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    I've started the new year strong with lots of 4 and 5-star reads, but not counting rereads, these were the ones that stood out as new favourites!      This was as good as I expected it to be after reading two Juliet Marillier books last year, then deciding to go back to the beginning of her most popular series, first published in 1999. It's a fairy tale retelling, and has this lush, meandering, detailed, atmospheric feel that I adored, even though a lot of those things are not usually my thing. It's also very long, but just like the other Marillier books I've read, it doesn't feel like long and deserves the page count.      Sorcha begins the book as a young girl in medieval-ish Ireland. She's the youngest in her family with six older brothers and a distant father who is always away defending his territory from the Britons. Her idyllic childhood ends when she uses her healing skills to help a young Briton soldier, and again when her father rema...

⭐8/10 What started as a nostalgia trip has quickly developed into an obsession. These games are good! They are fun to play! I don't want to stop!  I am now getting into true nostalgia territory as this is a game a beat a hundred times as a kid and still knew inside and out today. It is an improvement on the first entry in essentially every single way, now introducing a bunch of mechanics that would last the rest of the series. There are a million quality of life changes, such as ways to avoid random encounters or the ability to run from them if not. They also make each online space unique and interesting to explore, and there are plenty of balance changes so that progression feels more linear and fair.  I'll start out with the negatives. The first negative is that the story is way more involved. This is a negative because the story still sucks, and now there is more of it. The story in this game is just the annoying thing that happens between boss fights, and so no...

⭐6/10 Had a tough time with this one. It should be the perfect show for me because it's about therapists and broken people and healing from loss and all, and initially I was completely sold! That opening scene killed me and I was fully on board, and that feeling lasted a few episodes.  By the end, I was just waiting for this show to be done. The one trend in modern TV that I despise is constant therapy talk, characters sitting across from each other and pouring out their hearts, revealing their past traumas by just talking about it. The therapist in me thinks that communication is awesome and they key to healing, but the TV watcher in me thinks that this makes for very uninteresting viewing. My rule of thumb is that in stories, characters should not apologize by simply issuing an apology. I mean it comes down to the basics of writing: I want to be shown that someone is sorry, not be told. There are like thirty apologies per episode and it drives me nuts. I get that ther...

⭐10/10 I've had this movie in the back of my mind since Tim reviewed it, and like him, it was a movie I hadn't seen since it came out but one I loved then and was confident I'd love now. I watched this with a group of guys telling them that this is kinda the best movie of this variety, and by that I mean an action/thriller with government special ops and secret missions and whatever.  I think I was pretty much right. I had a few small quibbles here and there, but otherwise I think this movie is perfect. It's grounded and tight, it's led by performances by some of my favorite actors, the writing is absolutely fantastic, and like all of Villeneuve's movies, there is always something interesting to look at.  The thing that sets this movie apart is allowing for a truly difficult ethical dilemma. They are trying to find a Mexican drug lord, and Del Toro says "to find him would be like discovering a vaccine -- surely you understand the value of that....

⭐8/10 My up and down relationship with Miyazaki continues. Jess sold this one to me saying this was the most linear, logical of his movies, which is all I'm really asking for. I would say that description is probably accurate, though this movie is almost entirely plotless which helps. It is mostly a movie about two young girls moving into rural Japan and exploring life there.  I kinda loved it. It's a super cute movie with wholesome, authentic depictions of childhood in 80s rural Japan. I always connect with stories about kids in rural settings, the magic of country living, the creativity of children there. It reminded me of lots of my favorites, most notably Princess Kaguya by the actual master of anime Isao Takahata. Honestly if this movie had no fantastic elements I may have liked it more, though the monsters were nice enough.  So yeah, nice movie, not much more to add. Obviously if you are looking for a wonderful audio/visual, you will find nothing better than ...

⭐7/10 This is a movie I watched as a kid and thought it would be the perfect romantic, wholesome movie for Jess and I. It's a Tim Burton movie about a popular old man who's always told tall tales, but as he nears the end of his life, his son wants to know the truth behind them. Most of the movie is told through vignettes of when the man was young (played by Ewan McGregor) as he lives an amazing, bizarre adventure.  I was very concerned during the first half, looking over to Jess, swearing that it gets better. We both found the main character to be pretty obnoxious. They capture this type of person very well, not only someone who is a pathological bullshitter, but also completely self-absorbed, and for a guy that is supposed to be likeable we weren't feeling it. The son is kinda supposed to be the bad guy, but I would also be annoyed if my dad only told BS stories about how cool he is.  I will admit that the second half kinda got me. This movie is certainly one t...

⭐ 9/10 A rare podcast review! This is a series that covers the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s, with some stories I was completely fascinated by. I have always been interested in this moral panic, and a couple of these stories I had read about before, but many were completely new and startling. In all cases these sensationalized stories that scared a generation of parents into overprotecting their kids and ostracizing people different from themselves were complete fabrications. The result of racism, homophobia, fear of D&D or heavy metal music. There are instances of past trauma, and in a bunch of instances awful murders or abuse did occur, but in every case they look at devil worship and "ritual sacrifice" were no where to be found. The ones where people do die are scariest, because in all these cases someone innocent was convicted and the actual culprit never found! There is coverage of a book called "Michelle Remembers" that I had never heard of, a Canadian...

⭐ 10/10 I watched this entire series with a knot in my stomach. From the very first moments something unthinkable happens and a family is left in turmoil. I hate to pull the dad card so early in my dad journey, but as a father there was so much here that wrecked me. All of it is impossible to imagine, but the family reactions and the long lasting fallout is so painful, and I thought Stephen Graham was phenomenal, my favourite performance of the show. His short but bulky stature, his hard accent, pitbull eyes, all while being completely helpless, dragged along in a current with no control, an incredible performance by someone who created and wrote the show as well. Each episode is a single take, which aside from being flashy, really immerses you. We have to sit through the grief of the family, or the awkwardness of these conversations. Early in the first episode there is a drive to the police station where we have to watch this boy reckon with what is coming for him, and even if you k...

⭐7/10 Another one of the Great Courses which I mostly did because it relates to my job. CBT is kinda the LeBron of therapy - not really the best at this point but it's been around forever and is the one therapy your mom knows. I didn't love going through this but it was certainly helpful and I think I'd have enjoyed it better if it didn't feel like work. There's some interesting stuff here, and actual, proven ways of improving your mental health rather than silly self-help books or mental health tiktoks.  But that also makes it less sexy! Learning proven ways of improving your mental health is kinda boring and slow. The one-liners and controversial, one-size-fits all approaches would have been more fun to learn about, but alas, it wouldn't have made me a better social worker.  So it's good. It's a good book, but I don't think this teacher was the most engaging. I already knew the tenants of CBT and have done courses, but it was nice to ge...

⭐3/10 I was going to do the thing where I say that this movie was not made with me in mind and everyone has their preferences and to each their own. No! This movie is terrible and we collectively should have higher standards! This is Netflix slop in its purest form.  I get that Netflix movies are made to be watched passively with low stakes and between tiktoks. I also was not actively watching it but was in the room throughout with my switch. And I didn't need to fully watch it because within twenty minutes my thought was that I'd seen this one before! It is painfully cliche and completely unoriginal with hallmark level acting and writing that's not much better. It looks nice at times and features people that look nice, but in the year 2026 these are things that shouldn't move us. This is content, not art, and shame on us for letting this movie become a hit. 

⭐3/10 I kinda hated this. This is a graphic novel version of the Witcher with original stories, though it does also adapt some Sapkowski originals (though oddly some of his weakest stuff). I was so entirely convinced that I would love this that I spent my hard earned birthday money on this pretty expensive book. My birthday is in May. It took me 8 months to read this because although I hated it, I spent good money on it and had to see it through.  The main issue with this is simply the writing. Sapkowski is a good writer, but this book feels like crappy fan fiction, like someone on a Reddit board who likes Sapkowski but doesn't really understand what makes his writing special. He knows that Geralt is funny, but doesn't know what makes him funny, and so in this he tells painful jokes (here's a hint: Geralt doesn't tell jokes). I think the best parts of Sapkowski's writing is what he doesn't say, and this book tries to over-explain lore or motivations ...

⭐7/10 I love Del Toro in theory, a final bastion of pure creativity and bold choices in filmmaking, but man, not sure I actually love, you know, his movies. For much of this runtime I thought this would be the one to change my mind. It was a gripping tale of creation and responsibility, and I loved the macabre stylistic choices.  I think I kinda soured on it a bit as it went along. Frankenstein is always going to be a bit of a pulpy story and I appreciate that, but the choices towards the end got to be a bit silly. I also thought the ending was pretty brutal, a super rushed character arc to put a cherry on top when it really didn't need that, especially because it completely erases what made the novel special. Call me a cynic but after watching the Stranger Things final season, this felt like some Netflix intervention to make the movie a crowd pleaser and entirely take the punch out of the philosophical exploration.  I guess my other primary complaint is that this ...

This book was perfectly timed to my paternity leave, a time where I was not actively working and could reflect on my job. The post will be a short review of the book, followed by a much longer section where I will attempt to verbalize all my thoughts on Palantir. Thoughts on my time there, what I did and didn't like, and why I am leaving. I am not writing this as some manifesto. I have been explaining to a bunch of people in my life why I have been considering leaving, and my thoughts never feel coherent, the reasons change day to day. This is for myself to reflect, and I might even continue to edit it as I remember things. I thought this book was excellent, a biography of Alex Karp, but also a tale of Palantir's history. The author was around Karp for an extended period of time, providing a lot of details that even I did not know. It lays out all the Palantir milestones over the years, many of which I remember quite clearly, but hearing about it with a bit more distance is co...

⭐6/10 Finally this show is done and I have no idea what score to give it. On the one hand, this show is simply fun to watch. We binged it in about a week and I was always happy to start the next episode. It's exciting, but in a safe, formulaic way, where it's almost a comfort watch which is a crazy thing to say about a horror tv show. On the other hand, this is the most wildly self-indulgent show maybe in the history of TV. Find you someone who loves you like the Duffer Bros love their characters because holy crap, this was a tough watch by the end. Everyone has to have their moment, every pairing had to have a heart-to-heart, every character has to have their character development recap speech.  As for the good, I'll go back to the basics. The music is good as it has always been and is one of the defining traits of this show. The 80s aesthetic is cool but not really a huge part of the show by now. The characters remain fun and engaging. Still, I think the best ...

⭐7.5/10 Alongside Pokemon, the Mega Man Battle Network series were my absolute favorite games as a kid. This game came out in 2001 on the Gameboy Advance which is actually crazy to think about because it looks way more modern than that. I was in love with these games, and when I got the Legacy Collection for Christmas, I was actually a bit nervous that it would be like most nostalgia trips: fun for twenty minutes as you are brought back by the music and animation, and then you never play again.  Wrong! I absolutely flew through this game and couldn't get enough, starting the second game immediately after rolling credits. While I admit I would never play this specific game if I hadn't loved it as a kid, I think it still holds up in a lot of ways. These are a branch off of the old school megaman platformers, which I haven't really played, but in this one you play as both Lan in the real world, who owns Megaman as some physical embodiment of some AI person (Navi) t...

⭐7/10 This show seemed primed to be perfect ending to a great year of TV. A truly original sci-fi on the best streaming service for sci-fi, and made by Vince Gilligan? And after that first episode, I was completely sold. It was dark, unique, gripping and introduced a super cool concept. I also loved the first few episodes as this idea starts to dominate every thought in your head, all the ramifications and what-ifs. It's a great show that really gets you thinking.  I don't think it necessarily got worse, but this is a slow, slooooow show, and that started to grate on me after a while. I've always loved the Gilligan style, super meticulous, super intentional, letting us really settle into the show, letting scenes linger before and after the action. I love that, and loved it in Breaking Bad, but after a while I almost feel like this show becomes a parody of his style, super painstaking for pretty much no reason, and by the end I was starting to lose my mind a litt...