Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far)

The New York Times has an infographic Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far) "In the seven months since declaring his candidacy for president, Donald Trump has used Twitter to lob insults at presidential candidates, journalists, news organizations, nations, a Neil Young song and even a lectern in the Oval Office. We know this because we’ve read, tagged and quoted them all. Below, a directory of sorts, with links to the original tweets. Insults within the last two weeks are highlighted."

Paul Rudd v Stephen Hawking in Quantum Chess

Fun short film (directed by "Bill" and with a voiceover by "Ted")

Some more details about the video and the game here.

12 Years on Mars

In Focus shows12 Years on Mars. "NASA's Mars rover, Opportunity just celebrated its 12th anniversary on Mars—a mission that was originally meant to last just 90 days. Although recently eclipsed in the news by its bigger brother Curiosity, Opportunity is still going strong and making valuable scientific discoveries. Launched into space in 2003, Opportunity bounced to a hole-in-one landing in a small crater on Mars' Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004. It has since spent 4,270 Martian days, or sols, on the surface, slowly moving from target to target, exploring craters, meteorites, unusual rock formations, and finding evidence of past water activity. Over the past 144 months, Opportunity has taken more than 200,000 images, and driven a total of 26.50 miles (42.65 kilometers) across Mars—not bad for a mission designed to last only three months."

Google Go Program Beats Go Master

Google reports AlphaGo: using machine learning to master the ancient game of Go

We trained the neural networks on 30 million moves from games played by human experts, until it could predict the human move 57 percent of the time (the previous record before AlphaGo was 44 percent). But our goal is to beat the best human players, not just mimic them. To do this, AlphaGo learned to discover new strategies for itself, by playing thousands of games between its neural networks, and adjusting the connections using a trial-and-error process known as reinforcement learning. Of course, all of this requires a huge amount of computing power, so we made extensive use of Google Cloud Platform.

After all that training it was time to put AlphaGo to the test. First, we held a tournament between AlphaGo and the other top programs at the forefront of computer Go. AlphaGo won all but one of its 500 games against these programs. So the next step was to invite the reigning three-time European Go champion Fan Hui—an elite professional player who has devoted his life to Go since the age of 12—to our London office for a challenge match. In a closed-doors match last October, AlphaGo won by 5 games to 0. It was the first time a computer program has ever beaten a professional Go player. You can find out more in our paper, which was published in Nature today.

Money Men Say, Voters Move Over, It's Not Your Election!

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write Money Men Say, Voters Move Over, It's Not Your Election! At first they call David Brooks out for what he is:

So let’s get this straight: One of the most prominent of Republican elites in the country, who has even been touted as President Obama’s “favorite pundit” (we’re not making this up!), is calling on the donor class to rescue the party from the rabble. Game’s over, voters: The oligarchs will decide this election.

They go on to talk more about the donor class:

In the words of the veteran Washington insider Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economic advisor to Joe Biden, “There’s this notion that the wealthy use their money to buy politicians; more accurately, it’s that they can buy policy.” Environmental policy, for example, when it comes to energy moguls like the Kochs. And tax policy.

They end with:

So here’s the real value of all that campaign cash and lobbying largesse: underwriting a willingness among legislators and government officials to bend the rules, slip in the necessary loopholes and look the other way when it comes time for the rich to hide their fortunes.

This is the status quo to which the donors cling so tightly and clutch their pearls at the prospect of losing. But now, with Trump seemingly ascendant, some of those who might have been relied on to support a donor revolt are betraying Brooks’ call for a coup, weakening in their resolve and beginning to think that maybe the short-fingered vulgarian isn’t such a bad idea. Despite his populist brayings, they hope, he might well be brought into their alliance.

Which brings to mind a line from the movie version of the musical Cabaret. In pre-Third Reich Germany, the decadent Baron Maximilian von Heune is talking with the British writer Brian Roberts, explaining why the elite have allowed this Hitler fellow to get a jackboot in the door. “The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans, but they do serve a purpose,” he says. “Let them get rid of the Communists. Later we’ll be able to control them.”

We all know how well that turned out.

What Paul Graham Is Missing About Inequality

Tim O'Reilly brilliantly explains What Paul Graham Is Missing About Inequality. He ends with:

When a startup doesn’t have an underlying business model that will eventually produce real revenues and profits, and the only way for its founders to get rich is to sell to another company or to investors, you have to ask yourself whether that startup is really just a financial instrument, not that dissimilar to the CDOs of the 2008 financial crisis — a way of extracting value from the economy without actually creating it.

But it's worth reading the whole thing.

GOP establishment deserves Trump, Cruz

Princeton professor Julian Zelizer says the GOP establishment deserves Trump, Cruz "But Republicans have nobody to blame but themselves. The party needs to own up to the kind of politics that we now have. The style promoted by Trump, Cruz and the entire tea party is a conscious product of the key decisions and strategic choices that mainstream Republican leaders have been making for decades."

He cites events back to Reagan, courting the Moral Majority, Lee Atwater under Bush 41, McCain picking Palin, Boehner and McConnell welcoming the Tea Party (at first). Also conservative talk radio, Fox News and Drudge.

As Nancy LeTourneau sums up, The Insanity Started a Long Time Ago, "Once again today, David Brooks is pleading with Republicans to “stay sane.” His supplications completely ignore the path the GOP took that led them to where they are today. As Zeilzer notes, “the alliance, the ideas, the rhetoric and the style have all come from the heart of Republican politics.” In other words, there’s no “staying” sane. That’s because the insanity started a very long time ago."

Martin Longman analyses, Why Silver Was Wrong About Trump. He starts out saying the thought the GOP was at least reasonable and how since Gingrich he's been slowly chipping away at that notion.

The moment the organs of the GOP had to shift over to defending [Palin's] preparedness and suitability to be a heartbeat away from the nuclear codes was the moment that their brain was disconnected from the rest of their central nervous system. From there, it was a short hop to climate science denialism, Birtherism, rape-don’t-get-you-pregnantism, Benghazism, and all the rest.

But [thinking Trump support would peter out] assumes that the key animators of the conservative movement are the familiar things like low taxes, a strong national defense, and a ban on abortion. Those aren’t the keys. The keys are 1) fear 2) hatred 3) greed and 4) a need to be led. Trump encapsulates those almost perfectly.

Now, you can call my assessment harsh, but I didn’t get here lightly. I did not want to believe this. I came to this way of thinking kicking and screaming. But, since I gave up giving the Republicans credit for anything more, I haven’t been wrong yet.

So, when I saw Trump badmouthing McCain, I said it would help him when most people said it would sink his campaign. I knew the base hated McCain to begin with, hated him twice-over for losing, and they’d love seeing a strong leader kick him in the teeth.

This isn’t the kind of analysis you’ll find in a political science paper or by poring over statistics. It’s raw and visceral and human. People are responding to Trump because they’re feeling xenophobic and because they want to see the Republican establishment insulted. They don’t really care about marginal tax rates or who’s been a consistent opponent of gay rights. They want someone who will get some revenge on their enemies.

Now, finally, I don’t know that Trump will win the nomination. Maybe he won’t. But I don’t see a whole lot of distance between what he’s doing and what the rest of the candidates are doing. They’re all at least as radical as George W. Bush, and the gang they’d bring in with them is unquestionably much worse that the gang that came in in 2001. Most of these candidates are far, far to the right of Dubya on a host of issues, from Israel to climate to Islamophobia to the role of the federal government in education or medical policy.

Kevin Drum wonders, Why Do So Many People Believe Donald Trump?

This really does get at a key part of Trump's popularity: a lot of people believe him. Hell, I'd almost vote for him if I believed him. We're talking about a guy who says he's going to grow the economy at 6 percent, save Social Security, cut taxes on everyone, get rid of unemployment, crush ISIS, rebuild the military, erase the national debt, and make America great again. And the icing on the cake for conservatives is that he claims to be solidly pro-life, pro-gun, pro-religion, and in favor of nice, right-wing Supreme Court justices like Clarence Thomas. What's not to like? A few minor deviations from movement conservatism? That's piffle. Why are all those establishment Republicans opposed to him?

There are reasons, of course. But primary among them is that no one with a 3-digit IQ believes he can do this stuff. Lots of it is flatly impossible, and the rest is politically impossible. And if you don't believe Trump, then he's just a charlatan with nothing left except bad qualities: he's erratic, narcissistic, boorish, racist, thin-skinned, ideologically unreliable, opportunistic, etc. etc. It's pretty obvious why you'd oppose him.

So, really, it all comes down to whether you believe Donald Trump can do the stuff he says. It's pretty plain that he can't. So why do so many people think he can? That's the $64 trillion question.

The Federal Reserve May Have Made A Huge Mistake

Matt O'Brien writes in WonkBlog, The Federal Reserve may have made a huge mistake "Markets sure seem to think that the Federal Reserve has made a big mistake. It hasn't just been stocks selling off 10 percent to start the year. It has also been bonds saying that they don't think the Fed will come close to hitting its target of 2 percent annual inflation anytime in the next 10 years. Markets, in other words, have done everything short of holding a boom box outside of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's window to beg her not to raise interest rates any more after the Fed hiked them in December for the first time in nearly a decade. And it just might work."

Krugman of course agrees, Fed Fumble.

RIP Abe Vigoda

Abe Vigoda, Beloved Character Actor, Dead at 94 - NBC News "Character Abe Vigoda, whose leathery, sunken-eyed face made him ideal for playing the over-the-hill detective Phil Fish in the 1970s TV series 'Barney Miller' and the doomed Mafia soldier in 'The Godfather,' died Tuesday at age 94."

At least as of now, abe vigoda status, an odd early website, has not yet been updated. (Update: and now it has.)

RIP Marvin Minsky

he New York Times reports Marvin Minsky, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88. Virtually every colleague mentioned in this obituary is a genius who had a huge impact on the world (Alan Kay, John McCarthy, Seymour Papert, Ray Kurzweil, Danny Hillis, Stanley Kubrick, etc.)

Update: Here are more: Personal page for Marvin Minsky

Before, during, and after: the East Coast blizzard as seen from space

Vox has photos Before, during, and after: the East Coast blizzard as seen from space. My favorite caption: "This is a photo of millions of people digging out their cars."

In Focus has more, Wintry Scenes After a Freezing Week

Scientists May Have Accidentally Found the Cure For Cancer

TomoNews reports, Scientists may have accidentally found the cure for cancer. "Malaria researcher Professor Ali Salanti from UCPH in collaboration with cancer researcher Mads Daugaard from UBC have revealed that the carbohydrate the malaria parasite attaches itself to in the placenta in pregnant women is identical to a carbohydrate present in cancer cells. Scientists have created the protein that the malaria parasite uses to attach to the placenta in a laboratory and have added a toxin. The combination of malaria protein and toxin finds cancer cells, is absorbed, then the toxin is released inside, causing the cancer cells to die."

"For decades, scientists have been searching for similarities between the growth of a placenta and a tumor. The placenta is an organ, which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approx. two pounds, and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment. In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same, they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment," says Ali Salanti from the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen. Research groups from the two universities have tested thousands of samples from brain tumors to leukemias and have found that the malaria protein is able to attack more than 90% of all types of tumors.

The Meaning of Ex Machina

This Quora answer by Mark Hughes is definitely the best thing I've read on Ex Machina, one of the best films of last year, At the end of the movie, why does Ava ask Caleb to stay in the room?. It's all spoilers, don't read until you've seen the film (and then watch it again).

Snowboarding with the NYPD

This just put a smile on my face. Yes it's wrong, but it's also fun.

Todays Retro Calvin & Hobbes is Great

Astronomers Find Theoretical Evidence for Distant Gas Giant Planet in Our Solar System

Universe Today reports Astronomers Find Theoretical Evidence for Distant Gas Giant Planet in Our Solar System - Universe Today

The astronomer known worldwide for vigorously promoting the demotion of Pluto from its decades long perch as the 9th Planet, has now found theoretical evidence for a new and very distant gas giant planet lurking way beyond Pluto out to the far reaches of our solar system.

The possible planet has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and is believed to be gaseous, like Uranus and Neptune, according to Mike Brown of Caltech, who became famous during the contentious debate on Pluto’s planetary status.

