Drone Romance


“Directed by speculative architect Liam Young and written by fiction author Tim Maughan, In the Robot Skies is the world’s first narrative shot entirely through autonomous drones. In collaboration with the Embedded and Artificially intelligent Vision Lab in Belgium the film has evolved in relation to their experiments with specially developed camera drones each programmed with their own cinematic rules and behaviours. In this near future city drones form both agents of state surveillance but also become co-opted as the aerial vehicles through which two teens fall in love.”

Live Streaming Star in China

From the New York Times: “Over the past year, as Covid-19 has severely limited our ability to interact with the world beyond our front door, livestreams have helped transport us to places we couldn’t visit, people we couldn’t see and events we couldn’t attend. In China, live streaming services command an audience of nearly 560 million, with streamers broadcasting to devoted followers who tune in every night. Successful live streamers can earn thousands of dollars each month in direct donations from fans, and those at the very top earn millions from brand sponsorships and major contracts. In the short documentary above, we enter two agencies that scout promising newcomers and mold them into high-earning stars. But what’s it like working for a company that engineers every aspect of your life — and then requires you to livestream it all day?”

Not sure which I found more frightening… the lives of the “stars” or their fans.

Rambo III: Freedom Speech

We knew how Afghanistan was going to end way back in 2008. In this scene from Rambo III Richard Crenna warns the Russian commander how stupid it is to start a holy war in the middle east in the name of freedom.

And this from 2009. Matthew Hoh, a former marine saying Afghanistan is not worth U.S. lives.

“I feel that our strategies in Afghanistan are not pursing goals that are worthy of sacrificing our young men and women or spending the billions we’re doing there,” Hoh said. “I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them — not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West. The only reason they’re fighting us is because we are occupying them.”