CB and the dodo bird - Sep 19

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and CB (i.e. Colossal Biosciences, if someone is confused), is intent on making it worse, apparently.

With the grey/dire wolves, they actually have something: three grey wolf puppies (Arctic wolf subspecies, most likely), with some biological & anatomical modifications that are supposed to make them more like the extinct dire wolves. Lately, the news of those three are rare, hopefully, then, they have not died on CB’s watch.

With the moa birds, CB ignored the fact that we still have samples of the moa birds’ skins, feathers, and the like, and proclaimed that they will hybridize the Australian emu with the South American tinamous, and release the new hybrids into the New Zealand wilds. This movie is of a dubious legality, but the fact that there is no guarantee that the resulting hybrid ratites will be viable supersedes that. Therefore, lately, the commotion around the would-be revived moa birds is dying down, and CB’s celebrity sponsors, such as Sir Peter Jackson, (who made the ‘Hobbit’ and LotR movie trilogies), are keeping quiet.

Now, (September 2025), CB is launching yet another proclamation: they recovered some sort of primeval pigeon gene that will allow them to recreate the dodo. CB just needs chicken eggs. Pause.

The dodo were pigeons. They were very specialized pigeons, they had their own subtribe, and their closest relative was the solitaire, another specialized flightless species that died in the 17^th century as well. Their closest living relatives belong to the pigeon tribe Raphini, whose members are relatively big and bulky, especially for flying birds.

…The Columbidae birds (pigeons, doves, etc.) come in two main varieties: sleek and streamlined, or big and bulky. The dodo and the solitaire were two extremes of the second variety, but their living relatives, such as the Nicobar pigeon and the crowned pigeons, also tend to be heavyset, though nowhere as extreme as their extinct kin was. Where do the chickens enter?

Nowhere, that is the thing. Chickens are gamebirds, members of the Galliformes order, completely separate from the aforementioned pigeons, doves and co.; the chicken and the pigeon may look superficially similar to each other, but they are just as closely related as the red fox and the hedgehog – i.e. not at all aside from the most basic ties. To use chicken eggs (and genes?) to bring back the dodo is about as logical as using elephants to bring back the Smilodon.

As for the primeval pigeon genes/genomes/etc. …The name alone is rather unfortunate and populistic – and also vague and generalized. CB gives no concrete guarantee that using this technique will bring back the dodo precisely and not something else entirely. A creation of a brand-new pigeon species, flightless or not, would be exciting, but it would not be re-wilding, not really. Rather, it would be playing God with life (with birds, to be more specific), and that is something else. Of course, whether CB would go this course, and not just take the sponsors’ money and run, is another question…

So, to recap: in a matter of years, in less than a decade, CB went from something respectable to half-frauds and half-madmen, who have done science in general, and rewilding in particular, a bad service indeed. To make matters even worse for them, there is no real source of dodo DNA – a head and a leg is all that remained of a rather enchanting RL species; pity that it could not co-exist with humans and their companions, (such as domestic pigs turned feral, and rats). CB – or anyone else – just would not be able to acquire dodo genes at all, and what they are offering instead may just suffer from a bad, populist name, or perhaps CB is just pulling a completely banal, ordinary, con. The future will show. Real life seriously sucks, sometimes.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

 

F4, 'Ironheart' +etc. - July 27

Disclaimer: real life sucks. First OO is gone, and then HH, so now king Hades has to call queen Persephone to help him deal with the double emergency. Now onto the F4-2025 movie?

Hard to say. RL was not idle recently and CB unleashed the host species of their upcoming to be resurrected giant moa species – the greater tinamou and the emu. Why? Because among the ratites, the tinamous are the closest relatives to the extinct moa, whereas the emu…

CB also proclaims that the emu is a close relative to the moa birds. It is not – the two ratite lineages were quite distant from each other. However, it is the biggest modern ratite (and modern bird overall) after the African ostriches, so it is reasonable to theorize that CB is going to ‘augment’ the emu DNA with that of the tinamous and see what happens. In case of the wolves, this strategy worked… supposedly. Lately the trio of Romus, Remulus and Khaleesi vanished from MM, you know? The point, however, is that for most people grey and dire wolves are just… wolves, they expect them to be externally similar to each other, so when they see… well, wolf puppies, they don’t really care just what kind of wolf puppies they are – if CB says that they’re dire wolf puppies, they’ll believe CB, period.

