Whatcha watching?

by liberal japonicus

What's a old fart to do? Facebook slides into irrelevance, Instagram is a bridge too far, and Tik-tok might as well be from another Galaxy (not to mention X/Twitter), I end up going to Youtube. I use it to show things to students and it is possible to curate lists of videos, but it does wreak havoc with the algorithms. But I thought I'd crack open a thread and ask what folks are watching. For me, a couple of things

I like the Asianometry channel, the person who makes the videos is in Taiwan. I found him because he did some enlightening videos about TSMC, which is building two factories in my hometown, but stayed because he has a lot of interesting takes, not all necessarily confined to Asia. He has a Patreon channel.

The Roseanvil channel, where he cuts modern day and historic boots in half and discusses how they are made and what strictures are involved. I started by clicking on him cutting a Japanese military boot in half and I was off.

My seminar is about Marvel comics and the MCU, so a lot of videos related to that.

PMQs, usually on the Guardian channel

Flexibility posts, which is a cop-out, if I would spend the time actually stretching, I might get more flexible.

Two threads I'm an slowly weaning myself from, I was watching beekeeping videos, which included channels of people dealing with massive hornet nest, which I think started when I was looking at some killer hornet videos in Japanese and hoofed animal foot care videos, probably when I googled some stuff about why horses should have horseshoes. Fortunately, those have stopped popping up, especially after my wife said that the buzzing really bothered her.

So what are y'all watching?

Comments

[Snarki, child of Loki]

YouTube "TV for Cats"
Basically a trail-cam pointed at a bird feeder.

Very peaceful for hoomans, absolutely RIVETING for their feline overlords.

I want my, I want my,
I want my CAT TV: cat toys for nuttin' and the 'nip's for free...

[wonkie]

I waste a lot of time watching British TV comedy shows. One of my favorites is "Would I Lie to You?"

[Girl from the North Country]

wonkie, I love Would I Lie to You. I think it is now the best of the panel shows, even including HIGNFY. Have you seen the one with James Acaster and Mick in the "this is my" section? Also, the wonderful developing situation between David Mitchell and Bob Mortimer (developing over several series - I don't know how long you've been watching).

[wonkie]

FRTNC, I just watch what shows up on Facebook so nothing is in order and the shows aren't complete. I watch the James Acaster/Mick encounter several times and it stays just as funny--maybe grows. I love watching Acaster's face. I'll have to pay attention to who Bob Mortimer is.

[GftNC]

That is the absolute gem - everyone I've turned on to it finds it hysterical. Regarding Acaster's face, I watched a bit of one of his stand ups in which he said something to the effect of "When people laugh at me I think they are my enemies, which is a bit of a disadvantage for a comedian". You have to see the development of the David/Bob relationship. Use this link, but try and see if possible which are the earliest, and go from there.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+mitchell+bob+mortimer+would+I+lie+to+you

[GftNC]

And for anyone's interest that wonkie and I have piqued, I give you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct40CLTCC7A

[Girl from the North Country]

Oh for heaven's sake, I've just watched it again for the first time in a couple of years, and he says it here!

[wj]

The American Southwest has some stunningly beautiful country. Northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, southern Utah, western Colorado -- the high profile bits have photographs everywhere, but there is lots of beautiful land in between that you never see unless you are actually travelling around there. OR, if you come across the right YouTube channel.

So here's a guy who shows a lot of it. In the course of showing what his business does. He's enough of a showman to make even running a tow truck business interesting. And if you aren't interested, you can just watch the countryside go by.
https://www.youtube.com/c/MattsOffRoadRecovery/videos

It occurs to me that this is an impressive case of unintended consequences. YouTube was developed to let people share their home movies. (Is that term even used anymore?) But it has spread wildly in all directions. Here, I think it can be helping bridge the cultural divide.

On one hand, say you grow up away from a major urban area: small towns, rural, whatever. Driving is an absolute necessity -- you can't get to school or to the grocery store, or much of anything else without driving. You can readily see what urban areas look like, and how the people there behave, all over TV and movies. Sure, those aren't totally realistic. But you have a feel for, to steal a phrase, "how the other half lives."

On the other hand, say you grow up in an overwhelmingly urban area -- say Upper East Side Manhattan. You aren't totally divorced from nature (Central Park, after all), but generally you are surrounded buildings. Quite possibly, your family not only doesn't own a car, but you don't drive at all.

And then, you come across something like this, and you get a view of what the "wide open spaces" really look like. What it feels like to live on the far side of nowhere (which pretty much describes southern Utah, in my admittedly prejudiced opinion). And how the people there are much like the people you are surrounded by.

Or you stumble across something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/@FabRats/videos
Everybody you know well is a lawyer or a professor or works on Wall Street or something similar. And here's a guy running an auto shop. It's a whole new world. And again, you see that those guys are normal people, not that different from you. You might even decide that there's a career field that you never considered that looks like it might be interesting.

YouTube wasn't built to give you a closer look at how other Americans live. But it's happening anyway.

(Just to make you folks in the UK feel included, there's also this: https://www.youtube.com/@GuyMartinOfficial/videos. Even Upstairs, Downstairs didn't give you this kind of perspective.)

[wonkie]

I also like Ab Fab but only when there are subtitles.

[nous]

Just finished watching The Witcher S3. Rented Sisu for the perfect mashup of WW2 Combat Film and Spaghetti Western (with an arid, black, thoroughly Nordic sense of humor). Starting S2 of Good Omens next.

On YT it's mostly been Pinkbike videos while I console myself for not being as good on a mountain bike a I believed myself to be in my youth. Not that I want any part of a bike park. I just like watching the footage and marveling at the skill.

(I'm also low grade lurking on all the full suspension and super-light e-mtb reviews plotting out the next step for when my hip arthritis makes my hardtail mtb a bit more than my recovery times will allow for. The local hills are no joke, and the "easy" trails all have rock gardens that give you quite a pounding when *you* are the rear suspension.)

I also lost many hours watching The Climb on Max last spring - it's a climbing reality competition, but it's closer in spirit to GBBO than to the usual adrenaline fest extreme vid. Everyone in the competition is supportive and encouraging with each other and I really needed that sort of spirit to get through the most recent term of teaching.

[hairshirthedonist]

Just finished watching The Witcher S3.

I think I need a refresher before starting this.

[CaseyL]

I got rid of my TV some time ago, so when lockdown hit I went to YouTube for whatever content appealed to me. I subscribe to 60+ channels there now, though I don't watch all the postings all the time.

If you want some terrific by-topic science, with young and very witty people doing the narration/explanation, do check out SciShow at https://www.youtube.com/@SciShow.

A few of the same people on SciShow can also be found at PBS Eons, which looks at paleontology, emphasis on dinosaur and post-dinosaur Earth: https://www.youtube.com/@eons

More dinosauria, but this one gives extensive videos and analysis of the epoch, by the epoch, and for the epoch: Paleo Analysis, at https://www.youtube.com/@PaleoAnalysis

Here's one I found recently and adore: More young'uns who present history with a little snark: Overly Sarcastic Productions: https://www.youtube.com/@OverlySarcasticProductions

A channel devoted to history and fashion, and the history OF fashion (including haircare), with a very strong feminist viewpoint, from a professional costumer: Snappy Dragon, at https://www.youtube.com/@SnappyDragon

I got lots more; just ask!

[CharlesWT]

I got bored and started watching the drama series Yellowstone. Then got sucked into binging it. It's well crafted and acted. But I find it ironically appropriate that the commercial breaks have ads for antidepressants. It's a depressingly graphic depiction of the human condition. Something like Dallas steroids. But it does have a lot of great outdoors, wide open spaces scenes.

[wonkie]

Thank you CaseyL. I have signed up for the dinosauria. Lately, my recreational reading has gone all escapist and reading about dinosaurs is a big part of that escapism, so I am primed for videos on that topic.

[CaseyL]

wonkie, you're very welcome!

I love the dinos, of course, but some of Paleo Analysis' most interesting videos (to me) are the ones covering the pre-dinosaur epochs. He starts at the very, very beginning, the Hadean Eon (when Earth was still cooling from its creation), and spends a good amount of time on the Paleozoic Era (from Cambrian to Permian periods).

I love the Paleozoic because the life that emerged was just bizarre. The first of everything: first invertebrates, first predators, first armored critters, etc. Critters with odd numbers of appendages, odd numbers (and arrangements) of eyes... it's like, "Go home, Evolution; you're drunk."

[novakant]

I'm old school, so I don't watch stuff on the internet for the most part, though I'm of course aware of the blurring of lines and have actually worked on some very good online only projects.

It's probably because I'm instinctively afraid of the wild west out there: I'm longing for the times when there were only 4 channels on TV and also there's still a lot of prestige attached to the big names and their gatekeeping function.

So most recently I have watched Oppenheimer and Barbie in the cinema, neither of which I found very convincing.

Dopesick on Disney+ was very good and I followed up on it by reading Empire of Pain which focusses on the Sackler family and is fascinating and a great read.

Then I re-watched Things to Come the other night (Criterion Channel and elsewhere), one of my favourite recent films about a philosophy professor (Isabelle Huppert) whose world falls apart.

And last night I started to watch How To with John Wilson a docuseries set in New York, which is hilarious and can also be quite touching (HBO/BBC).

[hairshirthedonist]

And last night I started to watch How To with John Wilson a docuseries set in New York, which is hilarious and can also be quite touching (HBO/BBC).

I'm going to suggest this to my wife. We decided to quasi-binge Succession after it ended because of all the hoopla, including a bunch of Emmy awards/nominations. We're too busy to qualify as full-fledged bingers, not to mention usually too tired (as a result of being busy) to get through more than an episode at a time before dozing off.

We could use something lighter. My take on Succession is that it's a much darker version of The Office involving far worse people with way more money. Not that it isn't good. I'll just be happy to move on.

[Mike Shadow]

I've pretty much given up. I only watch soccer and MST3K on Pluto TV.

[Girl from the North Country]

On the subject of watching (or perhaps in this case reading), I see in today's Times that:

The Hillsborough County Public Schools district, which has its headquarters in Tampa, will continue to teach excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays in class. If students want to read classics such as Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in their entirety, however, they will not be allowed to do so in school.

The edict follows legislation introduced in Florida limiting classroom materials that “contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct”.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays contain suggestive puns and innuendo. In Romeo and Juliet, for example, it is implied that the hero and heroine have had premarital sex.

I'm guessing that the premarital sex might be less of a problem for these types than the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon, but I'm prepared to be contradicted. Trying to think oneself into the minds of these absurd Bowdlers is hard work.

[nous]

My best guess would be that Hillsborough PSD is engaging in a bit of civil disobedience there. Teachers and librarians look at the sort of objections that people call sexual content and obscenity in LGBTQ+ literature and then apply those same standards to the classic texts on the curriculum.

Can't discuss Hamlet without discussing Hamlet's disgust for what he considers his mother's incestuous and adulterous relationship with his uncle. Those plot points lead into discussions of a sexual nature.

And Macbeth is full of awkward moments of sexual joking even before anyone starts to delve too deeply into the language of the Weird Sisters or Lady Macbeth's role as Dom and the clear connection in her imagery between sexual potency and murder.

Can't run the risk of any awkward questions about those passages, they might lead to a discussion about sex - maybe even kinky sex.

Gotta apply those rules consistently. The rain falls on both the just and the unjust.

[wj]

My best guess would be that Hillsborough PSD is engaging in a bit of civil disobedience there. Teachers and librarians look at the sort of objections that people call sexual content and obscenity in LGBTQ+ literature and then apply those same standards to the classic texts on the curriculum.