The giant new planet orbits the sun some 20 times farther out than Neptune in the distant reaches of the Kuiper Belt. Neptune orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles (4.5 Billion km).

The theorized ‘Planet Nine’ travels in a highly elongated path that takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete just one full orbit around the sun, according to Caltech statement describing the work."

10 Best Opening Shots of All Time

Cinefix describes their favorite 10 (and more) Opening Film Shots of All-Time (via kottke)

Why Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders give such awful answers on ISIS

Vox on Why Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders give such awful answers on ISIS

Rather, there is a certain tension that none of the candidates wish to acknowledge here: all three have plans on ISIS that are some version of the status quo. But the status quo is unpopular; it's not an easy sell to ask Americans to look at the Middle East and conclude "let's do more of what we're doing now."

So, rather than acknowledge that they want to continue the status quo, all three candidates are describing policies that are almost exactly the same as Obama's while striving for rhetoric that suggests drastic differences where few really exist. Clinton is seeking to dress up the status quo as a new and more hawkish course, while Sanders wants to dress up the status quo as a new and more dovish course.

Clinton proposed a "three-point plan" of three things the US is already doing. Sanders merely praised Obama and then pivoted to criticizing Republicans. O'Malley urged, "We need to develop new alliances" against ISIS, though I'm not sure I could name a country in the Middle East, other than Iran or Syria, with which we are not already in some form of alliance.

The Republican candidates, by the way, are doing the exact same thing: their plans are broadly identical to Obama's. But this is easier for them to manage, in political terms, because they can criticize Obama and then present their plan as novel. Democratic candidates are in the awkward position of feeling they can neither fully embrace nor reject Obama on these issues.

Donald Trump is a Mediocre Businessman

Kevin Drum wonders why more people don't realize Donald Trump is a Mediocre Businessman

"The Plaza was a huge money loser. The shuttle was a disaster. Trump never understood the casino business, and his Atlantic City properties started hemorrhaging cash almost as soon as they were completed. All of this pushed him to the edge of personal bankruptcy, which he avoided solely because his banks decided Trump's holdings could be liquidated at a higher price if they allowed him to stay solvent. In the aftermath of this bloodbath, he raised money by taking the remains of his casino and resort properties public. And since this was a public company, we know exactly how well it did: it lost money every single year and went into bankruptcy proceedings in 2004 (and again in 2009 for good measure). Since then, he's mostly bought and managed golf resorts, which has been a good but not great business for him.

Bottom line: When it comes to building and managing tangible assets, there's really not much evidence that Trump has any special talent. He inherited a huge amount of money and nearly lost it all during his first couple of decades in the development business. However, before the money ran out he was able to use it to create the 'Trump show' (his words), and in the couple of decades since then his income has come not from building things, but primarily from licensing and entertainment.

Trump seems to have two genuine talents. The first is that he's apparently a masterful reader of people. The second is that he's a hypnotic blowhard, which accounts for his success at both branding and TV, as well as his success at scams like Trump University."

Bernie Sanders has released his Medicare-for-All plan

Vox explains, Bernie Sanders has released his Medicare-for-All plan. Here’s how he pays for it.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been charging that Sanders' health care vision necessarily entails higher taxes on the middle class. Sanders plan is structured to try to avoid that accusation — levying its payroll tax on employers rather than employees and calling its 2.2 percent flat income tax "premiums" rather than a tax. But in effect, working people — whether wealthy or not — will be paying higher taxes. The Sanders camp's real argument is that, all things considered, the average family would save money.

Friedman finds that a typical family of four with wages of $50,000 and an employer health-plan with $4,955 in annual premiums and a $1,318 deductible would pay only $466 through the new 2.2 percent tax, and save $5,807, or 12 percent of income, on net. Friedman also finds that an employer paying $12,591 toward an employee's health plan would pay $3,100 in the new 6.2 percent payroll tax, and save $9,491.

Optical phenomenon draws a map of a city in the sky.

Optical phenomenon draws a map of a city in the sky. "It’s a light pillar. Or, more accurately, a lot of light pillars, and it’s probably the most striking example of them ever. This is terribly cool, so bear with me here a sec."

The Truth About Benghazi Is Finally Going to Be Exposed

Kevin Drum writes about yet another example of what the House of Representatives has become under GOP leadership, The Truth About Benghazi Is Finally Going to Be Exposed.

You know what else is science? Cybersecurity. And do you know one of the key cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the US government? Email servers. And do you know who used private email servers a few years ago? Hillary Clinton. And do you know what she was writing emails about? Benghazi. So that means Benghazi falls under Smith's jurisdiction.

10 Things That Star Trek Got Right (That Have Never Been Copied)

io9 lists 10 Things That Star Trek Got Right (That Have Never Been Copied). I agree that Star Trek did these 10 things well, though a few have been done well by other shows. Stargate had an expansive universe that developed alien cultures. BSG did a pretty good job of showing the dehumanizing nature of war.

Oscar Nominations

Oscar nominations came out today.

Leaving out the short and the Foreign, Animated, Documentary Feature categories, since all the nominees have a total of one nomination, here are the number of nominations per film (those checked I've seen):

• [ ] 12 - The Revenant
• [x] 10 - Mad Max: Fury Road
• [x] 7 - The Martian
• [x] 6 - Spotlight
• [ ] 6 - Carol
• [x] 6 - Bridge of Spies
• [x] 5 - The Big Short
• [x] 5 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• [ ] 4 - The Danish Girl
• [x] 4 - Room
• [x] 3 - The Hateful Eight
• [x] 3 - Sicario
• [x] 3 - Brooklyn
• [x] 2 - Steve Jobs
• [x] 2 - Ex Machina
• [ ] 1 - Youth
• [x] 1 - Trumbo
• [ ] 1 - The Hunting Ground
• [ ] 1 - The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
• [ ] 1 - Straight Outta Compton
• [x] 1 - Spectre
• [ ] 1 - Racing Extinction
• [x] 1 - Joy
• [x] 1 - Inside Out
• [x] 1 - Fifty Shades of Grey
• [x] 1 - Creed
• [ ] 1 - Cinderella
• [ ] 1 - 45 Years

While there's no category where I've seen every film, if I see just three, The Revenant, Carol and The Danish Girl I will have completed 13 categories and seen everything with more than one nomination. Adding 45 Years and Straight Outta Compton and I add two more complete categories for all the major ones. I think that's my best start ever.

I'm surprised the leading film is The Revenant with 12 nominations. One it really doesn't interest me. Two I've only heard of two actors in it (and they both got nominated). So it's shut of actress categories, didn't get for music and didn't get for writing; yet it still got 12 nominations, basically in every other category it could.

In Best Picture, they only nominated 8 films meaning two more slots could have been used and the obvious choices were Star Wars and Carol. That's surprising. Star Wars is on track to be the biggest grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation) and it's not one of the ten best films of the year? That's crazy, everyone I know who saw it loved it.

I loved The Big Short, but I would have given a best directing nomination to Ridley Scott for The Martian over Adam McKay.

Supporting Actor is an odd category this year. I saw Bridge of Spies and I have no idea who Mark Rylance is. I would have given that spot to Nicholas Hoult for Mad Max. There's no way you forget Nux in that film. I had heard no buzz for Tom Hardy in The Revenant but I'll reserve judgement until I see it. I think Jacob Tremblay was deserving for Room. It will be interesting to pick this category as Stallone is the sentimental favorite and everyone else is more qualified.

It was a good year for actresses. The Best Actress nominees were all basically good picks. In supporting I would have picked Charlize Theron over Rachel McAdams.

I'm kinda thrilled that Drew Goddard is now an Oscar nominee. I'm happy Aaron Sorkin didn't get a nom for Steve Jobs.

I'm surprised Suffragette and Far from the Maddening Crowd were shut out, even in Costumes or Production Design. I'm happy that Black Mass was.

Visual Effects is filled with good movies, not just big action pieces from the summer. Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant Man, Jupiter Ascending all were shut out. I fell like in other years San Andreas could have gotten a visual effects nom, but not this year. I'm really happy there's no Transformers nomination I'm forced to sit through to complete a category.

I wish Me and Earl and the Dying Girl got something (maybe screenplay), I thought it was great.

Also I wish Call Me Lucky got a Documentary Feature nomination. I saw three of the nominees and Amy and The Look of Silence were both amazing, but Call Me Lucky was way better than Cartel Land. I hadn't heard of either What Happened, Miss Simone? or Winter on Fire.

It would have been kinda cool if The Tribe got a Best Foreign Language nomination (it was in sign language and not subtitled and was one of the most brutal films I've ever sat through).

This is What I'm Still Using My Apple Watch For

Serenity Caldwell describes This is what I'm still using my Apple Watch for. Here's her list:

• Third-party complications (and multiple clock faces)
• Ping my iPhone (I didn't know it did this)
• Exercise tracking
• Notification management
• Answering calls on my wrist
• Siri... when it works

I don't have an Apple Watch yet. If any of you do I'm curious what your experiences with it are.

This is What Makes Republicans and Democrats So Different

This is what makes Republicans and Democrats so different - Vox "Their main finding is that Democrats are motivated by specific policy deliverables while Republicans are motivated by broader philosophical principles. But behind this finding is some interesting evidence."

Since 1945, Democratic presidents have put forward 39 percent more policy proposals than Republican presidents, and 62 percent more domestic policy proposals. "There is a good reason for this asymmetry," write Grossmann and Hopkins. "Democrats and liberals are more likely to focus on policymaking because any change that occurs is much more likely to be liberal than conservative. New policies usually expand the scope of government responsibility, funding, or regulation. There are occasional conservative policy successes as well, but they are less frequent and are usually accompanied by expansion of government responsibility in other areas."

Also, the parties are different:

Democrats tend to project their preference for policymaking onto the Republican Party — and then respond with anger and confusion when Republicans don't seem interested in making a deal. Republicans tend to assume the Democratic Party is more ideological than it is, and so see various policy initiatives as part of an ideological effort to remake America along more socialistic lines.

Film Editing as Punctuation

Nice 20 min explanation from Max Tohline (though it does spoil one of my favorite films). (via Kottke)

Gotta Love Apple Support

So this is the first thing I'm typing on a new keyboard that Apple replaced for free.

I have a wired Apple keyboard because I like the numeric keypad and they (for some inexplicable reason) don't make a wireless keyboard with a numeric keypad. It's connected to my iMac and I obviously use it a lot. I bought my first one years ago, when I connected it to my laptop when it was connected to an external display. When I got the iMac almost three years ago I got the wireless keyboard with it and occasionally use it to connect to my iPad but primarily use the wired keyboard I had.

Lately my wired keyboard has become unresponsive randomly. It's still plugged in and there's no tension on the cable but the mac stops receiving input. Today it happened for the third time in three days so I said enough and was headed to the Apple store to buy a new one for $49. On the off chance it would help, I brought the keyboard with me.

At 3:30 in the afternoon the store was crowded but not mobbed. As I walked in a couple of employees told me to wait a second and then apologized for the wait which amounted to less than a minute. My experience is that it always pays to be completely honest with them. I explained that the keyboard was becoming disconnected from my iMac on it's own, and before I could get to the part that the iMac was almost three years old and I had AppleCare the guy said, "Well can I just replace it for you?" I said that would be great.

He typed in something to his iPhone and maybe talked to someone else and we chatted for a couple of minutes until someone brought me a new keyboard. He said he was going to take it out of the box to give it to me in just the same condition as the one I brought in (loose). I said "Fine whatever you want" and loaned him a pocket knife to cut open the wrapping. As he started to do that another employee (not in an Apple shirt) came over and said he didn't need to bother, he could just give it to me in the box so it's easier to carry.

That was it. I was done. They didn't even ask me my name or have anyway to check that I had AppleCare or if it was still in warranty.

I never even got to the part where they had replaced this keyboard a year or two ago when I brought it in because I had removed the spacebar to clean it and couldn't get it back on.

David Bowie’s Genre-Hopping Career

The Economist graphs David Bowie’s genre-hopping career.

RIP David Bowie

I was never a huge Bowie fan but of course there are so many of his songs that are just in the fabric of culture. I've been listening to his music all day and reading article after article. Nothing has been a more poignant remembrance than this.

There are so many layers of meaning, from being a huge song on it's own, to being a very personal creation of fan in a way that only a handful of people could actually do, to being a commentary on our advancement as a species that someone could actually do this and make it available to the world to watch (and knowing that recording studios idiotically banned it before relenting).

A Politics For Technology

Ben Thompson on A Politics For Technology talks about surge pricing and market efficiencies.

The end result is a system that ensures that those who need a ride are guaranteed to get one; those who really could do without self-select out of the system, at least until more drivers are compelled to increase the supply. It is much better than the alternative, where someone who could just as easily walk a couple of blocks might by pure chance grab the taxi needed by, say, a woman in labor. That’s an extreme example, but I use it to make the point: pricing ensures those who truly need a good can get it, and, on a holiday defined by champagne, we should all be grateful.

In the context of the price mechanism, money serves the role of a medium of exchange. The problem, though, is that money serves other functions as well: specifically, money is a unit of account and a store of value. It is the latter that is the rub when it comes to Uber and the idea of allocating rides based on price. To return to the extreme example above, what if the woman in labor is poor, and the person who only needs to travel a few blocks is rich? It very well may be that the latter’s ability-to-pay will trump the former’s willingness-to-pay; this is, to my mind anyways, the most valid reason to oppose surge pricing.

Later on: "Take taxis, to stick with the Uber theme: the justification for most taxi regulations were important ones like safety, dependability, and consumer protection. Given the fact that taxis would be out on the street unsupervised it made sense to tightly control entrance to the market. However, were it possible to address all those same concerns far more effectively, through, say, precise tracking and full histories of both drivers and passengers, as well as knowledge about pick-up and intended drop-off points, would not the regulations look significantly different?"

He peters out in the end, with this, "It would be far better — and a far better match for the reality of today’s labor market — to disentangle once-and-for-all employment from the social safety net." but it was still a good read.

The Website Obesity Crisis

Maciej Cegłowski posted The Website Obesity Crisis. "This is the text version of a talk I gave on October 29, 2015, at the Web Directions conference in Sydney."

It's a long but fun read about the bloat in today's web:

Or consider this 400-word-long Medium article on bloat, which includes the sentence:

"Teams that don’t understand who they’re building for, and why, are prone to make bloated products."

The Medium team has somehow made this nugget of thought require 1.2 megabytes.

That's longer than Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky’s psychological thriller about an impoverished student who fills his head with thoughts of Napoleon and talks himself into murdering an elderly money lender.

Racked by guilt, so rattled by his crime that he even forgets to grab the money, Raskolnikov finds himself pursued in a cat-and-mouse game by a clever prosecutor and finds redemption in the unlikely love of a saintly prostitute.

Dostoevski wrote this all by hand, by candlelight, with a goddamned feather.

As he points out the problems are spread across a variety of issues. I think he pretty accurately describes the issues (and in an entertaining way), I'm no so sure of his prescriptions. For example he says: "But the ad market is going to implode anyway when the current bubble bursts. The only question for publishers is whether to get ahead of this and reap the benefits, or circle down the drain with everybody else." Yeah, that's not going to work. It's their job and in their financial interest to delay the transition so that they make more money. The way to change things is to change the incentives.

Reading this I was reminded of seeing The Big Short. One of the causes of the near financial collapse was that people could sell off risk. As a result, they could sell things that would inevitably fail, make money, and get rid of the risk so that it failed on someone else. The fact that it got so out of control that when it failed everyone failed was lost on people at the time. An idea I heard shortly after the collapse was that it used to be that banks offered mortgages and if you defaulted they lost money, so they were invented to only offer loans to qualified people. Once you could sell them off, they were invented to make as many loans as possible, to high and low quality borrowers because they weren't at risk of default. That invented the system to create more fraudulent loans. Same with other mortgage backed securities.

So to fix the web you have to fix the incentives. I'm not sure what that is, but the bloat has to cost the creators of it more. While ad servers do pay for their upload bandwidth, maybe they should also pay for the consumers download bandwidth of those ads. After all the consumers didn't ask for the ads and supposedly the sales revenue those ads create are worth the bandwidth, so maybe the sellers should pay for it. Or the ad network companies, since they're the ones building the models us so that ads can be targeted to that we only see ones that we'll actually buy.

He also says "Let’s commit to the idea that as computers get faster, and as networks get faster, the web should also get faster." and while that's right, it's not complete. The argument would mean the web would still look like that in the 90s, with few images and few features. I like some of the new design and as bandwidth increases (and it has) it's fine for sites to make use of them. But his early metrics do have value. It seems ridiculous that the web page of a tweet (limited to 140 characters) should be 900,000 bytes or that a 400 word article on Medium should be 1.2MB. Then again, those do load pretty fast for me. :)

New Clinton Emails Show Mixed Concerns on Security of Information

I breezed past some article about Hillary's email dump late Friday. I caught the end of George Stephanopolis' show and someone mentioned it contained security violation that he expected her to be indicted on as a felony. I searched in the New York Times iPad app and found no article on the topic. I searched on my mac and found this (I wonder why that is New York Times?)

The New York Times wrote New Clinton Emails Show Mixed Concerns on Security of Information

On a Friday morning in June 2011, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had waited more than 12 hours for a set of talking points to be sent to her, a top aide told her the delay was because staff members were having problems sending faxes that would be secure from probing eyes.

‘If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,’ Mrs. Clinton responded in an email released early Friday by the State Department, one of about 3,000 newly released pages of Mrs. Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state. Of those, 66 documents contained classified information.

The note she sent to the top aide, Jacob J. Sullivan, instructing him how to strip sensitive material of official markings and send it in a ‘nonsecure’ way is heavily redacted, so it is unknown what the talking points were about."

That does kinda seem pretty damning.

ABC followed up, More Detail, New Questions About 2011 Clinton Email.

And on Saturday, a State Department official who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the increasingly complicated review of Clinton's emails said the agency "checked its records and found no indication that the document in question was sent to Secretary Clinton using nonsecure fax or email."

