybe volleyball too, it’s strangely absorbing. Though not beach volleyball, that’s just strange.
(Speaking of track and field, I’ve never understood the fascination with the 100m and the “fastest man in the world” thing. To me a race doesn’t get interesting till it goes at least 400 m.)
The Thin Black Duke
@VOR: To be fair, I don’t mind when Hollywood tweaks classic literary archetypes as long as the decision makes sense. What usually bothers me with filmed adaptations of Holmes is how they screw up Watson. For me, what was so refreshing about seeing Jude Law as Holmes was the fact that he wasn’t a buffoon or clueless sidekick.
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: That’s not true! They also cover it when Bill Gates’ daughter is on the horse!
Seriously, there is not a lot of mainstream news coverage of equestrian events, but they definitely show significant competitions on tv.
Woodrow/asim
Oh, it’s not canon to have him running around like that, at all, as he does in the show.
That said — Mycroft is rigid, in the canon. It’s the core of his personality — or, at least, what we see through Watson’s interactions w/Mycroft, which are limited.
He leaves his rooms, goes to the (very likely) men-only Diogenes Club, and basically runs everything from there. When he goes someplace else, like the 2nd time he comes to Baker Street in “The Bruce-Partington Plans”, it’s treated like a seismic quake around England’s interests.
So yes, a Mycroft that’s hide-bound and uber-conservative compared to Sherlock (who himself is…interesting in that vein), isn’t that far afield from what Watson put on paper.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Holmes outright says that to Watson .
The modern interpretation of Holmes is dislikable because is really odd because it was clear in the stories Watson and Holmes had a good relationship, and that’s with a guy who took cocaine to chill out and shot the walls up in the flat for the fun of it.
As for Holmes young sister, I suppose that’s for the female viewers because everyone now has to have their avatar in the story, but why they didn’t they just do what Doyel did and pit Holmes against female antagonists that were his intellectual equal? “Being female, smart and capable in this society makes you an outsider” is much more powerful statement about the assholeness of Victorian England than trying to retcon a female sidekick.
Not mention Watson would be constantly trying to pick up on the young Miss Holmes.
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
There were actually some detective agencies headed by women in Victorian times. But in any case, fiction does not have to be limited by any adherence to supposed history.
Gin & Tonic
@germy:
So the poor dear has to scrape by on a measly half-million a year? My sympathies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I believe Enola Holmes is based on the central character in a YA novel that was adapted into the show.
Cheryl from Maryland
@The Thin Black Duke: thanks for letting the jackals know about your excellent essay . I really liked the contrast between Sherlock and Mycroft.
cmorenc
Um…isn’t an emotional reaction by the Japanese people if Japanese athletes win medals precisely what this IOC spokesperson is hoping for? The above is a textbook specimen of PR doublespeak.
The Thin Black Duke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Maybe it’s me, but I thought it was very clear what a horrible place Victorian England was for young women by watching Enola struggle to find a place for herself in a world that holds her in contempt.
Woodrow/asim
Yep! In fact, I’d say that was an amazing cast all around; McAdams and Reilly play remarkably solid women characters as well overall (the fate of McAdams in the 2nd film notwithstanding). It…says something that IMHO Guy Richie’s best work w/women characters is in stories set, at least notionally, in the Victorian era.
(And no, I have no really issue with Holmes “flirting” with an Adler. My opinion is that adult Holmes is asexual and/or aromatic — and we know, thanks to his really toxic idea to fake-marry a maid in one canon story, he can express romantic interests, even if he’s not actually invested in the ideas in “reality”. Given how capable McAdams’ Adler was in this story [they even had her in trousers for the finale, a call-back to her ‘cross-dressing’ successfully enough to fool Holmes!], it was well worth the flirting, overall.
That said, the utterly toxic sewage that was the depiction of Adler in BBC’s SHERLOCK should be burned to the ground, Pulver’s talent aside.)
