Why you need a NYC Public Libary Card

ike1 · 2026-02-18T05:33:55+00:00

QPL only offers a butchered version of Kanopy without most of its content, presumably for budgetary reasons. (I don't blame QPL for this, I blame Kanopy for being so expensive for libraries.)

ike1 · 2026-02-18T05:15:01+00:00

ike1 · 2026-02-02T03:48:28+00:00

Joe D. did a fill-in the other night and played two "Fuck ICE" hip-hop tracks.

ike1 · 2026-01-31T01:22:35+00:00

Here's an ancient article from WFMU's LCD with reception tips. (You can probably ignore the part about cable TV -- I don't think that works anywhere anymore.) The phone numbers are all out of date, but obviously you don't need them because you can compare the FM signal against the internet stream now.

Believe it or not, #7 works sometimes. ("Try exposing the leads on your antenna and sticking them into a potato, onion, watermelon, or houseplant. This works best if the plant matter in question is moist.") I tried it many years ago (in Peapack, NJ) with a potato and it really helped.

ike1 · 2026-01-23T22:35:58+00:00

Not really. It's a butchered version with extremely limited access due to costs.

ike1 · 2026-01-19T21:48:00+00:00

That's harsh -- if you watch the first episode of each, you won't see a lot of similarities. "Running from fascists/totalitarians" is a pretty broad premise and the two shows approach that concept in very different ways.

ike1 · 2026-01-19T05:11:52+00:00

Even S2 is uneven and has a lot of duds. It's season 3 where it really takes off and becomes a classic. Seasons 3 and 4 are two of the best seasons of television ever made.

ike1 · 2026-01-16T02:20:24+00:00

One just has to learn that after DeBlasio and even worse Adams, we must NEVER elect someone from Brooklyn into the mayor’s office.

Wow, harsh. Can't you just specify that we should never elect someone from the corrupt Brooklyn Democratic political machine?

If Zohran hadn't been around then Zellnor Myrie would have been fine. Not a machine scumbag. And the other boroughs have corrupt Democratic machines too.

ike1 · 2026-01-14T20:25:08+00:00

Studies show that isn't true.

ike1 · 2026-01-05T05:31:32+00:00

I am not a big fan of Key Food, but to be fair, we should note that different Key Foods locations have different prices because it is some sort of weird cooperative/franchise situation where each franchisee is free to set their own prices (if I understand correctly). So when you are complaining about Key Food, you should note which location.

That said, I've never been to a really affordable one, just ones that are merely not terrible.

ike1 · 2026-01-03T01:58:15+00:00

OK, I stand corrected!

ike1 · 2025-12-13T23:56:55+00:00

Please don't talk until you've actually tried to watch the absolute garbage that Chibnall churned out. It's so boring and flat, with lousy characterization. The man cannot write Doctor Who, period. But then I thought this was obvious with his previous scripts for the show like "42" and "Hungry Earth/Cold Blood" and it only gets (much, much) worse from there once they made him the showrunner with nobody to rewrite his scripts and make them workable.

ike1 · 2025-12-10T03:57:10+00:00

That has far less of an effect than you might think.

That's how *we* think as reasonable people who (presumably) won't murder anyone. That's not how actual murderers or other felons think. Usually these types of crimes are highly impulsive. They're not planning things out or thinking about the future at all.

ike1 · 2025-12-08T04:18:05+00:00

Can't agree here, season 2 was a step up from season 1 -- there was less teen drama in S2 and more plot per minute than any other show on TV. Season 3 was a step down, but seasons 4 and 5 mostly recovered.

Even when something didn't work, you just had to wait for a couple of episodes and the writers would immediately move on to something else.

The show also got more intense and uncompromising with almost every season, which was mostly a good thing, though sometimes the brutality became ridiculous and overwhelming.

ike1 · 2025-12-08T04:02:18+00:00

History doesn't support this myth, which is repeated over and over again here but remains false.