Next step, suggest an expurgated version of the Bible for the schools. Hey, there's some pretty racey stuff tucked away in the Old Testament (the one those supposed Christians seem to prefer).

[Girl from the North Country]

nous, your theory makes sense. And if you're right, it's a good move, sort of a version of reductio ad absurdum.

[nous]

Florida’s ad absurdum seems to exceed the Chanrasekhar Limit.

[wj]

Pity that. Since it suggests an explosion, which will hit the rest of us, before it collapses into a black hole.

Better it should just burn out and leave a brown dwarf in its wake.

[Rodger Ramster]

I watch UFC fights. I watch free movies. I watch Kylin Milan.

[nous]

Pity that. Since it suggests an explosion, which will hit the rest of us, before it collapses into a black hole.

I'm hoping we are outside of the event horizon here on the Left Coast. The pull seems to die out by the time it gets to Colorado and New Mexico.

Atlanta will survive through sheer cussedness and the power of Outkast's ATLien technology.

[Hartmut]

In Utah calls for banning the Bible at school for reasons of obscenity were successful recently. Iirc in Florida an official threw a temper tantrum when critics of DeSantis' anti-woke law tried the same and let slip a version of 'you know exactly what we want to ban and that of course the Bible will be exempted!'
Florida officials btw outright deny that there is any ban on Shakespeare (bowdlerinzing the bawdy parts of the bard is not a ban, if one defines ban as Bill Clinton defines sex, I assume)

Btw, did Shakespeare come up with 'seemstress' as euphemism for 'prostitute'* (made so popular by Pratchett) first or was he just using an existing one?

*in Henry V this is strongly implied by mistress Quickly

[Pro Bono]

Suppose there were a contemporary play about a romantic relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a young man, replete with sexual references, and ending in suicide. Would we think it suitable for teaching in schools?

did Shakespeare come up with 'seemstress' as euphemism for 'prostitute'* (made so popular by Pratchett) first or was he just using an existing one?

I don't know, but it seems likely that sex workers would pretend to some more respectable occupation, and that this would be known to theatre-goers. So I guess that he would have used that rather than invent something from whole cloth.

[Pro Bono]

Suppose there were a contemporary play about a romantic relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a young man, replete with sexual references, and ending in suicide. Would we think it suitable for teaching in schools?

did Shakespeare come up with 'seemstress' as euphemism for 'prostitute'* (made so popular by Pratchett) first or was he just using an existing one?

I don't know, but it seems likely that sex workers would pretend to some more respectable occupation, and that this would be known to theatre-goers. So I guess that he would have used that rather than invent something from whole cloth.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Better to stage Richard II, with a DeSantis lookalike in the starring role.

The inconvenient little princes that stood in Richards path? Woke schoolkids. Richard will brick them up in the Disneyworld Magic Castle.

[ral]

[Pro Bono] ... invent something from whole cloth.

ISWYDT

[wj]

it seems likely that sex workers would pretend to some more respectable occupation,

I don't believe it was rhe sex workers themselves who came up with it, but "working girl" used to have the same implication here. With the increase in women in the wider workplace, that seems to have faded some.

[Girl from the North Country]

Suppose there were a contemporary play about a romantic relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a young man, replete with sexual references, and ending in suicide. Would we think it suitable for teaching in schools?

I imagine not. But do we think this is a good reason not to teach Romeo and Juliet to e.g. teenagers of say 16? I don't. And in any case, proper history lessons about dynastic matches, for example, teach children of say 12 and up that people used frequently to marry, and bear children, much earlier than we consider acceptable today. And this allows one to discuss the unaccceptability, so is (as they now say) "a learning opportunity".

[Hartmut]

That would be Richard III. But I don't think that would be fitting. DeSantis simply lacks the evil refinement and - yes - grandeur of Humpback Richard. He's a petty tyrant with at best delusions of grandeur. More of a Khattam-shud.