With the birds, it is more complex, especially with such a unique species as the South Island Giant Moa: physically, it is quite different from both the emu and the tinamous. Whether CB will augment an emu with tinamou genes, or vice versa, the result will not be a moa, even if CB will successful. What will It be, (and that is a big if), is another question…

In addition, yes, again, the emu is not the best candidate for a resurrected moa – the moa preferred to live in forests, and the emu lives on open plains instead. Even behaviourally, the potential new hybrid will not be like the original species. The cassowaries, who are the emu’s closest relatives, do live in the forests, but they are smaller than the emu, and much more aggressive. Naturally, CB will not have anything to do with them. What else?

Well, the F4 film. To me, it feels like a successful reworking of the 2000s F4 films, which worked. This puts ‘First Steps’ miles above the ‘Ironheart’ mini-series, which is forgotten already.

Why?

Because ‘First Steps’ is a soft reboot of sorts: it takes place in a completely different universe from ‘the sacred timeline’ with completely new characters – and it is a success. Now Disney/MCU can make more Marvel adventures in this universe with an occasional something or other taking place in the original MCU timeline as well.

‘Ironheart’, on the other hand, takes place in the MCU, just as Disney/MCU lose interest in it. ‘Ironheart’ is better than SW-2025, (but that is a low bar), but worse than 2024 ‘Kraven’. It is not a mash of two different movies, more like a failed case of having its’ cake and eating it too. ‘Ironheart’ fluctuates from being depended on Tony Stark and his legacy in the MCU world, to being completely detached from it. The cast, the crew, everyone else did not really know what they were doing, and they did not care about it either. The result? ‘Ironheart’ is almost forgotten by now, as is MCU itself by now – somewhat, but that is another story.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

CB and the giant moa birds - July 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I was about to talk about ‘Ironheart’, perhaps, or the JWR movie, when Colossal Biosciences (CB) came back out of nowhere, and proclaimed that they are bringing back the giant moa birds. Pause.

Let us roll back to the dire wolf adventure – re-creating those mammals is already hard because they belong to a different genus, one that is separate from all of the genera of the modern canines, none of them, from the grey wolf to the grey fox of the Americas are close relatives of the dire wolf. Giving ‘primitive’ traits and characteristics to the modern grey wolf puppies does not make them dire wolves. Pause.

With the moa birds, the situation is different from the wolves’. See, the moa birds are part of the ratites, or Paleognath birds, a separate infraclass from the rest of the birds for they do not have the keel bone anymore… only not. One lineage does.

The tinamous of South America are enigmatic and little studied birds; they behave largely like the gamebirds of the rest of the world, (aside from Australia), and they can fly, however poorly. Yet, they are also ratite/Paleognath birds, and they are the closest modern relatives of the extinct moa birds. Silence.

Let us expand. All of the Paleognath birds are related to each other, but there are nuances. The African ostriches (two species) are a sister group to everyone else. Next are the America rheas (also two species), followed by the tinamous and the moa birds, and finally we have the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and their closest living relatives – New Zealand kiwi birds on one hand, and the Australian emus and cassowaries on the other. Take a breath.

Now, with dire wolves, CB were able to swing it using the parallel evolutionary similarities between them and the modern grey wolves, and even that didn’t really float. With the giant moa birds, what candidates will CB use to ‘recreate’ them? Genetically their closest living relatives are the tinamous, but they do not behave or look anything like the giant moa birds did, so giving them the anatomical characteristics of the moa birds won’t work – the resulting mutations won’t be viable or beneficial most likely. Meanwhile, behaviorally, among the ratites, it is the cassowaries of Australia who are most like the giant moa birds are, but…

…But however the moa birds did behave, and we will never know because they became extinct because of the Maori before the Europeans could study them, the cassowaries are solitary birds with aggressive tempers who are not afraid of humans very much and who are known to attack them. Out of the two groups, the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries… ok, the biggest two species of the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries are, and so, if CB and co. will try to make bigger and more massive modern cassowaries, they just might end with an ecological disaster, and they don’t want that, hopefully.

On the other hand, Peter Jackson, the maker of the LotR and the ‘Hobbit’ movies seems to have invested into CB’s recreation of the giant moa birds, so now, CB does have to deliver something, at least on the level with the genetically modified dire/grey wolf puppies, or else there might be a lawsuit and some sort of a PR disaster for the company. Pause.

Do I care about CB? Not particularly. The wolf story was not a bad one; they could have just stuck with mammals and went along. Now they are off into the deep end, and with at least one celebrity along for the ride, they are likely to have a PR explosion in their faces – but they asked for it. Still, it will be interesting to see as to what will develop out of this statement of theirs – but it probably will not be a giant moa bird. (We do not really have any DNA of theirs, incidentally).

End

Moon Knight, Suit - April 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else. The second episode of ‘Moon Knight’, maybe?

Unfortunately, not. See, the problem with ‘Moon Knight’ is that it is about as detached from MCU, as ‘Morbius’ is; only while ‘Morbius’ is a separate universe from MCU, ‘Moon Knight’ isn’t. Hence, the notable lack of anything MCU-related in the second episode by now is becoming kind of grating.

No, seriously, when you compare ‘Morbius’ to ‘Shang-Chi’, the lack of Marvel-related Easter eggs and co. is notable…which is expected, (see above), but in ‘Moon Knight’? You would think that we would have encountered at least one Iron Man (or some other Avengers’) graffiti by now as a minimum; but no – we have a seemingly ordinary world, inhabited by Steven, an ordinary man, who abruptly finds himself in extraordinary situation, complete with Egyptian gods. The gods themselves we have discussed in the series’ premiere, and so far, there is little development… but what! The dog-headed demons are not caught by video cameras and co. so poor Steven got fired!

…Well of course they are not seen by electronic equipment, (and maybe even by muggles, cough). If they were, the situation in ‘Moon Knight’ would be different, more derived, because not unlike ‘Morbius’, the plot in ‘Moon Knight’ is also quite basic so far: it is ‘The Bourne Identity’ meeting Rick Riordan’s ‘Kane Chronicles’, save that ‘The Kane Chronicles’ have treated the Egyptian gods more respectfully, professionally as well, but that isn’t the point.

The point is that Oscar Isaac seems to be doing Tom Hardy’s shtick in ‘Moon Knight’, and then there is also Khonshu doing his thing to try to cover this rip-off up. The movies in ‘Venom’ series have their problems, and we’ve talked about this, but they’re also quite successful, and I’m guessing that MCU decided to emulate them, as Steven/Marc summon their suit in a manner not unlike how Venom takes over Eddie in the films. I am guessing that Sony and Disney/MCU have worked out their professional differences for the latter to try this sort of thing. What is left?

…I got a chance to see ‘The Bad Guys’ in not quite legal manner cough. Now there is an interesting movie, actually, as beneath the colorful candy wrapper it sought to talk about such fundamental matters as good, evil, (ok, badness) and redemption. It is quite Biblical, and there is even a ‘Mr. Snake’ to further drive that adjective home, since you cannot go badder than a snake, which stood in for ‘The Great Adversary’ in the original Book. Yet even he – the Snake character is male in the film – becomes a ‘good guy’ by the film’s finale. Hurray, but the movie’s message is marred by several issues.

Firstly, the child-friendly wrapper gets quite heavy at time from time, so the underlying message gets quite lost. And second, while venturing bravely to talk about such monotheistic issues in an increasingly polytheistic West, the movie may not have been brave enough; ‘Mr. Snake’ might be biblical, but Mr. Wolf and The Crimson Paw, (a fox), are more of fairy tale/folklore elements, and fairly baseline too. A wolf and a fox, really?! Moreover, a red fox at that – they could have used an Arctic fox or a grey fox instead; they could have used a porcupine or a coyote; but no – a fox for a wolf.

In reality, wolves ignore foxes normally, which is good, because otherwise? The former can easily overpower and eat the latter, but that is real life, where politicians – no offence, Ms. Foxington – are not necessarily ‘good guys’, eh? But real life has little connection to children films, so let’s just accept ‘The Bad Guys’ as a good film – and the ‘Moon Knight’ as a struggling MCU TV show – and move on.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #63 - May 23

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just look at the grey wolf – one day it is a part of the native ecosystem, the next – they are villains in the script written by the Europeans and their North American descendants, and right now, the wolves are still very much in the grey, pardon the intended pun. What next?

…So, ‘The Lovebirds’. Now that they were released, we can talk about them, and what can be said about this movie? …It is inane. Pause.

Now, here is the thing. ‘The Wrong Missy’ was just… wrong. It is politically deaf, probably not very correct either, and outright grating, even if you keep ‘me too’ issues out of the bracket. ‘The Lovebirds’ aren’t anywhere as extreme – they’re a direct spoof of the various mystery/action movies, just as the ‘Spies in Disguise’ 2019 film was a parody of the spies movies, and ‘Onward’ (2020) – of various fantasy films. Pause.

…Yes, this is already a mixed bag, as ‘Onward’ seems to be a rather more popular film than the ‘Spies’ were, but both of them are rather forgettable – you watch them once or twice and move on. And ‘The Lovebirds’?

‘The Lovebirds’ are birds of a feather, even if they are live-action rather CGI. Featuring an interracial couple, (real life says ‘how cute!’), who were drifting apart but now they have to work together or they are doomed, this movie aimed to entertain and amuse – nothing more. The titular characters half-wander and half-blunder from one episode to the next, and you are left exasperated – why are you rooting for them?

