Brian Behrend’s microblog
Great, quick read that I didn’t want to put down. Enjoyable humor and strong premise and character development of the titular murderbot. I was disappointed at first by the very last couple pages but then I remembered there’s 6+ other books that it leads into and am a lot less critical of how it wrapped up.
Rating: 5 stars
📚 Crossposted on Goodreads
📕 Buy All Systems Red on Bookshop
Are we all getting this alert over and over and over again every time we use AirPods?
They waited 15 years and 364 days without using magic and then everyone lost their damn minds baking cakes and color changing dresses and getting drunk one day before her 16th birthday.
Really enjoyed this on this rewatch though. I think I previously had this as maybe my least favorite of the classic princess movies but this is light years better than Snow White and almost up there with Cinderella. Glad to be moving on to the 60s and 70s now though as part of my animated Disney chronological rewatch, there’s a good number of films there that are either blind spots or I haven’t watched in probably 30 years.
Rating: 3.5 stars
🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch Sleeping Beauty on Disney+
Created a Shortcut on my Mac just to quit Apple Music every time it opens and open Spotify instead.
It’s not that I hate Apple Music that much, it’s just I constantly click the play/pause on my Airpods after a work call meaning to restart podcast/music on my iPhone. Be nice if Apple would let us configure that behavior. (I know, I know.)
New Mean Girls trailer is out…
Are they trying to keep it a secret that this is a musical? Or did they somehow screw this up and replace the songs with current pop music? Even the official website doesn’t seem to mention it at all except she has a musical note ring on in the movie poster.
Ventured out to theater on a Friday night to watch The Marvels with the entire family. Legit very funny and surprisingly short. Kids absolutely loved it and laughed out loud throughout. Rating: 4 stars
Well excuuuuuse me Princess… but Nintendo is apparently making a live-action Zelda movie.
Not exactly super confident based on the producer and director (only on their recent films) that were announced. I also find it interesting that they’ve decided to make it a movie and not TV, is that a sign it’s going to be big and expensive? Seems like live-action is riskier or at least makes it more likely this is a complete disaster? Will they be able to keep this PG with the darkness and violence inherent in the story.
Interestingly, Avi Arad is also credited as the creator of the Netflix’s kid show Super Monsters which my kids at least sometimes watched and I found it actually pretty solid.
Finally caught up with this since The Marvels is coming out soon and it was much more enjoyable than all the grouchy comments would let make you believe. Not really sure what people want or are expecting, but this was an interesting thriller with several really good performances (Charlayne Woodard and Kingsley Ben-Adir in particular). It’s not groundbreaking or anything but it does a good job of what it was trying to do.
Of course, the fact that the show is centered around a shapeshifting alien species that can be any character in any scene hamstrings it a bit, but I feel like they were largely judicious enough in their use of that trick that I wasn’t expecting a few of those reveals. I might find the Skrulls abilities more annoying in upcoming MCU stuff than I did here where they’re the main plot line.
Olivia Colman is really fun in this. Hopefully she continues to have chance to be funny and kinda badass if her character continues popping up in future MCU stuff.
Rating: 3.5 stars
🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch Secret Invasion on Disney+
Really enjoyable thriller. Been making my way through Preston and Child’s independent books while waiting for this book to become available at the library. Relic was considerably more interesting and generally better than any of those so looking forward to making way through more of these. Interested to see how Pendergast goes from side character to the namesake of the 20+ book series.
The Agent Coffey character was one of the worst “idiot cop who’s in charge of everything and keeps blowing it for our heroes” trope characters in any media though. Just comically stupid and obnoxiously stubborn.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Pretty much half of the recent NNG articles recently have been about generative AI/chatbots: nngroup.com/articles/ Some of them are interesting, some of them are pretty empty. Guessing in general putting out five truly riveting articles per week on usability is tough.
Interesting to see them so heavy into AI including most of the recent articles from Jakob Nielsen himself.