Destroy All Monsters
Did you know that Godzilla is named Gojira (ゴジラ) in Japan and that Gojira resulted from the combination of the words for gorilla (gorira -- ゴリラ) and whale (kujira -- クジラ)? You did? Oh, good, because apparently that's not correct (btw, when you click on the link you'll see what the internet looked like 20 years ago):
According to Eiji Tsuburaya, the creator of Godzilla: "At the time, there was a tough-looking guy working on the Toho lot. His nickname was 'Gojira'. We just adopted it for our monster. It caught on and certainly has immortalized him!"
Maybe you know Godzilla only as this goofy, weird, over-CGI'ed creature. Did you know, however, that the very first Godzilla movie, made in 1954, is genuinely terrifying?
This was less than ten years after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But then somehow, something changed and evolved, and you would go from the terrifying 1954 movie Godzilla to the 1968 Destroy All Monsters.
In some ways, Destroy All Monsters is infinitely better than Godzilla, as long as you're not solely considering cinematic quality. Sure, it has its lengths and inconsistencies and plot holes, and Tokyo (and a variety of other capitols) is getting destroyed yet again. But its embrace of all of its own silliness is incredible.
The closest US equivalent might be Sharknado, a mindnumbingly stupid movie that, however, has neither the technical finesse of the Japanese movie nor the sheer determination to make a good movie (however far from the target the end result might be). You can watch the whole (dubbed) movie through the link above. If you don't want to do that, here's a short clip (Japanese with English subtitles):
If this makes no sense to you, then, well, that's the way these post-1954 movies go. When you watch them, don't ever ask any question that begins with the word "why". There is no answer.
Speaking of destroying all monsters, the reason why this email looks different than all the previous ones is simple. I've changed the service provider. Previously, I was with Substack, which started out grat. But then things turned very, very sour very quickly.
Long story short, Substack not only publish some very, very problematic writers, but they also gave them a lot of money (while refusing to make the terms public). To be honest, I'm personally not comfortable with a platform that bankrolls the likes of Glenn Greenwald (who from being a muckracker has now turned into a crazy conspiracy theorist) and other such people. If you really need to know, read this article. Somewhere in the middle, it has this great line:
It's become the preferred platform for men who can’t work in diverse environments without getting calls from HR.
Me leaving Substack obviously won't change a thing for them. On a purely technical basis, changing creates a considerable hassle for me. Still, this was important for me, even as it means that I now have to learn how this particular site works and that I can't import my archive. Everything up until now is still over at Substack. Oh well...
When I started Conscientious almost 20 years ago, I had previously blogged on a couple of other sites. What that had taught me was this: you have to maintain full control over your site. Consequently, I've always relied on my own hosting (which has cost me thousands of dollars by now), with some open-source software operating as the machine for the site. This has served me well. A lot of people started blogging on Blogspot (remember that?) or Blogger (ditto?), and they got burned when those sites changes owners.
With the Mailing List, I looked into running it myself as well. But honestly, I don't have the time and patience (and technical expertise) any longer to deal with setting up my own mailing-list software, not even to mention the fact that spam filters would basically ensure the emails would get nowhere. So let's hope this site will serve me a little better than the haven for "men who can’t work in diverse environments without getting calls from HR".
With that I'm going to conclude for today. The next email will probably look a little bit more attractive. As they say pardon our appearance during the re-construction of the Mailing List. Btw, if you reply to this email, that'll get straight to me. So a lot of things work just like before.
I hope you're well and safe, and as always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg