Toy Story 5 (movie review)

One might wonder at my choice of time tunnels. The avatar: a white haired senior, clearly an old guy, riding alone on the bus in a tie and Python-branded sweater, because today it’s chilly enough for such garb, even in summer, when Europeans are experiencing record heat. I’d been to Quakers earlier (Bridge City Friends) and didn’t bother to change before heading out again. I often wear a tie when riding the bus.

The choice of time tube (as in program): bus and walk to and from Pioneer Place Regal Cinemas and take in Toy Story 5, 1:20 Sunday matinee. The senior price: somewhere between $12 and $13. 

I had the auditorium all to myself but for what I assumed were a parent and young child in the row ahead of me. The child seemed about the age of the two star kids in this movie.

Toy Story 5 is for sure made for children, and for parents of children, who have that shared concern about sociality, meaning not only finding friends, but the right friends. With whom is it OK, in the sense of beneficial, to hang out? 

Families tend to feel their way forward in America, more than they’re handed a list of pre-approved playmates, although it’s also the case that some communities are very ingrown and isolated, even in the 21st Century. That may be by choice. Diversity is the name of the game, which doesn’t mean “without boundaries”. Not every community has a sense of a shared public space. This movie recreates single family wooden homes in both a suburban and rural (as in horse-owning) setting.

Toy Story movies always harp on the same theme: the kids who own and actively play with these toys are growing up fast and the dolls therefore have a sense of their own mortality (sense of doom), an approaching death of relevance. They’ll end up on a box in the garage, or they’ll be donated, passed along. At best. The dolls in Toy Story 5 have been through several owners. They’re jaded, Woody has a shiny bald spot, and, as toys qua toys, they're losing ground to screen devices.

I have nothing negative I want to say about this movie. On the contrary, I felt witness to a serious yet humorous investigation into childhood issues around belonging. Inside Out 2 was another one in this genre. These movies (I’m talking about the “for kids” genre) serve a real purpose, both reflecting and refracting.

It’s not like I’m not moody. I’ve got the AirPods and Verizon and have my various antennae, for times when I’m walking or on the bus. Today I waited until I got home to walk the dog, before tuning in about the dirty wars (a redundant characterization in a lotta ways). Kids just wanna have a childhood and watch some cartoons, but so-called Adult World, or Machine World -- kids with guns in a lotta cases -- comes at them fast. Many get born into some nightmare scenario, whereas the stars in Toy Story are just coasting through the usual ups and downs.

My favorite aspect of this movie was the whole shipwrecked shipment of Buzz Lightyears, all groupthinking together, a mini hive mind on the move. There’s a satirical flavor to the Buzz legion that transfers over to Rambo movies and the wider genre. Males in packs. Team players. A fun ethnicity.

Cowgirl Sheriff (the star) is pointed and direct in her manner, goal driven, a born leader (if toys are born). Woody shows up, also somehow high ranking and already with a partner, allowing for an uncomplicated romantic subplot involving Buzz (he has a crush on Cowgirl). 

The movie opens with some kitchen utensils getting married, within a girl’s imagination, with the other toys playing along. We’re clearly in a space where “getting married” is imagined often. That’s not unique to Disney movies, obviously. 

This story keeps the married couples heterogenous in that parent couples are conventionally nuclear. No isotopes. Nothing molecular. 

It’s not meant to be a soap so much as a coming of age action thriller involving favorite toys getting lost and found. Again, The Inside Outs are somewhat similar. Science fiction? OK, it’s a soap, but deliberately easy to follow. Keeping track of who’s who is a learned skill.

I agree with this message also: letting the screens do all the work and not exercising one’s own powers of imagination through creative improv dollhouse style play, including with others (thereby making friends), is likely to come at a cost. Many parents would approve of that message.

So don’t let them shame you for diving into fairytales, anime and manga, where useful info lies encoded. Have a real inner life, in the first person, vs trying to outsource your emotions. 

A rich fantasy life is something to protect, vs bargain away for high pay. When they pay you to deliberately impoverish yourself, maybe its time to change the job description, or even switch careers. 

Parenthetically speaking, I’ll add that I don’t find STEM subjects to be inherently unimaginative, especially when we make it STEAM, by adding Anthropology.

Screen-based Sims and SimCity showed how the dollhouse simply re-emerges in the digital realm. We get a play within a play almost no matter what we do. 

Some of these screen based simulations might be more focused on the engineering. The Buzz Lightyears might even be into that, if sober. 

I was intrigued by some of the previews. One in particular, the claymation one by Laika, features Portland (before the portal is entered). Lost Island I think it’s called.

Podcast on Substack

Polydactica: Interview with Kirby Urner

A Wanderer Interviews another Wanderer

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Wanderers Meetup

Flickr Album: Summer Solstice Gathering 2026

Book Club Meetup

Our conversation circle touched on some of my Pirate Party planks today, not that I raised them as such, only that boarding school naturally arises once we have our planning hats on. We talking about the ongoing experiment with the dorm, in Mitchell School District #55 in Oregon. Different mixes of gender and subculture have been tried.

Sometimes I try out what will eventually become segments in more formal presentations, about Nietzsche for example, and how his sick and twisted sister helped shape his legacy into a form suitable for Third Reich exploitation. We learned that whole story from Walter Kaufmann. You may have heard me on YouTube covering that segment already.

After the conversation circle, I drove to WinCo, streaming Candace’s Ep 352, which is about how the private sector has replaced the public one in the military. 

In this post nation-state world, it’s private mercenaries all the way down, although some inherited the decals of their ancestral states and still flaunt them. Some people dress up like Romans or re-enact the Civil War. 

We see a lot of creative anachronists using live ammo, and starring in tawdry melodramas written by Urizen’s slaves. You can probably tell I’m not a big fan of today’s military-minded scenario programming, for use “in theater” as they say.

We saw our Republic fading with that Ollie North crowd and it only got worse: “never mind about the constitution and civilian control, we have our own agendas”. But then we had the 1960s assassinations before that. The fragile Union had been on a bumpy road ever since it had become an empire, having been birthed to fight one. Some would say the Philippine-American war was the beginning of the end.

Fictional television played a big role in helping folks jailbreak out of their narrow so-called “thinking caps” which no longer fit. Shows like Breaking Bad for example. Financial fluency also increased thanks to the crypto chapter (another soap). Fictional TV continues to be informative.

Anyway, those of us keen to regenerate a public sector are still allowed to brainstorm about what that might look like. 

It’s not like everyone will be on the same page, nor do they need to be. A common mistake in social engineering is to suppose too large a scope. At the other extreme, an experiment might be too minuscule to really matter. The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears has an obvious interpretation; there’s too hot, and too cold, with a sweet spot in the middle.

The days of “too big” publishing, which takes a “one size fits all” approach to schooling, are ostensibly over. It’s no longer about what they’ll need in Texas and California and let the others accept their choice as a consensus. We no longer need consensus on that level. The technology allows us to localize, even as we import from the various curricula, on tap around the world. 

The personal workspace, or “nerd cave”, has taken over as the place where education primarily happens, punctuated by field trips, more likely by smaller van than big school bus. Their scheduling might eventually be seen as a county level responsibility. In the meantime: it’s private sector. 

These workspaces might be in office buildings, repurposed. You might be learning algebra on some 28th floor of a mixed-use high rise, and getting paid in some form (catalog options?) for your self improvement work. Society benefits from improved selves, which is why it pays to pay the self-improving.

Diamonds (movie review)

I’m talking about an older flick from Movie Madness, selected from the Classic Actors Kirk Douglas shelf, that provides another puzzle piece in our Film Studies. 

We’ve already seen Kirk Douglas playing the old geezer opposite Burt Lancaster in Tough Guys, that train robber movie (they steal the train itself). 

We’ve also seen Secondhand Lions, with the coming of age angle: a young male learns from a different pair of grumpy geezers (his ancestor predecessors). 

