#2023 quick reviews

[the-infinite-jukebox]

Kali Uchis - Red Moon in Venus (Quick Album Review)

Genres: Contemporary R&B, Neo-Soul, Psychedelic Soul

Ever since her excellent 2018 debut album Isolation, Kali Uchis has been one of the premier names in contemporary R&B. With as much hype as one could hope for behind her, Kali Uchis manages to deliver with Red Moon in Venus. As a vocalist, Uchis is as striking as ever. What she lacks in power and traditional range she absolutely makes up for in sheer vulnerability. Few songs on Red Moon in Venus would be even half as successful as they ultimately are with a less tender yet smooth vocalist behind them. Kali Uchis' calm and often sensual vocal style compliments the lyrical themes of her latest record nicely, as the topics of break-ups, moving on, emotionally struggling, and self-empowerment all play fitting roles on the record adjacent to the aforementioned vocal work of the woman backing it all up. Red Moon in Venus is not exclusively the work of Kali Uchis, however. A number of talented producers and behind-the-scenes individuals play roles nearly as essential in the success of the listening experience as Uchis herself. Producers like Darkchild, Sir Dylan, and WondaGurl are people who have worked with some of the most major artists in the music industry over the course of the last fifteen years. When you work with musicians ranging from Beyonce and Drake to Anderson .Paak and SZA, there is bound to be a degree of expertise that bleeds into anything you work on. This rings true for the aforementioned producers, writers, and plethora of other people that combine strong lyrical content with immaculate semi-psychedelic production. The entirety of Red Moon in Venus flows perfectly and has flaws that are so minor that they really aren't even worth pointing out beyond a couple of less sweep-you-off-your-feet level tracks like "Not Too Late." Kali Uchis had a lot to live up to from the start being one of the definitive examples of a mastermind R&B artist in the current day. Red Moon in Venus proves that she is more than capable of exceeding expectations even when all eyes are on her.

Final Rating: 4/5 (Great)

Essential Tracks: Blue, Endlessly, Fantasy, I Wish you Roses, Love Between..., Worth the Wait

[thebellekeys]

Saltburn: The Reign of British Bourgeois (Meta)

I recently had an interesting conversation with a close friend of mine who said, "I don't think Saltburn is really about class." She said she thought it was mainly about obsession, in the most individualist and interpersonal way possible. I naturally disagreed, and we argued about it for an hour. But I think the reason she didn't think it was really about class was because the film had a categorically anti-Marxist conclusion. That is, a very British conclusion. In many ways, Saltburn is a Thatcherite's wet dream. Let's discuss.

Saltburn isn’t an “Eat The Rich” narrative. It’s an “Absorb The Rich” narrative. I disagree that Saltburn is merely about an individual’s obsession with a particular guy or family. Saltburn is about the bourgeoisie’s obsession with the old English aristocracy.

Let’s establish the establishment: the modern English aristocracy whose family seats litter the shires. Saltburn aims to satirize the English Country House family drama, and then some. This is made evident when Felix informs Ollie that, whoa, the Evelyn Waugh himself based Brideshead Revisited and other works on Saltburn, on Felix’s family. The film, in my opinion, was kinda ballsy to go there and to do it so bluntly. So yeah, Saltburn wants to poke fun at the long-established English tradition of aristocratic family dramas such as Downton Abbey, Brideshead Revisited, Bridgerton, Poldark, Rebecca, etc. It’s no coincidence that the movie begins with an egregiously stereotypical sketch of Ollie struggling to fit in at Oxford, à la Charles Ryder. Felix Catton is Sebastian Flyte, and then some. And Ollie is obsessed with him, because look at him. Except… I believe Ollie’s obsession with Felix is less of an interpersonal homoerotic deranged clusterfuck than it is the bourgeois boy’s perennial fixation with the unreachable closed-door English aristocracy, the national pinnacle of inherited class and status in a nation founded on inherited class and status.

Saltburn, butler and all, is a perfect symbol of English aristocratic privilege (seconded by none other than Oxford, but the film didn’t care to explore the hierarchies present in British education and instead chose to focus on family in lieu of academia). Saltburn is grand, medieval, kitchy, isolated in the middle of whereverthefuckshire. One would think that Ollie was intending to infiltrate Saltburn to possess Felix, but I rather think he was intending to infiltrate Felix in order to possess Saltburn. To possess Saltburn is to possess the rank and place of the Catton’s in the world, to be the world. And Ollie doesn’t want to destroy the Cattons nearly as much as he wants to embody them.