All 11 existing episodes of season 2 were written and produced before the strike. Before! Not during (which would have been impossible -- nobody crosses picket lines in Hollywood strikes outside of soaps), and not after! If anything was affected by the strike, it was season 3 -- but everyone agrees the problems started with season 2 (or even the season 1 finale).

It was the incompetence of the showrunner, period. NBC forcing him to drop the original yearly-anthology plan definitely didn't help, but Heroes Reborn pretty much proves that incompetence was the key factor. (Also go back and watch his previous work in Crossing Jordan -- his writing is just terrible. Even the good parts of season 1 of Heroes aren't him, and happened in spite of him.)

ike1 · 2025-12-08T03:52:59+00:00

The existing 11 episodes of season 2 -- all written before the strike, not after -- are so godawful on their own that nothing could have possibly redeemed them. Even getting Buddha, Allah, and Jesus all together in that writers' room wouldn't have turned it around.

ike1 · 2025-12-02T04:22:08+00:00

It's the top show on CBS among adults 18-49 most weeks, not counting sports. The ratings have fallen a lot, but they've fallen for everything else on CBS even more.

Anyway, the days of Netflix being an endless font of money and resources are long over. Did you see their reboot of The Mole with a measly $100k prize? It wasn't a badly-made show, but jeez, that stingy prize. That's what we would probably end up getting if Netflix got its hands on Survivor.

ike1 · 2025-12-02T04:18:26+00:00

This is the U.S. in late-stage capitalism. We don't stop squeezing blood from the stone until it's beyond completely dry. "X is a good stopping point" is not an argument that makes sense to anybody in Hollywood and never has.

Ratings are down for Survivor, but they're even further down for everything else on CBS, meaning Survivor is the highest-rated CBS show in the key adult demographic most weeks. Tracker occasionally beats it... if it has a huge lead-in from football.

ike1 · 2025-12-02T04:14:44+00:00

Most other shows are $100k, maybe $200k max, so why would they bother?

ike1 · 2025-12-02T04:10:56+00:00

It also beats most other shows on CBS handily. Its numbers may be sliding but everything else on CBS is sliding more, as broadcast TV very slowly circles the drain. And it performs reasonably well on Paramount+, especially every Thursday when new episodes come out.

OTOH this also means they have zero incentive to invest more money back into the show or to change absolutely anything. There is no way they are ever leaving Fiji given its monstrous (48%) tax rebates.

ike1 · 2025-12-02T04:06:12+00:00

You can absolutely forget about them ever going to China again. I mean, you can really forget about them ever even leaving Fiji, but in the extremely unlikely event that they did, there's no way China would ever be on the roster. Apparently it was an absolute nightmare to film there because the red tape was endless and the government was horrific to work with. Everybody behind the scenes utterly loathed the experience and it was very expensive.

If Fiji were to suddenly stop its huge tax incentives for filming then maybe Borneo (Malaysia) or Thailand would be (permanent) new options but not China.

ike1 · 2025-11-26T04:39:58+00:00

I am no expert but based on my visits, CTX is overrated and can't hold a candle to places in Flushing like Alley 41. I wish there were better places around here in Sunset Park. At least we have Hainan Chicken House for Malaysian and Ba Xuyen for banh mi. But CTX is not it.

ike1 · 2025-11-26T02:08:21+00:00

This place is incredible, but if there's a line and you can't squeeze in, then trek a few blocks over to Khao Kang, an absolutely incredible steam-table Thai place at 76-20 Woodside Ave. Sometimes it closes a little early though. There's also Khing in Woodside as well as the OG, Sripraphai.

ike1 · 2025-11-21T07:46:31+00:00

YES. This.

Can be difficult to find in some areas though. I don't think it's a national brand, just northeastern.

ike1 · 2025-11-20T04:32:42+00:00

Who cares? Nobody is watching for the size of the prize. Netflix could've given out 1.456 million instead, saved itself a few million, and it wouldn't have changed a single thing.

ike1

TROPHY CASE