The Boys (all seasons)

I need to preface this with the statement that I love a superhero and have since I started reading comics way back when. I am going to make social comment, and reference the Marvel and DC universes as well as those of 2000ad (my later staple). The Boys is the antidote to the moral rectitude of the traditional superhero, and this is a good thing.

Think about all of the traditional superheroes, they all have a moral compass that points pretty much rigidly north. That rigidity is a consequence of a transformation brought about by a series of life-changing events or because of the tuition of a wise but entirely mortal elder. Peter Parker's uncle Ben, Ironman sees the effect of his weapons, Jor-El, Superman’s father. They are the tropes of ascension to a higher good.

Super-Villains on the other hand diverge from this positive transformational path by dint of similar but negative situations, and without the background guiding compass, and or a perversion (for want of a better word) of their id by the imagined persecution of themselves or their dreams and ambitions, the death of a loved one, or in simple setups, they are already a criminal who acquires powers. Doc Oc, Mr (or Dr) Freeze, have something taken from them, their single point of focus sets on rectifying a past wrong or undoing a tragedy that turns them against the wider world, or sets them on acquiring the one thing they can’t obtain by legal means to fix their past. Or they try to bring about a positive transformation of their present regardless of the cost to society. In Lex Luther’s case, its ego and the fact that there is someone out there who can thwart him in spite of his wealth or genius. General Zod is motivated by revenge. I tend not to give much credence to the nihilist “wants to destroy all of creation/the universe villains” … it just leads to Dues Ex Machina moments, that are frankly bollocks.

As an aside in recent times, the movies Spiderman No Way Home, Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the Disney series WandaVision blur the line a little whereby the lead characters try to bend reality to their will to rectify a wrong and cause catastrophic fallout that they then have to try and fix (but I digress). If you look at the two paragraphs above clearly, supervillains are actually the more complex characters.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

WandaVision

The superheroes of The Boys, diverge from both of these paths because they are as we discover; manufactured by Compound V, a legacy of Nazi experimentation to create and or augment the master race with superhuman powers. I don’t think there are any spoilers here, after all we are on Season three.

The Boys are (for those who don’t know) the entirely human anti-heroes trying to expose superhero corruption, led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban, who played Judge Dredd in the movie adaptation Dredd 2012, that was by many leagues better than the Sylvester Stallone movie Judge Dredd from 1995). If you want full cast details for The Boys go and look here https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Boys-Season-1/dp/B0875VNF4W and or half a dozen other web resources elsewhere.

Dredd (2012)

The superheroes in the boys differ because they are made. Vought their creating company, has brought Ex-Nazi scientists to America post war to develop their ideas to fruition for one assumes the greater good and profit … but eventually just profit. There are no guiding principles for these superheroes created by stealth by the Vought Corporation (you need to watch the series for the detail). Some of the children created by the program go on to develop incredible superpowers. Homelander being the equivalent of Superman, but for the fact that he has no moral compass, and considers humans as expendable trash, however, like a greek god of old he needs hero worship to validate him in a world where he can do whatever he likes with impunity. It is smart, how the creators have made a god on the one hand who on the other hand is a petulant, spoilt, needy turd of a child … who by the way has no qualms whatsoever about committing casual murder.

So, three seasons in, two episodes into season three, I decided I needed to write something about The Boys. Season One took you by surprise because it took the traditional image of the superhero and pulled it through the looking glass. An accidental manslaughter by a superhero of an innocent bystander opens a can of worms, that shows the effect of the collateral damage caused by superpowers in use. Interestingly in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, this aspect of the use of superpowers was alluded to by Ben Affleck’s Batman. Put simply there must have been hundreds if not thousands of collateral deaths and injuries caused by Superman’s fight with General Zod; but the viewer only gets to see the heroic saves in the traditional superhero format … though that is the point is it not? We saw similar critique by authorities in the aftermath of the Age of Ultron and Hulks Rampage and fight with Ironman. Had these issues not been addressed as negatives there would have been a supersized elephant in the room forever.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

In The Boys, Vought just pays people off, spins a yarn and controls the narrative with corporate zeal. Season two, the middle season where we get to see the crossed threads and where the real power resides up in the boardroom. And now Season three.

I am tentatively going to say that if the gore continues throughout the series as it has in the first two episodes, then the entire series is going lose its way as a gory schlock-fest, which will be a great disservice to the story overall. However, as a reset and to emphasise the reality of what the world would actually be like with a population of superheroes and supervillains, it does drive the point home.

So, I have spoken of the superheroes. What about our entirely human antiheroes, the protagonists? They are almost to a man as ruthless and evil as the alleged heroes. They, spy, entrap, blackmail, coerce, steal and murder. And this is where The Boys wins ... our protagonists should be the villains for trying to undermine the heroes, but the heroes are so awful when out of the limelight that you want them taken down.

If you haven’t watched The Boys but have a need to cut through some of the last decade and a bit worth of standard Superhero movies; quite often in my opinion beautifully rendered realisations of comic books then, The Boys is for you. It’s not an either-or situation. You can love Superhero lore, and still get a massive kick out of watching the more plausible scenario, of a corporation dealing in pharmacology, Media, Movies, Theme Parks and Lobbying being at the core of exploiting their products, and the adoration of entirely ignorant masses who just cleave to celebrity.

