Random Thoughts: Just a Ploy for More Money

Tweets from January, 2022:

• 2022-01-01: "Dallas recorded a 13% drop in homicides in 2021." Wait, what? Didn't the National Fraternal Order of Police just scream about "SKYROCKETING MURDER RATES." You don't think it was just a ploy for more money, do you?
• 2022-01-02: Guys, ask yourselves, "Have I told my wife even once this year, I love you?"
• 2022-01-03: RT: "Donald Trump releases a statement endorsing Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán for re-election, saying he 'truly loves his Country.'". A good pairing to my blog post about Anne Applebaum's article in The Atlantic: "The Bad Guys are Winning."
• 2022-01-04: Don't Look Up (2021): Two astronomers detect a comet headed towards Earth and can't convince anyone to care. Of course, half of America consider it Fake News. A satire that doesn't quite land because today's reality is satire. If it hits, we'll deserve it. Loaded with stars. B-
• 2022-01-05: The Matrix Resurrections (2021): Tired franchise resurrected with nothing new to add. Lots of dialog about how dead characters are alive again. Token "bullet time" fights. Overstuffed with world-building. No chemistry between Neo and Trinity. Keanu Reeves's hair is still good. C+

After the jump, more random thoughts.

The House (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes

The House (2022): Three 30-minute stop-motion animations. Same house, different timelines. House is either haunted, infested with fur bugs, or infested with deadbeat renters. Not much in the way of plot. Quirky and weird. Kind of movie college kids might like to watch stoned. C+

The Righteous Gemstones - S01 (TV 2019)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Righteous Gemstones - S01 (TV 2019): Satire of a family of spoiled, selfish preachers at a megachurch. Plots involve blackmail and a heist but mostly it's the complicated family dynamics that drive the story. Blasphemous. Gratuitous nudity. Crude humor. Meh. C+

#VeryTardyReview

Richardson Doesn't Want Your Help Redistricting

Redistricting, or drawing new political boundaries, is something that happens every ten years after the Census is completed. The City of Richardson has to complete this exercise for City Council districts, but because of our at-large election system, the stakes are low. Creating districts that stretch and snake this way and that in order to predetermine the outcomes of elections is not an issue here. The City Council voted last Monday to appoint members of the City Plan Commission to a district boundary commission. The City Council missed an opportunity for opening an avenue for public engagement and input.

POTD: Inside the Burial Chamber of a Pharaoh

From 2019 11 22 Valley of the Kings

Today's photo-of-the-day is from deep inside a mountain in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was taken inside the (empty) burial chamber of Pharaoh Rameses IV (died 1149 BCE). The tomb was looted by grave robbers probably about three thousand years ago, along with the mummy of the pharaoh, so we thought it OK to smile and pose for photos. What? Too soon?

Station Eleven (TV 2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

Station Eleven (TV 2021): Flu kills 99% of humans. Survivors carry on. Lots of cuts between times and places and characters' stories. There's Shakespeare and a graphic novel, adding metaphor and symbolism. It gets surreal at times. The humanity at heart makes this so good. A-

#NoNeedForAnotherSeason

Read my review of the 2014 novel.

Divining the Votes on Rezoning Applications

2009 Future Land Use Plan
Red: Employment. Yellow: Residential

There's another rezoning application before the Richardson City Council. This one is for 16 acres of undeveloped land at Glenville and Lookout. The developer wants to build apartments, an independent living facility, townhomes, and live-work units. The 2009 Land Use Plans designates the property for "Regional Employment." The City staff report states that, despite that 2009 plan, an 8.5 acre tract on the northern half of the property has rights that allow for apartment development equating to approximately 153 units. The property owner is now coming back for another bite of the apple, asking for rezoning for the other 8 acres from industrial to residential to allow for a total of up to 590 residential units. That's almost four times as many apartments as current zoning would permit and, of course, infinity times more than the zero called for in the 2009 Land Use Plan. Will that 2009 Land Use Plan or the current zoning pose an insurmountable barrier for this City Council? That remains to be seen, but my money is on "No." By which, of course, I mean the answer to the developer's request will be "Yes."

Richardson to Netflix: Pay Up

This agenda item for the Richardson City Council caught my eye.

A lawsuit against Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+? What's that all about, I wondered. That sent me in search of lawsuits by other cities against Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and other video service providers. That turned up a story from The Dallas Morning News from November, 2021.

Review: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

From The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Once upon a time, the story goes, we were hunter-gatherers, living in a prolonged state of childlike innocence, in tiny bands. These bands were egalitarian; they could be for the very reason that they were so small. It was only after the ‘Agricultural Revolution’, and then still more the rise of cities, that this happy condition came to an end, ushering in ‘civilization’ and ‘the state’ — which also meant the appearance of written literature, science and philosophy, but at the same time, almost everything bad in human life: patriarchy, standing armies, mass executions and annoying bureaucrats demanding that we spend much of our lives filling in forms."

Amazon

The subtitle of this huge work is "A New History of Humanity" and as the name implies, Graeber and Wengrow range over the whole planet and tens of thousands of years. In the process they challenge the almost universal assumptions of humanity's social evolution. No one will be able to write another "big history" book without addressing the questions raised here.

Eternals (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

Eternals (2021): Too many characters. Too complicated. Character motivation is never clear, so you can't tell who the bad guys are. The humor falls flat. Normally, action scenes make up for these failings, but even those scenes got repetitive. A miss by Marvel and Chloé Zhao. C-