The official, who demanded anonymity, said records instead turned up a secure fax transmission shortly after Clinton's email exchange with adviser Jake Sullivan on June 17, 2011. The implication was that this was the same document.

While the review appears to rule out the possibility of Clinton improperly receiving sensitive material, it leaves other questions unanswered.

Was the document classified or unclassified? The State Department won't say.

And was Clinton wrong to instruct a senior aide to send it through nonsecure means, even if that request wasn't fulfilled? The department says it isn't making a judgment.

Even the subject matter hasn't been revealed.

HotAir might be the first report of the issue and they seem to be pretty good about updating with some new info (though not the ABC News report above). Whoa: Hillary e-mail instructs aide to transmit classified data without markings

Face the Nation interview Hillary this morning and asked her about this. Paraphrasing, she said the aide was known to be meticulous and knew that she meant to send whatever unclassified parts could be sent. She repeated that the State Department has said that nothing classified on the topic was sent. I guess it's a fine answer, but I didn't find it convincing because of the language she used in the message doesn't match what she says her intent was. John Dickerson said the FBI is investigating this matter.

Movies Seen in 2015

Previous Years: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

In 2015 I saw 226 feature length movies and 37 short films (those under 40 mins). That's a little more than the last three years.

77% first run features is a little less than last year. I rewatched all the Bond films and the Star Wars films.

I rate on the Netflix 5 point scale where 1 is hated, 2 is didn't like, 3 is I liked it, 4 is really liked and 5 is loved.

I had a pretty average curve for me.

Similar to last year I saw 68 features in the theater and most of the rest on cable. I only watched 2 films on Netlix this year, 2 on DVD or Blu-ray and 7 streaming.

I've got a few theaters I go to regularly, though the Somerville gets so much because of IFFBoston. The shorts I see in the theater are the Oscar nominees when they show them at the Coolidge. Boston got a new theater this year at Assembly Row, next year there will be more food choices nearby so I'll probably go more often.

I watched a ton in January, had my usually IFFBoston peak in April and watched a lot in October. My shorts viewing is in February for the Oscars, April for IFFBoston, and December when I found some National Film Registry shorts online.

Yet again, my viewing was really skewed towards recent films this year. I saw 71 features from 2015 and 63 from 2014.

Last year May and June were barren months for Oscar nominated films, this year it's just April. These are films from any year that got a nomination or won, not just from last year's Oscars. They also (obviously) don't include any films that came out this year that will get nominated on Thursday.

Yet again I feel like I need to see more foreign films:

I break down films into five genres that I'm pretty happy with. I then use some sub-genres and I still have a hard time putting every film in one. There are lots of Dramas and Comedies that have no sub-genre. But here's how it looks for this year:

Below are all the films I saw in 2015:

Seen	Title	Year	Length	Country	Rating
Jan 1	Dr. No	1962	Feature	Britain	4
Jan 1	Gimme Shelter	1970	Feature	US	2
Jan 1	Inception	2010	Feature	US	5
Jan 2	At the Circus	1939	Feature	US	3
Jan 2	Room Service	1938	Feature	US	3
Jan 3	CBGB	2013	Feature	US	3
Jan 3	Go West	1940	Feature	US	3
Jan 4	A Night at the Opera	1935	Feature	US	4
Jan 4	Wild	2014	Feature	US	4
Jan 7	Sidewalks of New York	1931	Feature	US	3
Jan 10	Blood Ties	2014	Feature	US	4
Jan 10	Parker	2013	Feature	US	4
Jan 10	Superman/Batman: Apocalypse	2010	Feature	US	3
Jan 10	The Other Woman	2014	Feature	US	1
Jan 10	Transcendence	2014	Feature	US	2
Jan 11	Frequencies	2014	Feature	Britain	3
Jan 11	Selma	2014	Feature	Britain	3
Jan 11	The Talented Mr. Ripley	1999	Feature	US	4
Jan 13	Inherent Vice	2014	Feature	US	2
Jan 15	and My Moulton	2014	Short	Canada	2
Jan 15	The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift	2006	Feature	US	2
Jan 15	The Phone Call	2014	Short	Britain	4
Jan 17	Finding Vivian Maier	2014	Feature	US	4
Jan 17	Godzilla	2014	Feature	US	1
Jan 18	American Sniper	2014	Feature	US	3
Jan 19	Our Hospitality	1923	Feature	US	4
Jan 24	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	2014	Feature	US	5
Jan 25	A Most Violent Year	2014	Feature	US	2
Jan 25	Superman/Batman: Public Enemies	2009	Feature	US	2
Jan 31	Bears	2014	Feature	US	3
Jan 31	Everything or Nothing	2012	Feature	Britain	4
Jan 31	Night Will Fall	2014	Feature	Britain	4
Jan 31	The Angriest Man in Brooklyn	2014	Feature	US	2
Jan 31	The Heartbreak Kid	1972	Feature	US	3
Jan 31	They Came Together	2014	Feature	US	1
Feb 1	Being John Malkovich	1999	Feature	US	4
Feb 1	Noah	2014	Feature	US	1
Feb 2	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	1982	Feature	US	4
Feb 2	Never Say Never Again	1983	Feature	Britain	3
Feb 2	Octopussy	1983	Feature	Britain	2
Feb 7	A View to a Kill	1985	Feature	Britain	2
Feb 7	The Living Daylights	1987	Feature	Britain	3
Feb 10	Man with a Movie Camera	1929	Feature	Russia	3
Feb 16	Belle	2014	Feature	US	3
Feb 20	Aya	2014	Short	Israel	4
Feb 20	Boogaloo and Graham	2014	Short	Britain	4
Feb 20	Butter Lamp	2014	Short	China	3
Feb 20	Feast	2014	Short	US	4
Feb 20	Parvaneh	2014	Short	Switzerland	3
Feb 21	A Single Life	2014	Short	Netherlands	4
Feb 21	Bus Story	2014	Short	Canada	2
Feb 21	Duet	2014	Short	US	2
Feb 21	Footprints	2014	Short	US	2
Feb 21	Me and My Moulton	2014	Short	Canada	3
Feb 21	Sweet Cocoon	2014	Short	France	3
Feb 21	The Bigger Picture	2014	Short	Britain	3
Feb 21	The Dam Keeper	2014	Short	US	2
Mar 5	The Fifth Estate	2013	Feature	US	3
Mar 7	CitizenFour	2014	Feature	US	4
Mar 7	Edge of Tomorrow	2014	Feature	US	4
Mar 8	Cloud Atlas	2012	Feature	US	4
Mar 8	For Your Eyes Only	1981	Feature	Britain	3
Mar 8	Kingsman: The Secret Service	2015	Feature	Britain	4
Mar 10	V for Vendetta	2005	Feature	US	3
Mar 14	From Russia With Love	1963	Feature	Britain	4
Mar 15	’71	2015	Feature	Britain	3
Mar 15	Diamonds Are Forever	1971	Feature	Britain	2
Mar 15	License to Kill	1989	Feature	Britain	2
Mar 15	You Only Live Twice	1967	Feature	Britain	4
Mar 21	Transformers: Age of Extinction	2014	Feature	US	1
Mar 22	The Unforgiven	1960	Feature	US	3
Mar 22	Wild Tales	2014	Feature	Argentina	4
Mar 24	Live and Let Die	1973	Feature	Britain	3
Mar 25	A Million Ways to Die in the West	2014	Feature	US	2
Mar 29	Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter	2014	Feature	US	2
Mar 30	Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 4	Fast Five	2011	Feature	US	3
Apr 5	Furious 7	2015	Feature	US	2
Apr 5	The Expendables 3	2014	Feature	US	2
Apr 5	The Man With the Golden Gun	1974	Feature	Britain	2
Apr 7	Analogue People in a Digital World	2015	Short	Ireland	1
Apr 7	Elgin Park	2015	Short	US	3
Apr 11	Henry Fool	1997	Feature	US	2
Apr 12	Fay Grim	2006	Feature	US	2
Apr 12	Ned Rifle	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 19	Ex Machina	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 22	The End of the Tour	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 23	(T)error	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 23	Finders Keepers	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 24	The Tribe	2015	Feature	Ukraine	3
Apr 24	Top Spin	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 25	Call Me Lucky	2015	Feature	US	5
Apr 25	Deathgasm	2015	Feature	New Zealand	3
Apr 25	GTFO	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 25	Stray Dog	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 25	Welcome to Leith	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 26	A Brilliant Young Mind	2015	Feature	Britain	4
Apr 26	A Well Designed Plan	2015	Short	US	4
Apr 26	Blackwell	2015	Short	US	3
Apr 26	Central Market	2015	Short	Bahrain	2
Apr 26	Starman	2015	Short	US	3
Apr 26	The Keeping Room	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 26	The Look of Silence	2015	Feature	Indonesia	5
Apr 26	Tobacco Burn	2015	Short	US	4
Apr 27	Cartel Land	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 27	Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD	2015	Feature	Britain	3
Apr 28	I’ll See You in My Dreams	2015	Feature	US	4
Apr 28	The Wolfpack	2015	Feature	US	3
Apr 29	Me and Earl and the Dying Girl	2015	Feature	US	5
Apr 30	Comic Book Heaven	2014	Short	US	3
May 1	Avengers: Age of Ultron	2015	Feature	US	4
May 3	The World is Not Enough	1999	Feature	Britain	2
May 3	Tomorrow Never Dies	1997	Feature	Britain	3
May 9	9-Man	2014	Feature	US	3
May 10	Far From the Maddening Crowd	2015	Feature	Britain	4
May 11	The Fault in Our Stars	2014	Feature	US	4
May 12	Guardians of the Galaxy	2014	Feature	US	4
May 14	Coney Island	1917	Short	US	3
May 15	Die Another Day	2002	Feature	Britain	3
May 15	Life of Crime	2013	Feature	US	2
May 15	Magic in the Moonlight	2014	Feature	US	3
May 16	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	2014	Feature	US	5
May 16	Goldfinger	1964	Feature	Britain	4
May 16	Pitch Perfect 2	2015	Feature	US	3
May 17	Footloose	1984	Feature	US	3
May 17	Mad Max: Fury Road	2015	Feature	Australia	4
May 17	X-Men: Days of Future Past	2014	Feature	US	4
May 25	Hercules	2014	Feature	US	2
May 25	Mission Impossible III	2006	Feature	US	4
May 25	Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan	1982	Feature	US	4
