Youtube link here. Occasional Gus! AKA Addie.
It’s a pretty classic week. Movies and TV. Tony insults the mentally ill/neuro-atypical. Azuretalon trolls us with AI. And then we both do our super social-science geeking until we get sleepy. Enjoy!
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Yup, certainly was me with the Charlie Sheen trolling.
He-Man Revelations was awesome in my estimation.
A few things I’m currently watching/have watched.
“MerPeople” – a documentary series on Netflix about people in the US who “mermaid” for fun and (very little) profit. What struck me was how similar the stories here are to the people who used to run away to join the circus. I’d say circus-life is somewhat different nowadays–more professional in all senses which has both a good and bad side.
“Physical 100” – a Korean reality show in which contestants are pitted against each other in physical competitions. I find parts of it hilarious, and parts really intriguing because of the way it highlights cultural differences around competition.
“The Mysterious Benedict Society” – a kids show on Disney+ that I would describe as a combination of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Spy Kids.” Kristen Schaal is one of the adult actors playing the heck out of a character I really like. Unfortunately, I found out about the show in an article about shows about to leave streaming. It has 2 seasons and no more, and I read that there is no resolution to the plot.
All Tony’s descriptions of “She-Ra” reminded me to recommend “Steven Universe” again as it fits into all the categories he mentioned. The majority of characters are female-presenting, but “presenting” is an important emphasis as gender is not definitive at all in this world. Steven, for example, is the titular boy main character, becomes female presenting in various ways.
Culture & Emotions:
I just recently read about a study that showed how even basic concepts (even concrete ones) were understood differently by different people.
Here’s a link to the article, which also has a link to the actual study results:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/16/new-evidence-on-why-we-talk-past-each-other/
And then I was also reading an article about the Japanese word tsundoko which means “stacks of unread books.” And what was particularly noteable was that the attitude toward stacks of unread books in Japanese culture is positive, because it shows how much you can still learn which struck me as different from the European/American attitude which emphasizes how much one knows.
One cultural difference (not necessarily emotional) I’ve noticed lately: the folks in my taiko group that are more closely tied to Japanese culture will always arrive early for events. We were talking about this, and somebody said that it’s actually considered rude to arrive just on time. It shows that you aren’t taking the possibility of letting others down very seriously.
Argh! Too late on “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” Already gone. I didn’t even get to watch the season ending for the first season!