A-. A thoroughly entertaining crime movie. A useful commentary on guns, and a somewhat unbelievable commentary on human nature.
Lift off
I had a colonoscopy scheduled for today (everyone at the clinic asked me why I was getting one, and I’d answer, “I’m 50”). My mom had suggested getting some lemon drops as chasers to the 4 liters of colonoscopy juice I had to drink last night and this morning, but I was having a dickens of a time finding any. Venture Foods in Divide carries some, but they taste like chalk. All City Market had was some Lifesavers, so I got some of those. 7 Eleven didn’t have any. Then I tried the Farm Crest store in Old Colorado City.
I usually only go to the Farm Crest store once a year to get eggnog. I really like their eggnog, and they have other things in their convenience store that other stores might not have. (There is usually some homeless person counting out change on the counter to buy cigarettes too). But no dice. Nothing but sour gummies, and I’m not a fan of gummies.
I was about to exit the store suspiciously empty-handed and was thinking of what I’d remark to the cashier, but she was walking out the open front doors (Tuesday was a lovely day). She was tall and thin, traits her high pumps and tight jeans accentuated. Suddenly, she stopped and lifted her left hand up into the air and stood as still as the Statue of Liberty. She was staring at her hand, held perpendicular to the ground, and I followed her gaze to the tip of her index finger.
Just then a dirt-brown moth stretched out its wings and took off from her outstretched hand, which she held completely still until it was clear of her fingers. A plague of miller moths are the bane of Colorado Springs every spring, but this clerk had taken the time to capture the lost creature and returned it to the outdoors so it could continue its journey up into the mountains to mate.
(Today’s colonoscopy went well, and I shouldn’t be dying of colon cancer anytime soon.)
Mediocre Films
I think I’m getting to the bottom of the barrel with 2022 movies. At least, critically acclaimed movies that I’m likely to also like. I’m not sure how to find the critically declaimed ones that I’ll like.
Brooklyn – B-. I was entertained. It was well done for what it is, which is a dramatization of a romance novel set in the 1950s. I was not the target audience. I was shocked to find out that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, because absolutely nothing about this film felt like Nick Hornby. I was even more surprised that the novel was written by a man, because everything about this felt feminine when I watched it. Much more Jane Austen than Charles Dickens. I thought about it a little more than realized that the perspective on the primary female character is in fact a very male one (hints of, “women in general aren’t to be trusted.”) But it’s not my thing. It did stimulate thoughts around immigration and emigration and how those things are so very different in the United States now, yet so universally unchanged.
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande – B. I knew absolutely nothing about this, having only read the Rotten Tomato critic consensus which reads, “Sexual awakening stories aren’t in short supply, but Good Luck to You, Leo Grande proves you can still tell one with a refreshing — and very funny — spin.” It’s not entirely wrong–it’s a sexual awakening story… about a 65 year old woman. It feels like you might want to include that in your single-sentence review? More importantly the whole thing felt like an apology for sex work. I’m not unsympathetic to the case being made, but I struggled to connect with either character or feel much urgency about the central issues. The acting was terrific, even if I ultimately found the characters unbelievable. I’m also not sure what was “very funny” about it, or how the thing is described as a “comedy”. Not only did I not find it funny, it never occured to me that I was supposed to.
Aftersun – B-. I think this was a reasonable idea, questionably executed and poorly shot with overly-artistic ambitions. It’s supposed to be a pensive woman “remembering” a summer vacation she took with her father when she was an 11 year-old girl, but you’d be forgiving for not understanding that because like so many art house films, it winds up substituting obtuse for clever, hoping you’ll think you’re too dumb to notice the difference. The cinematography was probably supposed to be edgy and presumably evoke a sense of remembering, but mostly was just crap. And I’m not much holding against it the transition scenes that are supposed to be an 11 year old with a camcorder, but the fact that the whole thing looks like it was shot by someone with the compositional sense of a monkey who’d been to film school and was trying hard to do the opposite of everything it’d seen there. Still, the characters felt real, the acting was great, and I at times soaked up all subtlety in the very real dialog that unraveled at a glacial pace and gave me time to contemplate the nothing that was going on.
Official Competition – C+. My lack of research and preparation lead to me to watch a film about filmmaking, one of the worst kinds of films. Filmmakers are insufferable about how important they think they are, and as a whole haven’t reached a point where I believe they’re allowed to reflect upon this in public. The saving grace here is that this was funny, and the fact that filmmakers take themselves too seriously is maybe the central thesis. I was entertained through most of it, all the way up until the absurd climax and ridiculous resolution. I think had it managed to be even funnier than it was, I would have liked it better.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. – B-. I read the book when I was Margaret’s age, and don’t remember enough of it to remember how true to it the film wound up being. A commenter on Marginal Revolution called it a “Period piece,” which is a much better review than I think I’ll manage. As someone who grew up in a secular household with parents who had the same backgrounds as Margaret, my feelings about religion when I read the book were, “Why does she care so much? Should I care?” As a teen, I’d sometimes reflect back on Margaret with a bit more sympathy, but in my 40s, I’m over it. It was a well-done adaptation, I enjoyed watching it, but I’m not sure that the world needed it.
Saltburn – F. Everything about this was terrible. I paused it about halfway through and asked Joanna if we could just stop watching it, but she said she wanted to see it through. When it ended, I asked her if she was glad we’d seen it through–she admitted that she wasn’t. It’s a bad story, poorly told, and relies on a reveal that wasn’t really a reveal. I don’t understand the motivations behind anyone who created it, but the world would be better off without it.
Love at First Sight (2023) – I can’t properly rate this. It was not a “good” movie, but I really did enjoy it. Maybe all I want in life are decent romantic comedies, and this one checks all the usual boxes.
Internet Passwords
This is a boring post about a mostly boring thing that I feel compelled to write. It’s aimed at those of you who haven’t thought much about Internet security, find websites’ increasing security demands obnoxious and just want to go about your life with minimal hassle. Like my Mom. Or Jonah. I find that I’m often giving this advice to people after it’s too late and individually, but now I can just link to this.
I know you’ve probably seen articles that are like “use a password manager,” and those are well-intentioned and have reasonable advice. And you know it’s a thing you should do, but it’s hard and you’ve got better things to do. And really, you probably figure that someone accessing your email account isn’t the worst thing the world.
So I’d like to start by explaining the way actual attacks work and why you don’t want it to happen to you. Hopefully coming from me in my own words means something more to you than some rando journalist.
A common thing that happens now is that someone (maybe you!) uses the same password everywhere. There are a ton of websites that require you to come up with a username and password for no good reason (like online shopping). So you buy some widget online from some little online outfit that runs a store with poor security. Someone targets their website and steals their entire customer database. This means that now they have your email address and your password for that store.
At first, maybe you think this is no big deal. But if the password to your email account is the same password that you used at this store–you’re probably screwed. One of the first things someone is going to do is try to log in to your email account with your password. They’re also probably on to the fact that you think you’re clever by using “secur3passw0rdWidget” for the widget store and “secur3passw0rdGmail” for your gmail. So now they have access to your email, and once they get in, you’re going to have a really bad time.
First, they’re going log into your gmail account and change your gmail password so you can’t access it anymore, but they can. Then they’ll read your email to see what banks you use. They’ll do “forgot my password” at your bank/paypal/whatever, which will send “you” an email to make sure you are who say you are.
The bank might ask for some other identifying information about you. Like your phone number, maybe your date of birth. Which, probably, can be found trivially by searching through your email. Once they get in, they’ll then change the phone number and contact information that your bank has on you to make it even harder for you to get your accounts back.
Chances are good that by the time you figure out what’s going on, they’ve stolen your account information, possibly your money. Maybe they’ve had one of your credit cards reported as lost and shipped directly to them. Possibly they’ve logged onto your Facebook and sent messages to some of your friends to explain that you’re stuck in a city far away from home, lost your wallet, and really need them to send some money to help you out of a jam.
