Radiation by Fiona Rae

Westworld is definitely crossing over with Person of Interest, another concept show. Though that one in the end did deliver a satisfying ending (though after a lot of muddling around).

Devs started well, and I did like the slow and quiet vibe. But I found the avant-garde music stuff to be a distraction, and to take up space which could have been spent exploring its concept more fully. As for the ending, meh.

As for the ending, meh.

Spoil... er, too late. ;-)

We're up to ep 4 of Devs. Because the Guardian review warned not to expect a coherent storyline, we approached this series with adjusted expections, in more than one sense of the phrase. The storyline so far is intriguing, sparking weird and interesting discussions about quantum theory and molecular tracing and timelines on rails.

So in that sense a tidy ending isn't expected. I enjoy TV that's slightly different and this series has a 'feel' that I really like. It's probably the director's touch.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the visuals so far. While there's probably even more cgi than I realise, the production design is beautiful and that gold-lined, vacuum-sealed bunker is a thing of beauty.

But jeez, that music! Especially the bits which feel like someone ran a competition inviting lonely Norwegian sax players to mimic the sound of fingernails scraping down blackboards and this guy came last. Those images deserve a much better soundtrack.

We have been considering Devs, given Garland’s earlier work. But for something completely different, I really recommend Shtisel, an Israeli series on Netflix. It is centred on an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, and one particular family and one particular father and son relationship (Shukem and Akiva). It is absorbing and often funny, and very, very human.
We have watched the 12 episodes of series one and are mid-way through series two. Series three is in production.

Welcome back.
I have been enjoying Devs, found Westworld a bit chaotic, and gave up on Altered Carbon after three episodes of season 1. I preferred to remember the book for that one.
Westworld's first season played the multiple timelines card to excess, and the third season seems to have switched to the virtualised reality card instead. Are we headed for resolution or more chaos? The trailer says *season* finale so I expect it's just going to be more chaos.

Have you had a look at Tales from the Loop yet?

Russell; have you noticed these bullshit spam messages infiltrating the conversation?

They have become more profuse recently and I feel sorry for Russell having to deal with them most days. In generic terms, geo-blocking works but is a hassle, while admin approval of new signups slows genuine users. There's no easy answer except swatting them like flies as they pop up.

Westworld is definitely crossing over with Person of Interest, another concept show.

Person of Interested was created by Jonathan Nolan and Westworld is co-created by him.

I thought Person of Interested worked quite well, it had the "of the Week" and the arcs were slowly introduced. Other concept shows dive too quickly into the big themes.

They have become more profuse recently and I feel sorry for Russell having to deal with them most days. In generic terms, geo-blocking works but is a hassle, while admin approval of new signups slows genuine users. There’s no easy answer except swatting them like flies as they pop up.

And the swatting is time-consuming. I'm not sure if we have an approval setting but I'll find out.

After playing admin on a large board for years I sympathise. We were running open source phpBB forums in a NZ/AU only context and as we gained popularity, more bots and trolls infested us daily. There really should be switches on every admin control panel offering:

Bots - Y/N, Trolls - Y/N

But there's not. Admin confirmation of new signups helped us initially. We also deployed a handy extension that compared signup IPs and flagged the duplicates -- spot the spammer -- that was brilliant! Plus captchas, Spamhaus checks and even bot confusers. But in the end geoblocking -- "Russia, Romania... be gone!" -- helped to reduce the flow most effectively.

Our blocklist was populated by IP ranges and the main text file eventually bloated out and became massive. I had half the world blocked via IP which in geek terms felt pretty god-like.

But all of these measures eat up time and we finally closed the board in January. Our main purpose had run its course, most of our users had migrated to social media for their daily fix and the enormous relief of finally switching off over fifteen years of spambots was just wonderful.

Disclaimer: this is just me waffling about older tech and I'm sure others will have more elegant solutions.

I did suggest that. Cactus-elves must have something under the hood.

inviting lonely Norwegian sax players

I'll have you know that this particular lonely Norwegian sax player is one of the greatest jazz voices of the late 20th and early 21st century. You philistine!

Another series that seems to be trawling the immortality trope is Upload.

I’ll have you know that this particular lonely Norwegian sax player is one of the greatest jazz voices of the late 20th and early 21st century. You philistine!

There was a period in my life when ECM jazz inspired me. Jarrett, Metheny, Pastorius… if you couldn’t whistle along to a track, so much the better. While I still love Metheny, over the years my tastes have mellowed and I’ve reached that age where wailing soprano sax equates to fingernails on blackboards. My apologies to the unknown Norwegian.

Our daughter escaping from Germany and joining our bubble has introduced different music to our lives. Thankfully there hasn’t been too much German metal, cos I don’t do metal. But some of the dance / electronica has been pretty inspiring... motivational... uplifting even.

I’d almost forgotten the joy of discovering new music. That’s been a real lockdown positive.

I have to confess to still being an ECM fanboi, and of Garbarek in particular.

But as I've aged I have found, while almost all of the music I enjoyed when much younger is still enjoyable, many types of music I scorned and scoffed at in past decades have recently been creeping into my library and put a few roots down. What have I become?

I still can't stand country & western though.