…To be certain, are not as bad as ‘The Wrong Missy’, ‘Doolittle-2020’, let alone ‘Cats-2019’. It just isn’t truly good either – at best it is light-hearted comedy, at worst, it is inane, with more style than substance, and that style isn’t very everyone, you know?..

On the other hand, given how real life sucks, how its’ narrative is so poorly written lately, maybe this sort of comedy is what we all require right now; for those, who want something different, PBS is released its’ own nature mini-series, based on its ‘Spy in the wild’ series, i.e. a nature documentary, and does this bring us back to the natural world?

…On the other-other hand, NG will present ‘Barkskins’, a TV series adaptation of the 2016 novel with the same title, of life in New France, aka the French colony in what has now become Canada. I admit that I’m of mixed feelings here – such adaptations tend to be a mixed bag depending on way too many variables… but it is certainly something different from the aforementioned ‘Lovebirds’ and co., who aren’t bad, just forgettable. (Unlike, say, a scolopendra centipede). Anything more?

I admit that I wanted to talk about turtles once again today. As probably the oldest reptiles of the modern world, they are fascinating creatures, and endangered ones, as humans have fed on them and their eggs to near-extinction; actually, some species – the biggest ones – have become extinct for real, and the smaller tortoises are also in trouble due to the exotic pet trade.

…Yes, I know – we have discussed this – how the terms ‘turtle’, ‘tortoise’ and ‘terrapin’ are interchangeable… to a limit. When I was young and went to an animal-lovers’ club for a couple of years, we had a lot of terrestrial tortoises, and a single terrapin, (I do not know the species), in an aquarium/terrarium combo. The two reptiles looked quite different – the terrapin’s shell was much smoother, much more hydrodynamic, and it was not released from its’ enclosure anywhere as often as its’ terrestrial cousins did. Ah, the nostalgia of the past!..

…For the present, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #56 - May 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It is also tricky, both on a lesser level – i.e., co-existing with your family during the lockdown that cannot end because of various reasons, both of COVID-19-(directly)-related, and of Trudeau vs. Trump related. There are simple solutions, but no one likes them, and so the lockdown goes on, satisfying fewer and fewer people, no matter how good (and/or righteous) are its’ initial reasons were… What next?

Today, I want to talk about the otters, actually. To wit, they are 13 existing species of aquatic or semi-aquatic mammals, which belong to the Mustelid family, (aka the weasels and co.), but also – to their own subfamily, the Lutrinae. And-?

…Starting with the good old reliable taxonomy, there are about eight existing genera of otters, (that hold the aforementioned 13 existing species), and about twice as many extinct ones. As Mustelids, otters are more closely related to wild dogs, bears, and raccoons, rather than cats, hyenas, and mongooses. Their relationship with the pinnipeds – namely, seals, sea lions and walruses – is more obscure, taxonomically speaking, but ecologically? Otters and pinnipeds are two sides of the same coin… sort of.

Let us elaborate. The pinnipeds live in seas and oceans – as a rule. They come in several shapes, and in different sizes, but most of them are social, gregarious, noisy mammals that often are easy to spot on the shoreline; in the water, they may not be as formidable as the more ancient and derived cetaceans are, but they are still a force to be reckoned with; in one of his TV shows, Sir David Attenborough showed a bearded seal actually outmaneuver a killer whale, meaning that you don’t discount the seals just yet!

On the other hand, we have the otters. Aside from the well-known sea otter, and the much more obscure – and smaller – marine otter of South America, all otters live in freshwater bodies instead. They are social animals, and playful ones, but their basic unit is a single-family group, whereas pinnipeds – especially such big ones as the elephant seals, fur seals, and walruses – have harems instead. Proportionally, otters tend to be shier and less noisy and noticeable than the pinnipeds are; very often they are much less active during the day than at night, dawn, or dusk; in part, this is because of human pressure, but the biggest freshwater otters of them all – the giant otters of South America, (aka Pteronura brasiliensis), are freely active during the day instead, human pressure or not. What else is there?

The other animals. The aforementioned giant otter of South America is the most formidable of otters; family groups of these species were shown killing caiman, (cousins of the crocodile, remember?), and driving away jaguars, (though in the case of the latter, a safe, respectable distance was maintained, and the jaguars were young and not fully-grown or experienced). Put otherwise, as in most of them mammal societies, size and strength, multiplied by numbers of family group matter. The giant otters are the biggest and most social of the river otters, hence their also the bravest and the boldest. The other freshwater otter species – not so much, they are much more demure and tend to stay out of the way of such carnivores, as wolves, bears, and lynx, for example, (in the Northern Hemisphere, both in North America and Eurasia).

…The sea otter stands apart, not unlike the giant otter of South America; its’ closest relative – proportionally – is the spotted-necked otter of sub-Saharan Africa, (Hydrictis maculicollis), but the two animals don’t have much in common: the spotted-necked otter is a ‘typical’ freshwater otter, while the sea otter behaves more as the seals and pinnipeds do.

…There are freshwater seals – true, or earless, seals – in fast. They are subspecies of ‘marine seals’, the only truly freshwater seal is the Baikal seal, Pusa sibirica, and it is one of the smallest seals, under 1.5 m in length. It exists in the Baikal Lake, which is more of a freshwater sea, really, and is an exception that underlines the rule. The case of the sea otter, which is really the only otter known to most humans, that went into the sea, is the same. …The marine otter Lontra felina, a close relative of the North American river otter, looks much more like the other otters rather than like the sea otter. It behaves rather like the otters, instead of the sea otter does too… but we became carried away.

To summarize: otters have appeared later in Earth’s history than the pinnipeds did, and as such, they were unable to fully transition to the sea, as the seals and their relatives did, except for two species, of which only the sea otter can compete with the pinnipeds in the sea, ecologically speaking, and even it has some caveats in regards to its’ ecology, it is a very different mammal from the seals and etc.. On the other hand, they were able to keep the pinnipeds out of fresh water – the subspecies/species of earless seals that were able to make it there are found in places where river otters are uncomfortable to exist; all of them are more terrestrial than the pinnipeds are…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Call of the Wild 2020 - Feb 21

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. One’s family makes it worse, and you hate them, you hate them, you hate them forever – onto the 30^th generation, onto the 20^th incarnation, and beyond! All hail Lilith and Sammael! …Where were we?

Ah yes, real life sucks, so let us talk about the 2020 ‘Call of the Wild’ film. We have discussed it last year already, when we only had just a teaser to go on, and it was released only this month, (aka February 2020), and what can I say? It is neither ‘Cats-2019’ nor quite as bad as ‘Doolittle-2020’, but it is certainly worse than the ‘Sonic’ movie is, and when you fail to surpass an anthropomorphic extradimensional blue hedgehog (supposedly) creature, then you suck.

Let us elaborate. The ‘Call of the Wild-2020’ movie failed on several levels. One is the CGI – oh, the technical side was done marvellously, we’re talking Cirque du Soleil quality, (a curse upon this abomination for 30 generations, for 20 incarnations!!), but regardless, you can still feel that the dogs are CGI very easily, so there’s that, and that’s a problem: just ‘like ‘White Fang’, the ‘Call of the Wild’ is a dog novel; humans play important roles, even critical ones, but the main characters are dogs and wolves. Considering that the 2020 ‘Call of the Wild’ film had only CGI animals, this means that it put itself at a disadvantage: the non-human characters just do not look real, no matter how authentic they were supposed to be.

The human characters have their own problem. The original novel was written in 1903, when political correctness was unheard-of, and so all of the human characters in ‘Call of the Wild’ were Caucasian, (technically speaking), and except for Mercedes, (played by Karen Gillian in this film) – male. So now, we got the two Quebecois mail workers played by Omar Sy, (an Afro-American) and Cara Gee, (an Ojibway woman). This is very politically correct and modern, but, sadly, ‘Call of the Wild’ seems to be one of those pieces that does not do transition to ‘modern’ too well in general. The original novel, just as its’ companion ‘White Fang’ was very, well, manly. The 2020 movie is anything but, and seems to be going for a more balanced, modern, politically correct approach – and instead got a pale imitation of the original novel.

Yes, Han Solo… I mean, Indiana Jones… I mean, Mr. Ford did his best to liven the movie, and may be its’ redeeming feature, period. (Chewbacca mutters and tells Han that you should never have a dog do a Wookie’s job, and can we try it again, in space, this time? Han points out that that is what the SW4 movie is for. Chewie sniffs and hugs his best friend. The end). However, you have to admit that his current incarnation – John Thornton – is rather manly himself, (possibly for the greater contrast with Dan Stevens’ Hal, who looks ridiculous in an unattended manner by the movie’s standards). The conclusion itself is also different, pause.

In the original novel, Thornton and his dogs, (except for Buck, of course), are killed by Native Americans, and in response Buck teams up with the local wolf pack and begins to kill them instead – this is how the novel ends. Here, the Thornton arc is resolved in a different manner, and Buck teams-up with the wolves in part because he gets into a relationship with a local she-wolf, black in color. Apocryphal Lilith much?

Now, about wolves – we talked about them before, when we discussed the AFO episode ‘Puma vs. Grey Wolf”, and the punch line here is that wolves aren’t just stereotypical grey color, they can range from white to black, why the great Audubon himself made a couple of paintings that featured precisely the white and black color morphs of the wolf, (he also made paintings of the so-called Inuit dog and Indian dog, but we won’t get into this here), but that’s it. Wolves may be of any color, but they are still the common or grey wolf, Canis lupus, the end. Why give Buck’s love interest an atypical fur color? It is anyone’s guess.

Speaking of love interests… first, Cara Gee? Is she pregnant in real life? If you look at the interview clip on the IGN YouTube channel, you see that she is caressing her stomach and the camera is angled thusly as to keep it out of the view. Maybe I am overreading this, but it still looks weird. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if news of her pregnancy and/or childbirth hit TMZ or something similar.

Back to dogs and wolves… Yes, Buck is a hybrid dog to begin with, even in the original novel, (a St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix), which makes himself something of a hybrid, which makes it kind of doubtful that he and a wolf would have viable offspring. St. Bernards are a derived dog breed, they are some of the biggest dogs around, and they are cases of gigantism from natural P.O.V., which may create issues if they are released in the wild. Yes, ‘Call of the Wild’ is fiction, a fairy tale, (sort of), but it can be noted that in the original novel Buck is not interested in any female dogs or wolves whatsoever, and there is no romance at all in ‘Call of the Wild’, (whereas in ‘White Fang’ the situation is different). Here, in the 2020 movie, the situation is different, and not in a good way – compared to the book, the movie feels diminished, a disappointment. Yes, political correctness is important, especially now, when the coronavirus, (yes, I know that it got renamed, but let’s not get too distracted here), is bringing the worst in humanity again, including the anti-Asians racism, (though apparently in Ukraine the native people are turning upon each other instead – how are they better than their Russian cousins, are again? That is right, they are not, apparently. Ouch!), but sometimes it just does not work, period. In ‘Frozen 2’, the socio-political agenda did not work, but it was still a good film, just different from ‘Frozen 1’.

…Not unlike the ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’, this version of ‘Call of the Wild’ just is not a good film, and political correctness just makes it worse, period. It may not be as bad as real life, (cough the coronavirus cough), but it is not very good either, both because of the CGI dogs (and scenery) and not. Go and see ‘Sonic’ instead.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

AFO: Cougar vs. grey wolf - Sep 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In case of Canada’s current PM, Justin Trudeau, this is because he has worn blackface/brownface in the past, and now it came back to bite him in the ass. The photos really show him in an unflattering light, but are they causing him to lose?

Well, if he loses, those photos will certainly be one of the reasons, but not the only one. As compared to the U.S., where each new presidential election is a bigger show than the lost one, (a tendency that became really obvious since Bill Clinton became impeached), Canadian elections… are not. Maybe it is because Canada is still subjected to the U.K., whose queen (or king) can always interfere, overtly or covertly, unlike the U.S., which is its’ own, independent country, but another reason is that Canada and its’ politicians tend not to blame anyone else when things go wrong in their lives; Hell, Trudeau has already apologized for those photos and this approach seems to be working – certainly, at least some people are turning onto Mr. Scheer for failing to apologize in his turn – it happens. Where were we?

Oh yes, someone has pointed out that when in the past I was doing my going-through of the AFO episode list, I forgot to cover the ‘cougar vs. wolf’ episode, so I might as well do it for closure…

Right. So, in one corner we had the cougar, (also known as puma and mountain lion), and in the other – the grey wolf. (As opposed to its’ more ambiguous cousin the red wolf, I suppose). The grey wolf lost. Why?

…Because the wolf is not an individualistic fighter, but a team one. ‘The Velvet Claw’ series and the companion book are somewhat outdated by 2019, especially when it comes to taxonomy of carnivores, but they are correct in that the cats are individualistic fighters, and the dogs are not. The puma, the lynx, the tiger, and the domestic cat have their differences, but even at a first glance a complete amateur of zoology/biology will I.D. them as relatives, and their lifestyles are very similar too. The only outliers among the cat clan are the African lions and the African cheetahs, (for a while, there were lions and cheetahs in Asia too, but now the cheetahs seem to be extinct there, and the lions are doing barely better. Sad, this is), because they do live in social groups – the cheetahs in family coalitions, the lions are more derived. Why this is so, is another question, but for now let us focus on the fact that the wild cats, small and big, tend to be solitary. And dogs?

This is where it gets blurry. Actually, most wild dog species are solitary, behaving as, say, the red fox does – we’re talking small carnivores that live on their own or in family groups; some of them, such as the raccoon dog of Far East, (initially), and the maned wolf of South America, can look very exotic, but their lifestyles are similar. And then there are the pack hunters.

Who are they? They are the domestic dog, the wolf, (grey and red), the coyote, the jackals, also – the African wild dog, and the dhole of Asia. This is it, right?

…No, because there’s also the bush dog of South America; proportionally, it may be related closest to the aforementioned maned wolf, but whereas the maned wolf looks like a wolf, or a dog, on stilts, the bush dog looks like a mix between a basset hound and an otter; it doesn’t even bark, more like chirps and squeaks, and it can swim and attack its’ prey items in water, as well as on land. A very atypical dog, but then again, South America has plenty of atypical carnivores, period – but we digress.

Such outliers as the bush dog aside, most pack hunting dogs look the same – streamlined, long-legged, long-muzzled, big-eared and long-tailed… built not for strength, but for speed and endurance. These carnivores evolved to act in a pack, overwhelming their prey through numbers, and using their jaws to tear and rip it to pieces, sometimes even eating it while the prey animal is still alive. They are hunters rather than fighters, especially when it comes to other carnivores, such as big cats and bears, although when it comes to dominance fights within the packs…they are ritualized, actually, and usually are resolved through shows of strength… and then…

Well, there is a video clip on YouTube that shows a wolf pack taking down a coyote. While externally wolves and coyotes are similar, wolves are larger and bulkier than coyotes are… although now scientists know that they do interbreed with each other as well as the domestic dog species, creating such animals as the eastern wolf, the eastern coyote, and the red wolf. The last species may actually be a species, having evolved into taxonomic and biological independence from both grey wolves and coyotes, but we digress. Wolves have evolved to function within a social unit – their pack, with which they bring down their prey items, from rabbits and hares to white-tailed deer, elk, and even the American bison. On their own, wolves are not very effective, as compared to the great cats and bears.

…Now a puma, technically, is not a ‘great cat’ – it is a ‘small cat’: it cannot roar, it can mew like a domestic cat, (or a bobcat), does, and while the jaguar, (can be twice as heavy as the puma) dominates the parts of the New World in which it lives, the puma does not. It can break even with an American black bear, (sometimes), but a grizzly (or brown) bear overpowers it more often than not, and the same goes for the jaguar, (which is unquestionably the bigger and more powerful animal of the two), and even wolf packs. Pause. ‘Packs’ is the key word here. A wolf pack can stand up not just to the puma, but also to the American black bear, (the grizzly/brown bear is a tougher question to answer), but a solitary wolf is no match for even the puma – which is precisely what has happened down in the CGI simulation of that AFO episode. While the rest of the carnivores are a mixed bag, (though, again, the ‘jaguar vs anaconda’ episode was something else), solitary pack hunters, (it even sounds as an oxymoron), are fair game and just are not… up to their best game, (pardon the tautology here), when facing-off with anyone by themselves. The grey wolf just couldn’t win by itself, especially against a mountain lion, which might be small and light by ‘great cat’ standards, but it still packs a punch well above its’ weight. The ‘puma vs. grey wolf’ episode was actually good, because it was honest and straightforward – whatever else you can say about AFO, at least there weren’t any inconsistences and partisanship as there was, (sort of), in DW, but that is another story…

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Captain Marvel, AoS and etc. - March 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes, it is somewhat tolerable, and other times it is downright weird. Now, let us talk now about ‘Captain Marvel’. The movie. Is it controversial?

No. The ‘issues’ have risen because people may have conflated, deliberately or not, Brie Larson and her personal beliefs, the movie, and its’ titular character. Ms. Larson is entitled to her own opinions, but then, she should also remember that not everyone will agree with them, and some people may even do something about them. Of course, those people then should expect their own backlash…and so on. It is a vicious cycle, really.

However, the movie itself? It is a straightforward origin story, not that different from… ‘Venom’ back in 2018. That movie was good, but also divisive, seeing how some people loved it, and some people hated it, and no one could agree on it, but most people enjoyed it, period. ‘Captain Marvel’ is no different, so as long as people remember that Ms. Larson is not her character – any of them in any movies – there should not be any problem. Unless you just straightforward dislike the movie, but that is just a matter of a personal opinion, so it is the turn of Disney/MCU to just buck up, grin and bear it. Instead, there was a crazy-ass story regarding ‘Captain Marvel’, its’ initial reviews, and ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ the site that didn’t do the latest Marvel movie any favors. It takes two sides to tango, and while Disney would love to blame all of the blame on Internet trolls, it does not work like that. At least they are not blaming the Russian Federation for ‘Captain Marvel’ problems.

No, seriously, look at Canada. For a while now, PM Trudeau’s cabinet is embroiled in the SNC-Lavallin scandal, and it is quite intense, quite serious, and no one is joking about it. Proportionally, it is just as bad as any of the messes that the U.S. president has done. The difference? No one is blaming any foreign powers for it, and instead are doing their best to resolve it ‘within the house’; whether or not they’re successful is another thing, but even so, Canada as a whole, remains a more cohesive and politically healthy country than the U.S. Undoubtedly, RF is guilty of many things, but the problem is that the U.S. just blames for anything and everything, for what they did and didn’t do, and that just muddies the picture – unnecessarily – and so, instead of getting anything done, the American people are revving for an All-American fight in 2020 already.

