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Month: October 2020
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It’s Nyango Star!
It’s impossible to describe Nyango Star with mere words. This video will do a much better job:
Nyango Star is a mascot for Kuroishi City in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, on the northernmost tip of Honshu (the main island), and Japan’s largest producer of apples. In a design decision that makes perfect sense if you’re Japanese, Nyango is:
- An apple (therefore a perfect mascot for Aomori)…
- possessed by the spirit of a dead cat (???)…
- who in the fusion was granted awesome metal drumming superpowers.
The name also makes perfect sense if you’re Japanese:
- “Apple” in the Japanese language is “ringo”.
- “Nyan” means “meow”.
- And, of course, the name is a pun on Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.
Here’s a Vice documentary about Nyango Star:
Here’s a great video — Professional vs. Beginner Drummer — in which somehow Nyango, a mascot in an apple/cat costume with fixed facial features is displaying more emotion than the human:
Here’s Nyango doing a drum cover of the Japanese pop tune Futon no nakakara detakunai, which translates as “I don’t want to leave my futon”:
And I’ll close with this observation: Only in Japan can you assemble a crowd of seniors at a concert hall to watch an apple/cat mascot drum along to Slayer’s Raining Blood:
Having notes also reduces the chance that you’ll fail to completely answer simple questions that you might otherwise find easy in a less stressful setting, just like Amy Coney Barrett did.
Here’s Alex Winter’s original tweet in all its glory:
This doesn’t say “I’m so smart I don’t need notes.” It says “I have no respect for you or this process and serve other masters.” pic.twitter.com/EJUYLGkSfq
— Alex Winter
(@Winter) October 14, 2020
It’s a two-part, four-hour watch, but it’s a good (and gripping!) one: Agents of Chaos, the HBO documentary about Russian interference in U.S. elections.
It’s directed by Alex Gibney, the same director who made Totally Under Control, the documentary about the Trump administration’s early, disastrous non-response to COVID-19. I wrote about it a couple of days ago.
I’ve started watching it, and I’m finding it hard to tear myself away. As with Totally Under Control, I’ll write more about it later.
Here’s the trailer:
Want to know more about Agents of Chaos?
Here’s a Washington Post video interview featuring Agents of Chaos director Alex Gibney and cyber conflict researcher Camille François. François is the CIO of Graphika, who make an internet/social media analysis system that detects disinformation, media manipulation, and harassment campaigns. It’s hosted by Jonathan Capeheart, opinion writer for the Washington Post:
François is also featured in the first hour of the documentary, where she explains the power of organized trolling and how it was used to create plausible social media accounts, webpages for seemingly real groups, and fake online organizations, all with the purpose of manipulating the American public — and how their technique has only improved since 2016.
The Guardian did a good job summarizing the documentary in their review with this paragraph:
Agents of Chaos finds no single story, operation, locus of blame, or clear measure of impact by the Russian government. Instead, it explores a common purpose employed by both Russia and pro-Trump players in the US, sometimes in tandem and sometimes covertly. “Using chaos to amass power,” said Gibney.
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“So what did YOU catch?”
Hey, I grew up in Canada and didn’t study U.S. history or civics, but even I was able to match Amy Coney Barrett by being able to name four out of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, namely:
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of the press
- Freedom of religion
- Freedom of assembly
The one both she and I had forgotten was “Freedom to petition the government”, which is also phrased as “Freedom to protest”.
Remember: I have an excuse — I’m not a U.S. citizen (I’m a Canadian with a “green card”) and didn’t grow up here. I didn’t take civics classes here. I just know what I know about the U.S. from reading the news, books, and observation.
You know who should be able to answer a softball question about anything on the Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — by a friendly party (Republican senator Ben Sasse)? An American-born law school graduate, judge, and candidate for Supreme Court justice.
I’ll give her this: She carries herself a good deal better than this toolbag:
Totally Under Control is the name of two recent works:
- A new documentary film that was released yesterday, and
- a print comic and motion comic.
While they were created by completely unrelated teams, both are about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, and both take their name from a statement by Donald Trump made on January 22, in which he downplayed the novel coronavirus:
“We have it totally under control.”
The Totally Under Control documentary film
I’m watching the Totally Under Control documentary as I write this post, and I’ll write more later. In the meantime, here’s some information and links.
Here’s the trailer for the documentary:
The film is currently available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
Here’s a review of the documentary by Breakfast All Day:
And here’s an interview with the documentary’s directors, Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger with DP/30, David Poland’s YouTube channel where he interviews movie-makers:
The latest episode of the Daily Beast’s podcast, The New Abnormal, features an interview with director Alex Gibney about the film, how he made it, and what he learned in the process.
You can get it via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other sources.
The Totally Under Control comic
Insider posted the comic on September 14th. You can read it online…
…or you can watch it in motion comic form below: