PicoBlog

Top line: We need a massive national effort to get men to move into jobs in the growing fields of health, education, administration, and literacy (HEAL), equivalent to the successful campaign to get women into STEM. Stat of the week: Just 5% of psychologists under the age of 30 are men. Chart of the week Why it matters: Getting men into HEAL would be good for them (because there are many jobs there), good for the professions (because they face labor shortages), and good for the boys and men using those services (because they often prefer a male provider).

My guest today is Merawi Gerima who released his debut film Residue to critical acclaim in 2020, and he has gone on to direct episodes for shows like Ava DuVernay’s Cherish The Day and the Black girl superhero show Naomi. His parents are the legendary filmmakers Haile Gerima & Shirikiana Aina, and he grew up in Washington, DC before relocating to his current home in Chicago. These days Merawi has been outspoken, consistent, and clear about the need for solidarity between the Black & Palestinian liberation struggles, and he’ll be the first to let you know that he is an “organizer first, filmmaker second.

Meta launched the Llama 3 large language model (LLM) today in 8B and 70B parameter sizes. Both models were trained on 15 trillion tokens of data and are released under a permissive commercial and private use license. The license is not as permissive as traditional open-source options, but its restrictions are limited. The company also announced it was training a 400B parameter model that will be released later. According to the announcement:

Damien Chazelle’s Babylon in so many ways feels like a critique of Hollywood and a love letter at the same time. The film’s second big set-piece is a chaotic, absurd, over-the-top send up of silent-era studio filmmaking. Drugs are handed out like peanuts, asbestos are poured on people’s heads, extras are killed in battle, cameras are destroyed, etc, etc. But through it all, by deftly wielding all the formal power of filmmaking as a medium, Chazelle manages to capture the magic of filmmaking at the same time.

In this piece, I’d like to use the above clip from Bo Burnham’s critically acclaimed 2021 comedy Inside to identify some essential aspects of the metamodern turn in culture. What is “metamodernism,” you ask? Well, curiously, in the short span of just four years (between 2017 and 2021) no less than four (4) different books were published by different authors of different backgrounds attempting to answer just that. These included:

Hello and welcome to REPLY ALT, the greatest newsletter about music in the entire world. Subscribe and get new posts, interviews, and podcast episodes sent right to your inbox. Totally free! If you want to support me further, you can upgrade to a paid subscription for a measly five bucks a month, which also gets you my weekly column about rock books and discounts/early access to all the stuff in my store.

A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

listen in ;) Throughout the summer, I have constantly been reminded of the wondrous and emotive musical experience that is the 2016 film La La Land. An early fruitful conversation and connection I was able to share with my new flatmate, Carlina. We both love it, and have watched it several times. I mention how its become a “comfort film” of sorts. Mia and Sebastian’s theme: central to a long and heartfelt instagram DM exchange with a close friend, which prompts a rewatch and I dive into the film once again, this time with pen and paper in hand.

Retired General Michael Flynn slow-clapped protesters outside Cranston’s Park Theater as he arrived for his speaking engagement on Sunday. During his interactions with the protesters, General Flynn maintained his innocence of the charges brought against him, charges he had pled guilty to and was later pardoned for. After he was pardoned, the charges were dropped. "It was a pardon of innocence," said Ivan Raiklin, an associate of Flynn, who identifies as a Constitutional lawyer, a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and formerly at the Defense Intelligence Agency.