Book Review: Lies that kill

Elaine C. Kamarck and Darrell M. West, Lies that kill: a citizen's guide to disinformation. Lanham, MD: Brookings Institution Press, with Rowman and Littlefield, 2024. ISBN: 9780815740728.

Genre: information literacy, media literacy

Subgenre: political science, current affairs, media, technology

Format: trade paperback, but I also had an ARC for it from Edelweiss

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College

 

For the record, I read this book before the election results of 2024 became known. Looking at the situation now, I feel this book is even more timely. It does take us right up to 2024 right before the elections.

In seven chapters the authors discuss the various ways that disinformation is not only dangerous but outright lethal. They then add one more chapter where they present a series of solutions. The authors wrote the book as a guide to help ordinary people learn about and understand what disinformation is and how it works. The authors discuss how disinformation works in the following areas: 

• elections
• climate change
• public health
• race relations
• war
• governance

 The authors combine case studies, analysis, and documentary material to present their points. The material is presented well with good organization and clear explanations. The preface provides a road map of the book's structure and basic thesis. The first chapter goes over the basics of disinformation and how it works. Chapters 2 to 7 look at disinformation in the areas listed. Chapter 8 provides their solution proposals. 

I felt some of their solutions were either a bit too optimistic or outright not right. For example, wanting universal real name registrations online is not only unrealistic, but it raises all kinds of privacy rights issues and security concerns that the authors seem to ignore in the interest of making a point. 

For the most part, the book is an easy read. Each chapter starts with a case study, then presents and explains the concepts in a clear way. The book does work well as a text for regular people. Jargon is kept to a minimum. For regular people wanting to learn what disinformation is and why it is dangerous, this is a good option. Each chapter includes endnotes for documentation. 

Overall, I really liked the book. I do recommend it for public and academic libraries. The book could also be a good selection for library schools and training librarians in information literacy. We ordered it for our library, and I will promote it locally. 

4 out of 5 stars.

Additional reading notes: 

What social media research shows:  

"Indeed, contemporary research on social media sites has shown that people who have extreme views and are deeply suspicious of experts and traditional media are the ones most likely to be influenced by false narratives and disseminate them to their friends and acquaintances" (8). 

Disinformation defined: 

"We define disinformation as material that is: 

• false
• organized
• intentional and malicious
• harmful
• fast" (8). 

 

A sampling of people you encounter in the book: 

"In this book, we will encounter people who have been accused of crimes they never committed or been pronounced dead of COVID but are still alive" (12). 

 

What AI has done for disinformation: 

"The result of this AI innovation has been a digital space that now has few safeguards in place, less active content moderation, and new tools to spread lies" (42). 

 

Best way to fight disinformation: 

"The best way to fight disinformation is to educate the public about ways to evaluate political narratives and be skeptical about information sources" (127). 

 As an information literacy librarian I do my part to teach these skills to our students (even as certain faculty rush right in to embrace AI, but that is another story).

 

Disinformation is big business, and it needs to be demonetized. I agree, but given the very large financial incentives I do not see it happening, especially in the U.S. where money is a god basically: 

"Practitioners find it easy to make money from subscriptions, ad revenue, and merchandise sales associated with false narratives. Some sites make millions peddling false content about elections, climate change, public health, government, and race. Unless we take significant action, we will never stop the flow of deadly information about these and other topics" (135-136). 

Knowing what I know and my skill set, if I had bad ethics or no ethics at all, I would would be making bank. The thought does occur to me now and then, but my decency and integrity are not for sale even if, as attributed often to P.T. Barnum, there is a sucker born every minute. 

 

Qualifies for the following 2025 Reading Challenge: 

 

Book Review: Verified

Mike Caulfield and Samuel S. Wineburg, Verified: How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. ISBN: 9780226822068.

Genre: reference

Subgenre: information literacy, internet, research

Format: trade paperback

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College

 

This book is an essential guide everyone using the internet needs to have handy. This book teaches how to be skeptical of what you see online and how to evaluate it. In these Hard Times where the internet and social media are full of scams, click bait, rage bait, and all sorts of assorted bullshit, this book gives you the tools to separate the crap from the few good things that remain. This guide can help you navigate the enshittified internet. 

The book is arranged as follows: 

• Introduction.
• Chapter 1: Get quick context.
• Chapter 2: Cheap signals. 
• Chapter 3: Google.
• Chapter 4: Lateral reading. 
• Chapter 5: Reading the room.
• Chapter 6: Show me the evidence. 
• Chapter 7: Wikipedia.
• Chapter 8: Video games. No, it is not about games. This is more about how videos are used to deceive. 
• Chapter 9: Stealth advertising. 
• Chapter 10: Once more with feeling. 
• Chapter 11: Conclusion. 
• Postscript, which briefly covers large language models, so-called AI, and verification.
• Notes and bibliography. 

Caulfield, one of the two coauthors, created the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate, Find other coverage, Trace the claim). Along with Wineburg, they basically give you a full course on how to evaluate what you see online so you can be empowered and act accordingly. The authors take you through the process step by step. These are skill you can learn with relative ease, and you develop the critical habits taught in the book you'll be able to better navigate the internet. A strength of their lessons is that often they do not take a lot of time. That is because you learn to assess quickly. If you decide to pursue a topic further, the authors show you how to do so. If you assess and decide something is not valid, relevant, or just not worth your energy, you can swiftly move on. Being efficient is a key element here. 

The book is relatively easy to read. Each chapter gives you practical examples and then they explain how to best handle each situation. You then learn the overall lesson so you can apply it when you go online. Chapters also include various tips and pieces of advice. Every chapter ends with a list of takeaways summarizing what you are learning. 

By now I am sure many academic librarians apply the lessons from the book in library instruction. We've done some some of it, but we will be working on adding more formal elements from the book in our instruction sessions. However, you do not have to be in an academic setting. This accessible book works for anyone wanting to learn how to find reliable information, evaluate it, and avoid the rest of the crap out there. In a time when Google largely has gone to shit, this book gives you steps and advice for making some good from Google. You learn how to do lateral reading like fact checkers do, and Wikipedia can be your ally, contrary to what some old time educators may claim. Learn that and more reading this book, then keep it handy for when you need a reminder now and again. 

This book is essential for all libraries. Librarians who have not ready it need to read it and then promote it to their patrons. The book can be beneficial for students in composition classes that require research. It may also be of interest to journalism students, journalists, and other writers who do or should be doing research. I recommend it fully, and I would buy a copy for my personal shelf. 

5 out of 5 stars. 

Additional reading notes: 

What this book can help you with: 

"Instead of being driven by emotion and outrage, you'll come to see your gut reactions as precious gifts that signal you to pause, take a breath, and ask a basic question: Is what I am looking at even what I think it is?" (3) 

 

Google is a search engine, not a truth engine:

"Google is not a dispassionate partner in information seeking who diligently corrects you when you've taken a wrong turn. Google is out to please, trying to determine what you want-- even if doing so means giving you a dubious answer but one you want to hear" (78). 

 And with its high commercialization, predominant advertising model, and now integrating LLM and AI features, it's gotten worse in terms of finding what you actually need. 

Need to beware expertise cynicism: 

"In authoritarian regimes, creating a broad cynicism about all sources of expertise-- the press, academics, professionals-- serves to make sure political power, not truth-seeking, is the ultimate arbiter of what is true" (109). 

This book qualifies for the following 2024 Reading Challenges: 

Brief random thoughts on Harry Potter in light of the possible new HBO series

I just read this article out of Salon on the topic of Harry Potter, the series not so nice author, and how the fans separate one from the other or not. I was just going to share the article on Twitter with a brief comment, but the comment was starting to become a thread. Anyhow, here goes. 

The article is something for the fans she still has left to think about. 

 

Personally, I never cared for the HP books, never read them, they were just not my thing. I will disclose that for the most part, YA fiction in general is not my thing, but I am live and let live. If it makes you happy and you enjoy, have at it. If you come to my library, we do have her books, and I am glad to help you find them. I am a librarian as well. For me, given J.K.'s vocal bigotry, I am even less likely to engage with anything of hers. For me, she is on the same shit list as bigots like Orson Scott Card. 

 

Having said that, I know folks who do their best to separate her from the works they have come to embrace and love. I have family members who are big fans and remain loyal to the works despite their author. Pretty much nothing is going to get them to just discard those works, and that is OK for them. I think every reader needs to decide where they draw their lines. And just when things were quiet, HBO decides to bring out a new live action series and stir the pot again. 

 

For me, this quote from the article sums it up: 

 

". . .I think the courageous, or at least right, stance for me personally to take is against someone who continues to dehumanize already-marginalized communities, no matter how beloved she, and the world she created, once were to me." 

 

For me, it is a bit easier to make the stand because her works did not interest me in the first place. In the case of Scott Card, I did read and enjoy Ender's Game in younger days, but that is pretty much it. I did recently watch the film adaptation of Ender's Game, but that was via TubiTv, i.e. it was free to me. I mainly watched it because well, it was available and free, and I was curious, but it was not something I was actively looking for. More like a bit of serendipity. Overall, he nor his estate will get a penny from me. 

 

In the end, I will be honest. I do not think any boycott matters at this point. I mean, boycott away if moved, but have no delusions it will make a difference. The woman already made her millions, and if the HP franchise somehow went broke, crashed, burned, and gone, she will be fine.

 

And there it goes.  

Some thoughts after using NewTumbl for a bit over a year now

As I mentioned last year in my end of year thoughts and reading list post, I started a blog over at NewTumbl back in June of 2029 to replace the Alchemical Annex, which I closed down from Tumblr. Alchemical Annex for me is mainly a bit of experiment, a bit of free writing and posting, and a bit of stuff for fun. I call it the "refugee from Tumblr" blog since that was the motivation for trying out NewTumbl. Now that I have used it for a year and a half give or take, and I've had time to kick the tires and take it for a ride as they say, I am going to write out some thoughts as an informal review. So, in no particular order, here are my thoughts on the site. 

• A strength of NewTumbl is their ratings for blogs and posts system. The ratings through F (family friendly), O (safe for work), mature (NSFW), X (explicit, really NSFW), and their extreme rating of W (they call it Wow! and not safe for anyone. As I understand this one, this is for stuff even too extreme for X rating but still legal content). You can learn more about their ratings here. Ratings in theory give you a good level of control for your blog content and for what you see on your feeds. Feed is based on tags you choose to follow and users you choose to follow. In practice, getting a formula you are comfortable enough for your blog and your feeds is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, I like the idea you can rate posts, and I like the idea people can then adjust what they see based on ratings. You rate your blog, and others see it or not based on their level of comfort. For example, I now have an X-rated blog (more on that in a moment), which means I can see any blog and its content at X level and below. People with a rating below me would not be able to see any content I rate higher than them. They can see posts I rate at lower levels but nothing higher, so they would only see the parts of the blog that fit their comfort level. 
• As I mentioned, calibrating your comfort level (what you want to see) and your blog level (what you may want others to see of your content) is not easy. I reflected on this on Alchemical Annex back in July 2 and again in July 5 of 2019.
• The ratings system is mostly human based, and to a large measure it does depend on people flagging things if they are not accurate. The results can be inconsistent. For one, I found a lot of people rate lower than they should be, i.e. a post that by definition is likely X gets an M rating because the user may be trying to skirt rules or just trying to get more views (or their threshold is higher despite the definitions from NewTumbl). The result is at times, if you have a lower rating of M for example for your comfort level, X-level stuff slips in because some users are just not scrupulous enough or may not care. This is another reason that getting a good comfort level on NewTumbl is next to impossible short of filtering everything out, but if you do that, you see very little since not many people are rating at the lower levels of F and O. 
• So, why did I end up rating my blog with an X rating? Mainly because I started getting some followers who had a higher level I had, and to see their material, I needed to raise the comfort and blog ratings. A big disadvantage of the higher X rating is that regular viewers may not see parts of the blog unless they are signed into NewTumbl (and they have a high enough rating). However, for posts below X rating, and I think for me that is actually most of my content there, if you have the URL link to the blog, you see that content just fine.  Having an X rating for the blog was not a decision I took lightly, but I felt it put me at a disadvantage. However, it does mean I have to more actively filter my feed because to be honest I do not want to be seeing porn all the time. Hey, I like porn as much as the next healthy male, but I do have my limits. NewTumbl does give you the option to filter the feed by levels, which means I can just tell it to see stuff that is just F and O on the feed and filters the rest out. One thing NewTumbl can do is make users a bit more thoughtful about the content they post and share and have a bit more control on what they see or not. 
• What kind of content do I post? I use the blog as a second place to post my cartomancy content. I do a daily Tarot card pull on Twitter, and I cross post it at Alchemical Annex. It is just another alternative, though those posts get very little views and interactions if any. I also posts or repost memes, some pin ups, other bits and pieces of art, trivia, some vintage things, quotes, i.e. stuff one may keep in a commonplace book. 
• What do other people post? From what I see, you get a lot of memes. All kinds of memes from humor to politics (on both sides of the U.S. spectrum. Don't really see much politics from other places). A lot pictures of things people like. A ton, and I mean a seriously huge amount of porn. NewTumbl basically became the Mecca if you like posting and sharing porn and adult images. Nothing wrong with that. After all, they billed themselves as the adult alternative to Tumblr, as the place that will not censor you (as long as you mind the broad rules), and people have run with it. If you set your comfort level to X, or even M as I mentioned, you will see porn. There is no escaping it. If that is your thing, then this is the place for you. If it is not, I honestly think you should either stay with Tumblr or try someplace else for your microblogging. 
• Features on NewTumbl. I think it is safe to say NewTumbl is a Tumblr clone. It is not the only one, but it was one of the first that has been growing. You can do pretty much anything you might do on Tumblr.
• You can post and repost content from other users. You can also like content from other users and you can mark it as a favorite. If you mark as favorite,  you can then view your favorites in a single feed. This is pretty much as you would do in Tumblr .
• You can set your "home" (where you start when you log in) to your dashboard, which shows activity related to  your blog (any reblogs, likes, favorites, comments, so on you that you've gotten on your blog) or the general feed (shows content based on tags and users you follow). I have mine set up to go to the dashboard when I log in. 
• Types of posts you can do: text posts, photos (and pictures), video, quotes, links, and audio. However, not all of those work. In reality, you can do: 
•  Text posts (which include some limited editing ability; you are not getting anything like a WYSIWYG option, but you can link things in text posts).
• Photos and pictures can be uploaded and you can add text underneath. However, you cannot embed images in a text post. So for example, if you want to make a text post and put a picture in that post with a caption, you cannot do that. 
• Quotes. Sort of a text post. It puts the quote in a bubble when it displays, and gives you space to put in source of a quote. You can also add comment on the quote in text. If you share quotes, say a quote or thought of the day, this may be useful. I suppose you could do the same in a text post but this makes it look nicer. 
• Link. You can post a link to something like a website, a video (the link; you cannot embed videos), or anything else on the web with some comment. 
• Audio. That option is just for looks. Seriously, I have tried it and nothing happens. It looks like they intended to have some way to embed audio but they have not gotten around to it. 
• Video. It supposed to be to either upload a video or embed one from a place like YouTube. The functionality is pretty limited. Embedding from YouTube or such is not working. Like the audio function, it seems to be there for looks. The uploading video function does not seem consistent neither. I honestly do not bother with it. Overall, it is a bit of a fail in usability for NewTumbl.
  
• What you do see often are short animated GIFs (often porn clips) and some very short video clips, which I am guessing people upload since there is no function to link and embed. 
• You can filter types of activity to see on your activity, so basically sort things by just the likes you are getting or any comments. 
• You can follow people, and they can follow you. While NewTumbl claims there is an option to block people you do not want following, in reality it does NOT work. They claim to block someone they have to follow you first, which makes it a joke because more often than not on social media you want to block out anyone who bothers you, who may be offensive to you, or you just do not want to see period. Most social media ranging from Facebook to Twitter have easy blocking options to make things more comfortable for the user. There is NONE of that here. Believe me, I have tried and looked. This is a big failure on the part of NewTumbl when it comes to usability. 
• You can set up a queue of posts so things can post to the blog over time. You can also set the frequency in which those posts in the queue get posted. For example, I have the blog's post with enough content to post once a day. 
• However, another big fail is that there is NO way to schedule posts to specific dates like most other blog platform does. You can just add them to the queue but they post when they post. You can move posts in the queue around a bit so one thing posts before another, but even this process is somewhat difficult. Basically, it is very much a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. Lack of ability to schedule posts on a specific date is a significant limitation. Even Tumblr allowed one to schedule posts on specific dates, like content for Christmas/holiday season.
• You can make posts and save them as drafts. However, the draft queue is not that much better than the queue in terms searching and moving things around to put in certain order. 
• You can hide certain blogs and tags from your feed, though this also works fairly inconsistently. 
• Tagging. You can tag your content. An issue is that a lot of people do not due to laziness or carelessness, so if you want to hide certain posts, many that fit a tag will slip because some  user did not bother to tag things. 
• There is some limited function to personalize the appearance of your blog, things like having an image banner, adding some personal links, a short statement what your blog is about and a title, those kinds of things. 
• Having said that, there are a lot of users that do not bother with any of that and just leave their blogs as untitled. On a related note, a lot of people just set up a blog but not post content of their own, nor do they reblog. They just lurk. To me that is not a big deal, but there are some users who get very anal retentive about disliking followers with no content of their own. Oh well. 
•  You can get post alerts. This usually means you got flagged. This allows you then to revise a post, say change a rating. Until you revise, a flagged post becomes invisible. So for example, if you rate something as M, but it is really X, and you get "caught" (i.e. flagged), you get an alert. You then either revise the post content or change the rating for the post to get back in circulation. Once you learn the feel of the land, at least for me, alerts become rare to non-existent. First few days I got some persnickety monitor that flagged every other thing (not unlike Tumblr, except Tumblr uses their algorithm). Once I learned the ropes, I've not had any issues. The flagging system has its advantages (human based) but also disadvantages (again, human based and now and then you get some fuckbagel who is either way too literal and anal or one that does not have anything better to do than flag to bother people. The latter kind is relatively rare to be honest, so there is that). 
• Speaking of the ratings, they do offer you the option to become a monitor. There is a process to apply, and they review your flags to get you a proficiency rating (i.e. how well you match their ratings rubrics). If you work your way up to "community monitor" there is a small payment that those folks can earn. Some of the information on that program is here.  
• I have given thought to applying and seeing if I can make it to becoming a community monitor. I am sure my librarian skills could help, but realistically speaking I do not have the time to just go around looking for things to flag or not. Having said that, I do appreciate the self policing efforts, which are more than many other sites do. 
• Their search function. This is not very good to be honest, but then again, search functions for most social media are bad. Facebook's search function is notoriously bad for instance. In NewTumbl, you can type in a keyword, say cats, and you first get any blogs that may contain "cats" in title or content, then searches NewTumbl for any posts containing "cats." Notice it is not a matching search. For example, type "tit" and in addition to what you might expect (tits, i.e. female breasts), you can also get things like "unTITled," "TITanic," "TITillate," etc. There is no exact match, and it finds anything containing the set of letters you type. This makes for a pretty poor search function. 
• Speaking of searching, finding anything on your own blog is also next to impossible. You can see your blog, and if you tagged things well, a site search can bring up your posts, well, for the most part. However, there is no specific way to search your blog that is easy if you want to find a specific post. So if you recall you posted a particular post, but do not recall when, search may or not help you find it. At least Tumblr allowed you to see your blog's posted queue by month so you could at least scroll and look. NewTumbl does not even offer that.  
• Advertising. It is a free to use platform, so supported by advertising. The ads show up in your feed and they sort of try to look like other posts, though they are identified as ads. The main issue with the advertising is not that they advertise. It is that they have chosen to use the worst porn ads imaginable. I am talking about the kind of cheesy and ethically dubious porn ads you only see on not so good porn sites and on seedy parts of the Internet: shady personals, the "click here to meet hot women in your area," ads for dubious male enhancement, and other less than tasteful ads. I get the site has to monetize. Believe me, I am not opposed to some ads. But for crying out loud, that is the best they could do? By the way, even if you have your comfort set up to low levels you will still see the porn ads in your feed even if all you set up to see was Dr. Seuss and memes and about cats. Their choice of advertising adds a seriously seedy element to NewTumbl overall. 
• They have a chat function. These are fairly basic chat rooms. Chat rooms can be labeled according to level (F, O, etc.). However, I have no idea who creates chat rooms nor who picks the topics for rooms (assuming people even stick to a topic). I certainly do not have the option to create or set up a chat room. Most chat rooms to be honest are basically sex related and fairly explicit kind of chat rooms, so if that is not your thing, chat rooms will be pretty useless to you. The chat rooms, if there are people in it, do allow you to invite someone to a private chat. However, traffic in chat rooms seems to be fairly low. I personally find the function fairly useless.  This is something they probably could have done without. 
• They also have a trivia competition feature, but I have not tried it out. It appears to be something that may provide some form of micro reward to users. As I said, this is the one feature I have not tried out, so I cannot comment on it. 
• You do have the option to delete an account, and it does not seem difficult. However, there does not seem to be an option to export your blog content should you decide to leave (or if there is, I have no found it, and I did look). Tumblr at least gave you an export function.
  

So let's do the final thoughts. 

If you are into adult content, and you really like your porn, then this is definitely a place for you. 

If you are not into that, you can filter it out when you set up your profile and blog, but odds are content you will see will be much less. There are just not that many people who do "mixed" content or stuff other than posting adult imagery. Practically no one posts any text. Much like Tumblr, images are the main type of post, and they are the post most favored and most likely to get other users' attention.  

In terms of functionalities, NewTumbl does the very basics to be a Tumblr clone. However, there are a few features I feel it should have that they do not have, and that just makes the site less effective and useful. If you want a micro blog for "shits and giggles" as they say, then this is an OK site for that. However, if you were doing OK in Tumblr, at this point in time, even if you hate Tumblr's current owners, you may be happier or more comfortable there. I do not see a reason you would want to move over to NewTumbl unless it is for the adult content. Granted that Tumblr's algorithm is a pain, but if it is not bothering you because your content is relatively safe, I see no reason for making a move. You can do what some people do and keep their Tumblr and open a blog in NewTumbl to test it out, but as I said, if you are happy over there, you may be better staying over there. 

Sense of community is still lacking in NewTumbl. Granted, they are a new site and a small operation, so they do not have the time, reputation, nor resources that Tumblr or other bigger social media sites have. Having said that, community sense is still limited. On the positive, looking for sex friendly (who may or not be sex positive, that is another question) and explicit material loving people, then NewTumbl could be for you. If you have any other interests, you may be better off looking elsewhere. That could change over time if more people come over, although from what I see, I do not see the current patterns expanding anytime soon. If you have more mundane interests like books and reading, you are not going to find enough if any people with similar interests in NewTumbl.

For the moment, I am keeping the blog and account. For the most part, I have the filters set up to something that works for me, but it did take some effort to get there. I am not sure if I would keep it long term given the lack of community and the limitations on some functions, like scheduling posts. In addition, when they were starting out, the owners/producers of the site would update on progress and report on new features, fixes, so on. They have gone awfully quiet, and the site does not seem to be upgrading or updating things much; that video non-function shows no sign of being implemented for instance. So long term, it is possible I abandon the site and end the experiment. It would be nice to export things, but to be honest, if not, it would not bother me. Overall, this is my review based on my experience as a fairly active user of the site.

And that is that. 

An update note (10/8/2022): I went back and checked again ability to upload videos. It seems you can now upload a video, the shorter the better as the upload can be a bit slow. I tried uploading a video I had made from the computer, and it worked OK. Adding a video linked from the web seems uncertain. When I attempted it, it just kept spinning, and it never loaded it. So the feature remains inconsistent at this point, but slightly better than when I first reviewed the site.

Media Notes: Movies and series watched in 2017

I read a lot of books from my local public library, the Berea branch of the Madison County (KY) Public library. In addition to books, I often check out DVDs for movies and older shows I want to watch or that I newly discover. In 2017, in addition to what I read, I decided to more actively keep track of what I was watching in terms of media. This list for 2017 is a partial list based mainly on what I remember watching and checking out. If I own an item, I will note it, but for this list, these are all from my local public library. I am sure I am missing a few things I have watched recently because I honestly do not remember if I watched them in 2017 or before, so we will let those go. I am hoping to keep better track in 2018, so I am thinking I may do a monthly roundup in 2018 listing what I watch with some brief comments. I already review books, so I am not feeling inclined to start reviewing films as well. Links below go to IMDB.com unless otherwise noted. I am not rating the media; I will simply give now some quick impressions and try to help you decide if you might like it or not.

And for the record, I do not watch movies in movie theaters anymore. After a very unpleasant experience with some obnoxious assholes who could not shut the fuck up during a movie, I completely gave up on movie theaters. Besides, movies come out on DVD or Blue Ray soon after, so I do not feel I miss anything. As for television, if a series is good, it eventually gets put on DVD, and I prefer to binge than wait week after week to watch something.

So here is my 2017 (partial and not complete but it is what you get) list of media watched.

Feature films and movies:

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). This was a lot better than I was expecting. It certainly was a lot better than The Force Awakens, which to be honest, was basically a rehash of Episode IV, except with a young heroic lady. One can only hope that Disney, the new owners, do not fuck up the Star Wars legacy into the ground and maybe take a clue that individual, stand alone stories in the Star Wars universe can work and be entertaining. 
• Star Wars Episode VI: The Force Awakens (2015).  My comment above pretty much applies here. It looked good, but it was clear Disney was mostly rehashing to avoid taking any risks. For fans who have been with the franchise since the beginning, you probably want to watch it, but keep the expectations low.  Having said that, the interactions between Ray and Han were nice.
• Dead Snow (2009). This was somewhat silly horror fun about a group of college age guys and gals trapped in the Alps in a cabin. They get surrounded by Nazi zombies. Mayhem ensues. It sounds like something of the scale of Sharknado, but it is actually a lot better than it sounds. I really liked it. If you like your horror on the light side, this may be for you.
• Doctor Strange (2016). A few people on my campus were drooling over this one. I will say that it looks fantastic. The art, the cinematography, the special effects, are all great. It is a nice movie to look at. The plot was decent enough, though I was not too keen on that very last scene (the one in the credits), which I thought was unnecessarily cruel. If you are fan of the character,  you might like it. Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch will probably like him playing his usual arrogant asshole character, although here he seems to grow a bit. 

Television shows and other series:

• LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles (2013). I always loved LEGOs as a kid, and it is a bit of a pity that they did not have as many options as they do now (I grew in the 80s with "classic space guy"). Anyhow, in my quest to escape from reality and the "Hard Times," I am discovering things like LEGO films. This is part of a television series where Yoda is training Jedi Padawans. This DVD contains two short episodes, about 25 minutes each. I found them to be cute, entertaining, and with a light sense of humor. If you like LEGO Star Wars already,  you will probably like this one. Your kids, if they are into LEGOs and/or Star Wars, already probably like this. 
• Doc Martin (2004- ). Only reason I picked this up is that it got mentioned in the Acorn Media trailers of the DVDs for the Poirot series I watched before. My library had seasons 1-7, which is what I watched. It is entertaining, but I admit that living in a small town myself, though not as small as the town the Doc lives in, at times it reminded me a bit much of the small town nonsense I put up with.  If season 8 ever gets here, I am likely to pick it up. It is curiously addicting.
• Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975). Another British series that caught my eye via a trailer on Acorn Media. I think my library has the full run, but I was only able to stomach the first series, and that I watched barely. For one, it has not aged well. Two, the snobbery and sexism are just a bit much in this day and age.
• Inspector Morse (1987-2000). Yet another British series. Since I like the Poirot series, I figured I would like this one too. I did like it. Morse is a seriously morose character, but he draws you in. I definitely liked that it was set in Oxford and the world of academia. It was also a reminder that academics, no matter where, can still be serious assholes. I always felt for Detective Sergeant Lewis putting up with Morse. My library has the complete run, and I watched all of it. It is not a happy series, but it is worth watching. 
• Prime Suspect (Series 1, 1991). I wanted to watch this in part because, again, it was featured in the trailers in another DVD, plus it had Helen Mirren, fine actress that she is. I could barely make it past the first series (there are seven total, plus some extra movies including a prequel). While her performance is good, this is another series that has not aged well. The rampant sexism is beyond obnoxious and even painful to watch today. Unless you are a hardcore fan of Ms. Mirren, skip this one. 
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999). Of the new Star Trek series after the original series, this one is my favorite. I have mixed feelings about The Next Generation, which I do think got better once Wesley Crusher was gone for good and they added Mr. Worf. In other words, I like the later episodes in small doses. I could not care less for Voyager, (which I honestly tried watching when it was on the air, and I eventually just lost interest and watched here or there. I did watch the ending), and Enterprise was just tripe. But DS-9 holds a place in my heart. It started so-so, but it evolved very well, and I think it still holds on for its age. My library has the full run, and I fully enjoyed watching every single episode. This is a set I would like to own someday.