Days 774 - 776

A quiet weekend this weekend.

As per usual, I did the G2 Crossword and the streak continued with Friday’s crossword, praise the little grey cells, as I only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 23), I should have gotten ‘tons’ from ‘a lot’, but I went for ‘many’ inside. And I learnt that ‘Daedalus’ was the ‘father of Icarus’:

While Saturday’s crossword ended the week with the streak faltering a little as I had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 23), I think the little grey cells are feeling a little burnt out as I should have gotten three of those four – ‘audacity’ from ‘boldness’, ‘enormous’ from ‘immense’, ‘astrophysics’ from ‘science of the properties of celestial bodies’ (I went for astronomy, which isn’t even long enough!), but I learnt that the ‘Jerboa’ is a ‘desert-dwelling rodent’:

I also watched ‘Behind The Curve’, a documentary about flat earthers, people who believe that the Earth is flat and not round:

At first, you’re just shocked that people believe the Earth is flat, then you’re kinda laughing at them, then some of them explain that they believe in other conspiracies, including the racist ones, one believer notes that NASA is similar to a Jewish word (if I remember correctly he says Jewish not Hebrew word) for deception and then there is footage of him confronting a NASA employee (we don’t see the employee or any conformation that he works for NASA) asking him ‘Why do Jews hate America?”!!! Then as you get further into the documentary you realise that they are missing something in their life and believing in a flat Earth fills that hole and that they have lost friends and family over this and you feel sorry for them. 8/10. My initial thoughts were:

My favourite bits are the experiments the Flat Earthers do to prove that the Earth is flat, such as using a laser GPS system to measure how far the Earth rotates in an hour. If the Earth is round it will travel 15 degrees an hour (as 15 times 24 equals 360 degrees) and their experiment shows that the Earth rotates at 15 degrees an hour! So, they do another experiment using lasers and markers set out over a long distance, the laser beam is a straight line and if the Earth is flat it will hit each marker at the same height, if the Earth is round it will hit the markers at different heights, but they can’t get the laser to work properly and use a bright light instead, which hits the markers at different heights. And they end the documentary determined to do more experiments until they prove that the Earth is flat!

…and then I watched ‘Triple Frontier’, which is a Netflix Original film about, in a nutshell, a group of retired soldiers who steal hundreds of millions of dollars from a drug lord and must escape to the coast before their get caught. There is a bit more to it than that as they are little explorations of what it means to have been a solider and how to go back to being a civilian and there’s a chunk of ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ in the mix, with how money and greed effect individuals and the bonds of friendship.

There’s also a few clichés as well, the film is set in South America and practically all of the South American characters we meet are either corrupt officials, inept officials or poor people forced into working for criminals, while the friends haven’t lost any of their skills while being civilians, no skills have gone rusty or have been lost. And, as suggested above, the plot isn’t ground breaking or doing anything new, but that said it’s got a good cast, script, direction, sets, costumes, etc and it holds your attention for it’s two hours. 7/10. 

…and I picked up the new The Brain Jonestown Massacre album, ‘The Brain Jonestown Massacre’ and an Edwin Starr best of, he has a great track on the ‘Bad Tines At The El Royale’ soundtrack ('25 Miles') and everyone knows ‘War’ so I wanted to give the rest of his catalogue a try…

…and on Sunday I went on my long walk and managed to walk 10.32km (6.41miles) in 1 hour 48 minutes and 58 seconds, which burnt 1,100 calories and took 12,582 steps…and then some weights at home: