Does This Still Count As "Good News, Bad News?"

The Commission candidates are now official.  And there is no further chance to enter the campaign this year.

There are eight candidates.  Two names that were previously mentioned never did declare candidacy.  The two people who did not declare candidacy would have been terrible (one already has been terrible).  Two of the people who declared candidacy are already also proven terrible.  None of the other six people who declared candidacy has been involved in the Village in any way (well, one has slightly, and we'll get to him), and nothing is known about them (not to me, at least), so under normal circumstances, they would be last choices.

If the two people (Ginny O'Halpin and William Abreu) who did not declare candidacy are the "good news," and it's "bad news" that two terrible Commissioners and six complete unknowns and uninvolveds did declare candidacy, is the imbalance still "good news, bad news?"  Or is it really all varying kinds of bad news?

I told you who (mercifully) didn't decide to run.  If you want to know how merciful it is, William Abreu did run one cycle ago, and on the basis of absolutely nothing, including short residency here, no involvement with the Village, and no campaigning, he got a few hundred votes.  I still can't figure that one out, except to assume that Village voters didn't/don't know what they're doing, intended blindly to vote for an incumbent named William Tudor, and simply either didn't know the last name, or carelessly voted for the wrong William.  But really, it's a mystery.  William Abreu, a few hundred votes?  Not explainable in the universe I inhabit.

Dan Samaria and Judi Hamelburg are also somewhat inexplicably doing it again.  They are both incumbents, and neither of them has contributed one thing of value.  These are classic, and sadly not unknown, cases of running for the benefit of oneself, or to feel some sense of status, or imagined self-value or importance.  Just an additional word about Dan Samaria.  Dan has what are colloquially called "issues."  Dan seems to know this, and he even explains that because his day job is as an exterminator, he thinks he has been excessively exposed to chemicals which he presumably concludes may have had a bad effect on his brain.  Dan used to come across as deceptively and inexplicably focused.  That's when he was getting lots of advice from Roxy and Chuck Ross and Bob and Janey Anderson.  Then, he stopped consulting them, for who knows what reason, and he launched himself into some grossly dysfunctional and aimless orbit.  It was last night that Dan missed a budget workshop (attending budget workshops is sort of essential for Commissioners) because he was babysitting his "grandchildren."  These grandchildren are the children of someone who is not Dan's biological child, and it's unclear to me if he ever even adopted her.  And because Dan is a Commissioner, the Village relies on him.

I have met Jonathan Groth a few times, because he's on the Foundation, and I had a return stint, this time as an alternate.  Jonathan seems like a nice enough guy.  Quiet, but nice enough.  He doesn't offer much, but he's mostly there.  That's the best it gets of the current crop of candidates.

The second best might be Mario Carozzi.  Mario is like the rest of the other four candidates in that he has not been active in the Village in any way (so no reason to think he knows what are the salient issues, what is our history of having done or not done things, or how things work.)  But the difference with Mario is that one person whose opinion I respect said Mario has listened in to Commission meetings, asks questions (of this one person whose opinion I respect), and might have opinions.  Of course, opinions are not hard to come by, and it takes more than that.

The other four candidates are Veronica Amsler, Ivette Corredero, Veronica Olivera, and Maxwell Stiss.  I know absolutely nothing about any of these people, except that they had to have been Village residents for at least one year to qualify.  So I'll assume I know that about them.

Election Day is November 8.  On that day, we will wind up with three of these eight people.  They will join Mac Kennedy and Art Gonzalez.  You will decide, by voting or by not voting, which three we'll get.  In my opinion, it will help the Village greatly if we don't re-elect Dan Samaria or Judi Hamelburg.  For me, the rest are pigs in pokes.  Maybe they'll campaign, and if they do, it might become clear that some would somehow represent the Village, its residents, and its interests well.  If they don't campaign, or if you don't get a chance to meet them, you can flip a coin.  But whatever you do or don't do, we're getting three of these people.

Up is Down, and Down is Up.

I was going to talk again about my creeping electric bill, but I think I'll save that.  Unbelievably, something else is bothering me.

Didn't the Pilgrims come to the New World because they wanted to escape religious persecution?  It was really hard for them, and some groups of them didn't survive here.  But apparently, escaping religious persecution was really important to them, so they kept trying until they made it.

And didn't the colonies form a small Union, and write a Declaration of Independence, and then a Constitution, and then some Amendments, the first of which guaranteed freedoms of religion, speech, and press?  And not being pushed around and controlled by people whose interests were not their interests?   Didn't they have to fight a war over those values?

And aren't there people today -- this very day! -- who call themselves "conservatives," by which they also claim to mean "originalists," who think that the "Founding Fathers" had unique and impossible to repeat wisdom, which led them to conclude, over 200 years ago, things that we should emulate and honor today, even if we're trying to deal with matters that didn't exist over 200 years ago, and would have been beyond the imagination of the "Founding Fathers?"

Nebraska.  It's in the mid of the midwest.  Sometimes, we call that part of what is now our country, which was not our country 200 years ago, the "corn belt."  Sometimes, we call it the "bible belt."  Since the midwest was not our country over 200 years ago, is it still in some sense not our country?  If it's not our country, then they can make whatever laws they like for their country.  If it somehow now is our country, don't they have to follow our laws?  And for what it's worth, that part of the country is usually very reliable to declare itself "conservative" (whatever it is they tell themselves they're trying to conserve) and "originalist."

So, here's what recently happened in Nebraska: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nebraska-school-officials-close-down-student-newspaper-that-published-lgbtq-articles/ar-AA117AqM?li=BBnb7Kz

Does our Constitution and its first Amendment guarantee us freedom of speech, press, and religion?  Wasn't this country in many senses founded on yearnings for freedoms like those?  And didn't we fight and die for freedoms like those?  Does our Constitution or any of its Amendments say anything about sexual preference, or gender identification, or abortion?

So, when some part of the government (even the School Board or the school's administration) in Nebraska shuts down a student newspaper, which is exercising its purely American and guaranteed freedom of speech/press, and possibly freedom of religion, to talk about something the "Founding Fathers" never addressed, and likely never considered, and they shut it down for reasons that most likely amount to religious persecution of people/students who might not share their personal religious beliefs, isn't that as unAmerican as humanly possible?

These midwesterners aren't "conservative."  They're not "liberal."  They're fascists.  And they are not remotely "American," in the original and intended sense.  It becomes a little clearer why they demonize what they call "Antifa," as if being against fascism was a bad thing.

Being against fascism and religious persecution, and guaranteeing ourselves freedoms, like freedom of speech, press, and religion, were what this country was all about.  It was our goal.  It was our purpose.  It was our ethos.  But not in Nebraska.

Now, I do want to be fair here, since being fair is one of my things.  And amazingly enough, I'll even be a bit politically incorrect.  Although it's true that anyone who understands homosexuality knows that this is a normal and non-pathological orientation for some people, it is fair to express concern about part of the rest of "LGBTQ."  The T part -- transsexualism -- has no rational meaning, since no person can think he or she was somehow "supposed to be" a gender, with chromosomes, and hormones, which he or she is not and does not have, because no one can know what the experience of being that other gender feels like.  And to make matters worse, the linked article is about school students -- minors.  It is universally agreed in this country, and in many others, that minors do not on average and predictably have the maturity and introspection to consent to sexual activity.  So how can they have the maturity and introspection to make a decision they will never, ever, be equipped to make: that they were "supposed to be" some other gender (there are several)?  If mentally well adults want to make that decision, I still say they don't know what they're doing, but I don't dispute it with them.  But minors?  No.  Although American history and our agreed Constitution give them every right to say whatever they want to say about it.  No real American (if midwesterners are real Americans) can take that away from them.

And I realize that the matter of abortion is fraught, because some people simply look at it as murder, which, in a narrow sense, it is.  (Orthodox Jews follow the Old Testament, which proscribes the "spilling of seed" -- male masturbation -- as a form of murder, and convention among Orthodox Jews say women who have had a period cannot touch anyone for two weeks, because they have "touched" a "dead body" -- the unfertilized ovum/egg -- and until they undergo a ritual cleaning.  These proscriptions are more of a stretch, but they're the same idea.)  At a certain level, I could appreciate the antiabortion argument, if we ignore all the other factors behind abortion.  But antiabortionists don't call themselves antiabortionists.  They refer to themselves as "pro-life."  And that's the problem.  They're not pro-life at all.  They're hypocrites.  The vast, vast majority of them are not against capital punishment.  They don't take that same narrow view of something that is intended to kill someone else.  Now, they're suddenly very interested in the other factors, like what bad thing the sentenced person was convicted of having done.  And they're generally not opposed to guns in civilian hands, which the Constitution and the "Second Amendment" do not permit in a general or blanket way (we can have that conversation another time), even though we see that the second most common result of guns in civilian hands is death.  (The most common result is nothing, which raises the question of why civilians want guns, if there is no benefit to having them.)

It's really hard to tell which end is up.

TV For the Record Books. More Netflix.

I really don't know how or why I stumbled onto "Extraordinary Attorney Woo," but it just sort of happened.

This series, which has just completed its first very compacted season of 16 episodes (it started this past June, and two episodes per week were shown), is South Korean, and it's the story of an autistic woman who also has an eidetic memory, and for some unexplained reason, decides to become a lawyer.  She has an odd and incisive way of looking at things, and she graduated at the top of her class.  She joins what is presented as one of the two top law firms in Seoul, and, for the first season, is a "rookie."

The CEO of this firm is a superficially charming, but subtly conniving, woman, and the CEO of the other top firm is about as equally superficially charming, but a somewhat less subtly conniving, woman who also, as it is revealed before long in this series, is the biological mother of the autistic lawyer.  She made a bit of mischief with a male fellow student in law school, took an unexplained break for a year while she was pregnant, and resumed her studies, rising to CEO of the competing firm.  She immediately gave her newborn daughter to the newborn's father, on condition that he keep her, rear her, and make sure her path never crosses with that of her biological mother, who later married someone, and had a son.

"Attorney Woo" describes herself as being "on the autism spectrum," but she's reasonably deep onto that "spectrum."  This is, of course, fiction, and the writers can say whatever they want, and rely heavily or not so heavily on guidance from whoever is their consulting psychiatrist.

There are lots of stories that evolve and overlap during this first season, but one thing that is consistent is Attorney Woo's talent for looking at the law, which she remembers photographically, sort of like Benedict Cumberbatch's "Sherlock's" "mind palace," in her unique way, and is somehow always the lawyer who comes up with the winning strategy.

I'm not going to describe the side stories that evolve, because that would cheat you out of the pleasure of watching this series.  It should be noted, though, that the series is in Korean, the actors often speak fast, and the translation comes and goes quickly, so you miss a noteworthy amount of the dialogue, unless you happen to speak Korean.  I myself happen not to.  But you don't fail to follow the gist and many of the details of what's going on.

The acting is generally speaking spectacular.  Attorney Woo is played by some 20-something woman who had been a child actress earlier in her life, and she becomes this autistic legal savant like Noomi Rapace became the antisocial but brilliant "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."  I've never seen Park Eun-bin ("Attorney Woo") in anything else, and I don't know if she speaks English.  But Noomi Rapace does, and her real self is a very far cry from "Lizbeth Salander."  Park Eun-bin was off the charts.  Pretty much everyone else was terrific.

I really don't know anything about Korea, and certainly not about things like the legal system there, but I have to say that as dim a view as I take of the American legal system and courts, I was very impressed at how civilized, orderly but not suppressingly rigid, fair, decent, and respectful was the Korean legal system as portrayed in this series.  Judges ask questions of witnesses, and seem to take a real interest in adequate information and proper development.  (Again, this is fiction, so I don't know if the Korean legal system is as portrayed.)  Of course, the lawyers were very focused on getting other people's money, as they are here (the English word they use for their fee is "commission," but there's no shortage of making bank).  But apart from that, they were largely portrayed as at least recognizing the larger issues, even if their representations of their clients often led them not to accommodate those larger issues.  But issues like fairness and a civilized, decent, caring, and respectful society were not uncommonly mentioned.

If you can deal with the technical problems (language, quickly disappearing subtitles, etc), this is really an amazing series to watch.  Sometimes, it has a cute or even silly quality to it, but they do handle some very complex and thought-provoking issues.  Although if you can get through episodes 2 and 16 without shedding a tear, you're not human, so maybe it wouldn't be worth your time.  The legal cases are mostly unrelated to each other from one episode to the next, but the side stories have arcs and evolutions, so if you do watch this, you probably want to watch it in sequence from episode 1 to episode 16.  Each episode is an hour.

Oh, No!!

It's August 18.  People who want to run for election to be BP Commissioners can now explore, or even declare themselves for, candidacy.  The election, if you've forgotten, is on the general election day, which is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  This year, that's November 8.

The three seats that expire this coming November are Ginny O'Halpin's, Dan Samaria's, and Judi Hamelburg's.  It's too soon to be relieved, but Ginny O'Halpin has not declared candidacy.  Dan Samaria and Judi Hamelburg have, though.  If it's hard to imagine (re-)electing Dan and Judi, it shouldn't take too much of a search of the memory banks to recall at least equally stupid mistakes we Village voters have made.  It would certainly be an omission to forget that we elected Dan and Judi once, too.  Sometimes, nothing is beneath us.

Two other Village residents have also declared candidacy already.  And some others have "taken [informational/registration] packets," but not declared candidacies.  One person who is listed as having opened a campaign account, which is an essential part of declaring candidacy, is Luigi/Louis/Louie/"Hot Dog King" DiRaimondo.  Luigi, or whatever he likes to be called, does not have a specific platform, and my one more or less direct experience of him, which was watching him make a public comment at a Commission meeting, was slightly worse than eating glass, and nails, and consuming poison, and getting beaten up in an alley.  Luigi comes across as part dimwit and part vile person.  

Someone named Mario Carrozzi has reportedly declared candidacy (but not opened a campaign account).  Mario was identified by another Village resident as an interested and capable person.  But Mario has never chosen to involve himself in any Village functions, apart from asking questions and making comments to the person who told me about him, so I give him no weight as a meaningful Commission candidate.  (Although no weight is better than proven destructive losers.)  We've already had our fill of people who start from nowhere, and decide they should start at the top, and I have never once been impressed.

William Abreu reportedly took a packet.  This would be William's second time running, and the first one didn't make any more sense than does this one.  William has no meaningful connection to the Village and its functioning and government, apart from the fact that he lives here.  He does not participate, and he contributes nothing.  But in whatever orbit he's in, this somehow means he should want to be on the Commission.  My unforgettable story about William was from the last time I ran.  I knocked on almost every door in the Village (not Tracy Truppman's, and those of certain other people), and when I knocked on a door on 115th St, a young woman answered.  I introduced myself, and told her about the election, my candidacy, and the other people running.  Oddly, she seemed to know William Abreu, and as we got talking, I put two and two together, and asked if William was her husband.  He was/is.  So I finished explaining whatever I wanted to explain, including that I, as a Village resident, would be disinclined to entrust the Commission to someone who had never in any way been involved.  (And she claimed she and William and their family had lived in the Village for a different number of years than William claimed.  I think one said three, and the other said four.)  At any rate, it was some time after that that William said, possibly on NextDoor, that he had been present for this conversation, and hiding in an adjacent room, eavesdropping.  Why he didn't introduce himself, or his wife didn't say he was home, was a total mystery.  But William continues, in my opinion, not remotely to be Commission material.  If he grows up, and becomes active in the Village, I'll reassess.

I'm also told that some other people, possibly as many as four other people, might also want to try to get elected to the Commission.  This is one of those reports that is going to be very incomplete and unspecified for the moment, because it relies on very incomplete information given to me.  As the information becomes more complete, I will most certainly share it.

What is wrong with us?!  We leave Mac Kennedy, who is the only current Commissioner who wants anything for the Village, as a minority of one, and we content ourselves with dead weight and people whose most beloved objects in life are mirrors.  The best Commissioners we've ever had either won't run again or no longer live in the Village.  We reward their devotion and efforts with disdain.

We really ought not to continue to mess this up.  This is our Village.  It is our home.  It is the home of our neighbors and friends.  We, and our Village, and our home, and our neighbors and friends, deserve better than what we've been producing.  And if this is the best we can do, we should at least have enough introspection to be ashamed of ourselves.

"Not Blasphemous?"

I was listening on the radio today to one of the stories about the attack on Salman Rushdie.  One commenter, Geoffrey Robertson, said that part of the response to Islam's call for Rushdie's death a few decades ago, after he published The Satanic Verses, was someone's close examination of the text of this book, to see if it was, in fact, blasphemous against Islam, as the Muslims claimed it was.  Whoever closely examined this text determined that it was in fact "not blasphemous" to Islam.  The report did not include details as to how it was determined that The Satanic Verses was not blasphemous.  I was left not knowing what anyone thinks "blasphemous" means, or what qualifies something to be "not blasphemous."

I read The Satanic Verses when it came out.  The radio story mentioned that it is 900 pages.  Frankly, I remember little about it, except that it was hard to follow.  One particular part that I do remember, because it was captivating, was that Mohamed was dictating what was on his mind, and a scribe was writing it down.  At some point, the scribe, who was writing furiously, in order to keep up with Mohamed, realized he had made a mistake in the transcription.  But he also immediately realized that no one would know he made a mistake.  So he continued to take down what Mohamed was saying, but he gave himself liberty to make more "mistakes," and to approximate the Prophet's words less and less precisely.  I haven't read anything about what Muslim's think about The Satanic Verses, because I don't care what they, or the members of any other cult or religion, think about any of the things they choose to believe, but my assumption, which might be wrong, was that it was this that so offended Muslims: the idea that the Qur'an could be wrong.  Jews, Christians, and other cult followers are similarly incensed at any suggestion that what they choose to believe could be wrong.

They don't get the joke: that this is simply what they choose to believe, and many of them make this "choice" because they were brought up to believe it.  If a Hassidic Jew had been born a Catholic, s/he would think Jesus was the son of "god" and the Messiah.  If a Hassidic Jew or a Catholic had been born a Muslim, s/he would think Mohamed was the Prophet of "Allah."  Anyone who takes the time and trouble to read any of the relevant scriptures with an open mind (I have) would realize they're all impossible nonsense.

But that doesn't stop adherents from believing deeply in this stuff, and not only fashioning their own lives around their own carefully crafted approximations of what it's convenient and satisfying for them to tell themselves it says and means, but from insisting that other people, who do not believe these fairy tales, should fashion their lives, too, around similarly carefully crafted approximations of what the fierce adherents consider it convenient and satisfying to tell themselves this nonsense says and means.

I keep a collection of quotes from various people.  They're in my house, on the hard drive of my desktop computer.  So I can't reproduce them precisely now.  One of them is from a guy named Steven/Stephen Roberts (not the widower of Cokie), who is listed as a software engineer or something.  He said, and I might be paraphrasing a bit here, "I contend we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer 'god' than you do.  When you understand why you reject all the other available 'gods,' you will understand why I reject yours."  Another of the quotes, which I remember less, has to do with the fierceness of adherence to the least supportable or provable ideas.  There are lots of other quotes that address more or less similar "intellectual" approaches.

But the problem, as I say, is that these adherents aren't simply deeply and rigorously devoted about their own ways of living.  They want to be deeply and rigorously devoted about your way of living, too.  And if things could get any more creepy, these people tend to call themselves political conservatives.  They're never clear what political conservatism means, but when pressed, they will claim to be "originalists," and to expect modern America to follow (exactly) in the footsteps at least of the "founding fathers" over 200 years ago (these "founding fathers" are imagined to have had or to have been able to form predictable opinions about things that did not exist and were out of the range of imagination at the time).  But imposing their entirely personal and private religious beliefs and interpretations on everyone else (who may well not hold all, or perhaps any, of those beliefs and interpretations) ignores the fact that the Pilgrims came here from England to escape religious persecution, that the US Constitution guarantees "separation of church and state," and, for what it's additionally worth, that Thomas Jefferson famously cautioned to "keep the preachers out of government."  I have said many times, and I'll say again, that it is not possible to adhere to the Republican/conservative agenda without being a hypocrite, dishonest, or both.

So, what's this got to do with Salman Rushdie, who is now off a ventilator, but might still lose an eye after having been stabbed 10 times by some crazed religious person (in this case a Muslim one)?  Sure, the order/fatwa to attack him came from the Middle East decades ago.  But he was attacked in New Jersey, which is in the "good ol' US of A."  And the person who attacked him was some rogue cult-follower, who happened to live in NJ.  But we live in Florida, most of which is exactly like that, except the prevailing cult in Florida is Christianity, not Islam.  The problem is identical, though: cult followers who somehow think everyone should adhere to whatever they tell themselves and each other are the demands or preferences of the cult, which are really, according to the lore and fantasy world of it, the intentions of "god," which no one can demonstrate exists (they call religions "beliefs" and "faiths" for a reason: there's no proof of any of this; you can just believe it and have faith in it, if you want to, and if it makes you feel better), and are prepared to punish anyone who tries to have the independence that the Pilgrims took great pain and trouble to seek, and which the Constitution guarantees.

 

More About Solar Panels, and Where You Put Them.

As you know, I have solar panels.  I have 20 of them.  Although I make more electricity than I use every day, and FPL says that my acknowledged negative usage results in a bill of $0.36 a day (I'm not sure how that math works), my bills are now creeping up from $10.05 a month to more than $20 a month.  I'm not home.  I haven't been home since May 2.  No one else is there.  The thermostat is higher than it is when I'm home.  But the bill I get for selling electricity to FPL keeps rising.  Maybe there's something more than math going on.

My daughter and son-in-law live in Massachusetts, which is where I am now.  Because I got solar panels, and they worked nearly rationally well to minimize costs for a couple of years, my daughter and son-in-law got solar panels, too.  They got 14 of them.  The contractor who sells you the solar panels shows you some graph, chart, or list that alleges how much your solar panels will produce, and you either do or don't believe the contractor.  Generally, you find someone you expect to be able to believe, because they're in the solar panel business, and you're not, and you sort of take their advice.  Hence, my daughter's and son-in-law's 14 solar panels, which someone told them would lead to some advantage.  And those 14 solar panels have in fact led to an advantage.  Since my daughter and son-in-law got solar panels, their electric bills have been $0.  Part of the pitch was that they were supposed to get a monthly check from the local electric company, and they have gotten a monthly check, but it's been for considerably less than was predicted.  (Nobody communicates in a way that you could ever say anything was promised.  Predicted or suggested is as good as you're going to get.)

The reason FPL knows I produce more than I use every day is a two-way meter, which turns in one direction when I'm buying, and in the other direction when I'm selling.  This is called net metering, although someone's finger is on the scale, so it's unclear what the net flow should produce, in terms of a bill.  The fact that although they know I'm selling more than I'm buying every day, but they still think I should owe them $0.36 a day, and then they charge me double that, is the special song and dance and frank cheating that is part of having solar panels in Florida.

My daughter and son-in-law have the same net metering I do.  And even though they have fewer panels than I do, and produce less electricity than I do, and run their AC much colder than I do in the summer, their electric bill is $0.

If you're going to get solar panels, it appears you should put them in Massachusetts.  You'll get a much better deal.

The Good News and the Bad News About Being Horribly Bored. They Both Involve Watching Television.

I still keep busy enough with my preferred work, but I've essentially stopped doing one job that's increasing trouble -- often way too much trouble -- and pays very little, so that the public service aspect of it gets replaced by the saying about no good deed going unpunished, and even the system of getting paid is harder to finalize.  And this was the job that used to take more of my time than anything else I do.  So, since I essentially quit, I have a lot more time on my hands.  It's unavoidable that a good deal of that time, especially at nights and on weekends, gets used to watch television.  For me, it's what's on Netflix, (Sc)Amazon, Hulu, or Vudu.

What turned out to be the worst of the bad news was the first episodes of ''Breaking Bad" and "Orange is the New Black."  I've heard about both of them over recent years, but I had never watched either.  I got through Season 1, Episode 1 of each, and that was all I could stand.

Very many steps up from that was "The IT Crowd" series.  I've seen all of it before, but I really like them, so I watched again.  Great stuff.  There's plenty of other great British comedy, but this one was burdened with another of my crushes, Katherine Parkinson, who is wonderfully funny.  Chris O'Dowd is also great, and I have reverence for Richard Ayoade.  I first saw him in "The Mighty Boosh," and I've seen him in some British comedy game shows, too.  Of interest, Ayoade was a classmate of John Oliver's at Cambridge.  Ayoade studied ("read") law, but he went into comedy instead.

The other two things -- both very captivating -- I watched lately were series.  "The Most Hated Man on the Internet" was only three episodes long, and it was an infuriating story of a 24 year old kid, if I may say a 24 year old is a kid, with whom some woman apparently broke up (imagine that: an unsuccessful relationship), and he responded by starting a "revenge porn" site which accepted submissions from some women who were trying to make money from showing off their naked selves doing very provocative things, but which also included "selfies" some women took, and stored in their computers, which were hacked, and some submissions from angry ex-boyfriends, and from whom many of these women could not get this infantile creep (Hunter Moore) to agree to take down their photographs.  In a later evolution of the site, he even included personal information like material from their social media, as well as their addresses and phone numbers.  How this guy got sentenced to 30 months for hacking (30 years wouldn't have been enough) is inexplicable.  He referred to himself as a "professional life-ruiner."  All because some woman broke up with him.  This was, as I say, infuriating to watch, and Hunter Moore didn't get nearly what should have been coming to him, but it was a well done documentary, and I'm glad I watched it.

"Inventing Anna" ran for about nine episodes.  It was about some European (first Moscow, then somewhere in Germany) 25 year old, who moved to NY and passed herself off as a German heiress, and whose specialty seemed to be somehow to convince people who should have known better to put her up in very expensive NYC hotels, and provide funding for some foundation she imagined herself creating.  She claimed to be in line for about a $65M trust, which somehow, no one could confirm.  She mostly didn't pay for anything, except sometimes she mysteriously had stacks of $100 bills to pass out as tips.  She came from nothing, and it was unclear whence she got this ambition to start the foundation.  It became increasingly clear that she mostly just wanted to be famous.  There were people who fawned over her, and imagined themselves her "friends," but she was completely psychopathic, and she was incapable of having any feeling for anyone.  She was 100% manipulative.  She lied to and took advantage of everyone, the vast majority of whom couldn't see it for what it was.  She eventually got arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, then deported.  The name she used was Anna Delvey.  You can look her up.  One funny part of this series, which was otherwise not funny at all, was that each episode began with printed language like "This story is completely true, except for the parts that are totally false."  And they didn't help you know which was which.  Anyway, many references in this series were derogatory about Donald Trump, who was portrayed as being a complete and advantage-taking dishonest and manipulative phony, just like Anna Delvey.  But by the end, it turned out that everyone was taking advantage, and acting (which is what led them make stupid and wrong decisions that allowed Anna Delvey to get away with as much as she did) in their own misguided interests.  So it was sort of an interesting tricky device, where the audience was supposed to demonize Trump, only to find out to what extent they have similar (if less grossly psychopathic) available reactions.  It was a good and interesting series, setting aside a bit of ineptitude in the way the story was constructed, and I'm glad I watched it.  The acting was mostly not particularly good but that in itself didn't detract too much from the story-telling.  The woman who played Anna Delvey apparently, according to my daughter, is a regular in "Ozark."  I think I might have tried to watch the first episode of that one once, but I couldn't stay with it.  My daughter says it's loaded with drugs and violence, both of which she knows I don't like.