[ral]

Re Richard III, there will be a BJ thread on The Daughter of Time

[GftNC]

I went looking for that on BJ, since TDOT was one of my faves when young (didn't find it), but saw this instead, and since I watched it I reckon it's legit in this thread, and it seems to me a perfect summary:

https://twitter.com/traecrowder/status/1689365444917080064

[ral]

GftNC, see https://balloon-juice.com/2023/07/30/medium-cool-josephine-tey-part-i-with-subaru-dianne/

DoT coming up soon

[nous]

So I guess that he would have used that rather than invent something from whole cloth.

Well played, sir.

As for "seamstress," Shakespeare doesn't actually use the euphemism, and OED says that the first printed occurrence they have found is 1615 in its literal sense. But with all the needles and pricks and other suggestive metonymy, the association was probably inevitable.

I think, though, that Pratchett got it from census forms for the East End during the Late Victorian. So many unattached women listing themselves as seamstresses.

[Hartmut]

Mistress Quickly presenting herself as a respectable woman seems to presuppose that people will take it for a euphemism and assume that she and Pistol are running ab brothel (which we can assume is actually true given the well known characters involved and the later given info about death by STD [malady of France = syphilis]).

[Girl from the North Country]

Thanks for that, ral. I checked the comments, and in that particular thread they're talking more about her (other) mysteries and books etc. Being someone who pursues every book by someone I like, I do remember that many decades ago I read all her other books, but I have almost no memory of them. Whereas, with TDOT, I remember it pretty well, to the extent that despite loving A Man for all Seasons, I have nonetheless retained a considerable amount of suspicion where Thomas More is concerned. I will continue checking in to get to the TDOT discussion on August 27th.

[nous]

Mistress Quickly presenting herself as a respectable woman seems to presuppose that people will take it for a euphemism and assume that she and Pistol are running ab brothel

Not disagreeing with that reading, only quibbling that the actual word "seemstress" does not appear to have been used until later, even if the associations between needlework and prostitution antedates the word itself.

Not that we need a lot of pricking to follow a thread like this.

[Hartmut]

You are of course correct. I used the word to describe the concept and as a useful abbreviation for 'ladies that live by the prick of their needles' (I think those are the words used in the scene, at least as far as I remember them from the Olivier film adaptation*).

Of course those could also be ladies that practice acupunture ;-)

*that was my first contact with the drama and what comes first to mind when I think about it.

[Hartmut]

And one of mistress Quickly's closest friends is not content with the mere stressing of seams but tends to tear the sheets altogether.

[Donald]

I like this site. He makes replicas of ancient and medieval weaponry and then tests them. It turns out that longbows generally cannot penetrate plate armor, or at least not in the tests he’s had done with armor and some guy who can shoot bows with a 160 lb draw weight. I think a commenter claimed that historical sources contain instances where plate armor penetration supposedly happened, so there is a mystery there. ( In Hollywood it happens all the time, which if true would make you wonder why anyone would bother wearing it.)

https://www.youtube.com/@tods_workshop

[hairshirthedonist]

Well ... I've never bothered to wear plate armor, soooo ... yeah.

[Hartmut]

What is known is that there was a lot of sub-standard armor with faked marks from renowned workshops (btw same with numerous fake Ulfberht swords in the Viking age). So, a number of knights believing to wear top notch Milanese steel armor actually wore cheap imitations of wrought iron that turned out to be far less resistant. And it of course matters where the arrow hits. In front it is thicker and tapers toward the sides. And, as Tod's later test showed, other pieces of plate (e.g. on the arms) get penetrated since they are even thinner. But even if the arrows makes a hole, it does not mean automatically that the person gets seriously injured since padding and mail was worn beneath.

Btw, I also subscribe to Tod's channel and can only recommend it.

[wj]

...would make you wonder why anyone would bother wearing it [plate armor].

For one thing, plate is significantly lighter than mail covering the same area. (I'm speaking from personal experience here.) Not to mention that incorporating articulation at the joints is much easier.