What a young person learns: old guys often make stuff up in the name of storytelling, and to glorify their own exploits (thereby winning admiration), and yet sometimes what seems an unbelievably fantastic story might turn out to be true. 

More often though, having such stories turn out to be true is what turns the movie itself into fiction. All these aforementioned movies are completely made up, we shouldn’t forget that. They don’t even claim to be “based on a true story” which doesn’t mean a whole lot anyway.

But then I’m forgetting one of the most important puzzle pieces, The Harder They Fall, featuring the corrupt world of boxing from which Kirk Douglas now hails, post stroke, and so with a speech impediment. But still he’s the Polish Prince, committed to overcoming all obstacles. In getting his brains knocked about a lot, he’s living the American Dream. 

From that other boxing movie, he gets Bogart’s old flame, Lauren Bacall. Not that she’s opposite Bogart in that movie (his last, she outlived him), where he’s paired with Jan Sterling. The woman is usually the positive influence, as the man, Bogart, faces money problems.

Those ill-gotten diamonds (back to Kirk Douglas) were real after all (after the head fake with the fake ones), so, happy ending, he gets to stay out of the old folks home and live gracefully on a farm with Bogart’s ex. Given this film is a Kirk Douglas vehicle, we understand why it goes there.

Kirk’s two sons are struggling with their own mid-life issues, which include having healthy relationships with their own offspring. Dan Akroyd plays the boomer dad, Lance, divorced and sharing custody of the 15 year old for whom this movie is mostly made (his demographic that is).

What makes this film more edgy is how transparently it’s an ad for Reno. Can you spell it? R-E-N-O (I’m quoting dialog). Not Vegas. Repeat not Vegas. The hotels are nice, kid friendly, great food, and you’ll win both at cards and at the slots in ways that are supremely satisfying. 

You’ll even be a hero and prevent gramps from getting mugged (you’ll chase down the mugger and get the money back — how often does that happen?), but do stay out of the back alleys if you’re a tourist. Go back into the casino where it’s safe and where you’ll be appreciated. Or maybe visit a really fun brothel (tip the waitress for a referral). Reno has it all.

Come to Reno for your midlife crisis and maybe strike it rich! Nevada put a lot of energy into helping out with this film, that much is obvious both from the content, and the credits. It was filmed on location.

USA OS

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Async vs Sync

:: innocent whimsy from the negative left ::

The catalogs need to keep their offerings sounding contemporary for the most part, to meet prospects where they are, in terms of the current street talk amongst the vulgate. Not that everyone speaks the same vulgate. Marketing must be tailored to be effective, unless appealing to universals, which of course most commercials do at some level.

Once enrolled in say Systems Design, one encounters the syllabus around which other experiences, such as meetups and lectures might be built. Typically a cafeteria style catalog based system, such as a university, will give a try-before-you-buy grace period. 

Dive in, get a good sense of it, and then decide; feel free to bail. I’m accustomed to such a system. A further nuance: sticking around to audit but not committing oneself to time/energy requirements, either in terms of tuition (although audit fees may pertain, as at a rock concert) or in terms of meeting deadlines and having a recorded grade.

Typically, a prospect will have ways to survey a course without taking the probationary step as even just that step may look like an unnecessary detour in the rear view mirror. “Can’t I just read ahead myself, as an autodidact, like I’m used to doing, and not submit to your no doubt tiresome lectures?” Yes, of course, that’s where async comes in. 

A perennial problem with a bell curve classroom is the presenter is expected to accommodate whatever dimensions the real time attenders bring to the space. I call that a “problem” more from the standpoint of an attender with high aptitude who feels the presenter is slowing it all down for the benefit of other attenders. 

This type of frustration is standard in classrooms, but may not be a problem for a professional presenter as their job is to distribute the frustration load such that all payees (assuming a fee) get their share (frustration builds competence), or, if there’s no fee, people stand to gain according to their own level of investment i.e. the presenter isn’t there to “put a lid on it” in terms of value, and yet every session is capped in terms of meeting some average benchmarks. From the standpoint of the slower, the process may seem equally unfair as the presenter moves on to the next segment, unconcerned about some not getting it.