Michael Cain
@Baud: If you don’t like NBC’s Olympics TV coverage, I believe you can stream any sport you want online or with NBC’s app.
I’m a sport fencer. The 2012 London streaming coverage of fencing was magnificent. They covered every minute of every bout. The UI made it easy to find who was fencing when, and jump immediately to it. The feed was the raw one from the venue, before any announcers were overlaid on it. Slow motion replay of each touch while the fencers were returning to the on-guard line.
The 2016 Rio coverage was disastrously worse in almost every way. Only partial coverage. The UI sucked. The video streams tended to break up. They had added announcers, a pair of Brits, who were terrible. Most of the slow motion replays were gone.
I’m really sort of afraid to see how bad they’ve made it this year.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Thin Black Duke: I’ve haven’t seen the series but consider Scandal in Bohemia were the antagonist is a single woman with the brain the size of Holmes and the best she can do is being a human mattress for upper class twits (cough, cough Prince of Wales cough) and then blackmailing them.
raven
@Michael Cain: It’s always something.
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Speaking of track and field, I’ve never understood the fascination with the 100m and the “fastest man in the world” thing. To me a race doesn’t get interesting till it goes at least 400 m
In the original, ancient Olympics, the stadion was a race over about 190 meters. I think it might have been the only foot race, at least in the beginning.
I love the 100 and 200 meter races, and admire middle and longer distance running.
Gin & Tonic
@The Thin Black Duke: I dunno, reading The Pearl made it seem like Victorian England could be an awful lot of fun for young women.
The Thin Black Duke
@Woodrow/asim: To toss another curveball into the mix, my favorite Moriarty was the great Leo McKern in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’s Smarter Brother. It’s an oddball addition to the canon that’s quite intriguing and more satisfying than I expected.
rikyrah
@The Thin Black Duke:
Haven’t told you, but, I enjoy your essays :)
Geminid
@The Thin Black Duke: I love Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and I wish he had written more. But I’m glad Conan Doyle created another fictional hero, Brigadier Gerard, and wrote 17 stories narrated by him. Long retired, General Etienne Gerard was a Gascon soldier serving in the Napoleonic wars. Unlike the brainy Sherlock Holmes, though, Brigadier Etienne is a brave but clueless dufus, but he always manages to do the wrong thing at the right time. The stories make good light reading, and I get the sense that the author had fun writing them.
Woodrow/asim
Because — aside from the fact that it’s a YA novel, and Watson ain’t that kind of guy anyway — it’s been done, and recently to amazing effect, in the modernized Holmes series ELEMENTARY. Saying more is a massive spoiler for a kick-ass way to pit Holmes against a worthy woman-as-antagonist.
Moreover, that’s not a series story. As someone who’s had this fight on the TREK side with Michael Burnham and DISCOVERY, I beg leave to remind folx that adding diversity to the stories we love is not a harmful thing — it’s how these stories are refreshed and rebuilt to survive. Indeed, the reason Netflix did this was that Brown’s success with STRANGER THINGS got her a “check” to do a project, and she loved this book series so much, she spent that check on this adaptation.
So this wasn’t some one-off story idea. This was, and is, a work bore out of love of a book series, and it might be useful to understand it as such.
frosty
Good to see you @Quinerly!
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Doyle only really did this once, with Irene Adler.
As I previously noted, I don’t have a problem with the addition of a Holmes sister. It is just as appropriate as adding brother Mycroft from out of nowhere in the original stories.
And I even think it fine that female viewers are given an avatar. It was only due to a rigid lack of imagination and rank sexism that fictional heroes had to be male. Make room. Make room.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I have to go to the dermatologist now to get sliced and burned. I’ll be back.
Woodrow/asim
I’ll confess that my head canon is that Adler was what we’d call, today, a sex worker.
But I would not, at all, call her or anyone in that work a “human mattress,” fictional or otherwise.
