I can’t say I loved it.  The Circe scene was excellent, Cyclops was good, and the battles in Troy were well done.  But most of the roles were miscast.  I like Matt Damon, but he is too “Good Will Hunting” to play Odysseus.  The character did not cohere.  (Compare to Ralph Fiennes in the superior The Return.)  Zendaya’s role was superfluous.  Worst of all was Calypso, who reminded me of the kind of chick you might meet at a Tupperware party in the Hamptons.  At least half of the dialogue was lame and contrary to the spirit of the Mycenaean world.  Some of the sea and boat footage was good.  I strongly disliked the changes made to the ending.

There is enough energy, effort, and money put into the thing to make it eminently watchable on the big screen.  And if this were a new director, you would think he had great promise.  But relative to both the reviews and where most expectations were placed, this has to count as a disappointment.

The post *The Odyssey*, the movie (no real spoilers) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Linus Torvalds:

I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I’m willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that “clearly” even just a year ago, but it’s no longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but “is it useful” is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn’t actually used it.

The post Are England football coaches all raving mad? appeared first on spiked.

The post No, the BBC is not a ‘trusted’ news service appeared first on spiked.

In economics, Phil Magness is probably most famous for his synthetic control paper (with Michael Makovi) showing that Marx only became a socialist superstar after his fanatical followers conquered Russia. In this conversation, Phil and I discuss my recent pieces on “How socialist was Nazism?” His knowledge of turn of the century intellectual history is truly astounding.

P.S. If you had any sound issues with the livestream, I don’t hear any problems on this recording.