MandarisI tried to make a post with JPEG XL but it didn’t render properly.
Pluribus: Patience in the Pacing
As I write this, it has been almost a week since the end of season one of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus. I think it’s a really nice addition to the media that I’ve been watching this year. This year has had a lot of opportunities for me to look at pacing. I find it to be a refreshing contrast to how many things have changed this year. They say the only constant in life is change, and I’m eagerly waiting for events to become boring. Pluribus has moments of stillness. Moments where “nothing” happens, and you get a chance to observe all the little things.
How did I get here?
This year, the media that I noticed pacing the most is Casablanca, Jaws, Gremlins, Sinners, and PeaceMaker Season 2. These all had different kind of pacing. What I define as pacing is the rate at which action and dialogue is shown on screen. For some, these are the moments that happen when the director yells “action”. All of these had moments where you have the actor contemplating or a pause filled with foreboding.
I feel that countless modern shows are pushing narratives where they explain everything to the audience, and the examples that I mentioned above leave some of this subtext up to you to figure out.
That is the point. You get to think.
More than a billion dollar screensaver
Pluribus has the most extreme version of empathy that I’ve ever seen on TV. You see millions of people coming together for one purpose. No violence. No Racism. No differentiating of social economic status. It allows you to think about a world where it doesn’t matter and what it would cost the individual.
I remember when I was unemployed, and I had my wife and two young daughters to care for. I was depressed and felt like a failure. The initial stance of The Others on providing purpose and happiness is tantalizing. If this option was presented to me, I would not have hesitated on the promise that my family would have everything they wanted.
I feel that is part of what makes discussions and thoughts about the show so engaging for me. When I think about the scenarios, I also think about who else would be in the hive mind, and it makes me question.
- Is my family in there?
- How many of my exes?
- Is the person who borrowed my 1996 Ginuwine… the BachelorCD and never gave it back in there?
- Can I have it back?
- What if I was the only one who wasn’t joined in?
That last one, really has me wondering. I’ve sometimes felt lonely at parties. I don’t know what it would mean to have that feeling and it being the entire world.
What a weird day for me. I hope that your 2026 started off well.
Finished reading: The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin P. Williams 📚
I read it as IndieWeb Book Club and it was suggested by Al Abut.
It’s a pretty quick read.
They really put some money and effort into this show.
Found the issue, it’s because I accommodated an upcoming layout change in Hugo and didn’t account for the fact that I’m using an earlier version on my test server.
Spent hours working on new theme feature and I pushed it to my test server. It’s broken and I’m not going to fix it until tomorrow.
Finished reading: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald J. Robertson 📚
I did this one as an audiobook and I think I might check it out from my library again sometime next year. It was a great introduction to stoicism. Some parts do seem to drag on though…
This year, I took less pictures, wrote less, and was less happy.
Yes, I’m aware that those are all related.
One thing that I do appreciate about Mac OS26 is the new spotlight. I’ve been using a launcher for years, but never the power
features of it.
Today, I’m making the switch.