So, here’s the things you should do to keep this from happening, and I’ll list them in the likelihood that you’ll actually do them:
(1) Make sure your email password is truly unique. I don’t care if you write it down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor or carry it with you. It’s not ideal, but this attack vector is unlikely compared to someone stealing it from another site.
(2) Pick an actually secure password for your email. Do what works for you, but it should not be a dictionary word, and doing common letter substitutions doesn’t count. It doesn’t need to be random to be secure. Correct battery horse staple passwords are pretty good as long as you avoid the 5,000ish most common words. (Munroe’s math in the comic involves cracking character-by-character, but a sophisticated attack will build rainbow tables with common words. If someone knows you’re using a battery horse staple password, they’re actually easy to crack if you use common words. Weird, uncommon but memorable words are best.)
(3) Go to Have I Been Pwned and see if the common password you’re using everywhere is in their database. It probably is. Stop using it for anything important, but seriously don’t use it for your email.
(4) Use a password manager! I know you don’t want to. It seems hard. It’s really not. The hassle is just in setting it up, but the good ones have browser extensions and apps for all browsers and phones. Once you go through the hassle of setting it up, it’s going to make your life much easier! You just click “generate random password” in your browser, it’ll generate it and remember it goes with that site. Your random, secure password will be auto-filled way faster than you can type your common password. It’ll then be synced to all your devices magically.
(5) Turn on two factor authentication for your email. There are 3 basic options now:
- SMS – you get a text message with a code
- Authenticator App – You use an app (like Google Authenticator) to generate a code
- Hardware Key – a thumb-drive like device that you stick in a USB port and push a button when you want to log in.
The SIM card in your phone can be trivially cloned by any teenager who works for your wireless phone provider. Then they’ll stick the SIM in their own phone and get your code texted directly to them. SMS-based two factor is way better than not having two-factor, but it’s the worst choice and you should pick one of the others if you can.
Authenticator apps are a better choice, but they leave you vulnerable to phishing attacks where you think you’re logging into your email account, but you’re not. While you type in your password and your authenticator code, an attacker is logging into your account for you.
Hardware keys are the best answer, but can be a bit of a pain. If you want to go this route, Yubikey is the standard choice. You actually need to buy at least 2 of them because you won’t be able to access your account if you lose/break it. The way it works is that you log in to your email with your password, but then it’ll ask you to tap your hardware key. You don’t have to type They are awesome because when used correctly, they cannot be phished or stolen remotely.
The hassle is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can check “remember this device” so you effectively only have to use the key to log in from a new device.
(6) Ideally you’ll turn on Google’s Advanced Protection! It looks like you can now do this with a modern phone, and you don’t even need to buy a security key to do it.
Sunday Movies
Maybe going through and watching critically acclaimed movies is actually working for me. I’m mostly just plugging in the movies that are well-liked by critics into Criticker and watching anything that Criticker agrees I’ll like. This is working better than it usually does.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: B. I’m not much of a fan of animation. Or kids’ movies. This is… maybe only sort of either? It’s live action, except that the main character is an animated shell. And while there’s nothing in this movie that’s inappropriate for kids, I’m not sure it’s a kids’ movie? It’s not paced like a kids’ movie, and it doesn’t feel packed with the obnoxiousness I’ve come to expect from, say, Pixar. Instead, it’s a careful look at the modern world from the perspective of an innocent, well-meaning shell. The good humor is good, but even the dumb humor is somehow endearing. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen before (though it did remind me slightly of the Everything is Alive podcast), and that’s perhaps the best thing about it. The plot is not strong–it exists only to let a shell show us how he see the world, and that’s fine.
The Duke (2020): B. So British! Worth it for the old married repartee. Which is really good since it’s worth watching just for that, but otherwise this movie doesn’t have a lot to offer. The plot is predictable (literally old news!), the character development ranges from non-existent to uninteresting, but the acting and dialog is fantastic.