Streaming Services

 For starters I should mention that I don't believe I have ever subscribed to cable tv, though I had some roommates who have had it already when I moved in.  Because of this, I don't think I am one of those people they are talking about when they mention the whole unbundling of cable and whatnot. I also have to wonder if the metrics that Wall Street seeks actually feed into the metrics of any given service.  For example, I have had, and cancelled, Netflix.  I cancelled it not because it was bad, but rather because it was too unwieldy to find anything on. I don't normally want to binge a season of anything, at most I will watch 2-3 episodes of a half-hour show in a row, before deciding to switch to something else, then come back a week or two later and watch another few episodes. Wall Street only cares that I subscribe, and I don't know if Netflix actually processed my viewing habits, because I may not have been their ideal customer.  Anyway, aside from Netflix, I also just cancelled Paramount+ and Showtime, which I had as a bundle, and that was because I wasn't watching enough.  So far, even though all the news services decry the lack of content, I have enjoyed Apple TV+, which I am not cancelling, even when my free time expires (a new season of Snoopy just dropped, and Ted Lasso will be back soon as well). The Disney+ bundle with Hulu and ESPN is also something I pay for, and I think I spend more time in the Hulu part of the bundle, but don't see any reason to change things there.  Finally, I use BritBox, as I enjoy all sorts of content there, even the lit up holiday train.

Overall, it is kind of funny, my neighbor told me his cable package was $270 or something stupid, and he has Netflix on top of that, even counting my internet bill on a monthly basis, I don't pay half that, and I have more than enough on TV to keep my attention. I know those businesses need to figure out how to keep people subscribing, but I also think they need to remember not every subscriber wants the exact same thing from their streaming services, while variety is nice, it is also nice to have something small with a limited selection that someone may have actually cared about when they chose the shows, rather than just doing a hope and prayer that it would hit some algorithmic section of the audience enough to keep it from being cancelled after one season.

Australia, finally free from Facebook

 While I am not in Australia, I love the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg has gotten himself into a snit and decided the best result was to no longer allow Australians the ability to link and share local news. With no need to visit Facebook for news stories, they no longer have to wonder if what they see on Facebook is news or QAnon fodder. Now they have the luxury of knowing everything aside from vacation pictures and family trip updates will be either advertising or stories pretending to be news, but not necessarily true.

While I still use Instagram, basically for photo sharing, I do not miss Facebook.  I do not miss someone illegally harvesting data and the response basically being, "Oops, they shouldn't do that because it is against the terms of service." Anyone can pretty much do anything they want with a Facebook property as long as it does not hurt Zuckerberg's bottom line, he pretty much won't care. The Right might complain about social media censoring them, but I see most social media as being right-wing friendly, because the right-wing drives page views and page views drive revenues.

While purportedly only 4% of the linked stories on Facebook, if I read those articles correctly, it doesn't really show how much time is spent on that 4% compared to the other 96%. If the various social media companies really want to keep your eyes tied to their websites so that you will see the advertising they dish up, rather than the advertising dished up by a story's original publisher, by refusing to allow local news links, Facebook has also pushed out users from the info silos those users have also created for themselves, and now they will need to actually view the website of their local newspaper or tv news. 

I dropped the Facebook echo chamber, and given time, those in Australia will find something outside of Facebook for their news source. The worst thing about aggregators like Facebook is that they dumb down the internet for its users.  Now that Facebook doesn't have news in Australia, Australians are going to need to relearn how to surf the internet, since just logging into Facebook will no longer bring joy.

Last Summer (2013 film)

Sometimes I think I am acquiring films faster than I can watch them, so I figure that maybe I could share some of my thoughts on them.  

First up is Last Summer, which is a lovely bit of gay themed cinema from 2013, directed by Mark Theideman. The plot, such as it is, is very thin, but as a meditation on young love and that summer between high school and college, when you both want to spend all your time with your partner, don't want to think about leaving, but know at some point one of you will be going to college. Movies tend to move at their own pace, and this was not a quick paced movie, though I think the languorous speed was as much to echo the Arkansas summer when this was taking place, as well as that thought amongst those of a certain age, that you have all the time in the world.

I would recommend it if you are willing to devote the time and not expecting an action flick or a melodrama. The actors do a good job, and they look like they could be teenagers, which is always a nice change. 

I was going to add more, but it began to sound a bit pretentious, and that really was not my purpose. Enjoy the movie if you are looking to see something a bit on the gay-themed art house side of things.