That said — Adler’s actions were, from my readings of SCANDAL spurred by real emotions and affection for von Ormstein. The letter she leaves Holmes says she felt “cruelly wronged,” which along with the fact that von Ormstein was way outta pocket with how he treated her seems to indicate he promised her some level of permanence and dignified treatment in his life, then chose that marriage to another — at a minimum.
The blackmail, in that reading, is out of anger and fear. That she managed to find someone new, Norton, who helped her work thru that, someone who clearly loves her for her (he almost certainly knows about her past, given how the story is shaped) is a good thing.
And the reason we know this is that, even after she breaks out of the emotional part and wrangles Holmes along the way, she still keeps enough to protect herself from von Ormstein’s agents, going forward.
Jinchi
I’m really surprised that the IOC and the international community didn’t join in an all-out push to vaccinate every athlete and the support staff who were traveling to the games, and to mandate that athletes get vaccinated if they wanted to participate. That would have gone a long way to calming legitimate fears that the games will be a superspreader event.
Reading yesterday about Coco Gauff losing her chance to compete because she tested positive, what struck me most was that the media silence regarding whether she was vaccinated, unvaccinated or unable to get vaccinated. Was this a breakthrough case or did she just think she was invincible?
It’s shocking that an American athlete might throw away her chance, when the vaccine is widely and freely available. Now repeat this over competitors from every country in the world most of whom don’t have the option and this is starting to look like it will be a world wide version of the Sturgis event.
The Thin Black Duke
@rikyrah: Thank you. That means a lot.
The Thin Black Duke
@Woodrow/asim: Irene Adler deserved a spin-off, damn it.
Woodrow/asim
@The Thin Black Duke: Hunh. I always kind of threw that one in with the other 70s-era “make fun of Holmes” stories that mostly annoyed me. I’ll put it on the list now, thanks!
Central Planning
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My wife is doing the same thing, but she’s coming up on 2 years of daily DuoLingo.
I swear, it’s like a cult.
The Thin Black Duke
@Woodrow/asim: To be honest, I thought the same, which is why I ignored it for years. The only reason I watched the film was because of my wife, who is a huge Gene Wilder fan, and it was a glorious surprise. It subtly threads the needle and manages to be both an intelligent comedy and a thrilling adventure without those two genres smashing into one another like a trainwreck.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“I, Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald, am exceedingly sad that there are negative legal consequences for the tourists who took selfies in the capital while demonstrating in favor of stalling the constitutional process to replace Trump (who I totally do not support) so that Trump could stay in office and do things that I do not support. I are Glenn Greenwald.”
– by Glenn Greenwald
tom
@The Thin Black Duke:
Interesting, thanks! I haven’t seen Enola Holmes yet, but based on your review I will. I got a kick out of your description of how other actors portrayed The Great Detective :).
FTR, my favorite Holmes was Jeremy Brett’s.
Gin & Tonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Dude, seek help for this obsession.
scav
@Woodrow/asim: Irene Adler did rather have an entire career as an opera singer, appearing at La Scala, not quite the usual venue for a mere Victorian sex worker born in New Jersey.
MazeDancer
@The Thin Black Duke: Excellent essay
Ceci n est pas mon nym
To the Jeremy Brett / Sherlock fans (and I count myself one), a little trivia.
Brett played the empty-headed Freddy Eynsford-Hill who falls in love with Eliza in the My Fair Lady film. It’s really fun to watch those scenes and contrast the character with Holmes. Also, he had a wonderful singing voice, but they dubbed over it because it sounded too good, i.e. too mature to be Freddy.
You can find videos of Brett singing here and there on YouTube.
MazeDancer
Best comment on Twitter about the robots was that, clearly, they had been programmed by white people.
They do dance like every geeky white guy ever. Despite searching and trying every option, they cannot find, or stick, with the beat.
Feels like they would have to be programmed to be able to not stay on rhythm.
tom
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I knew that Jeremy Brett played the part of Freddy, but did not know his voice was over-dubbed. They should’ve over-dubbed Rex Harrison’s :).
