#when this very series has such a good example in Khalil of how people in the community view Moon Knight as someone

[age-of-moonknight]

“An Unquiet Grave,” Moon Knight: City of the Dead (Vol. 1/2023), #4.

Writer: David Pepose; Penciler: Marcelo Ferreira; Inker: Jay Leisten; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

My coffee is nice and hot and I’ve collected a lot of material to share this week. There’s no way I can share it all. A lot of it centers around American Politics and the rift between WordPress and WP Engine.

I hope you enjoy the links I’ve selected for you. 😁

The Carter Center

ATLANTA — Today, The Carter Center and the world celebrate the 100th birthday of former President Jimmy Carter. As the longest-living U.S. president in history, he stands as a beacon of leadership and compassion, inspiring people around the globe.

I remember as a kid folks being very critical of Jimmy Carter, especially around the Iran hostage crisis. But, there’s no denying he is a wonderful man whose real legacy started after he was President. He’s an American Hero and a great example of human kindness and compassion. He walks the walk.

Happy 100th Birthday Mr. President! 🎂

Hafsa Khalil • BBC

Kris Kristofferson, the award-winning country singer and actor who worked with Johnny Cash and Martin Scorsese, has died aged 88.

Kris Kristofferson was a Renaissance Man. He earned a Masters degree at Oxford University, served in the US Army, was an actor, and he’s probably best know as a musician. He was also a badass. I tend to look up to folks like that.

A part me me hopes the dust-up between Toby Keith and Kris Kristofferson, as penned by Ethan Hawke for Rolling Stone, actually happened. 😄

RIP 🪦

The Cincinnati Enquirer • Mark Wert and Jason Hoffman

Pete Rose, MLB all-time hits leader, dies at 83

As a boy I was a Reds fan and vividly remember the 1976 World Series. I was a Johnny Bench fan as a boy and became a catcher because of him. The fact that they hammered the Yankees by sweeping them in the series was icing on the cake. My MLB team allegiance changed over the years but I’ll always be a fan of The Big Red Machine and The Great Eight, Rose among them.

It’s high time Major League Baseball allows Rose to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

RIP Charlie Hustle. 🪦

Jeffrey Zeldman

My insight into corporate legal disputes is as meaningful as my opinion on Quantum Mechanics. What I do know is that, when given the chance this week to leave my job with half a year’s salary paid in advance, I chose to stay at Automattic.

The WordPress community is in complete turmoil at the moment. I would not be shocked to see this completely fracture the community into competing factions, forking WordPress, and building how they see fit.

I’m a big fan of WordPress, even though I complain about it not being able to make static sites. It is a very nice plug-n-play system for everything from a simple one person blog, to a small business, to a huge corporation managing a very large, heavily trafficked site.

I’ve tried to get a job there I like it so much. I’d still love the opportunity to work on their iOS client or Tumblr iOS client apps.

They’ve done a lot for the open source community and Matt has always come across as one of the good guys.

I really hope this gets resolved without blowing up the community.

John Stoehr • Raw Story

Former GOP official Michael Steele unfurled an epic rant bashing voters who would consider sending “incompetent” Donald Trump back to the White House.

Michael Steele is the former Chair of the RNC and lieutenant governor of Maryland. The man is a politician and life long Republican. He’s the type of person I usually disagree with politically but I respect him. He’s nothing like the modern GOP turned MAGA cult.

Anywho. So many real Republicans have come out against the Orange Man, yet the polls are still tight? I don’t get it and I’m still terrified we might get Orangey for a second term.

Bradley Brownell • Jalopnik

NASCAR is running an unlawful monopoly on the sport of stock car racing, alleges a suit filed on Wednesday by stock car teams 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against the sanctioning body and its CEO Jim France. 23XI is, of course, the team co-owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan and racer Denny Hamlin.

My popcorn is ready! I hope 23XI — pronounced 23 11 — and Front Row Motorsports make some headway for NASCAR teams. I know I’m new to NASCAR but if you read what the two teams claim it’s shocking what NASCAR gets away with. How teams manage to exist is beyond me. It’s a terrible business, if that’s what you’re after. It seems you need deep pockets or sponsors with deep pockets just to keep a team afloat, much less be competitive.

Christian Selig

Juno for YouTube has been removed from the App Store

This can’t be a surprise to anyone given how fiercely YouTube protects its product. Of course I wish they’d left Christian alone because he makes beautiful software.

I know nobody from YouTube will see this but I wish they’d offer to give Christian some cash for it and hire him to continue working on it.

Jamie Zawinski

Mozilla’s CEO doubles down on them being an advertising company now

With all the kerfuffle between WordPress and WP Engine it’s hard to watch Mozilla head down this road. They’re one of those organizations we could look up to as an open source advocate and maintainer of one of the most used pieces of software in the world.

Hopefully they’re able to find their way back to their roots and continue to maintain Firefox.

Michael Moore

Right now, if you know how to really read the polls, or if you have access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites, Wall Street, and Members of Congress, then you already know that this election was over weeks ago. Trump simply refused to believe that “Sleepy Joe” was no longer his opponent and that there was instead “some woman” claiming she was “Black” who was now going to pummel him on Election Day. He soon became unhinged, ranted for hours about Hannibal Lecter, Haitians cannibalizing your pets, and a nonstop drone of oral diarrhea spewing misogyny, racism and essentially claiming that if he loses “it will be the Jews’ fault.”

I’m steeling myself for the possibility of a Trump Presidency. Seeing articles like this give me some hope for a Harris Waltz win. If they do win I expect a lot more violence this time around. I hope that can all be suppressed before it can happen but it won’t surprise me if it does.

All news outlets and social media sites need to agree to not give the Orange Man any airtime for speeches after the election or at least be ready to cut away at an instant.

JOSEPH SHAVIT • The Brighter Side

In a groundbreaking development poised to reshape the energy landscape of Saskatchewan, Canada, a compact nuclear reactor with the capacity to operate for eight years without water is set to come online by 2029.

I hope this works out. It could provide us with clean energy for years and years to come.

Sylvain Kerkour

Rust developers are stuck in an endless hamster wheel where every month / week there is a new best way to do something, and the previous way is now deprecated, kind of like in the fronntend development world with the weekly hottest JavaScript framework.

I know Rust and other languages rely on the community to make the language better but I am surprised the actual framework support for the platform often comes from outside sources.

Rust should have runtime library support just like the C and C++. Basic stuff plus heavily used things like networking and other frameworks layered on top of those. All using common framework patterns and maintained by the main Rust development team.

Something that makes developing in Apple platforms are the shared frameworks that work the same on Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc. Sure, the UI bits are different, but a lot of other code is the same. I’d say 80% of Stream code is shared between Mac and iOS and it’s maintained by Apple and ready for each new release of their OSes.

Blair Vanderhoof, , Jesse Watts-Russell, Fernando Gorodscy, Matt Galloway, and Eli White • engineering.fb.com

At Meta, React and React Native are more than just tools; they are integral to our product development and innovation. With over five thousand people at Meta building products and experiences with React every month, these technologies are fundamental to our engineering culture and our ability to quickly build and ship high quality products.

I’ve been working in React Native off and on since June of this year. It’s a fine framework and definitely allows developers to move quickly. Especially web devs with React experience. They can come to a project and be instantly productive.

This Facebook Engineering piece reads like marketing material at times but giving developers the means to develop for everything from iOS to Android to Windows to XBox to PlayStation is real and that’s powerful.

It doesn’t mean all the UI looks exactly the same just like Mac and iOS apps can share a bunch of code and have a different UI, but that ability to share a large portion of code is extremely powerful to a development team.

I still love writing native apps in their native frameworks and expect to keep Stream 100% native. I still love using C++ for cross platform work even though I haven’t had the need for it in years. Then you have Rust gaining ground. We have good choices for cross platform work, including Swift.

Something I really dislike about using React Native and TypeScript is the lack of real tooling for debugging in a full IDE. I’d love to be able to debug between Swift and TypeScript right inside Xcode but TypeScript/JavaScript tooling is arcane. Hopefully someone way smarter than me will make that happen.