I suppose Ollie’s need to absorb, to consume, to possess and to incarnate is obvious through his actions—drinking Felix’s semen in the bathtub, the period blood bit, the grave-fucking debacle. He worms his way through every aspect of the family members’ lives with the intent to become them, to suck them dry (see: “I’m a vampire”, how gothic). By the end when the Cattons are all dead, Ollie celebrates the privilege he has grasped, and in turn, the film applauds his feat rather than condemns him. Saltburn is a film that congratulates Ollie’s usurping of wealth and privilege, rooting for him from beginning to end. And the film never tries to interrogate itself and ask why Ollie is our hero. Ollie, who does not want to break the wheel as much as he wants to be in the room where it happens, even if that means destroying everyone else in his path. Ollie’s obsession, generally speaking, arises from the desire for status and rank rather than an inoccuous maniacal insanity. This is symbolized by his possession and control of Saltburn. If Saltburn were a gothic ghost story, then Ollie is our specter. And Saltburn is definitely rooting for the specter, full stop.

Britain is a nation of ranks and hierarchies, naturally averse to watering down pristine intergenerational blue blood with filthy postmodern capitalist dollars. “Stay in your place”, that is the Tory way. Even in a “modern, democratic” nation nonetheless governed by an antiquated Tory hegemony and quite opposed to both radicalism and revolution. Ollie, however, wants to be in the room where it happens in a world where only those who are born in that room ever get to enter it. It is why he faces this overwhelming yearning for Felix’s world and Saltburn’s beauty – it is, by default, off-limits to him no matter how hard he tries to reach it. In my opinion, Ollie’s fascination with Saltburn isn’t due to a homoerotic fixation on Felix. It’s due to an outsider’s bourgeois fixation on the romantic world of inherited English rank, status, and wealth. The romance of Saltburn, our need to romanticize the privileged upper class, is evident in the stunning cinematography and costuming. Farleigh is the first person in the family to notice Ollie’s insecurities and see it for what it is – he’s begging to be let in. Farleigh likewise takes the opportunity to constantly, antagonistically remind Ollie that Saltburn isn’t his world, that he will never fit in and will never be accepted as one of them: the tux will never perfectly fit. It is the tragedy of the almost-theres. So Ollie decides to just get rid of everyone in his way and prance about naked since the tux refuses to bloody fit.

It’s just so English, culturally speaking. To claw your way to the top to sit with the big boys rather than to criticize the system that bred the arduous, back-breaking, fatal climb in the first place. This is Tory meritocracy, founded on decades of policies to reduce taxes on properties such as Saltburn in Britain, to keep old peers in the Lords. Felix Catton is Sebastian Flyte is Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher who, despite brandishing her “common” background as a selling point during her political career, painstakingly perfected the Received Pronunciation of her Eton parliamentary peers and successfully died with the coveted title of Baroness added to her name. Thatcher, an Oxford scholarship kid like Ollie, who wormed her way into a title and country house and was yet forever plagued by her average, middle-class upbringing.

Ollie is obsessed with much more than a mere man. If Saltburn were a Marxist class story, truly dedicated to class critcism or subverting the English Country House drama, Ollie would have burned the whole damn place down. But Saltburn is rather a Tory class story about the insane lengths the British bouregoisie, obsessed with ascending class hierarchies and disillusioned by the lies of meritocracy, will go to possess the near-unpossessable ranks at the peak of English-textured privilege. The film is a performance in English upper-class tomfoolery and a celebration of its infiltration by the almost-theres.

And yet, the cycle perpetuates itself. Saltburn is ruled by a new lord. Nothing, really, has changed.

[racesundae]

chrome

[c-show]

Watch this so you can hear my video essay about Saltburn (2023)! Mine is the second video in the series of three.

[randomlynormalgirl]

my take on saltburn is that it is a class commentary but not in the way people are thinking.

It’s not an eat the rich story, it’s more of a ‘look how desperate the English middle class are’. 

Oliver puts on a facade of being worse off than he is, similar to how the British middle class try to appropriate working class culture and struggles whilst at the same time aspiring to an upper class lifestyle and actively putting down working class people.

The movie also doesn’t portray richness as evil but it does show it as odd and those who HAVE richness as alienating - having customs that can only be known if you were born into it and that is what separates the middle from the upper classes in England. 

Oliver is a satire of the middle class hunger and desire for infiltration and assimilation into the upper classes, not a scathing satire of working class desperation, nor is he a working class hero.

[alexisgentry]

It’s the Heathers of 2023 in the very best way

[imthefailedartist]

Saw someone say they didn't like Saltburn because the movie doesn't explain Oliver's mental state and why/what led him to do what he did.

And I. . . What? We are doomed. The children are being left behind, and they have no media literacy. No comprehension of nuance. Put down the YouTube, movies explained, and over analyzed reviews masquerading as film essays and pick-up books.

Other than the fact that not everything needs to be explained to make something understandable or even good, it is explained. Oliver wants what they have. That's it.

(Not fully it, but the majority)

Maybe him growing up upper middle class confused them, but still.

[libraryleopard]

Young adult fantasy graphic novel

Follows Aiza, a girl from the recently conquered Ornu people, who dreams of becoming a knight and becoming a full citizen of the and so joins the squire-training program

As Aiza navigates rigorous training and rivalries among the trainees while keeping her Ornu heritage a secret, she begins to question the glory promised by the empire and must decide where her loyalty lies

Explores xenophobia, imperialism, and propaganda

Palestinian American author and Jordanian American illustrator

[andreai04]

“We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.”

[academiawho]

Nitrogen Cycle Imp Microbes

[theraininthestars]

Review of Lost In The Never Woods

When I started reading Never Woods I thought it was going to be an action-fantasy book, and yes the book is action-fantasy, but it went another route that I didn't expect.

Let's give a brief summary of the book: Wendy Darling is a reserved and shy young woman who spends her time volunteering at a hospital. She only thinks about school and the hospital, her dream is to become a nurse to stay there. People feel pity for her personality, she used to be such a lively and happy person, just like her family. But after the disappearance of her and her brothers when they were children, she was never the same.

On the night of her 18th birthday, she did nothing special. She woke up, did house chores, went to the hospital, finished her shift, and went to her house through the woods where she was lost and found. Oh, and she ran over someone in the woods… IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. It was very dark, and no one goes to the woods after the Wendy incident. She goes to attend to the poor thing that she hit and when she sees him, she recognizes him. She has seen him before, she knows him, but her memory does not hold; he just sees her and whispers Wendy before fainting, Who is he? How does he know her? Will he be her answer to understand that he happened to her brothers and her?

This happens in the first chapter, maybe the second, and from there it doesn't stop being an exciting book. It maintains a steady pace of intrigue and suspense about what will happen to Wendy, the stranger she ran over, and other mysteries that haunt the town. I think Aiden Thomas grew a lot in his writing skills; If his first novel, Cemetery Boys, was for me a success in style, rhythm and character development, here it is simply a home-run. The characters are well-built, it has an attractive mystery with a very good resolution, and the dynamics between the characters are interesting and complex. I felt the end was a little quick, but it closed the book well and the conclusion it gives to the mysteries, I couldn't stand it. It shocked me.

I loved all the characters, and loved all the fairy tale retellings, but Peter Pan, ufff. They have a reserved place in my heart.

Lost In The Never Woods is a story of intrigue, action, fantasy, romance, and suspense. If you're chicken like me, maybe it's scary because the main villain in this story is intimidating. I'm going to give him 5 stars, it gave me what I wanted and more. Aiden Thomas is becoming one of my favorite authors.

Have you read Lost In The Neverwoods? Do you plan to read it? What other texts do you know of Aiden Thomas? Do you like suspense stories?

[the-infinite-jukebox]

Periphery - Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre (Quick Album Review)

Genres: Djent, Metalcore

Excluding subgenre pioneers Meshuggah, you'd be hard-pressed to find a band quite as relevant to the djent movement as Periphery. Despite what the band's latest studio album's title may imply, the syncopated start-and-stop playing style of djent has created a brand of metal entirely its own. Periphery fail to do it justice even despite being one of the more renowned djent acts active today. Periphery V starts off strong enough with a few genuinely solid tracks like "Wildfire" and "Wax Wings." These aforementioned songs undoubtedly rank among Periphery's best in quite some time. Around the half way point, the listener comes face-to-face with the odd synthwave influences of "Silhouette." The track in question completely disrupts the flow of the record and marks the beginning of the end for what is otherwise a decent djent record up to that point. What follows is a disastrous series of songs that is every bit as self-indulgent as they are directionless. The reliance on melody makes Periphery's work feel melodramatic and unimportant at best, while the synthesizers and strong sections come across as wildly out of place. It's nearly impressive how Periphery managed to fail at a record with a reasonably balanced start of melodic structure and heaviness. However, the back half of Periphery V feels like the wings coming off a plane mid-air rather than a smooth landing. Although it could've been worse, the weakest moments of Periphery V: Djent is Not a Genre drag its highlights down with them.

Final Rating: 2/5 (Bad)

Essential Tracks: N/A

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[looking-for-sight]

me and media #2

With all the hype around the bathwater scene, why did I see nobody talk about the grave scene?

I watched Saltburn and it was very entertaining

like honestly I almost thought I might have ruined the experience, because I saw so many people talking about the movie, especially on tik tok, before watching it myself. The talk around the bathwater scene; was either the grossest thing and people left the cinema or people were disappointed because they had read weirder stuff under the dead dove do not eat tag. If i maybe had no prior knowledge I would have had a stronger reaction because the audio was intense, but nothing compares to the grave. the dirt. the young man just buried. And Oliver on top.

[libertyreads]

Book Review #113 of 2023--

Iced Out by Veronica Eden. Rating: 2.5 stars.

Read from September 2nd to 6th.

Before I get into anything about this book, can we talk about how I got sold on it by a Tumblr post about hockey romances, bought it, completely forgot the premise, and then when I went to write up my TBR month got it confused with another book also called Iced Out? I wrote up a synopsis for that other book. Ugh, why am I the way that I am? I have no clue. Let me know if you ever figure it out. I also spent way too long (for me in particular) trying to read this one. I started it on Sunday and got one chapter in before I couldn't focus anymore. My husband and I are starting the house buying process and the sheer stress I've been under has turned my brain to rot. I read one chapter (11 pages) of a hockey romance but then put it down for the weekend because I couldn't focus. Huh? This genre takes the least amount of focus for me and I couldn't do it? That's not a great sign for the rest of the month.

However, focusing on the book, I want to mention that I had a sort of love/hate relationship with this one. I had so much fun in the beginning with watching Easton attempt to woo Maya since she had sworn off of hockey players following a bad break up years ago. I loved how slowly her guard lowered and seeing her try to avoid getting feelings. And the way he was instantly all about her and just waiting for her to decide to give him a chance? Ugh. Yes please. But that was only about a third of the novel and it wasn't enough of the angst. We all know I'm an angst driven reader. I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened, I don't even WANT to know what it means about me. But I could have easily read another 50 pages of the 'Will they/won't they?' I also really enjoyed all of the side characters/hockey players and the hockey house seemed like so much fun. Which really makes it sound like this book should get a higher rating from me. But wait. There's more.

Between the sheer volume of sex scenes and the kinks that are explored in them, I could hardly read this book. I DEFINITELY had to stop reading it on my breaks at work. I swear I looked like a fucking stop sign while sitting in the break room and reading about things I do not like. I get that everyone is different with what they enjoy, but as an asexual reader who sometimes likes to pick up a spicy sports romance? It was way too much for me. Which sucks since I enjoyed almost literally every other aspect of the novel. I just cannot get over the things this author made me read with my own two eyeballs.

I think part of it is a me thing, but, in this rare instance, I also think I wouldn't be alone in saying that the sex in this book is just too much. Too many scenes, too many kinks. It's a lot. I think this had an opportunity to be a great read for me since this is one of the few hockey romances I've read that doesn't make me want to sit the author down and explain how the sport actually works. But if anyone has any other hockey romances to recommend I would really appreciate it.

[jackbeauregards]

Book Review: The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Amanda Quick

Rating: 4/5

I was in the mood for a mystery and also in an old Hollywood mood so this was perfect. It was fast paced, exciting, intriguing and it had a great atmosphere to it.

The only reason it's 4 stars instead of five for me is that I found the dialog to be a bit fluffy and unnatural. Not really how real people talk to each other. And the romance felt a bit forced. I couldn't really feel the chemistry between the main characters, and the sex scene also felt forced and came out of left field. Overall, I think this story could have been written without a romantic subplot and it would have been just fine.