The async curriculum is less about presenter classrooms, although these remain important, and more about how a curriculum might be explored in between more formal synchronous meetups. The word “homework” comes with the lame connotation of “assigned” whereas “the freedom to wander” (more like “play”) is what a home sweet home should provide. It’s not for anyone else to dictate what a given PWS wants to dive into (PWS = personal workspace;  picture a work-study studio).

Do I ever get around to Martin Buber in my curriculum for example? In my own career as a browser with a browser history I’d likely reflect back on my time as a student under Walter Kaufmann at Princeton, as he talked about Buber quite a bit. Buber was definitely on the syllabus.

Kaufmann didn’t like “thou” as a pronoun anymore than he liked “superman” as a translation for “uber-mensch” or whatever Zarathustra was on about. He preferred a straight “you” so “I and You” (thinking Buber) and for “superman” he went with “overman” as “uber” goes with “over” quite frequently (overseer = supervisor).

OK so I had Walter Kaufmann as a professor, that might put me on some mental maps. Does that mean I also link to Kierkegaard in my syllabus? Questions like that. 

“What does the School of Tomorrow do for me, in terms of extending my sense of orientation within some vista?” 

That’s a question each prospect needs to ask as its own “me ball” i.e. as an avatar within said system (curriculum). The decision might be: not now, but I’ll come back later for a second look. That’s perfectly reasonable. 

“Incommensurability” is another hook.

Campus Outpost

Prompt: Make a picture: A forest child in Cascadia, a Native American from the Columbia Gorge region, is also an experience drone flyer. She keeps each of her drones inside a miniature geodesic dome of the kind hippies have used forever in that part of the country. That off grid lifestyle blended nicely with the high tech aesthetic associated with the tribal outposts in the Alaska-Siberia region, where the new electrical project is currently planned.

Hotel Colonial (movie review)

Exercising Wanderer Skills

Greetings from CrowTown

One of the themes in these logs is navigation (broad brush stroke), starting with School of Tomorrow hypertrails through Cyberia, but also getting into literal cityscape navigation skills such as bus and subway riding. In rural areas, we might switch to ATVs (I got to operate one of those last week in fact, on a farm, gas powered, not electric (not an EATV)).

Those of you perusing these logs may be thinking: yeah but isn't wandering around on the bus and subway all day kind of a lonely old man occupation. So you have your bus binder reading, and camera, bag of goodies, so what? That's not an appealing lifestyle or even with reach for me.

Got it. But you may have a relative you think should get out more... but as to the solo operator feature, that's not the only mode. You have multi-operator wandering to reconnoiter, and I'll be practicing that today again, scheduling a bus ride such that I'll be joined by another Wanderer (yes, he's been to Pauling House for a gathering) at a different stop from where I get on.

I think I've yakked about this before, but it bears repeating: when the Brazilians would show up for a Portland OSCON (at one point the Portland part was taken for granted, before the OS Bridge chapter), they'd already be using telecoms to the max, rendezvousing with one another as if they'd been practicing for years, which they had been in many cases. Not surprising really; Brazilians with an opportunity to come to an OSCON tended to be "genius class" in their niche geekdom.

So yes, your skills might mean you get to use the same skills in a different city, maybe Madison or Boston or one of those other "ending in on" places (London...), or maybe we're doing more than just playing word games. Portland is in the midst of its treasure hunting season, so my mindset might be tinged by the "leaving breadcrumbs" aspect of our CrowTown festival.

Joining another party on the same bus woulda been a real challenge back in my more youthful days in Rome, Italy, where bus and subway riding was my lifestyle as a teen. I'd go solo and/or with friends. So yes, I'm reliving my teen years to a degree, but actually today it's all much easier to get fancy, because of smartphones and real time texting, not to mention TriMet Trip Tools, which I access through my phone-based HOP app, the same one that I pay with (it's hooked to my Visa -- but would that work in Brazil?).