Anyone know if Rust fully integrates into Xcode and Microsoft’s Visual Studio?

[hellyeahheroes]

Some more interesting quotes:

We haven’t seen many African-AMerican so-called superheroes, and I think making a family drama, you’re able to explore our humanity,” Akil said. “In a season, there’s an attempt to divide us. I think shows like this try and pull us together.”

“I think celebrating our culture is important to remind us that we are also part of the fabric of American culture,” Brock Akil added. “I think it’s important to know its origin… What we have gone through as a people… To show… our humanity in that journey… I love how we mentioned the Tuskegee experiment. Tracing our history and our path is important. I’m also very excited to show what’s really happening in our neighborhood… There is a lot of just everyday people. They’re the everyday heroes surviving what’s happening in these neighborhoods… Putting our families back together is part of the history we’ve been trying to repair since slavery.”

As to the show’s depiction of a divorced family, Adams said, “All depiction is very sort of modern and contemporary and is a very good example of how families exist now… It’s blended… it’s really an analogy for how to navigate this chapter in our lives… We’re really navigating what everyone’s navigating. I think the themes are kind of universal. I think it’s great we don’t even attempt to be perfect, because who is?”

“First season, I felt like it was necessary for Jennifer to struggle,” McClain shared. “She doesn’t want to be different. She’s already different, being part of this family… I think it was a really nice contrast between Jennifer and Anissa… This season, I hope she grows out of that… and becomes more confident in who she is as a superhero and a person.”

“I love the reference of Harriet Tubman and keeping her name alive,” Nafessa Williams shared. “Anissa, when she wants something and believes in it, she gets it done.” She added that the best experience of playing the character, for her, is hearing from young lesbian fans who feel normalized by the representation they get in Thunder.

“The role itself is a dream come true for me, because it tells so many truths about people who are faced with adverse situations because of something they’re born with… the many ways that they can be overcame. Tobias Whale represents that in a dark way,” Jones said of his character Tobias Whale. “He represents it almost in a positive way, too, because of his success… He was able to come up out of that and make himself a prominent politician within Freeland��� the duality of the good and the evil he represents through his upbringing is I think something we face on a day-to-day basis… especially in the black community.”

“Jill Scott is a queen of our time. I think that it would be an understatement to call her a national treasure for the black community,” he said. “It was a dream of mine to work with her musically,” he added, explaining it just never happened but that he was blessed to have worked with her on the series. “It was an honor… I learned from her a lot from our time on Black Lightning… She had such a sensual darkness to her that I really enjoyed playing opposite. It brought a sensual side out of me.”

“When you watch the show, I feel like the way Anissa is present is almost how he was then.I think he’s learned that you can’t always use the hammer. Through those 9 years of just being Principal Pierce, I feel like he’s found that other way… that it requires balance,” Cress Williams explained. “I think having family ties now… just kind of rounds him out. It’s one of the things I love playing the most… I think it’s an asset to have those ties back at home.”

“You can’t do both. Being a principal is a full time job. Being a hero is a full time job. Being a father, another full time job. I think you’re going to see, especially in the season to come, some of that coming to bear. Juggling all of those things is going to take its toll,” he teased.

Akil announced Jordan Calloway, who plays Khalil Payne aka Painkiller, has been upped to a series regular for Season 2.

Akil also shared a moment from his childhood where he dressed up as Batman, a character he loved, for a school project. “I remembered looking in the mirror, feeling very proud. I remember realizing that the face didn’t match my hands. I really wanted to be authentic… the solution was that my mother gave me gloves… I never never want another young black girl or black child to have to hid their skin again to be a hero… What’s beautiful is that, just today, LEGO presented us with a LEGO of Black Lightning and that will be in the culture hopefully forever.”

“The only other reward I’m looking for from this show… is I can’t wait for Halloween to come this year. If I can see little brown boys and little brown girls and little white boys and little white girls dressed up as Black Lightning and Thunder, I think it would be amazing for American culture,” he added.

[aion-rsa]

The Black Lightning Series Finale is Imperfect and Powerful

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Black Lightning has given us four seasons of culturally relevant sci-fi drama, and the Pierce family has been its center. In the season finale, the family show up for one another and for Freeland and take a final stand against Tobias Whale.

Jefferson Pierce is not dead, but he’s buried alive, and still without his powers. As he prays for his family and his city to be protected—and reflects on his own heaven- worthiness— his family pushes back against Tobias. Gambi, Anissa, and Grace infiltrate Tobias’ heavily secured building and destroy the emitter. In the coffin, Jefferson talks to his father in an ancestral plane, a life/death spiritual in-between, and he is able to get closure about his father’s death and be affirmed as a hero by the very person he modeled his heroism after. He returns to consciousness aware of his power, and recalling what his father says about him having everything he needs, he pulls power from the earth—drawing from the Prometheum under Freeland—and breaks free.

“The Book of Resurrection: Chapter Two: Closure” is a powerful, if imperfect finale whose weaknesses don’t detract from overall enjoyment of the episode. The episode follows through on all of the stories built up over the season, to varying degrees of success. The decades-long rivalry between Jefferson Pierce and Tobias Whale culminates in a physical altercation that, while brutal, doesn’t really live up to the level of animosity the two harbor for one another. Fortunately, this brawl is just the final stand in a season-long battle that played out through politics and manipulation instead of fists. The real victory isn’t the knockout, and by the time Jefferson lays hands on Tobias, the Pierces have already won.

Jefferson has always tried to live up to the example his father set for him. He’s always strived to be a good man, and to do right by his people. Being Black Lightning was just one part of that, and it weighed heavily on Jefferson whenever he felt like he failed. Having his father tell him that he’s a good man, that he’s lived up to that ideal, is a powerful moment for Jefferson. We know that when he goes after Tobias there is no glee there. That’s what makes these two men different. Jefferson doesn’t want to kill Tobias, but he isn’t given much of a choice. Jefferson doesn’t relish the kill—the way LaLa or Painkiller does—he takes satisfaction in the victory because he kept his family and his city safe. Equal to that, his daughters proved themselves capable of protecting themselves, each other, and Freeland. He succeeds as both a hero and as a father. He and Lynn decide to get remarried, and he and Gambi officially retire, leaving Freeland under the protection of Thunder, Lightning, TC, and Wylde.

Anissa and Grace have been in sync this entire season and have moved as a unit, powered or otherwise. It has been incredible to watch their relationship as both a married couple and a vigilante team grow and flourish. It’s also amazing to watch Jenn become her full and truest self. When JJ returns to the ionosphere to charge up, Jenn—the real Jenn— follows her back to Earth. JJ is an entity that existed in the Glaze without physical form, who latched onto Jenn, replicated her DNA, and took her memories so she could have a physical existence. We were given hints throughout the season that there was more to JJ. Jeff had a sense that something was off and particles lingered around JJ whenever she went back into space. I applaud the creativity here and how it allowed Jenn to stay on the show with China Anne McClain gone. China’s return was exciting, and Jenn’s fight with JJ was a fun and cool moment that allowed both actresses to shine, and showed how powerful Jenn truly is.

The same cannot be said for Lopez. She takes energy absorbing powers—Black Lightning’s powers, it appears—and almost drains Freeland’s power grid, to obtain enough juice to kill Lightning. Detective Shakur and the meta task force hold her off until Lightning shows up, and makes quick work of her. Lopez is the biggest disappointment of the season. She’s not allowed to be anything more than a minor foil, and the time spent with her this season is not rewarded in her final confrontation with Lightning.

There is a sense that there are some stories left untold or that are incomplete, but none that have a strong negative impact on the finale. What is the Shadow Board and what do they want with Freeland? What did it mean for Tobias to lead them? There may be comic context I’m missing, but within the show, they’re never really given an identity and it feels like narrative energy that could’ve been better spent elsewhere, perhaps in making Lopez a more fully realized character.

TC tells Khalil he can remove Odell’s kill order but Khalil will have to forget the Pierces. Khalil accepts, which is a definitive choice that doesn’t necessarily work if Painkiller had been ordered to series. The choice for Khalil to forget the Pierces would resolve one of the major conflicts for the character and undermine the story that show was aiming to tell. It makes me wonder whether an alternate scene was filmed for Khalil that was contingent upon the spin-off being picked up or if Akil had low expectations for the series being picked up and wanted to close out Khalil’s story satisfactorily. Whatever the case, I have enjoyed Calloway this season and wish we could see more of him, but am happy with the way his story concludes.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Finally, What happened to Lauren? Again, why spend time introducing her to the family if not to make her a part of it in any way? Gambi is as central to the show as any of the Pierces and it seems like a missed opportunity to give him a happy ending that doesn’t solely revolve around the Pierces. I am happy that the Pierces are alive and whole and healthy and happy. This is the ending I wanted for them, even if it felt at times like it might’ve come too easily. What I wanted for this episode was to feel full and I do. I feel an immense amount of joy and satisfaction after this finale, not because it does everything right but because it does right by the characters we love. Black Lightning has always been on-the-nose when it comes to cultural and political dynamics, and it has always played with concepts of power, but more than anything, it has given us a world where Black people are empowered and where Black people win. The series finale drives that point home by showing us a family of Black heroes who are alive and whole and healthy and happy which is a powerful thing in and of itself. Black Lightning is a superhero show that leaves us with Black triumph and Black joy.

The post The Black Lightning Series Finale is Imperfect and Powerful appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3bTSYJ0

[thisnerdsadventures]

a 2021 update

Ah, so I have forgotten to update in a million years, per usual

~ Random thought section ~

I woke up this morning and read this tweet thread about Alice Wu's director's note for her movie The Half of It. It's streaming on Netflix, and I highly encourage to go watch it, it's probably one of my favorite movies from the past few years. Anyways, she talks about how she produced the film while digesting the heartbreak of a friendship breakup - the whole thread hit me on a different level, but here's a quote that really hit home for me, especially a month from graduation: "The end of the film is each of their beginnings. And for my characters, I can think of no happier ending." We spend a lot of time worrying about the end of things and the uncertainty of things to come. Yet, there was a time where we worried about the exact same things for the very chapter we are now so nervous about leaving.

1. I'm nervous about leaving school and starting the..... rest of my life???

2. I'm nervous that my friends will slowly fade away. I'm nervous that they'll get on with their lives and I'll be slowly still trying to get my bearings, stuck in limbo.

3. I'm nervous that starting adulthood will be difficult because there are no more college orientations, no more awkward freshman dinners, perfect opportunities to meet new friends who are just as nervous as you are.

In writing this out, I felt a sense of deja-vu, like I had written these words before. So I just looked back at some of my posts right before entering college, and lo and behold:

08-18-2016: Today I said goodbye to one of my closer friends, and i realized that without even knowing it, Sunday’s party was the last time I would see some of my closest friends. It’s awful that way, that you don’t even know it’s the last time until it’s passed, and you’re left to pick up the the end of a chapter of a relationship from the scraps of an unexpected and improper farewell.

I feel like I’m in a weird twilight zone between college and high school where my present friends are all beginning to fade away to move on in their lives, and I’m yet to really meet anyone in my class yet, so at the moment,,,,,,there really isn’t anyone.

I wrote this less than a week from moving to Boston, and it's so shocking to me that I also experienced the "unexpected and improper farewell" part in senior year. It's almost the exact same thing that happened in COVID and is continuing to happen. You never know when the last time you might see someone might be, except instead of consolidated over the course of one pre-college summer, it's over the course of more than a year, the time that this pandemic has been going for.

And I hate that I said the "fade away and move on" thing verbatim, literally nearly five years ago. To be honest though, it's true, a lot of them did fade away and move on. But so did I, I wasn't left behind. To some extent, I was the one who did a lot of the moving away. And like many things in life, a couple of us continue to hang around, and maybe our friendships cycled in and out over college, but have come around again after a few years. I guess those are the ones that you know will stick around. The limbo period between chapters is a hard one, and it's nice to know that present-day me isn't the only one who has felt this. It's nice to know that past me met so many incredible people so fast, that I forgot this limbo period happened.