Edmund Dantes
https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1417120123563954181?s=21
Apparently the DOJ has decided not to prosecute Ross for lying to congress about the census stuff even after a referral from the IG.
why are the Dems so bad at this?
artem1s
The tweet reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote,
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
I have an objection to the framing of that tweet. While it’s a magnificent accomplishment to design and build a robot that can move and perform those movements without falling over, let’s be clear, they are NOT responding to the music and freeform reacting to it. They are executing pre-programmed movements which are designed to be in sync with that particular piece of music. And the music was likely recorded over the video – no sounds of the robot’s can be heard. There is no info on how much they can actually do in the real world without someone on the other end of a joystick.
I’ve seen mall fountains back in the 1990’s do exactly the same thing synced up to classical pieces like Beethoven’s Fifth and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Cool, but hardly advanced tech.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
I would, but the dude continues to retweet himself and has a small army of people who simply amplify him be retweeting with no commentary.
If he was a nobody, I’d ignore him, but he’s been characterized in a feature motion picture AND makes routine appearances on Fox and other RW sources.
sanjeevs
@Edmund Dantes: Garland is another Mueller/Comey type.
zhena gogolia
@artem1s: Dancing Waters! I loved them!
rikyrah
@frosty:
Absolutely Agree :)
NotMax
@artem1s
Historical tidbit.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Tell us about your impressions when you visited it.
Martin
@germy: You’re reading this at the wrong level. This is a cold war. Their end game is to win it, and you can’t win a war by admitting that your enemy has a good point, even when its obvious they have a good point.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: years ago I convinced my co-workers that a donut hole is exactly that—a hole, just air. Not edible or tasty. The thing called a donut hole might be called a donut ball?
And speaking of edible, at a family gathering someone mentioned a food as being edible, and the teenagers present thought that meant it contained marijuana. They didn’t know the general meaning of edible.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I stay away from enterprises requiring new clothes, and an “elegant pajama” contest would certainly be that. My pajamas come from JC Penney when they have a sale. Paying more than $20 for a pair…well, that doesn’t happen and it’s not going to start now.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Okay. The ’64 incarnation was very bright. And very loud.
artem1s
@NotMax: cool! Pretty much the same tech that was used for player pianos and looms and early computing machines!
Matt McIrvin
@Woodrow/asim: The weird one to me is Without A Clue, the one with the premise that “Holmes” is a Remington Steele-like character invented by Dr. Watson to sell his detecting services (and eventually embodied by a bumbling actor he hires for the purpose). It totally feels like one of those 1970s movies, yet is from 1988. A peculiar throwback.
It’s all good fun until you get to the climax and it turns out to be one of those movies with surprise transphobia!!
Gravenstone
@Matt McIrvin: For a very different take, I would suggest people took at Moriarity the Patriot. a recently concluded anime. As the name might suggest, the focus is more on Moriarity, with Holmes not even appearing until midway through the first “season”. Although I suspect a lot of purists would take issue with some of the other changes made to characters over the course of it. Currently it’s only available to stream from Funimation (subscription with a 10 day free trial for the curious), or you can purchase the episodes from Amazon Prime streaming.
J R in WV
@The Thin Black Duke:
I’m v late to this thread, busy around the house, but I wanted to add that I always enjoy your writing here, there, and elsewhere.
Will confess that I thought you were “The Thin Black Dude” for a while, sorry about that hitch in reading comprehension!
Nutmeg again
Hah! Late to the party, as usual. I used to drive past the Boston Dynamics building on my work commute (Hellooo Rt 3!). At least they have a sheepdog, for when they develop electric sheep. Although, really, we know they are coming for us in our sleep, right?
Geminid
Not many people talk about The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). That is not surprising. The movie was an long, expensive “road show,” and was not a success. In retrospect many critics see it as a sign that director and cowriter Billy Wilder had lost his magic. He sure had it when he made The Apartment.