OT: Yellowjackets

[purplefaithful]

I got off pretty unscathed. Both boys had one “what the fuck were you thinking moments” that could have ended badly. Other than that, nothing.

I have a cousin who had a moment like that while going to college in No MN...This was 25+ years ago now.

He was the driver in an attempt to do "no good" 

Been in jail since. Probably going to do 40 years even though nobody (thank goodness) was harmed. 

His dads since passed, mom (my aunt) never recovered...

[StickierBuns]

Watched all four Adolescence episodes with my kids in one sitting the other night. Not for everyone, but it hits hard. Daughter said something about realizing just how much a kid's actions can impact a parent's life. I have so much more to say about what happened--and the culture that caused it--but I don't want to give too much away.

We watched it also. I think why we enjoyed it is because of the bolded part above. It gives that perspective better than most anything I've watched around this subject in recent memory. It annihilates families of the perpetrators. The helplessness. The scope of tragedy. The impact toward that family by the community. And the horrible, all encompassing misery of knowing their child's life has ended for all intents and purposes behind bars.

Watching a more light hearted 'who dunnit' now called "The Residence"....not entirely my preferred viewing, but this one has been not bad the first 2 episodes.

[purplefaithful]

Speaking of light hearted, Mythic Quest is my "go to" when I want something easy and will give me a few chuckles...Easy 1/2 hour per episode.

[AGRforever]

Same here.  

I do strongly suggest to all who have even a mild curiosity of "how the F**k did we get here?", some intriguing viewing.  We just finished a 9-episode documentary on Netflix.   It's called "Turning Point:  the Bomb and the Cold War".

It started out framing the Ukraine invasion but then went back to WWII in the European theatre and then the Pacific theatre.
The why/how Hitler was abler to rise to power.  The Manhattan Project (you thought Oppenheimer was eye opening?)
Going back to explaining WWI, even as far back to the influence (and failures) of Marx in the mid-1800s.
Stalin and Lenin before him.  The post WWII power grab that created the Soviet Union, including East Germany and the Berlin Wall.
A parade of US Presidents.  Fear of communism.  Joe McCarthy and his top advisor/image maker, Roy Cohn (mentor to Trump).
Kruschev and Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The creation and subsequent embarrassing failures of the CIA. Over and over.
Finally...Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan.  How the tearing down of the Berlin wall was a media mistake by an inexperienced Soviet military officer, who neglected to use a few words (as in "with proper documentation"), to say that people from East Berlin could pass into West Berlin.  Once the dam broke (accidentally), there was no fixing it, and the Russian people rather enjoyed freedoms.  How an accidental release of concentrated uranium was found in Kazakhstan, with enough uranium to fuel nearly 20 atomic bombs, that the U.S. managed to buy from a Governor/Director who needed money to operate his region, since there was a vacuum.  The clear understanding by every US President and Russian/Soviet premier that a nuclear war could wipe out civilization as we know it and that a launch (by either side) could easily happen with a misunderstanding.  Detente'.  
Boris Yeltsin's alcoholic behavior, and the subsequent hand picked candidate to replace him:  Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine's independence with Georgia and tentative acceptance of both into NATO, followed by Putin's ruthless attack on both Georgia and Chechnya.  Ukraine's first democratic election with a democratic candidate up against a puppet of Putin, and Putin's attempt to poison his opponent...who lived and won the election.  How a vacuum between leadership in Ukraine allowed Putin to just go in and annex Crimea.  How a former comedic actor who played a Presidential candidate on TV went to win and became a steel-eyed tough leader.  How the Ukraine people refused to back down this time.

A series of agreements and treaties that Russian agreed to (including participating in the voluntary nuclear disarmament of the third most powerful nuclear power in the world...Ukraine), and how a dozen years later he disregarded it and ran roughshod over it.

And how Putin's iron-handed rule was not about doing good for Mother Russia...it was all about creating oligarchs, taking state-owned industries and turning them over to friends to become wealthy, and then jailing one of them and threatening the rest with the same (or worse), unless he gave Putin (personally...not the government) 50% of their profits.  And Putin's relentless hate of the West, and driving motivation to put the Russian Empire pieces back together again.  

Two thoughts...
if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
The parallels of the Dictators and Authoritarians that controlled Russia, the Soviet Union (Lenin, Stalin and then now Putin, who is every bit of a ruthless thug as Stalin was), Mussolini, Hitler...and even some noises from some guy mentored by Roy Cohn....it's eye opening.  

I'm not a big documentary guy, but this was spellbinding...it didn't take political sides, it told the story with the 20-20 accurate vision of history.  

We went back and watched Charlie Wilson's War over the weekend, and the framing of the documentary series put this based-on-a-true-story movie into much clearer historical context. 

It's viewing that in between March Madness and the NFL draft that I would recommend to anyone.

I am a big documentary guy and yes. Everyone with Netflix or those who sail the seven seas should watch this documentary.