Statuses

Read - Want to Read: Modern Welsh by Gareth King (Routledge)
This new expanded edition of Modern Welsh is the ideal reference source for all speakers and learners of Welsh, suitable for use in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes at all levels. Focusing on contemporary spoken Welsh, this new enlarged edition features a substantial new function-based section, explaining and exemplifying a wide range of sentence and phrase patterns. Notes on variations between dialects and between spoken and formal written forms have also been expanded. The Grammar presents the complexities of Welsh in a concise and readable form. Common grammatical patterns and parts of speech are discussed in detail, and extensive cross-references make the book comprehensive and easy to use.
I started this back in September, but hadn’t bookmarked it?
Watched Breaking the language barrier | Tim Doner | TEDxTeen 2014 from YouTube

Tim Doner is a senior at the Dalton School in New York City who has studied over 20 languages. His interest started at the age of 13, after several years of French and Latin, when he began learning Hebrew and soon moved on to more obscure tongues such as Pashto, Ojibwe and Swahili. As he describes it, his goal is not to achieve fluency in each, but rather to learn about foreign history and culture through the medium of language. He spends much of his time perfecting his linguistic skills in different neighborhoods around the city, and to date his Youtube channel has received over 3 million hits. Tim has been interviewed (in English, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi, among others) for media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, The Today Show, Reuters and The Economist. He is starting his freshman year at Harvard next year and plans to study linguistics.

A nice hook to pull one into some of the reasons why one would want to pick up languages as well as how to do so.

8:44 method of loci (locorum)

10:02 Learning words in groups based on related sounds.

11:22 Why learn languages? Some useful motivation here.

Language represents a world cultural view. This is particularly poignant because a language (and its methods of thinking, viewing the world, and usually lots of associated culture) disappears from the world every two weeks.

Watched The Incredibles (2004) from Disney+
Directed by Brad Bird. With Craig T. Nelson, Samuel L. Jackson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee. A family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world.

Rating: ★★★★

Watched with Evie, who was reticent as always to start, but eventually liked it. “When can we see ?”

Entertaining and fun. Jason Lee’s voice spoiled the reveal of the heavy for me.

Read - Want to Read: The Raconteur's Commonplace Book by Kate Milford (Clarion Books)
Nothing is what it seems and there's always more than one side to the story as a group of strangers trapped in an inn slowly reveal their secrets in this new standalone mystery set in the world of the bestselling Greenglass House, from a National Book Award nominee and Edgar Award-winning author.
How can you resist a book about commonplaces?!

Comes out in 2021.

Read - Want to Read: The Boneshaker by Kate Milford (Clarion Books)
Thirteen-year-old Natalie Minks loves machines, particularly automata--self-operating mechanical devices, usually powered by clockwork. When Jake Limberleg and his traveling medicine show arrive in her small Missouri town with a mysterious vehicle under a tarp and an uncanny ability to make Natalie's half-built automaton move, she feels in her gut that something about this caravan of healers is a bit off. Her uneasiness leads her to investigate the intricate maze of the medicine show, where she discovers a horrible truth and realizes that only she has the power to set things right.
Set in 1914, The Boneshaker is a gripping, richly textured novel about family, community, courage, and looking evil directly in the face in order to conquer it.
Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
@withKnown supports Micropub, so you could use @ThreadReaderApp to do it in the other direction before WordPress could. 

https://boffosocko.com/2020/05/28/threadreaderapp-micropub-to-blog/
Watched Enemy of the State (1998) from HBO Max
Directed by Tony Scott. With Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet. A lawyer becomes targeted by a corrupt politician and his N.S.A. goons when he accidentally receives key evidence to a politically motivated crime.

Watched on Thursday October 15, 2020.

Rating: ★★★★

Seems odd watching this so many years later that we were worried so much about the government spying on us instead of worrying about corporations spying on us. Reminds me of the dichotomy of the way Americans and Eurpoeans view Government versus Corporate overreach.

I always mean to watch this in a double feature with Walter Murch’s The Conversation. One of these days I’ll get around to it.

Watched "The West Wing" Hartsfield's Landing from Netflix
Directed by Vincent Misiano. A fictitious small town in N.H. is the site of the first presidential primary vote, and the results from Hartsfield's Landing, announced at 12:07 a.m., will dominate the news all day until the final tally, so Josh wants favorable press for the president, prompting to ask Donna to persuade a local couple she knows to reconsider their vote. Elsewhere, Bartlet has just returned from India with a ...
I immediately notice a few specific differences. I really want to do a side by side viewing of the original episode and the remake now.
Watched A West Wing Special to benefit When We All Vote from HBO Max
Directed by Thomas Schlamme. With Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Rob Lowe, Janel Moloney. Stage version of the season 3 episode "Hartsfield's Landing"
An apt episode to be doing for this particular purpose, but of course almost all of them could be really. 
 
Incredibly well done and well-directed as a stage version. Definitely not something easy to do, though it also wasn’t quite live either. I’ll want to revisit the original again and then do a side-by-side comparison. A few smaller characters are definitely missing and the Josh/Donna relationship has shifted massively–in part because she no longer reads as “Bambi”.
 
It was a nice touch to have Ainsley return for stage directions, but I suspect that it may have been because Stockard didn’t want to come back for it?
Acquired The Boneshaker by Kate Milford (Clarion Books)
Thirteen year-old Natalie Minks loves machines, particularly automata — self operating mechanical devices, usually powered by clockwork. When Jake Limberleg and his travelling medicine show arrive in her small Missouri town with a mysterious vehicle under a tarp, and an uncanny ability to make Natalie’s half-built automaton move, she feels in her gut that something about this caravan of healers is a bit off. Her uneasiness leads her to investigate the intricate maze of the medicine show, where she discovers a horrible truth, and realizes that only she has the power to set things right. Set in 1914, The Boneshaker is a gripping, richly textured novel about family, community, courage, and looking evil directly in the face in order to conquer it.
Purchased an autographed copy at Vroman’s for $7.99.