May 31	Slow West	2015	Feature	Britain	2
Jun 2	The Silver Chalace	1954	Feature	US	1
Jun 2	The Wind	1928	Feature	US	3
Jun 5	Saratoga	1937	Feature	US	2
Jun 6	The Equalizer	2014	Feature	US	3
Jun 7	Begin Again	2014	Feature	US	3
Jun 7	I Origins	2014	Feature	US	2
Jun 7	The Judge	2014	Feature	US	2
Jun 9	Deep Web	2015	Feature	US	3
Jun 9	RoboCop	2014	Feature	US	3
Jun 9	Somebody Up There Likes Me	1956	Feature	US	4
Jun 11	Gosford Park	2001	Feature	Britain	3
Jun 12	Boyhood	2014	Feature	US	2
Jun 12	Million Dollar Arm	2014	Feature	US	3
Jun 13	Gun Crazy	1950	Feature	US	3
Jun 13	I, An Actress	1977	Short	US	2
Jun 13	Ministry of Fear	1944	Feature	US	3
Jun 13	The Letter	1940	Feature	US	3
Jun 14	Jurassic World	2015	Feature	US	3
Jun 17	A Dog’s Life	1918	Short	US	3
Jun 17	Greed	1924	Feature	US	4
Jun 17	The Circus	1928	Feature	US	5
Jun 18	No Good Deed	2014	Feature	US	2
Jun 30	Amy	2015	Feature	Britain	4
Jul 1	Inside Out	2015	Feature	US	3
Jul 3	The Paleface	1922	Short	US	3
Jul 5	Doctor Zhivago	1965	Feature	Britain	2
Jul 5	Underworld U.S.A.	1961	Feature	US	3
Jul 12	The Overnight	2015	Feature	US	2
Jul 18	Ladies in Retirement	1941	Feature	US	3
Jul 18	The Rewrite	2014	Feature	US	3
Jul 19	Ant-Man	2015	Feature	US	4
Jul 19	The Big Broadcast of 1937	1936	Feature	US	3
Jul 19	This is Where I Leave You	2014	Feature	US	3
Jul 21	Complicit	2013	Feature	Britain	2
Jul 22	Meshes of the Afternoon	1943	Short	US	2
Jul 24	Big Hero 6	2014	Feature	US	4
Jul 24	Star Trek: First Contact	1996	Feature	US	4
Jul 25	It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World	1963	Feature	US	5
Jul 25	John Wick	2014	Feature	US	5
Jul 25	The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming	1966	Feature	US	4
Jul 25	Whiplash	2014	Feature	US	5
Jul 26	Trainwreck	2015	Feature	US	3
Aug 1	Lucy	2014	Feature	France	4
Aug 1	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1	2014	Feature	US	3
Aug 1	Foxcatcher	2014	Feature	US	2
Aug 1	The To Do List	2013	Feature	US	3
Aug 2	Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation	2015	Feature	US	4
Aug 4	The Good Lie	2014	Feature	US	4
Aug 4	The Sting	1973	Feature	US	5
Aug 8	Tell	2014	Feature	US	3
Aug 8	Playing it Cool	2014	Feature	US	3
Aug 9	The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies	2014	Feature	New Zealand	2
Aug 9	Rooster Cogburn	1975	Feature	US	4
Aug 10	The Unknown	1927	Feature	US	3
Aug 23	American Ultra	2015	Feature	US	2
Aug 30	The Man from UNCLE	2015	Feature	US	1
Sep 5	The Ipcress File	1965	Feature	Britain	3
Sep 6	It’s a Gift	1934	Feature	US	3
Sep 6	The Diary of a Teenage Girl	2015	Feature	US	3
Sep 10	We’ll Never Have Paris	2014	Feature	US	3
Sep 20	Black Mass	2015	Feature	US	3
Sep 24	Into The Woods	2014	Feature	US	2
Sep 24	Why We Laugh: Funny Women	2013	Feature	US	3
Sep 26	Words and Pictures	2014	Feature	US	3
Sep 26	Interstellar	2014	Feature	US	4
Sep 27	Teacher’s Pet	1958	Feature	US	4
Sep 27	Unbroken	2014	Feature	US	2
Sep 27	Mr. Turner	2014	Feature	Britain	4
Oct 4	The Martian	2015	Feature	US	5
Oct 5	Room	2015	Feature	US	4
Oct 9	Akeelah and the Bee	2006	Feature	US	4
Oct 11	Sicario	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 11	Focus	2015	Feature	US	3
Oct 16	The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter	1980	Feature	US	4
Oct 16	Jupiter Ascending	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 17	The General	1927	Feature	US	5
Oct 17	The Coconuts	1929	Feature	US	3
Oct 18	Bridge of Spies	2015	Feature	US	4
Oct 21	Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!	1958	Feature	US	2
Oct 23	Taken 3	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 23	The Boy Next Door	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 24	Compared to What? The Improbably Journey of Barney Frank	2015	Feature	US	3
Oct 24	Wild Card	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 24	The Day of the Jackal	1973	Feature	Britain	5
Oct 24	Magnolia	1999	Feature	US	4
Oct 25	Sin City: A Dame to Kill For	2014	Feature	US	2
Oct 25	Find Me Guilty	2006	Feature	US	3
Oct 25	Where to Invade Next	2015	Feature	US	3
Oct 26	The Invitation	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 27	Steve Jobs	2015	Feature	US	2
Oct 28	The Assassin	2015	Feature	China	2
Oct 29	Anomalisa	2015	Feature	US	4
Nov 1	Maps to the Stars	2014	Feature	US	2
Nov 2	The Crowd	1928	Feature	US	3
Nov 5	Casino Royale	2006	Feature	Britain	4
Nov 6	The Jackal	1997	Feature	US	2
Nov 7	Blackhat	2105	Feature	US	1
Nov 8	Quantum of Solace	2008	Feature	Britain	2
Nov 8	Black Hawk Down	2001	Feature	US	4
Nov 8	Spectre	2015	Feature	Britain	2
Nov 14	Third Person	2013	Feature	US	2
Nov 15	Kill the Messenger	2014	Feature	US	3
Nov 15	Spotlight	2015	Feature	US	4
Nov 22	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2	2015	Feature	US	2
Nov 23	One Week	1920	Short	US	4
Nov 23	The Theory of Everything	2014	Feature	Britain	4
Nov 25	Creed	2015	Feature	US	4
Nov 25	Bernie	2011	Feature	US	4
Nov 26	Gone Girl	2014	Feature	US	4
Nov 29	Trumbo	2015	Feature	US	4
Dec 1	Suffragette	2015	Feature	Britain	4
Dec 7	Spearhunter	2015	Short	US	3
Dec 8	Brooklyn	2015	Feature	Ireland	4
Dec 11	Star Wars IV: A New Hope	1977	Feature	US	5
Dec 12	3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets	2015	Feature	US	2
Dec 12	Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back	1980	Feature	US	5
Dec 12	Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi	1983	Feature	US	4
Dec 13	Divergent II: Insurgent	2015	Feature	US	2
Dec 13	Hitchcock/Truffaut	2015	Feature	US	4
Dec 14	Bee Movie	2007	Feature	US	3
Dec 16	Black and Tan Fantasy	1929	Short	US	3
Dec 16	Dream of a Rarebit Fiend	1906	Short	US	3
Dec 16	Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze	1894	Short	US	3
Dec 16	The Inner World of Aphasia	1968	Short	US	3
Dec 16	John Henry and the Inky-Poo	1946	Short	US	3
Dec 16	The Old Mill	1937	Short	US	4
Dec 16	The Story of Menstruation	1946	Short	US	3
Dec 17	Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens	2015	Feature	US	5
Dec 19	Aloha	2015	Feature	US	2
Dec 20	Sisters	2015	Feature	US	3
Dec 25	Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens	2015	Feature	US	5
Dec 27	The Big Short	2015	Feature	US	4