POTD: First Stop, Istanbul

"East and West embrace,
bridging time and continents.
Istanbul welcomes."

— h/t ChatGPT

From 2024 05 06 Istanbul

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Istanbul, Turkey, one of the world's great cities for 2,000 years. It's the gateway between Europe and Asia, between East and West, between modernity and history. Travel there from the West and it feels exotic. Arrive from the East and it feels like you are back in familiar surroundings. It's chaotic and wonderful at once.

A bonus photo is after the jump.

Two Days, Two Presidents, Two Value Systems

Two social media posts in two days.

One President with some Girl Scouts, pitching a documentary about our oceans.

One pitching guitars for $1,500 (or, if autographed by the Grifter-in-Chief himself, for $10,000).

I miss one of these guys.

Book Review: The Cartographers

From The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd:

Amazon

"It was an open-and-shut case, they’d determined. Dr. Young had been alone—the security cameras in the Map Division didn’t turn on until the last employee in the department had clocked out, but they had already been running in the lobby since closing time the night before. The only reported movement was from the security guard on patrol, who had been the one to find him when he’d peeked in on his last loop around the library, sometime in the early hours of dawn."

Emilia Pérez (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Emilia Pérez (2024): Spanish. Head of a Mexican drug cartel wants to transition into a woman. The existence of a wife and children pose a problem. If that premise isn't implausible enough, the movie is a musical. But somehow Jacques Audiard pulls it off. A-

Netflix

Family Pack (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Family Pack (2024): French. Family game night causes a whole family to be transported back to the Middle Ages where they have to slay four werewolves in order to return to the 21st century. A comedy/adventure/fantasy that is mediocre at all of them. Maybe for kids. C-

Netflix