I know this part is getting a little long, but there's just a couple more snippets I want to share:

08-13-2016: I recently read Marina Keegan’s essay The Opposite of Loneliness, and one line resonated with me a lot: We’re so young. It seems silly and almost pretentious for me to think that this party would be so final, and yet it does, even though we have decades upon decades to build and connect or reconnect.

We’re so young, but that doesn’t stop the understanding that we are going to a new chapter in our lives and that it’s going to redefine our relationships. I hope it doesn’t change them too much.

I suppose much of the anxiety of going to college results from having to build my own community from the ground up again.... I tell myself the pieces will fall together and everything will be ok, but it doesn’t stop the increasing anxiety from, well, increasing.

I loved this collection of essays, if you haven't read it, I recommend you do. In moving around for so many years, I haven't been able to keep a lot of books in my possession, but I kept this one because that essay really hit home for me, and continues to, no matter what part of life I'm currently experiencing.

I think moving to college did change my relationships. But change is not a bad thing - your childhood friendships, the few of them that survive, end up strengthening and growing into adult friendships. And in the end, isn't that better than not changing at all? I'm hoping that a few of my college friendships will do that too - we'll go from college friends to family friends, and my kids will call them "Aunt" and "Uncle" and they'll grow up watching their parents talk for hours in the front yard before finally getting in the car and leaving for home.

08-13-2016: But hey, this is part of what I signed up for, I knew I wasn’t going to have much of an initial safety net, but I’m sure I’ll survive. We, as humans, always find a way to adapt right?

I think I survived and adapted. Not in the way I saw things going, but we can never really fully predict things, can we? One day, I'll learn to give myself a safety net for the next chapter, I'm sure. Today's not that day though.

Going back to her director's note, there was one more thing that just struck an emotional chord for me:

Fun fact, Alice Wu actually went to MIT for a bit before transferring to Stanford, and then she became a software engineer at Microsoft! I relate a little too much to her. Maybe one day I too will dump coding for my art form. But for now, in this above example, I relate far too much. I worked on my album, Imperfect, a little too obsessively this past winter while trying to digest the throes of heartbreak from one of my own friendships that ended. I still don't know if there was an ending for that friendship. I think I've spent a lot of time trying to put off the end, like a TV series that just keeps adding more and more seasons. Regardless of whether it needs to end or not (which I have not decided and will continue not to do so), I spent a lot of time thinking about who I was before and after that friendship, and I've concluded that a lot of who I am now, what my life looks like now is a result of that friendship. I'll give you a hint: I really like who I am now, compared to who I was before, and it showed me a lot of parts of life and friendship that I never expected would happen. That friendship was (is?) one of the most beautiful things that has happened to me in my life.

Let's finish off this reflective post with a quote from Khalil Gibran, that's kinda related to that point about how transformative the past can be, and how we're far better off in future chapters of our lives because of it.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

Again, if you haven't read his collection of poems, you should absolutely 100% drop whatever you're doing right now and do so! Wow, I really just assigned an entire reading list in this post.

I hope in making this movie, Alice found peace. I would hesitate to say that I found peace when making my album. I wrote a lot of songs about the heartbreak I felt from that whole experience. But the last song I wrote, "Best Friends," ends the whole thing on a positive note, that at the end of the day, I remember how my friends (past and present) literally saved my life and how things are looking a little better, and whatever happens, I hope my best friends will be there waiting for me, whoever they end up being.

- OK I PROMISE I DIDN'T SET OUT TO BE 100% SO EMO -

But yeah, I haven't really been doing much otherwise? I guess just tryna stay alive, I've been cooking a lot and cooking a lot of good good food, I did apply to an MBA program, I got my COVID vaccine (second shot this week!), I am excited to announce I am publishing a paper in my MEng lab, which is a really big accomplishment imo, I am thriving in my (1) econ class that I kept, even though I didn't realize we had readings assigned like for the past month, I went to try pastries from this Turkish bakery, I biked, probably, 15 miles over the past month, I've read at least 4 or 5 books this year so far, and am hoping to knock another one out today. Currently dying because trying to finish my thesis in like . a week, which is looking a little challenging, but I'm sure it'll happen!!!??