Nuclear Monster

  • Good Time movie poster

    Watching their movies out of order, Good Time was the previous Safdie Brothers film, another criminal thrill feature released years before Uncut Gems.

    Good Time features two brothers, Connie (Robert Pattinson) and Nick (Benny Safdie). Nick’s brain is non-typical and his brother Connie manipulates him into a bank heist that leaves Nick locked up for the crime while Connie spends the rest of the film trying to free his brother.

    Unlike Uncut Gems‘ Howard (Adam Sandler), Connie seems to actually care about someone besides himself, and there are few enough side characters that everyone gets to have a moment. Connie’s girlfriend Loren, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, does a terrific job depicting someone who is trapped in a bad relationship with both Connie and her familial relationship with her mother.

    Ultimately, this film is better for the space it gives those side characters, their realistic portrayal helps the world of Good Time feels more real than Uncut Gems. The spaces the characters visit and inhabit are also true to real city spaces. A Dominos to hide inside with a pissed off manager, a shitty local bank to rob, the home of some nice people Connie takes advantage of will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever struggled to pay for food and find the energy to clean, even the amusement park doesn’t feel fake.

    Good Time also comments on stereotypes. Dash (Barkhad Abdi) is a Black security guard that Connie beats into unconsciousness, and doses with enough acid to make The Undertaker hallucinate for a year. Connie races to Dash’s home to conduct business in order to get money for bailing out Nick, but audibly remarks that the apartment is actually well furnished, and it is. This is an apartment that Dash cared about, and he is added to the list of people that Connie undeservedly steps on in order to help Nick.

    There is no existence under capitalism that doesn’t involve stepping on other people, and that is true in the fiction of Good Time as well. In the opening, the brother’s bank heist was going well, but the bank teller hides an explosive dye pack in the money bag. Both risking her life, if the brothers-as-robbers were armed during the heist and they realized what was in the money bag, and when the dye pack goes off it caused an unintended car crash that could have been fatal for any pedestrians caught in the way. Just to protect the bottom-line of a bank whose money is insured to begin with.

    The characters of Good Time are interesting, the world feels more realistic than other thrillers including the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, and the movie has an important message behind the thrills about capitalism even if most people will miss it. I like a lot about this movie, but I will note there is a particularly disturbing scene where Connie attempts to sleep with a sixteen-year-old girl in order to distract her before the local TV news program gives a report on the bank robbery. Fortunately, no clothes come off before they are interrupted, but it is another incident where Connie feels he has to do something in order to not create another witness to his flight from “justice.”

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

  • Connectivity Issues with AirPods and the Mac

    Jason Snell writing for Macworld:

    But… connecting and disconnecting AirPods on the Mac is so much more frustrating than on iOS. While iOS 14 brought more intelligent connection and disconnection of AirPods, Big Sur can’t get with the program. It can take a long time to connect the AirPods, and they seem to disconnect at the drop of the hat.

    Typically I use a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones with my Mac, connected through a USB audio mixer and both those devices are a little more than a decade old, but when I need to make a video call on my Mac I use my one working Powerbeats Pro (it’s the left one, the right one turns off after about 10 minutes of usage) and trying to determine that it is connected, the default microphone, and the microphone whichever app I’m using actually selects is a nightmare.

    I don’t want to go back to switching which device (my Mac or my Windows computer) has a physical microphone attached and my experiences otherwise match Snell’s in this article. My wired Sony headphones are more than a decade old and work great even if they have some signs of wear at this point — I’ve replaced the ear pads four times now — nothing beats the reliability and consistency of actual headphones. In that same time I’ve gone through several pairs of AirPods with warranty servicing, and now these PowerBeats Pro that don’t have an extended warranty and I wasn’t able to get serviced during their first year. You can’t beat the convenience of AirPods and their cousins from Apple’s Beats brand, but they do not last at all and are not convenient to use with a Mac.

    AirPods Max

    Airpods max silver witb

    Apple also recently released a pair of over the ear headphones called AirPods Max and they are completely ridiculous. $550 just for the headphones and the included “Smart Case” doesn’t cover the entire headphones but at least they have replaceable ear pads… oh wait those are $70! The most expensive ear pads I’ve ever gotten for my Sony MDR-7506 headphones are $20. The Apple AirPods Max ear pads look like they will be much easier to replace, but they also look like they are more wasteful, there is a hard plastic part in the replacement, not just the foam mesh ear pad I replace on the Sony headphones.

    The AirPods Max headphones also do not include any kind of wire for connecting directly to a device, just a Lightning to USB-C Cable for charging and no charging brick. Without a direct wired connection here will be audio latency that makes the AirPods Max unsuitable for editing video or audio, or doing any other kind of low-latency work like playing video games. Apple does sell a cable that will directly connect the AirPods Max for $35, but you can’t charge while you’re using that adapter. There are plenty of other lightning to 3.5mm cables but they apparently won’t work.

    From the Apple Watch series of devices, the AirPods Max have a digital crown in order to change the volume, access Siri, and so-on.

    Topping off the design of the AirPods Max is the weight, 385 grams. That’s heavy. My Sony MDR-7506 headphones are 229.63 grams which is completely comfortable. Even Gruber noted the weight in his review, titled “Heavy Is the Head That Wears the AirPods Max:

    The AirPods Max headband does seem to distribute the weight as comfortably as it can, but the weight is all in the ear cups, and heavy ear cups are, well, heavy. When you remain motionless, you can forget they’re there. But when you move around, the AirPods Max have inertia. They move a bit when you shake your head side-to-side, and they move a lot when you nod your head up and down. Look down at your feet and look back up and you’re instantly reminded, Oh yeah, I’ve got heavy cans on my ears. You feel a bit bobble-headed with them on. The heaviness of the AirPods Max doesn’t make them uncomfortable, per se, but it definitely feels like they’re intended for stationary use. Their lack of water resistance aside, the weight keeps them from being the sort of headphones you’d want to use while exercising any more vigorously than a brisk walk.

    There are plenty of headphones that cost $550 or more, but after my experiences with the regular AirPods and the Powerbeats Pro I would definitely not recommend anyone spend this much on these. When my Sony MDR 7506’s eventually become irreparably broken, I will get another pair of them. A decade is plenty of life for headphones that cost less than $100. For my iPhone, iPad, and video call use I’m going to get the cheapest pair of regular AIrPods I can. The other features of the AirPods Max sound great, 20 hours of battery life, active noise cancellation and a transparency mode that let you hear what is going on around you… but the inconsistent experience of using AirPods with a Mac, the ridiculous Smart Case, and the high price of both the AirPods Max and their replacement parts make it both out of reach for me now and completely unserviceable over time. Replacing the ear pads on my Sony headphones has cost about $60 over ten years for four replacements. Replacing the same AirPods Max earpads four times over a decade would have cost $276. Hopefully those Apple ear pads are more durable and last longer.

    Beats Flex

    Beast FlexAs a complete counter to their most expensive headphones, Apples’s Beats brand now has a $50 pair of headphones called Beats Flex that are Bluetooth earbuds connected to each other by a wire that is meant to go around the back of your neck when worn and the earbuds magnetically connect when you’re done with them. They don’t have a case, and at 12 hours they last longer than typical AirPods on a single charge which get 5 hours until you put them back in their charging case. The Flex are also available in a variety of colors (black, yellow, blue, gray) compared to the white AirPods and AirPods Pro. But the $50 price tag only gets you the first generation of AirPods chip, the W1, instead of the newer H1 in the 2nd generation of AirPods and AirPods Pro. The aforementioned AirPods Max have an H1 for each ear. The older H1 chip has more latency between the device making noise and the headphones receiving them, hands-free Siri access (which is almost entirely terrible if you call anyone in your life “Sweetie” preceeded by “Hey”). The H1 is also incredibly slow to pair to a device. The only thing the Flex have that AirPods don’t is that you won’t be as likely to drop one into water, due to the cable connecting the two earbuds together, and they charge via USB-C. The Flex also won’t sense they’re out of your ears and don’t pause podcasts or music until you magnetically link the earbuds. Apple also has an Android app for updating the Beats Flex firmware, something they don’t make available for their AirPods line of products.

    The Verge’s Chris Welch liked the Flex for what they are. I don’t think I’d really recommend Beats Flex for anyone who wants to use them with a Mac but it is incredible that Apple makes competent bluetooth headphones that cost less than replacement ear pads for the AirPods Max.

    Rumors

    Supposedly new AirPods and AirPods Pro designs are coming this year with shorter stems and new charging cases. I hope this doesn’t mean all of the new designs will be in-ear. One of the reasons why I’d like to go back to the regular AirPods is that they are more comfortable for my ears.

  • Lauren Kaori Gurley writing for Vice’s Motherboard tech subsite about a new change for Amazon workers:

    On January 25, hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Chicago were presented with a baffling choice: sign up for a ten-and-a-half-hour graveyard shift, or lose your job.

    Management informed workers that their warehouse, known as DCH1, would be shut down, and they were being offered a shift that runs from 1:20am to 11:50am, which is known as “megacycle,” at a new Chicago warehouse.

    This is the same Amazon that hired Pinkertons to spy on the workers at their warehouses, as reported by Gurley in another article for Vice.

  • Sam Machkovech has reviewed the Sinden Lightgun at Ars Technica. This is a $110 crowd-funded lightgun primarily targeted at emulation and I’ve been really curious how it would turn out once it actually shipped. Sounds OK according to Machkovech:

    That being said, when I got Sinden working with some of my favorite light-gun classics, from Nintendo’s Duck Hunt to Sega’s Gunblade NY, Sinden’s sales proposition held up. Simply changing my aiming angle helped with one finicky screen, while my two others worked perfectly by default—particularly with precise, “through the sights” aiming I demand in a good arcade shooter. When configured incorrectly, you can get stuck with a more “relative” aiming situation, like in old Wii games; in those cases, the verbose menu system will be your friend. I’m glad I generally didn’t have to rely on it.

  • Uncut Gems’ Poster

    Uncut Gems is a very wild thriller. If it were a book, it’d be a “page turner” that has the slightest of statements on how awful it is to step on people who have been stepped on for generations and how bad gambling addiction is.

    As with all things that depict some terrible fiction I wonder how many people will watch this and think “gambling is fun” despite the punishment that Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) goes through, and more importantly what his loved ones go through. Sandler’s performance is kind of amazing from someone who is best known for his comedic roles, and those comedy films have been critical failures for years. As Howard Ratner, Sandler is a character that seems to feel no difficulty in putting his family through hell and destroying their lives even if Howard ostensibly loves them and tells them so, it’s clear that this isn’t enough, he isn’t really there for them. The words Howard says when he tells his kids how proud he is are hollow because the film is telling us Howard cares more about gambling than them.

    Deriving entertainment from “what will happen next” in Uncut Gems is disturbing. What happens next is always someone getting hurt, terrified, or ruined because of Howard’s gambling addiction and we don’t find out what the consequences are for them, because the film is almost entirely focused on Howard’s perspective.

    One of the saddest things about exciting movies like Uncut Gems is the fiction that the protagonist’s behavior is exciting and successful and romanticized. Howard would be very successful at gambling, he doesn’t lose as often as he should even when taking bets that others think are losing bets, if it weren’t for the meddling of another character in the film Howard would succeed, he would be rich. Ultimately, his gambling is a problem only in that the gambling introduces bad people into Howard’s life, but the film says it is those people who cause the worst of the problems, not Howard. I think that is sad, and much like other films about crime it still, pathetically, has a positive outlook on the activities it depicts… if only it weren’t for the violent criminals that get in the way. Much like The Irishman, another recent film that depicts bad people ruining the lives of their families, Uncut Gems makes its protagonist’s life a thrill. The people that suffer along the way? Uncut Gems doesn’t give a shit about them.

    As a fiction, Uncut Gems is fine, it is exciting, it is ultimately as meaningless as the latest Marvel film in messaging and challenges practically nothing the viewer already thinks. In the universe of Uncut Gems, women are almost entirely brainless sex objects who only exist in their relation to men, white men are the functional actors but are failures at parenting. Racial minorities in Uncut Gems can only fulfill roles as athletes, sales people, and musicians obsessed with jewelry, money, sex, and success. Few characters besides Howard are anything but obstacles to his obtaining success, or money, or sex, and that’s the only bad thing that we are allowed to see in him.

    I like Uncut Gems, but of course I like Uncut Gems. It is a movie built for me, a white male adult.

    Rating: 3 out of 5.