No, seriously, on the Internet, there are people that are planning to vote for Trump no matter what, and there are people who plan to vote against Trump no matter who, and many other people besides those two groups. Internet is awesome, if it was not around, I would not have an online blog, now would I, but it is also ambiguous, and it divides people as well as unites. Even in the last years of Obama’s presidency, the American people were preparing to fight each other, then they fought each other, in the first year of Trump’s presidency they continued to fight, and now they are almost back to it, as the first four years of Trump’s presidency are winding down.

Will Trump go for the full eight? It is very likely. The Republicans do not intend to rock the boat at such a sensitive point in time; they want ‘their man’ to remain in charge for another 4 years, and them to remain on top in D.C. Moreover, the Democrats do not appear to have a problem with it either, since by now, no strong single leader of their party had emerged, and they are just as messed-up as they were before. In addition, since the 1990s the U.S. seemed to have formed some sort of an unspoken agreement that each 8 years the Republicans and the Democrats switch their presidents, and everyone else can go hang. What will happen in the U.S. in 2020 is anyone’s guess right now. Real life sucks, I will say it again.

Back to ‘Captain Marvel’? The reason as to why I’m writing about it, is because its’ connection to AoS and S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, and to a lesser extent – Phil Coulson, played important roles in this movie and brought us to the beginnings of S.H.I.E.L.D.; AC talked about its initial incarnation as SSR (Strategic Scientific Research or something similar) instead. Between this renewal of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the MCU movies and the changes in the format (sort of) of AoS itself, odds are that S6 will see the show rebooted. Will it work? Since ‘Arrow’ got cancelled, (sob), it just might. 

Alternatively, it might backfire instead: Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube channel uploaded, among other things, a brief interview with Ming-Na Wen (aka May) and Jeff Ward (aka Deke), who, among other things, confessed to really not get along with Iain. The latter plays Fitz, aka Deke’s grandpa-to-be, as well as one of the main characters, (Deke just appeared in AoS S5, so Fitz got seniority easily), and so this got to sting, especially since Jeff the Deke said this on the red carpet for CM. Few people really know as to what is going on behind the scenes in AoS, but you got to admit – none of the actors from ‘the Gifted’ or C&D, for example, ever said anything like this, so the upcoming (summer 2019) S6 of AoS will be interesting…

Anything else? Well, speaking of YouTube, the National Geographic Wild channel released some sort of a ‘Wolves 101’ video, where it claims that there are two species of wolves in the world. One of them is the grey wolf, which is correct – it is the wolfiest wolf that has ever wolfed, aside from the now-extinct dire wolf, (on Earth – on Westeros it is another story).

However, the other wolf, according to NGU? It is the so-called Ethiopian wolf, and here we have a problem. The genus Canis has several members. There is the domestic dog, the grey wolf, the coyote, and coyote’s Old World counterparts, the jackals. There are three or four different species of them, and the Ethiopian species is one of them. It lives a life…similar to a coyote’s or the common jackal of Africa and Asia – it lives solitary or in pairs, in a family group at most, and hunts small animals – in the East African mountains, it’s various rodents – the Ethiopian jackal doesn’t go after bigger animals like the local mountain sheep or the geladas, the mountain-dwelling cousins of the baboons, who have formidable fangs of their own, but who feed primarily on the local grasses instead. No, the other true wolf of our times is the so-called red wolf from the American south; it is somewhat bigger than a coyote is, (though it should be noted that the Canadian coyotes are slightly bigger than the U.S. ones, really), but smaller than the grey wolf is, it doesn’t live outside of the North American continent, and it is more reddish in color than an average grey wolf is, (whose coat can vary from almost pure white to almost pure black and anything in-between). The red wolf’s lifestyle is not much different from a coyote’s, either.

To somewhat complicate the picture there is another species of ‘red wolf’ or ‘red dog’, one that is now known moreso as the dhole. It is also a wild dog, but it belongs to a much more ancient lineage than that of wolves, jackals and coyotes, and it does not have any close modern relatives either. It lives only in Asia and is not really domesticated. It is quite rare too, in modern times too. Now what?

Well, NGU got its’ wolves mixed-up, (it never mentioned the American red wolf at all in its’ video), ‘Captain Marvel’ is a good enough movie to enjoy (or not, depending on whether or not you like this sort of movie), and real life still is much more messed up than any movie is.

This is it for now; see you all soon.