Dispatches from Vilnius

It's an interesting year in cinema with so many biographies and true stories being brought to the big screen.  This past summer I was very much impressed by how Christopher Nolan handled Oppenheimer , and now find myself debating whether to try to sit through another 3+ hour epic this holiday season, given my tight bladder.  Reviews of Napoleon haven't been very good, much to Sir Ridley Scott's chagrin, but the same critics have been very favorable of Killers of the Flower Moon .  There's also Maestro for those who love Bradley Cooper, I mean Leonard Bernstein. Part of the problem in Scott's epic is that he tries to span the entire life of Napoleon rather than focus on a particular aspect of it.  We all know who Napoleon is so it's not like Sir Ridley had to give us a refresher course.  Owen Glieberman notes that what makes a "biopic" good is when it explores the inner dynamic of its central character and uncovers something we weren't aware of b...

Not that I'm an investor or know a great deal about AI, but it has been interesting to follow the events surrounding OpenAI the past two weeks.  Like many, I didn't know anything about the research organization until Sam Altman was dismissed shortly after launching customized versions of ChatGPT, making AI accessible to virtually anyone curious as to what it can do.   There was already a lot of consternation over such products as they could do everything from write songs, to movie scripts to books based on a vast database culled from the internet.  All kinds of alarms were being sounded.  Nothing was sacred.  Certainly not whatever personal information you had on the web.  Mostly we heard from screenwriters, musicians and novelists who felt their work was being openly plagiarized and that there was little they could do about it. Enter Elon Musk in an effort to save the day .  He seemed to be the one pulling the strings at OpenAI that led to Altman...

 I signed up for the Christmas Run on December 9 but things are looking pretty bleak at the moment.  Winter fell on us like a cold heavy blanket after what was a pretty mild autumn.  I was shoveling snow out of the driveway last week and there is no way to run on the icy sidewalks.  I've taken enough spills over the years and at 62 would like to keep my hip intact.  Nevertheless the festive season is upon us.  The city decided to use a real tree this year, standing it up on a 5 meter tall platform with metallic gold apron.  Looks like it will also serve as a stage for the official opening on December 1, looking down on a little village of white vendor stalls.  Not sure what is more sustainable: to use a real tree or a metal frame with tree branches stuck into it as is usually the case? Back in October, Vilnius beat out Guimaraes, Portugal, and Graz, Austria, for European Green Capital in 2025.  It has always been a green city with its parks ...

There's a general wackiness in the air that is a bit disconcerting.  While the off-year elections in the United States were quite promising with Democrats winning in Virginia and Kentucky and thereby turning back anti-abortion efforts in these two states, Argentina fell for "El Loco" and Geert Wilders is once again in the news as his "Party of Freedom" took the most seats in the Dutch parliamentary elections.   El Loco is a bit of an enigma as he seems to have sided himself with the Western world by promising to pull Argentina out of BRICS so as not to deal with "communist countries" like China and Brazil.  He has also vowed to privatize everything with the zeal of an Ayn Rand Libertarian, and peg the Argentine peso to the US dollar.  I imagine Putin and Xi are not happy with this turn of events.  For a social welfare state like Argentina it is interesting to see how people are going to react when the cost of their their basic services soar through th...

Not surprisingly, I jinxed my blog again.  No sooner do I write a new post than my stats tumble.  Makes me feel a little like Joe Biden whose poll numbers once again have sagged in the aftermath of the Israeli-Hamas war.  Granted, I would like to see the President exercise more influence over Israel but that's not going to happen.  His advisors have worked out the mental calculus on the issue and determined it is better for him to side with Israel as all presidents have done.  He can show his sympathy for Palestinians but that's about it.  The bigger issue, however, appears to be how he is being projected in the media. Joe turned 81 yesterday and once again the issue of age came up with pundits wondering how many "good years" he has left in him.  We are still more than 11 months out from the general election, but everyone is pointing to the poll numbers that indicate Trump would win if the election were held this month.  I highly doubt it as most ...

This blog seems to do better without me.  I get more hits when I don't post than when I do.  Not sure what persons are looking at, if anything at all, as it is not the posts themselves they are reading.  They come from an interesting array of places.  The predominant hits are from the United States, France and Singapore.  A few stragglers from India, Germany, Japan and Russia.  But, the hits usually come in lumps of 300-500 from one place.  Yesterday it was Singapore.  Never any comments.  I googled to see what to make of this spike in activity and the most likely culprit is spam traffic from bots.  Anyway, thanks for the hits. Gaza has almost completely taken over the news cycle.  The world is helpless to do anything about it as Israel is carrying out what amounts to a " Nakba " on the Palestinian homeland with the full intention of occupying the northern part of the strip after the war is over.   In this sense it is no d...

As we sat in a long line waiting to dump some old household items at the recycle center, my son and I got talking about electric cars.  He had rented an electric van to load the beat up sofa and a few other things that wouldn't fit in the car.  The oddest thing he noted about it was that he couldn't start the van unless he had his seatbelt on.  Otherwise, he was fine with it.  He was fiddling with all the options on the dash display as we itched along the line, turning the engine off during the breaks so as not to lose too much of the charge. He brought up a good point.  Where is all this lithium going to come from to replace all the internal combustion engines on the road?  As it is, lithium is a pretty limited resource.  I noted that the lithium-ion batteries often outlast the cars but he said the batteries pose a real danger, noting the recent carpark fire at London's Luton Airport was the result of an electric car.  The battery reaches a heat ...