2022 In Review

I find the “good riddance to this year” trope, even in terrible years, unhelpful and uninteresting, and in light of some recent years, not particularly meaningful. Here’s some highlights of my past 12 months.

  • Finally took a letterpress workshop at Public Space One
  • Replaced 2,500 car miles with an electric pedal-assist bike
  • Hiked more than 100 miles, including in the Rocky Mountains and the Loess Hills
  • Added a redwing blackbird to my arm thanks to Nikki Powills
  • Had really meaningful and sometimes tough conversations with my kid who is now on the verge of adulthood
  • Ended my 1,010-day COVID-free streak
  • Engaged with friends and family for walks, meals and more

Onward.

Day 1,010

Getting COVID-19 isn’t inevitable, despite how much it feels like it may.

I knew the numbers were increasing, knew we had ticked from “low” to “medium,” but I was lazy. Maybe cocky.

There are two times in the past week I thought about wearing a mask and didn’t, and one of those probably caught me.

And so, after successfully avoiding COVID for 1,010 days, it got me.

In and Out of Character

Trump’s “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” that turned out to be a sale of licensed NFT’s when it seems interest is at best waned seems out of character for a presidential candidate. But is seems very in character for this particular former president.

There was, I think, a gap in the steaks and for-profit scam university because he had other, more valuable things to sell. But NFT sales con man is who he is.

Meanwhile at Twitter

There are many mockable things going on at Twitter, and this certainly isn’t the most outrageous, but a new gold verified badge appeared as they roll out a second iteration of Twitter Blue verification to differentiate the big players who might buy ads meanwhile legacy verified accounts, including government agencies, simply get a blue badge noting “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”

Star Wars Imagined in the 1940s by Walt Disney

Inspired by Flash Gordon, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walt Disney began sketching out characters for grand, animated space opera full of villains and magic warriors. No one outside Disney was believed to have seen them, until, recently, these drawings were found in George Lucas’s collection.

Imagined using AI from Midjourney.

Why Andor is Great and Rouge One is Just OK

Jamelle Bouie on Rouge One versus Andor:

[In Rouge One] We don’t actually get a sense of the interior lives of any of the characters, who, we know as an audience, are on the way to their doom. There’s no real attempt to deal with the psychology of rebellion. The movie is exciting, but I don’t think it quite works.

…

[W]hile “Andor” is billed as a show about the Rebellion, it is just as much, if not more, a show about the Empire. It is most interested, I think, in how the Empire works — in the bureaucracy of domination. Key moments take place within the Imperial intelligence agency, in scenes reminiscent of a John le Carré novel or adaptation (it helps that many of the actors are British, with the Received Pronunciation that we expect from Imperial officers in Star Wars). We see how paperwork in an office translates to brutality for ordinary people on the ground; how Imperial control is administered, and how dissent is repressed. We see why someone would join the Empire, find fulfillment in the Empire, seek to advance Imperial goals. It is a show that uses the idea of the “banality of evil” in exactly the way it was meant.

Exactly right.

American Exceptionalism Extends to Killing More People Walking and Riding Bikes

Emily Badger and Alicia Parlapiano writing for The New York Times:

Safety advocates and government officials lament that so many deaths are often tolerated in America as an unavoidable cost of mass mobility. But periodically, the illogic of that toll becomes clearer: Americans die in rising numbers even when they drive less. They die in rising numbers even as roads around the world grow safer. American foreign service officers leave war zones, only to die on roads around the nation’s capital.

…

Much of the familiar explanation for America’s road safety record lies with a transportation system primarily designed to move cars quickly, not to move people safely.

“Motor vehicles are first, highways are first, and everything else is an afterthought,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

This is maddening because, as Caron Whitaker of the League of American Bicyclists puts it here, “We know what the problem is, we know what the solution is. We just don’t have the political will to do it.”

Dead Red

I’ve been a Netflix member since 2004, and found a lot of value in the service since the disks-in-the-mail days of yore, when getting a livestream of Starz was just a weird freebie throw in.

But when I look at all the services I pay for each month — currently including HBO Max, Disney+, Apple TV+, Prime Video and now a free trial of Hulu — it’s the first one I’d cut.

No wonder Netflix is hurting. How did the one-time leader go wrong?

I think it’s death by a thousand cuts. Here are my pain points:

Netflix doesn’t integrate with Apple TV

I started my Hulu trial because I wanted to watch Community and it suddenly seemed to disappear from Prime Video but Apple suggested I watch it on Hulu. It was available to me through Netflix, but I didn’t know that! Even if I fall in love with something, if it’s not on what I think of as my TV front page. While Nintendo and a whole bunch of others beat out Apple TV (the device, not the app and not the service) for marketshare, it suggests to me Netflix’s attitude that was believing its prominence made it special seemingly blinded to its competition.

Netflix gave up on its “queue” for a “list”

In the old days, there was this moment of angry-turned-joy when something made it to the top of your queue and showed up in the mail so you watched it and found a new favorite. The move to a list, necessitated by the constant churn of the catalog due to streaming-right fights, went that joy was lost. It also turned Netflix from a “we’ve got everything” place for movie lovers to a “we’ve always got something to watch” place for people who just wanted flickering lights.

Netflix doesn’t show me good stuff to watch

At one time, Netflix was really interested in building a better recommendation engine until it wasn’t. Now I get trending stuff that doesn’t fit me. I can’t find good movies or TV to watch, there’s nothing that drives surprise and delight, and its recommendations suck. I’m aware of the big cultural moments (Squid Games, Stranger Things) but Netflix doesn’t seem interested in finding off-the-beaten-path stuff I might like.

Netflix has a shotgun approach to exclusives

I trust HBO to deliver great TV, and it has an amazing back catalog. Apple TV+ has also constantly delivered great shows that are at least worth trying out. Disney+ always seems to have a show I’d like to try (folks, Andor is really good, even if you don’t like Star Wars). I kept bumping into shows I wanted to try (The Bear, Only Murders in the Building) that were on Hulu and eventually game in. There’s nothing I’m excited about on Prime, but it fills the “other stuff” category for me and comes bolted on to other Amazon services that I pay for. I liked, but didn’t love, Stranger Things and felt the same about many other Netflix originals.

Netflix has overvalued itself in my life

I now pay $20 a month for Netflix because I want 4K. They’ve also tied the number of screens you can use at a time to that, which isn’t a big deal to me but feels cheap (we probably use two concurrently). Apple TV+ is $7, Hulu is $15 without ads, Disney+ is $11 and Amazon Prime is $15 and the video feels like an add-on to free shipping.