19 April 2016, evening time
I put a hold on Fire in Babylon at the library right after watching the trailer. A film about how the West Indies kicked colonial ass at cricket? That’s a movie for me. The film tracks the rise of the West Indies from so-called “calypso cricketers” to the team that totally dominated the sport for the later half of the 70s and all of the 80s. The film begins with their embarrassing loss to Australia in 1974, the victims of Australia’s vicious pace bowling. Their captain Clive Loyd builds a team around his own pace bowlers and the rest is history. The film is basically scene after scene of serious comeuppance. It’s euphoric to watch. Near everyone involved in the team is interviewed for the film. It’s a serious feel good movie, and should be of interest to anyone, whether you like cricket or not.
The official Fire in Babylon website.
Movies
- Good riddance to relations with Iran.
I thank the Canadian government for internationally chiding the Iranian regime. Not because of its purported threat to Israel or its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, but for its well-documented and insidious assault on its own people for the past 34 years.
- “I had so many advantages, and I barely made itâ€: Pinterest engineer on Silicon Valley sexism - Quartz
My path to a career in software engineering should have been simple. I grew up in Silicon Valley, the child of two software engineers with computer science PhDs. I went to high school in Mountain View—the land of Google. Later, I went to college at Stanford University, where our university president was a computer scientist who had made a fortune in microprocessors. During the summers, I interned at Facebook and Google.
But even though I was completely immersed in tech culture, I had trouble envisioning a career in software engineering for myself. The issue wasn’t a lack of interest or ability. It was that the sexism I encountered, both in school and in the workplace, had me convinced that I wasn’t just good enough to make it in tech.
10 April 2016, mid-afternoon
I watched most of Zootopia in between taking Mythilli in and out of the movie theatre when she got too scared to watch the film. The movie is about bunny rabbit who becomes the first bunny rabbit to join the police force in Zootopia, a giant animal metropolis. The films plot mostly revolves around her trying to find a missing otter while people don’t take her seriously. The rest of the film is about stereotypes and racism. On the whole this film is pretty fantastic. It’s a great film for children—who aren’t scared of movies, anyway. A great message and discussion on a difficult subject: animals make everything easier I suppose.
The official Zootopia website.
Movies
- No Space Left.
The only thing we truly have in common is that we write and speak candidly about race. Desmond is a progressive activist who spent years doing anti-poverty work. I’m a financial professional who made a living advising the wealthy. In a just world, the two of us should be ideological enemies. But we arrived at our leftist credentials by way of our blackness. For the most part, that’s all the space we’re allotted to write and speak on.
- Panama Papers: This is the leak.
Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell companies enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady.
In the months that followed, the number of documents continued to grow far beyond the original leak. Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data, making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures.
The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes.
This is a huge story.
3 April 2016, late at night
Shima and I watched Inside Out last night—without Mythilli. Much of the film takes place inside a little girls head. Her feelings are the stars of the film: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. At the start of the movie the girl and her family pack up and move to San Fransisco. This coincides with two of her feelings getting lost inside her mind. This is how Pixar explains the bad mood the little girl ends up in, as the rest of her feelings try and figure out how to keep her happy, and fail. The movie’s explanation for how people work and feel is very imaginative. This is a really good Pixar film. It’s all about our memories, and relationships, and how we become who we are as people. The film has some heart. I don’t have an absolute order of all Pixar films in my head—well besides knowing Wall-E is the best—but I liked this one a lot.
The official Inside Out website.
Movies
3 April 2016, late at night
10 Cloverfield Lane film is a thriller. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a women who gets into a bad car accident and wakes up in a bunker chained to a wall. John Goodman plays the man whose brought her there. The story unfolds at a brisk pace, with twist after twist. It’s a fun film. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a strange followup to Cloverfield. In many ways it feels completely different. The action takes place almost entirely inside a bunker, rather than the sprawling city of New York. There are basically 3 characters of note in the whole film. The man on the scene documentary film style of the first film is gone. I’m not even sure i’d call it a spiritual successor, but suffice it to say the name isn’t completely arbitrary. I’m not sure which of the two I enjoy more. They are both great films. This one probably could have ended a 10 minutes earlier and been a better movie, but I still liked it all the same. It’s worth checking out.
The official 10 Cloverfield Lane website.
Movies