Grim's Reality

Sunday, 5 June 2022

Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #286

This is quite the interview. I found it challenging because it undermined so much of what I understood about the current state of play. That isn't to say I haven't become (or previously been) more aware of the highly polished propaganda of the west and more so over time, but that Oliver Stone talks about the west and his own country's politics and policies as scurrilous and underhand is revealing. It is also a measure of our relative freedom of speech that he can do so, so we need to bear that in mind when we get all antsy about freedom of speech, it's only really marginalized from mainstream media, but if you look (and not too hard) you will find sensible counter-narrative and those all-important alternative facts (it's a shame the phrase `alternative facts' got so buggered up as it was born).

There is a truth to this interview that is jarring. Some time ago I happened to look at some stats on Our World in Data (I fell down a rabbit hole of looking at military expenditure, population, conventional forces, land mass, capital, reserves, playing a game of mental Top Trumps if you like) and I came away thinking, that if Russia ever got out of its pram and decided to go first strike, that it would be crushed like a bug. The point was that having been down the rabbit hole and having this mental calculation glaring an answer at me I still clung to the notion of ... well it was once the Evil Empire, and the light of Glasnost was extinguished fairly quickly. So, I ignored my instinct and my own calculations answer, and now I have to sit here and feel disjointed and uncomfortable about things I held truer than not, and know I was probably wrong not to listen to my inner voice.

Oliver Stone's take on nuclear is very clear, we need more of it, simple fact. Our World in Data will help again.

https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy

https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy

Saturday, 4 June 2022

What is Peripheral Neuropathy?

A video short which shows the active effect of Peripheral Neuropathy, caused by long-term compression of the lumbar nerve roots, resulting of itself from the previous herniation of spinal disks.

Neuropathy may cause painful cramps, fasciculations (fine muscle twitching), muscle loss, bone degeneration, and changes in the skin, hair, and nails. Additionally, motor neuropathy may cause impaired balance and coordination or, most commonly, muscle weakness; sensory neuropathy may cause numbness to touch and vibration, reduced position sense causing poorer coordination and balance, reduced sensitivity to temperature change and pain, spontaneous tingling or burning pain, or allodynia (pain from normally nonpainful stimuli, such as light touch); and autonomic neuropathy may produce diverse symptoms, depending on the affected glands and organs, but common symptoms are poor bladder control, abnormal blood pressure or heart rate, and reduced ability to sweat normally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_neuropathy

Restless legs syndrome (RLS), also known as Willis-Ekbom Disease (WED), is generally a long-term disorder that causes a strong urge to move one's legs. There is often an unpleasant feeling in the legs that improves somewhat by moving them.[2] This is often described as aching, tingling, or crawling in nature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restless_legs_syndrome

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.