Presence is such a good film. It’s not horror, really, for all you horror haters. It’s more of a psychological thriller with some few horror elements. It’s mostly about misogyny and family dynamics. And it’s shot so beautifully. Probably my favorite film I’ve seen in the last couple of years.
Good analysis of how it was shot. (And wow, Callina is so different than her character Chloe in the film!)
Here’s why I can demand the things I do at work: I walked into my current job after the other person running the place had been let go.
There was no documentation of any kind. The hosting company was shit-tier. Some important parts of the infra I didn’t even have log-ins for and had to break into them or rebuild them. Everything was designed with the sole goal of saving money with no other thought or consideration. If there was something that was 100x worse but 10% cheaper, that’s what was used. Also, my predecessor was negligent and attempted to do more than they actually understood how to do. And was not well-liked, to say the least.
Since they had already been canned I had zero training, as already mentioned no documentation, and no preparation. There was no one to ask anything substantive of and no one to help me get started. It was all me.
And I rocked it. Maybe one of 1,000 of people in my field could’ve done what I did while keeping the actual product up in an extremely fragile and insecure environment.
It was admittedly rough for a while but now the company is in a much better place (hosting-wise and more metaphorically).
So that’s why I can and do send snarky emails to recruiters. I can roll that way because I can do what I do.
In general, I’d probably advise against following my example.
One thing that is accurate from Sherlock Holmes is that you can discern more about most people than they think they are revealing by paying very close attention and having a whole lot of background knowledge.
My partner says that I “do my Sherlock Holmes thing” sometimes and I take that as a huge compliment. Seeing more than most people means you have to have done more with your mind than most people in the past.
And that’s always been my aim — but I don’t do it within other people’s parameters. And never will.
The Exhausting Fight for Climate Action.
The Man in the Midnight-Blue Six-Ply Italian-Milled Wool Suit.
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.
We Need Corny Star Trek Now More Than Ever.
Sprinting Toward 2030’s “I Own Nothing” Reality.
Trump’s desire for Greenland sets feelings on fire in the Arctic.
I read Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods recently.
This won’t be a complete review, but will try to offer enough of an appraisal to know if you, dear reader, would like to devote your time to this fairly long book.
My main thought is that I wish it had been better. The work starts off so well and had so much potential, which is why I kept reading it. The characters are interesting, the beginning is a banger, and the mystery is compelling. But it begins to suffer as it spends more and more time with viewpoint characters who offer little to the story. Too much of the action happens off the page — it’s like Moore has no idea what to do with anything more than people talking, so God of the Woods has no substantive propulsive action scenes at all even when they are core components of her own story. Nearly everything important occurs outside of the reader’s observation. While this can work — see No Country For Old Men for an example — you have to be Cormac McCarthy or the Coen Brothers to pull something like that off.
And Moore is neither of those things.
As the book becomes increasingly meandering and the characters do little to advance the story, I began to hope the ending would be the banger that the first 30-40 pages were. No such luck. The denouement is unbelievable, unsatisfying and borderline insulting to the reader.
There was a good novel in there somewhere. A decent editor probably could’ve located it for Moore, who clearly has some writing talent. But like many of the characters in the story, that editor was nowhere to be found.
I don’t have a Goodreads account, but if I did I’d rate The God of the Woods 2 out of 5 stars. However, I’d rate the first 100 pages a 4.5/5 and the last 100 a 1/5. By the by, Yun’s review is better than mine and more thorough — and is essentially what I think, but she is more charitable to the book than I am.
This was my reaction too when people told me this same thing in middle and high school.
Luckily, it was not true. The best years of my life are right now. And I love it, but no love to all the haters (as they say).
Watching the Terminator 2 Director's cut with commentary and this shot is wild: That's not a mirror!
It's Linda Hamilton's twin sister mirroring her with the real arnold while she works on a fake arnold head in the foreground pic.twitter.com/9e0dHkAoJz
— Misha, Photographer, Eligible Bachelor (@drethelin) September 3, 2022
Ah what the fuck.
I had no idea. I need to check that commentary out. I knew Linda had an identical twin, but I didn’t know that’s how that shot was created.
