Having babies and toddlers in the house takes you out of the popular culture loop for a while, so I completely missed this challenger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe¹ when it came out. But now that the fourth installment is available for streaming and one of the said toddlers is of age to watch a PG-13 movie (i.e. almost 9), HBO Max is finally paying itself off.

Most Japanese versions of Gojira/Godzilla are in their hearts cinéma bureaucratique — you come for the thrill of monsters destroying Tokyo, you stay for the drama of humans battling red tape. There is no deeper layer to this American version — you come for the monsters and stay for the monsters, and you skip all the dialogue unless you’re into cringing. If there is a subtext to the movie it is this: most of the protagonists are highly competent US marines who fail to prevent giant monsters from destroying the liberal mecca that is San Francisco.

The monster battles truly are fun, though.

Samsara with a bit of a backstory and Jessica Chastain — perfect for the nights when you’re feeling pretentious¹ but don’t have four hours to spend on the Snyder Cut.

Directed by Terrence Malick, 2011.

• Photo of the week: Mars, of course (this one is even better, but there’s something to being first)
• Article of the week: Mars, of course
• Video of the week: May as well be from Mars (this one too)
• Gaming story of the week: There was supposed to be a Monkey Island movie, then Steven Spielberg asked for more monkeys and the thing fell apart. I’m heartbroken.
• Meme of the week: Texas.

A mini-series is usually the better format for a book adaptation than a movie. Not so with HBO’s The Undoing. The stretched-out plot and meaningless flashbacks just barely fill out the six hours allotted. Twenty years ago it would have been an enjoyable 100-minute psycho-drama, also staring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland. With less Upper East Side lifestyle porn, perhaps, but also with fewer unnecessary scenes of violence.

It is difficult to understand why things didn’t work out, because the first episode — easily the best one of the show — had such promise. Squeeze the other five into Acts II and III, and you would get a much more engaging story. Sadly, it is only the three hundred million dollar flops that get do-overs these days.

• Article of the week: Zeynep Tufekci on critical thinking (and a close second: Matthew Yglesias on controversial topics)
• Thread of the week: Taleb gets Covid-19
• Video of the week: John Mattick’s RNA lecture.
• Internet service of the week: Radio Garden
• Meme of the week: Psychology versus cognitive science

Aaron Sorkin doesn’t get Silicon Valley — case in point — so it is a small miracle that his screenplay about (The) Facebook’s origins works. The Sorkinized version of Mark Zuckerberg bears little resemblance to the real person, if old footage is anything to go by. Yet even this aloof and opportunistic cipher is more human than the soulless privacy-destroying corporate robot that the kind of people who like Sorkin — let’s call them New York Times readers — now see when they look at Zuckerberg.

Much has happened in the 10 years since the movie came out, the least of which is Facebook’s valuation going from $25 billion to $770 billion. I imagine a great deal of the story being depicted differently if it were shot today, including but not limited to the experience of the women involved, the entitlement of most of the protagonists, and Peter Thiel. In fact, with all those culture bombs strung out it’s unlikely it would even see the light of day in 2021, at least not as a David Fincher feature film. In 2010 it had felt too soon for a movie about an internet company that was barely out of infancy. From 2021 hindsight, making it so early seems to have been the right call.

• Article of the week: Current landscape of immunotherapy trials in thoracic malignancies (and a completely unrelated bonus: How EU tripped in Covid-19 vaccine race)
• Chart of the week: those vaccines do work.
• Newsletter of the week: Culture Study and the diminishing returns of productivity culture (the French are laughing now aren’t they?)
• Thread of the week: A baton-twirling champion meets David Letterman (video of the week is at the end of that thread)
• Satire of the week: White history month

Chernobyl became a last-minute entrant for the best show on TV of the 2010s, but it is apparent now that the 2020s are its decade. From governmental incompetence to criminal cover-ups to the bravery of regular humans, the parallels between a 1980s nuclear meltdown and a 2020s societal meltdown draw themselves. Being an 80s baby, I can only count my blessings that nuclear fallout isn’t self-replicating.

But I do hope I’m still around when Wuhan comes out.

• Article of the week: MARIETTA
• Meme of the week: Don’t take press releases seriously
• Chart of the week: Vaccinations per 100,000 in Europe and Serbia is in the lead (?!)
• Thread of the week: Skin in the game, the Serbian way (bonus: Venkatesh Rao is only now watching Community)
• Satire of the week: Blue check homes

The Mandalorian is still a series of fantastic action pieces connected by enough plot to make it interesting without requiring you to build your own crazy wall. It’s the good kind of mindless, now with some old favorites.