Star Trek Picard Season 2

I recently binge-watched all of Season two of Picard in two sittings of many hours. It was a hoot and a wheeze, and many other things besides, however, I can see why it has generated discussion on numerous forums across the internet, and why there is some critique of its (alleged tendency to wokness or the appeasement of therein). There is some incongruity, a dash of carelessness, a sprinkle of trite tripe, a fair bit of navel-gazing, self-referencing with formulaic in-jokes and some po-facedness. 

There is also the predilection to overlay the “current thing” cultural mores where may hap’s a few edits could have made it tighter. However, from an actors `actory’ perspective and with a view to plumbing the depths and breadths of experience as some, if not all concerned with the plot cruise towards agedness, a certain infirmity, but in the light of; the accrual of wisdom and its deployment to solve problems -where once actions were always the answer- I find myself having got it and enjoyed it.

Star Trek Picard Season 2

And who is to say in the future that Picard and the entire Star Trek universe occupy, that some if not all of our prejudices are flattened off relative to the expanse of alienness encountered in the wider galaxy (from their imagined perspective). 

Prejudices do still exist in our time, we are not that far removed from, homosexuality being a crime or the Victorian attitudes to sex (outwardly at least). I know this from growing up around my own grandmother who I now know looking through the lens of hindsight made prudery an artform, just by social convention. And that a general closed-mindedness and disgust dragged on like a social anchor to a dead past, until at least the swinging Sixties, through a fair part of the Seventies, Eighties', slowly ablating away through the Nineties, to the Noughties to where we are now. 

Clearly, I could write an entire piece on the evolution of sexual freedom that has occurred in the exact fifty-five years I have walked the Earth, from the summer of love in 1967 (my birth year as an arbitrary placeholder) until now, (and recently a certain renaissance of repression via the new puritans emerging as a consequence of actual wokery. Which will be hilarious to watch evolve and eat itself as it ties itself in a Gordian knot of contradictions). 

However, let's stick to Picard, if you are a Trekky, then this is a good dose of entertainment, and after all, that's the point is it not? Leave your preconceptions at the door, it isn't your universe (either of them), or your time frame.

Memes no Theme.

A general selection, some recent and just off topical, a couple for wisdom 

There is no cure for stupid.

Ha Ha.

Mitigations or Actions  

A classic reimagined

Also applies to Coffee

Amusing Antidote to Inspirationals

Truth to Power

Truth to Power 2.0

As true today as it was two-thousand four-hundred years ago. And that's the thing about truth, it doesn't change very much.

 

I finished reading #viral today.

I rather suspect that the for a while at least the #CCP (Chinese Communist Party), are phewing and wiping the sweat from their brows while silently thanking whatever deity you pray to from a foxhole, that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and took any residual attention in the west away from the very high likelihood that the #WIV in #Wuhan had a minor Captain Trips moment with some #SARSCoV2 specimens ... possibly cleaning rags, probably just simple carelessness.

There is a saying "that if it quacks like a duck it's probably a smoking gun" ... or something.

To paraphrase Monty Python `You Lucky ... Lucky Bastards"

Everyone should read this book or chunks of it, even if it's just the timelines and then the list of citations and links (very useful for the Kindle user).

Viral, Alina Chan & Matt Ridley

Gut Micrbiome

 This article popped up in my feed courtesy of Neal Asher's Facebook page.

 

Slowing the effects of ageing by eating well and feeding the good gut bacteria.

fightaging.org calorie-restriction-slows-immune-aging-in-part-via-gut-microbiome-alterations

In response to the post, I commented as below. My last paragraph is conspiracy theorist crap, based on the premise: that one should never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be attributed to stupidity (or in this case the likelihood that there are great removes between the various parties involved in potential solutions, so the attribute is ignorance by dint of separation).

My comment.

I have been banging this particular drum for a while. From the evidence that the gut has a sympathetic nervous system akin to a brain with all the associated neurons and synapses. The relationship, this activity has regarding gut chemistry and enzyme activity, and the potential as described in a fair bit of scientific literature that; there is indeed the case to be argued that an abundance of one particular form of bacteria dominating the gut could indeed lead to parasitism of the gut microbiome, leading to the host unconsciously feeding the parasite, to the detriment of the host in time.

Scholarly articles linked below.

Is eating behaviour manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

The gut microbiome in neurological disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

Regulation of Neurotransmitters by the Gut Microbiota and Effects on Cognition in Neurological Disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

A simplified blog post from John Hopkins Medicine. Hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection

At a tangent. An interesting thing caught my ear this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. They were talking about the lack of activity in adults and children in the wake of the post Olympics get Britain moving campaign. And of course, the bloke from the NGO blamed the government and said it was the government's job to put more money into the process and the government should be pushing people toward healthier lifestyles. I was amused (unpleasantly) at the simplicity of the solution, and the lack of depth of understanding of `lurking variables’.

We have a population that lives off processed food with one of the highest consumption rates of sugar on the planet.

www.worldatlas.com top sugar consuming nations in the world

I am not suggesting that we as a species aren’t to blame for our own health and consumption. But it would be remiss to discount the possibility that there is a feedback loop that hampers efforts to get people off sugar, off processed foods and more active.

And then all of a sudden we are into geopolitics, big food, big pharma and according to the NGO, the need for more big government. Clearly, the co-morbidities of the pandemic which accounted for most of the non-age related deaths have an almost one to one relationship with the health of the nation and the diet of the nation. 

If a no-one, with no scientific background from the arse-end of the world, can see something approaching a correlation, it begs the question. Is anyone actually interested in resolving the underlying issue? Or is the study of the field just a useful tool for developing novel pharmacological treatments to treat for a food industry that is quite happy to feed the pharmacological industry new clients?