Do You Want A Cashless Society?

If you went to pay your bill at a restaurant or wanted to buy something at a grocery store would you be put out of sorts if the business didn't accept cash? I think I would be. I don't always want to put items on credit cards. For me it's far too easy to spend more money than I intended to spend if I use a credit card.

There is also the case that I may not always want the bank issuing the credit card to know where I was or what I was purchasing. However more businesses are starting to refuse cash. Not everyone is happy about this.

Sam Schreiber was mid-shampoo at a Drybar blow-dry salon in Los Angeles when someone from the front desk approached her stylist with an emergency: a woman was trying to pay for her blow-out with cash. “There was this beat of silence,” says Ms. Schreiber, 33 years old. “She literally brought $40.” 

More and more businesses like Drybar don’t want your money—the paper kind at least. It’s making things awkward for those who come ill prepared. After all, you can’t give back a hairdo, an already dressed salad or the two beers you already drank. Ms. Schreiber was tempted to wait and see how the Drybar employees would handle the situation with the customer, who had no credit or debit card with her; instead, she intervened from the shampoo bowl. “I said, ‘I can just pay for her and she can give me cash or Venmo me,’ ” she says.

A few moments later, one of the employees came back to hand her the $40 and expressed thanks on behalf of the stranger. 

Movie Reviews: Venom

Venom
directed by Ruben Fleischer
Middling movie with more than a little camp

I didn't see Venom initially in part because so many comic fanboys claimed disappointment with the movie. This film is an origin tale of the titular character, someone who at best might be considered an anti-hero but is mostly, from the comics I remember reading, a straight up bad guy. 

The movie mostly downplayed Venom's unpleasant side either by playing it for laughs (the character constantly threatens to eat the heads of people who displease him) or by simply not showing the more violent actions. This movie is rated PG-13. It probably should have gone for the R rating. 

Because I was only slightly familiar with the character's history, I didn't have raised expectations. This was a decent Sony/Marvel movie that stuck to formula. It felt like I had seen it before. If you're fine with that sense then this could be an okay time investment. Strangely enough the movie has a few nods to Taxi Driver and similar films, but because it shies away from explicit depictions of carnage, never truly convinces in the way that films like say, The Dark Knight did.

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is an investigative journalist whom most people, including his fiancee Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), would agree is a pain in the tuchus. Anne is a successful attorney. It seems that she's slumming with Eddie. Eddie must have some hidden talents. It doesn't help the film that Hardy and Williams don't seem to have too much chemistry together. And by "too much" I mean any. Williams looks bored in her scenes with Hardy. This is not Robert Downey Jr. with Gwyneth Paltrow, or Brad Pitt with Marion Cotillard.  Nope.  

Movie Reviews: A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor
directed by Paul Feig
Neo-noir that looks good but mixes in just a little too much comedy for my taste.

This movie was based on a book which I have not read, but it also owes quite a bit to the French movie Diabolique,  which it indeed name checks.  A Simple Favor carries some DNA  from such works as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys series, the first of which is also name checked, as well as the works of V.C. Andrews and Hanna Barbera's Scooby Doo, which are not credited. I am betting that the movie toned down a few things from the book. The film also normalizes some things I don't think should be normalized. I am mildly curious if the book took the same approach or not. But just mildly.

I didn't identify with any of the main characters but that's ok. None of the characters are all that sympathetic. If you are looking for a movie with well defined heroes, or in this case heroines, this movie lacks those. Or perhaps I am being a tad judgmental. You would have to see the film for yourself. 

This film is set in suburban Connecticut. Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is playing the role in this film that would normally be played by a man in a traditional film noir-the easy going seemingly not too bright fellow who gets pulled into a dangerous world by a sultry leggy blonde with a hidden past.

No Heat in NYC Public Housing

What do you do when your furnace doesn't work? Well if you own your own home then you will spend money to fix it. But if you rent your living space then your reasonable expectation (assuming that the landlord has responsibility for heat) is that your landlord will fix the malfunctioning furnace. 

If the landlord shows that he is incapable of fixing the furnace, won't fix the furnace from spite, or won't fix the furnace because he wants you to move, then you would probably stop paying the rent and/or sue the landlord. If you were a younger more excitable respect obsessed person you might even appear at your landlord's place of business to take a more "hands-on" approach to the discussion. Whatever you decide to do it's pretty clear that the landlord is breaking the deal that both of you signed. You pay rent. He provides a livable space for the agreed period of time. It's not a complicated relationship.

But this relationship doesn't work for everybody. If you are poor and black (or poor and hispanic or even poor and white) the system is not designed to work for you. Most middle class or upper class people would raise holy hell if they lived in a place without heat. Systems are created so that that doesn't happen. But when you lack money people with power don't expeditiously respond to your complaints. And tragically many poor people learn not to bother complaining.

Evelyn and Franklin Badia’s wish of qualifying for a public housing apartment became a reality in 2011 after eight years of waiting.  Then it got cold outside. Inside, too. The heat in their apartment — owned by the New York City Housing Authority, also known as Nycha — didn’t work that winter, or any winter after, they said. 

Book Reviews: Imperium In Imperio

Imperium In Imperio

by Sutton E. Griggs

Sutton Griggs was a black man born in Reconstruction era Texas. He later became an author, publisher and minister, among other professions. Griggs was a great proponent of activism for Black Americans. Griggs was an example of deeds being as important as faith. He helped build and maintain social institutions for Black Americans during the worst time for Black Americans outside of slavery. 

From the very first time that enslaved Africans arrived in this country there have always been different, occasionally conflicting ideas about how to best obtain freedom or even what freedom is. People of course change their minds depending on their life experiences. A traumatic experience as a youth can set the adult on a different path than he or she otherwise might have been. 

Growing up at a time when racist atrocities against Black Americans were literally unchecked Griggs used that environment to produce a novel that is by turns didactic and descriptive if not always entertaining in the modern sense. Griggs was a supporter of DuBois and thus perhaps a believer in the "Talented tenth" and integrationist models. However in this novel Griggs seems to be working out his own skepticism about the limits of those models and their ability to solve the needs of Black Americans. Griggs calls back to earlier more specifically Black nationalist writers such as David Walker. Griggs also eerily anticipates upcoming Pan-Africanist nationalist activists such as Marcus Garvey, who would come on the scene just a few short years after this novel, as well as later folks like Elijah Muhammad.

The novel is really more of a short story or even novella. It's just under 100 pages. It's occasionally dense reading. Griggs really liked prepositional phrases, a weakness I share. 

#MeToo Backlash Hits Wall Street

For some Wall Street male movers and shakers, because of the #metoo movement, the Mr. Bean gif to the right could become the preferred model that any man with something to lose will use when interacting with women in the workplace.

No more dinners with female colleagues. Don’t sit next to them on flights. Book hotel rooms on different floors. Avoid one-on-one meetings. In fact, as a wealth adviser put it, just hiring a woman these days is “an unknown risk.” What if she took something he said the wrong way? Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women. Call it the Pence Effect, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he avoids dining alone with any woman other than his wife. In finance, the overarching impact can be, in essence, gender segregation.

Interviews with more than 30 senior executives suggest many are spooked by #MeToo and struggling to cope. “It’s creating a sense of walking on eggshells,” said David Bahnsen, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley who’s now an independent adviser overseeing more than $1.5 billion. This is hardly a single-industry phenomenon, as men across the country check their behavior at work, to protect themselves in the face of what they consider unreasonable political correctness -- or to simply do the right thing.

Movie Reviews: Leviathan

Leviathan
directed by George Cosmatos
Saturday afternoon monster movie that had decent SFX but not much else.

I like watching some 80s sci-fi horror movies. Usually the computers and CGI weren't as dominant as they are now. So the special effects impressed me more. I didn't take them for granted. They differed dramatically from film to film and director to director. So I had  some occasional fun watching this movie, which was a mashup/kissing cousin/ knock-off of such similar films as Abyss, The Thing, Alien, and several other best forgotten films that I saw on Saturday afternoon television. You know the drill. A bunch of people are working in an environment which is 100% hostile to human life (underwater, outer space, etc). Someone runs across something that shouldn't exist, gets infected and proceeds to willingly or not, infect his or her teammates. 

If there is a breach of some kind everyone dies. But maybe the breach is better than taking this virus/infection/parasite/alien back to civilization. The problem with many movies like this is that the black guy often dies first. To add insult to injury he often dies in some stupid sacrifice for the white hero/heroine. Well this film got rid of one of those problems. So I guess for the time that was progress.

This movie was pretty predictable. It did have some well known faces. Some of the actors and actresses went on to bigger and better things. Others pretty much stayed in this pocket for the rest of their careers. So it goes.