Mitch's Blog

I spent a few minutes on the Democratic Socialists of America website, paying particular attention to their platform. Much of it is aspirational and utopian and entirely agreeable. This is the world we’d like to see in 25, 50 or 100 years, not necessarily tomorrow.

However their singling out of Israel of all the nations of the world for criticism sets off a bright, blinking red light for me. I’m fine with people criticizing Israel — I am highly critical of it myself, as are many Israelis — but when a political organization or candidate criticizes Israel exclusively without also criticizing countries like Saudi Arabia and China, with which the United States also has strong ties, I strongly suspect that candidate or organization of anti-Semitism.

The DSA says Israeli and American officials who committed genocide against Palestinians should face criminal prosecution. I have no objection to that. But the DSA says nothing about Palestinians who commit atrocities against Israeli civilians. That’s a big red anti-Semitism flag for me.

Both major political parties in the US now have powerful anti-Semitic wings. I’m sure this is fine and will be no problem at all.

If you want to respond to this post by pointing out terrible things Israel did with US support, go ahead, but you’re missing the point.

I updated the template for my newsletter to set the maximum width for the body to 600 pixels, so the newsletter doesn’t stretch alllllllll the way across a widescreen. I had Claude do the code and it appeared to get it right in one shot, which is too good to be true.

If you’re reading this in the newsletter and the formatting is funny, please let me know. And if the newsletter is so badly formatted that you can’t read it, well, I hope my attempt at mental telepathy is working.

This is cool: The cast of “The Pitt” will do a live table reading of the first broadcast episode of “Star Trek” to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary and benefit the Writers' Guild Foundation. Noah Wylie will play Kirk, and other cast participating include Katherine LaNasa, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez and Ayesha Harris

We missed the San Diego Carnivorous Plant Society Sale and Show. It was last weekend. Darnit!

In other news: San Diego has a carnivorous plant society. Is it a society of carnivorous plants?

If there’s a movie based on a book, and you plan to both see the movie and read the book, what order should you do it in?

I think most readers would say you should read the book first, but a friend makes a compelling, brief argument for seeing the movie first: the book will have so much more to it than the movie. You watch the movie to get the broad strokes and read the book the appreciate the details.

With “Project Hail Mary,” I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before: I read about half of the book, then watched the movie, then read the rest of the book. I loved the movie, thought parts of the book were great but much of it was “meh.”

Parts the novel “Project Hail Mary,” by Andy Weir, were compelling and even moving. Those were the parts that involve interactions with the characters and advancing the plot, particularly the warm friendship that grows between the human hero and alien Rocky.

I found the speculative technology and science less compelling. I know that it was meticulously and scientifically worked out, but it all read like Star Trek or Doctor Who technobabble to me and I found my eyes skating over pages and pages and pages without taking in anything I’d read.

Overall, I found the book enjoyable and even gripping in parts, but I don’t know whether I will read another Andy Weir book. I am not the audience.

There was one hugely implausible element to the book: The premise that all the nations of the world might come together to save the world against an invisible threat. Given how many people still believe Covid was a hoax, I fear that’s not how it would work out.

I had the same problem with the otherwise brilliant Last Policeman trilogy by Ben Winters, which is a series of police murder procedurals set in a small Massachusetts city during the final six months before an asteroid is due to strike the Earth and wipe out all life. Everybody in the world knows the asteroid is going to hit and the novel is about what you’re going to do when you know the world will come to an end in two years. I don’t remember any of the characters in the novel saying the asteroid is a hoax — astronomers go on TV to announce the news and everybody just believes it to be true.

I use semicolons anyway. Give the motherfuckers reading my shitposts an edumacation.

Yes to this