I recently finished reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and prior to that I read his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. I was left feeling quite differently than what I was expecting to feel. I'm an outdoorsman, a conservationist and an activist. I spent a good portion of my time last year on The Colorado Plateau, much of it in the places Edward Abbey has been and discusses frequently in his work. There is a distinct emotional connection I feel to this land, so my mental conflictions are especially notable. I recently wrote a friend a letter, much of it including my thoughts on Abbey thus far, and I felt posting the relevant excerpt here would be a good conversation starter. Let me know what you think!

"I just finished Abbey's Desert Solitaire, while I enjoyed many aspects of the work, it also left me feeling conflicted. I wholeheartedly concur with many (but not all) of his views on conservation. He challenged my views in some positive aspects as well, his disdain for the automobile in national parks, for example. Other views of his I cannot ignore or absolve him of. His views on traditional family values (read: misogyny) are quite apparent in The Monkey Wrench Gang and seep into this work as well. Furthermore, his views on indigenous peoples are outdated, even for his time. His incessant diatribe on the blights that impact Native Americans and other indigenous populations, blaming their own attitudes (victim blaming, if you will), while simultaneously railing against the federal government and The Bureau of Indian Affairs is at best hypocritical (while also patently racist).

Edward Abbey's actions also do not reflect his writing. The man continually rants about the ongoing destruction of this Earth, he blames everybody (The National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the modern consumer, tourists, oil and gas corporations, mining companies, logging businesses and wannabe outdoorsmen) but himself. He went so far as to work for the NPS, while admitting their culpability in their own decimation. During his time there he constantly capitulated to the tourists, the modern consumers in their iron contraptions. Some federal employees I've met have set out to change their respective agencies from within, but what did Abbey do? He left. He saw a problem, railed against it, and left.

So I ask: Why didn't he do more? It has been suggested that Ed had engaged in some less-than-peaceful activities, "eco-terrorism" they call it. I personally don't believe it, I believe that any actions taken were never near the magnitude of the happenings of The Monkey Wrench Gang. Ed's books were his personal fantasies, which while not a guide, a reference point. He prefaces Desert Solitaire, describing it as an elegy. Almost as if he is passing an extinguished torch on to our time. It is frustrating and demoralizing to say the least. While grateful to read his words and as much as I concur with his notions, I disagree with hits actions (or lack thereof). I finish this book left feeling angry."

I just finished Andrew Marantz's Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, and I think it's a book that would interest a lot of the people on this site. Marantz is a journalist for the New Yorker who embedded himself with alt-right influencers and social media companies. This book is a compilation of all of those stories; part memoir, part retelling, part observation, part commentary.

Despite its title, the book is not a one-dimensional hit piece. I actually strongly dislike the title as I feel it's a bit too barbed for a book that's rooted in extensive, thoughtful contemplation. The author is honest, open-minded, and critical. I hate the word "balanced" for all of the baggage it brings to the table, but it really feels like the best word to use, especially as an antonym for "unbalanced". He deftly handles a lot of different subjects here. He doesn't shy away from giving criticism where its due, but he's also not quick to judge, trying to understand the broader picture first before casting any judgments about it.

I mention it here because I think it has a lot of relevance to Tildes as a site, as well as the type of people that have congregated here. It covers a lot of ground of direct interest to Tildes: the role of social media platforms to police speech and ideology; how the structure of social media creates influence; how bad faith actors can manipulate systems; how noxious ideologies continue to appeal and propagate. I also know that Tildes trends toward the left, and as someone far on that side myself, I appreciated this book for giving me what I feel was a fair and thoughtful window into the lives of certain high-profile people on the right. It's easy to think of them as a monolith, but I was surprised by the differences between all of his various character portraits. Marantz never loses the individual humanity of his subjects, even when some of them are abjectly abhorrent people.

I should mention that the book is very US-centric, as that was where he focused his journalistic efforts. As such, readers outside the US might not appreciate it as much, but I still think a lot of what he shares is relevant no matter where you are located since we all share space together online.

I have just watched ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, after yesterday watching the original ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time. I have not, to my knowledge, ever watched ‘Mary Poppins’ in full before now. I’ve caught snippets of it on weekend television, but I’ve never seen it from start to finish. Well, with our new Disney+ streaming subscription, I’ve finally seen ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time yesterday, and followed it up by watching ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ today.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is a sequel in name only. It’s basically a remake of the original. It’s as if the director had a checklist of everything ‘Mary Poppins’ contained, and just checked them off in this sequel:

• Mary Poppins herself. Check.

• A dirty working-class friend with a heart of gold. Check.

• Children who didn’t know how to have fun. Check.

• A father who needed to rediscover his children and his own childish joy. Check.

• A woman who’s working for a progressive cause. Check.

• Bank seen as a negative institution. Check.

• Quirky relative of Mary Poppins who gives the children a different point of view. Check.

• Animated sequence. Check.

Actually, I’m surprised that there is an animated sequence in the sequel, given how much P.L. Travers reportedly hated the animation in the original. (Strangely, I’ve seen ‘Saving Mr Banks’ a couple of times, and even watched a documentary about Ms Travers somewhere along the way.) But I suppose she’s dead now, so her input is limited to just turning in her grave.

It even gets more detailed than that. Individual musical numbers have been mapped from one movie to another:

• Vaudeville-style song & dance number within the animated sequence, with the main characters performing alongside cartoon animals. Check.

• Big dance number featuring the aforementioned working-class friend and his colleagues. Check. The names even have a metaphorical resonance: “Step in Time” becomes “Trip a Little Light Fantastic”.

• Uplifting song at the end of the movie. Check. But instead of being about a child’s toy that flies in the sky (kite), let’s make it about a different child’s toy that flies in the sky (balloon).

It’s a shame that Julie Andrews can’t sing any more. It would have been lov-er-ly (ha!) to see her in the cameo role that Angela Lansbury had. Not that I have anything against Ms Lansbury: far from it! But Dick Van Dyke got a small role, and it would have been nice to see Ms Andrews pop up as well. A little on-screen moment between her and Emily Blunt would have been sweet.

There was one thing that the director left off his checklist, though: singable songs. While everyone knows “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and can sing it at the drop of a hat, noone is going to be singing “A Cover is not the Book”, as fun as it was. “A Spoonful of Sugar” is fun and memorable, while “Can You Imagine That” is fun and forgettable.

This is not to derogate the performances. There were no weak links in this chain. Emily Blunt was spot-on as Mary Poppins. Lin-Manuel Miranda was technically great as Jack the lamplighter (and he certainly did a better Cockney accent than Dick Van Dyke – which admittedly isn’t hard). Miranda lacked a little heart, but is a great singer and dancer. The rest of the cast were also good. Not a sour note among them. They were just let down by a weak script and poor songs.

The new Mary Poppins movie is a watered-down copy of the original – and the original wasn’t the best movie in the world to start with! I love me a good musical. I have a whole shelf full of musicals on disc, along with assorted soundtracks. I can quite happily spend an afternoon with ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ or the family-friendly ‘My Fair Lady’. But ‘Mary Poppins’ was too bland for me. And its sequel/remake was even blander.

So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school work.

Specifications

Laptop Model : Acer Aspire 3 A315-42
Laptop screen : 1080p IPS (with matte finish?)
CPU : R5 3500U
RAM : 8GB DDR4 (6GB available because of iGPU)
Storage : 256GB SSD NVMe
Wireless : Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377
Wired : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 (According to lspci)
2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI port, Audio jack, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port
Battery : 36.7Wh

Linux compatibility

Everything worked out of the box, gotta modify TLP to not kill the touchpad and webcam. The touchpad seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to being detected, It seems to be a kernel bug, unsure what I'll do about it concretely but rebooting a couple of times makes it work. Nothing to install thanks to AMD's open source mesa drivers. Might need a kernel higher than 5.3 because of general Ryzen 3000 issues but I've not tried, it was already higher than that.

Operating system tested

Basically never touched Windows, directly installed Fedora 31 Silverblue.

My Silverblue configuration is :

● ostree://fedora:fedora/31/x86_64/silverblue
                   Version: 31.20191213.0 (2019-12-13T00:42:11Z)
                BaseCommit: a5829371191d0a3e26d3cced9f075525d2ea73679bd255865fcf320bd2dca22a
              GPGSignature: Valid signature by 7D22D5867F2A4236474BF7B850CB390B3C3359C4
       RemovedBasePackages: gnome-terminal-nautilus gnome-terminal 3.34.2-1.fc31
           LayeredPackages: camorama cheese eog fedora-workstation-repositories gedit gnome-calendar gnome-font-viewer gnome-tweaks hw-probe libratbag-ratbagd lm_sensors nano neofetch
                            powertop radeontop sysprof systemd-swap tilix tlp

Kernel : 5.3.15
Gnome : 3.34.1

Body and Looks

The screen back has metal, I believe it feels quite sturdy. The rest is reasonable feeling plastic. The material used just loves to imprint grease / fingers which kinda sucks - the keys being the exception thankfully. There was also stickers on the inside which well, are somewhat standard but I thought they were pretty obnoxious so I removed them.

Typing experience

It's nothing amazing but it's good enough. I'm not really knowledgeable on keyboards so that's as much as I can say on it, really.

Performance

Everything feels quite snappy but I don't game at all on this machine so I'm not pushing it too much other than while I'm compiling or doing other things. The temperature does go up to 75°C and the fans get a little loud but it's not that bad. It's mostly the bottom getting hot so it's not something you notice too much while typing. It also cold boots quite fast, in about 10-20seconds I want to say but I've not benchmarked that. It's my first computer with an SSD so there's that.

Battery life

I get about 5hours with tlp installed doing web browsing, some programming occasionally, listening to music on the speakers and chatting. Personally I was kind of expecting more from this considering it's an APU but it seems to be what other people are getting on similar setups so It'll do.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this laptop considering how I bought it for 575$ on sale. I made this review mostly because I wasn't finding much information about this laptop on Linux and well, I don't know, I guess I felt like it. If you have any questions, ask up!

I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two men and their friendship around their metal detecting hobby.

Here's the link to the BBC Four webpage for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l51nr

Some review sites -

Rotten Tomatoes 100% (few reviews), 99% audience score: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/detectorists

IMDB 8.6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082744/

Guardian review (because she writes about it far better than I can): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook

Detectorists is about nothing and everything. Made with palpable love, it’s about people and their passions; camaraderie and community. As a portrait of male friendship, it is closer to documentary than drama, delving beneath the topsoil of mid-life ennui via the sparsest of exchanges. You won’t find a laughter track, or smart-arse punchlines or an oh-so-subtle veil of irony here; instead of begging for your attention, Detectorists is notable for its avoidance of snark. It’s the drama least likely to culminate in alpha plonkers blowing up cars, taking down baddies or ravishing beautiful women.

Instead, it lingers lovingly over dewdrops on grass, magpies on gateposts, scudding clouds and gently fluttering leaves. Even an alfresco wee takes on a painterly aspect, viewed solely through the steam cloud billowing from behind a sunlit tree. Meanwhile, the camera makes high art out of Lance’s face in closeup, crestfallen as he unearths a scaffolding bracket instead of an Anglo-Saxon nugget, and from Andy’s silent incredulity when a colleague jokes about Richard Attenborough when he means David.

Radio Times review https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-12-13/detectorists-series-3-review/

If all British programmes took this much care over their tone, look and overall distinctiveness, the golden age of television would never go away.

Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

Apple has spent a lot of money on The Morning Show for its new tv service. It has a bunch of actors that I love. In particular I'm excited to see Anniston, Duplas, Carell, and Crudup in this.

Metacritic gives it only 60. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-morning-show Sometimes a single terrible review can drag that number down, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. There are a few bad reviews, and lots of mixed reviews.

I don't know much about critique or how reviewing works, so I'm curious: is The Morning Show bad, or are critics terrible at reviewing, or is something else going on?