MarkFord.net
The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
Is President Biden Reading My Blog?
On Friday, I wrote about Navy Joan, Hunter Biden’s child that, for four years, the Biden family has never officially acknowledged. On the contrary, Hunter has been suing the mother, attempting to legally prohibit his daughter from bearing the Biden family name. Apparently, that made its way back to the First Family. Just this weekend, Navy Joan’s grandfather first acknowledged her connection to the family.
Click here.
Smart Guns Hit the Market
After years of development and promotion, smart guns are finally on the market. In December, a brand called the Biofire Smart Gun will be widely available to US citizens from Florida to Oregon.
Smart guns aren’t AI-smart, but they do offer a feature that hasn’t been available before. They use fingerprint and facial recognition technology to identify registered owners. Nobody else can fire the gun. The gun isn’t smart enough to decide whether the owner should be using it. But in reducing the use to a single person, experts say it will lower the risk of unwanted shootings and theft.
That’s good. But couldn’t we do better?
With all the advanced technology available today, why can’t gun scientists develop smart guns that could stop bad guys in their tracks, but not kill them? What would be wrong with that?
Click here.
Venezuelans at the Top of Illegal Immigrant Flow to the US
After 2.5 years of basically wide-open borders, the Biden administration has done a little tightening. Since May 12, the average number of daily illegal crossings has been around 3,360, down from about 7,100 in March.
A large number of those immigrants have been Venezuelans fleeing the economic disaster and political oppression that started when Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) came to power in 1999. (Inflation in Venezuela is now over 400%.)
According to the WSJ, more than 7.3 million Venezuelans have left their country, making them the biggest refugee group in the world right now. About 6.4 million of them have settled in Central and South America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But many hundreds of thousands are hoping to get into the US.
Click here.
What Do You Get When You Mix China with Russia and North Korea?
Danger, for sure!
Top Russian and Chinese officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese Politburo member Li Hongzhong, met with North Korea’s dictator in North Korea last week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the truce that ended the Korean War.
North Korea launched more than 100 ballistic missiles since last year, while China and Russia have blocked US-led efforts at the UN Security Council to have North Korea sanctioned.
Click here.
US Industry’s Recent Boom Market: It Is Ending. Or What?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 237 points last Thursday (0.7%), while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.6%, putting an end to the longest running bull market for tech stocks since 1987.
Click here.
The Quiet Girl
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad
Based on the book by Claire Keegan
Starring Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Catherine Clinch, Michael Patric, and Kate Nic Chonaonaigh
Release date (US): Dec. 16, 2022
My sister gave me a copy of Foster by Claire Keegan for Christmas. It was very good, and so I read another book by Keegan, The Quiet Girl. That was excellent, too. So when I saw that it had been made into a movie, I put it on my shortlist.
The Plot
It is the summer of 1981. Nine-year-old Cait, a shy child who struggles to fit in at school, lives with her over-crowded, dysfunctional, and impoverished family in rural Ireland. When her mother gets pregnant again, it’s decided that she should spend the remaining months of the pregnancy with distant relatives – an older, childless couple. In their care, she blossoms, experiencing love for perhaps the first time in her life.
What I Liked About It
* The Quiet Girl is an Irish-language film (Irish title An Cailín Ciúin) – with 95% of the dialogue in Irish, and English words peppered in only occasionally. (There are subtitles for both.)
* It’s beautifully shot.
* It’s well-acted.
* The musical score is effective.
* It gives a different, quieter impression of Irish families and what it’s like to grow up in a small town in a rural countryside.
Critical Reception
The Quiet Girl broke box office records for the opening weekend of an Irish-language film and became the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time. It received 11 nominations at the 18th Irish Film & Television Awards (IFTAs) in March 2022, and won in seven categories. On January 24, 2023, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, becoming the first Irish film to be nominated in the category’s history. A milestone.
“There’s been a tendency in our cinema to pander to something that’s expected of us,” said writer/director Colm Bairéad in an interview with the NYT. But a recent wave of Irish films feel “very sure of themselves in terms of their identity. They’re coming from the inside out, rather than the outside in.”
* “A quiet film. A whisper of a film, really. And its unassuming nature makes it all the more effective.” (Adam Graham, Detroit News)
* “As beautiful as it is devastating.” (Odie Henderson, Boston Globe)
* “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that conveyed with such vividness and precision the helplessness of childhood.” (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle)
You can watch the trailer here.
* Oppenheimer’s secret city explained. Click here.
* How the investor of the first chatbot turned against AI. Click here.
* Why fraud thrives on Wall St. Click here.
* Amazing rules for teaching Air Force Academy recruits how to speak inclusively. Click here.
* Biden announces he’s cured cancer. Click here.
From Murzban Shroff, author of one of the “Book Recommendations for 2022” that I listed here:
“A small note to say: I stumbled upon your website here, which lists one of my recent books, Third Eye Rising, as a recommendation – and I was quite blown away to learn of your accomplishments and interests. Would you, by any chance, be based in New York or California? The reason I ask is: I will be visiting the US this fall on a reading tour and would consider it an honor to meet you. We could discuss our mutual love for books and literature and our individual journeys. Mine has been an interesting one: from corporate life to the literary, including intense persecution that brought my life and family under threat. Either way, I am very pleased to have known of you and wish you the best in your endeavors. I am Mumbai-based, so should you ever visit, please don’t hesitate to call.”
Whale Ballet!
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