Category: Writings

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Apple TV Feels Like the Indie Movie Theater of Streaming

The image shows the interior of a vintage-style movie theater with rows of plush seats facing a large screen. The screen displays the Apple TV+ logo, which consists of the Apple logo followed by the text "tv+" in a sleek, modern font against a black background. The theater is dimly lit with warm lighting along the walls and aisle, creating a cozy ambiance.

For me, Apple TV feels like that neighborhood indie movie theater—the one you can walk to, the one tucked into the corner of downtown, the one that only shows the best stuff 90% of the time and insists on real butter for the popcorn. It’s not about quantity; they don’t always have shows; it’s about quality.

On a recent episode of Basic AF, cohosted by my friend Jeff Battersby, I had the chance to talk about my love for Apple TV and how it stands apart from other streaming services. During the show, another guest and journaling expert Joe Moyer encouraged me to turn my reviews into a journal entry. So here it is!

Why Apple TV Works for Me

I’ve been evangelizing Apple TV pretty hard lately. With other streaming services continuously hiking their prices, Apple TV’s curated, high-quality content feels like a breath of fresh air. Althought it’s not as accessible as Netflix or Prime, for me that’s actually part of the appeal. It feels exclusive—almost like you’ve discovered a hidden gem.

Because Apple TV creates virtually all their own content, it doesn’t clutter its library with “filler” content. Unlike other services where scrolling too far down reveals some questionable movies, Apple TV curates with care. Similar to the Walled Garden model that their App Store offers, almost every show or film meets a high standard, and I appreciate that level of curation.

And most of what I love on the platform are TV shows, which is surprising for me.

I’m an ex-Lost fan. I had built entire friendships around that show; a group of about 20 of us would meet up in someone’s basement, sharing snacks and debating theories long into the night.

The way that series ended badly scarred me. I tried again with Game of Thrones, only to be let down again. So I stayed away from TV shows for a long time, and watched movies instead. I would only watch a series if the entire run had ended and the end had positive reviews.

Apple TV changed all that.

TV Shows Worth Your Time

The image is a collage of six visuals related to various themes of television shows. Top left: An astronaut in a spacesuit with the reflection of a person standing on the Moon, with Earth visible in the background and an American flag patch on the suit. Top center: A futuristic sci-fi themed portrait of a woman with a spaceship and a landscape in the background. Top right: A stylized artistic representation of a woman’s face overlaid with a group of people holding a torch, symbolizing themes of discovery and leadership. Bottom left: A minimalistic office setup featuring green partitioned cubicles and an old-fashioned computer on the desk. Bottom right: A group of shirtless men standing next to a vintage military aircraft, evoking themes of wartime camaraderie and aviation history.

For All Mankind ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A masterpiece. Stellar storytelling, NASA-level science accuracy, and visuals that could rival anything on the big screen. It’s an alternate history that feels so real you might start questioning your knowledge of the space race.

Foundation ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Issac Asimov’s work is notoriously tough to adapt, but they pulled it off. This series manages to balance the sprawling complexity of his novels with a visually stunning and coherent storyline. For bonus points, they brought Robyn Asimov on board to make sure that the show remains in her father’s vision. I can’t wait for more.

Silo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Silo is a wild ride. The Season 2 finale completely resets everything you thought you knew, and that’s what makes it so brilliant. Apple TV nailed the world-building, special effects, and character development here.

Severance ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A haunting, thought-provoking show that deserves at least two watches. The way it explores work-life balance through a sci-fi lens is nothing short of genius.

Masters of the Air ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The visuals in this WWII drama are breathtaking, and you can feel Spielberg’s touch. Every detail, from the sets to the aerial combat, feels meticulously crafted. As a bonus, make sure you watch The Making Of documentary after you’re hooked on the show.

Solid Honorable Mentions

The image is a collage of four different visuals, likely representing characters or themes from popular television shows or movies. Top left: A person wearing a hat stands in a vast field at sunset, looking toward a triangular portal revealing a starry sky, blending rural and sci-fi aesthetics. Top right: A man with an intense expression crouches in the aisle of an airplane, seemingly in a tense or action-packed situation. Bottom left: A woman with vintage 1950s-inspired blonde hair and makeup, wearing a professional outfit, with a pencil tucked behind her ear, evoking themes of classic drama or period storytelling. Bottom right: A bearded man wearing a beanie holds a sleeping baby close to his chest while holding a green leaf, suggesting themes of family, survival, or emotional drama.
  • Invasion ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Nail-biting suspense with interwoven stories that keep you invested.
  • Hijack ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Idris Elba at his finest—gripping and full of twists.
  • Lessons in Chemistry ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Sweet and surprising, blending science and romance.
  • The Changeling ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Engaging but a bit too unsettling for my taste.

What’s Coming Soon

The image is a collage of four visuals likely related to upcoming television shows, movies, or cultural references. Top left: A woman with blonde hair in a black sleeveless top, with the text "WYCARO 339" beside her, suggesting a mystery or drama theme. Top right: A cyberpunk-style illustration of a man wearing an intricate VR headset with glowing yellow markings, a cigarette in his mouth, and a futuristic, gritty aesthetic. Bottom left: A classic animated character wearing a racing helmet and gloves, posing in front of a checkered red and yellow background with a stylized futuristic race car, likely referencing vintage racing-themed cartoons. Bottom right: A retro-style mosaic of an astronaut in a CCCP (Soviet-era) spacesuit, raising one hand in a salute-like gesture, hinting at historical space exploration themes.

There’s more to get hyped about:

  • Wycaro 399 – Vince Gilligan’s take on sci-fi.
  • Neuromancer – A long-awaited cyberpunk adaptation.
  • Speed Racer – A nostalgic cartoon adaptation.
  • Star City – Alt-history that promises to amaze, spinning off from For All Mankind.

Movies That Stuck with Me

Top left: A period drama scene featuring a man and a woman seated at a dining table, with the woman wrapped in a striped blanket and the man wearing a vintage suit. The setting suggests a historical or Western theme. Top right: A stylized artistic portrait of a man with part of his head fading into an abstract design, conveying introspection, identity, or psychological themes. Bottom left: Two men, one in a green jacket and the other in a red fur-lined coat, striking a playful pose against split red and green backgrounds. This suggests a holiday or comedy theme. Bottom right: A man sitting in a thoughtful pose in a home setting, dressed casually, giving off a contemplative or documentary-style vibe.

Killers of the Flower Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I appreciated the attention to historical detail and the powerhouse performances from Lily Gladstone, Robert DeNiro, and Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s hard to watch because it is brutal and raw, but definitely worth it. This should be required viewing in history classes.

Swan Song ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A psychological romantic sci-fi movie, it’s almost like an expanded Black Mirror episode, but with even more emotional depth. It’s beautifully done and deserves more attention.

Spirited ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds compete to be the funniest person in the room? It’s a self-aware Christmas classic in the making.

Still ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I mentioned on the podcast how blown away I was by this documentary’s storytelling. Using old footage and body doubles, they recreated Michael J. Fox’s life in such a seamless way that it feels like stepping into his shoes.

Why Apple TV Stands Out

Apple TV isn’t just about producing “content” — they create art. There’s a level of care in their projects that you just don’t see in most other platforms. Whether it’s sci-fi, drama, or documentaries, their storytelling is top-notch.

If you haven’t checked out Apple TV yet, I highly recommend giving it a try. Now, I start there first when I’m looking for something new to watch because I know I’m going to find something worth my time.

What’s been your favorite Apple TV show or movie? Or is there something I absolutely need to add to my list? Let me know—I’m always up for a recommendation.

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A Requiem for Spooky

I killed a cat on the way home last week.

A pickup truck was coming in the other direction.
As soon as it passed me, the cat darted across the road.
I was going slow already.
I hit the brakes.
It didn’t matter.

He was a big guy, all black, and very fluffy. Looked like a shadow with eyes.

I did a quick u-turn on the empty street, hit my flashers, and ran over to him.

He was still breathing as put my hand out to comfort him, but didn’t last long.
He didn’t cry.

I looked up in the direction he had been running; a house that resembled a well-worn and threadbare slipper.
There was a light on inside.
The porch didn’t seem like it would hold me.

Through the front door, I could see an older man in a bathrobe watching TV.
I knocked.

A silver-haired woman with bright eyes and glasses came to the door.

I asked her if she owned a black cat.
“A few!” She laughed, but then looked past me.
“Oh no.” She said.

“Yeah.” was all I could say.

She came out in her socks, and gently lifted the cat up from the stain on the pavement.

“I’m so sorry…” I said, I began to tear up.

“I told you, Spooky,” she admonished the cat, still warm in her arms. “I told you so many times…”

“I’m so so sorry.” I repeated.

The man called from the porch. “Spooky?”

“Yeap.” Replied the woman. “It’s too bad.”
She turned to me. “It’s not your fault. I just couldn’t keep him in, you know? Some cats just don’t take to bein’ indoors.”

The man, apparently ever practical, reappeared on the porch holding a garbage bag.

Their daughter came out, and took the bag from him.

She came out to us, smoothing Spooky’s fur down.

“I’m really glad you stopped and told us.” The elderly woman said.

“At least it was quick…” the daughter searched my eyes, it was a half question.

“Yes; very.” I reassured her. “I stayed with him until…”
She visibly relaxed. “Thank you for doing that.” She lifted him gently, closing his eyes. “A lot of people wouldn’a even stopped.”

They thanked me again, I apologized again, and they went back into the house, carefully cradling Spooky.

You were loved, Spooky.
I hope you know that.

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Reading Response to Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula

While I am in Kawawachikamach, I am taking Naskapi 2 from McGill University, which my Dad, Bill Jancewicz is teaching.

One of our assignments was to read a portion of a book titled Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula by Henry Youle Hind.

The excerpt I read is available below.

Explorations_In_Labrador_01_Hind-ExtractDownload

Reading the selection from Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula was fascinating for me for a number of reasons. There was a peripheral fascination with the pet beaver and the tools they used and how they travelled. But I was much more interested in the interactions between the various people in the story.

I loved seeing Domeninque’s interactions with his wife. It is quite clear throughout all their interactions that they are in a strong partnership. Domeninque consults with her at every single interaction, even calling her over to participate in conversations when Hind and Louis attempt to talk to him alone. Even though Hind doesn’t even bother to learn her name, it is clear that she has equal footing in every decision that is made.

It was quite clear to me that the Innu chief Domenique did not trust Hind at all, even from his caution when he first approached them on the river. Louis, who serves as Hind’s translator, detects Domeniques hesitation in helping Hind at all at a very early stage. He delays Hind’s request for Domeninque to give him Michel, a young orphaned Naskapi boy, multiple times. He intuits quite well that Domeninque does not want to let Michel go with Hind.

Domeninque has had a lot of experience with white colonizers, being a member of one of the tribes that were first contacted by the French, and it is clear he does not trust Hind at all. I really want to read the rest of the story to find out what Hind ultimately does.

I also got kind of annoyed with Hind as the story progresses. It’s clear that he values Native people and hires and pays them quite well (a dollar a day is near the top of what going wages were for the time period) and yet he repeatedly ignores or resents their advice throughout the narrative. He gets told by multiple people that the water is too high, making it dangerous to continue, by people who grew up and know this territory. And he ignores them, even though he’s paying them for their expertise. Hind even calls Louis “talkative and bumptious”, when he sees Louis is at ease talking with Domenique, despite having just used the man for multiple pages of repeated and redundant questions about the previous winter’s hunt and the icy conditions ahead.

Hind then goes on to make racist remarks about how he knows how “Indians are deferred from any efforts involving great labour”. The high water in the Moise River is a life or death situation, and not something to be taken lightly. This attitude of doggedly pushing through any obstacle in their path is what led to the death of many white men who first landed on North American soil. 

Hind seems at face value a neutral observer who simply records the things happening around him, but it is clear to me that as soon as his ego is at stake or if he feels himself the professional in the situation (despite having never travelled this part of the world), everyone else’s advice and opinions are null and void.

It is clear to me that Domeninque sees himself at a clear disadvantage in this situation. He and his family are alone on the river, and encounter a rather large (and uncounted in this section of the book) party entirely composed of men. Though the power dynamic is quite strong against him, and he fiercely protests the taking of Michel still. He makes the correct argument that Michel is the one and only failsafe his family has of survival should anything happen to him. Despite all this, Hind again does not take the Native person seriously, and asks Louis if Domeninque’s death threats are legitimate or not.

I look forward to reading more.

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Long Point Beach

I went to the beach today.

And; I know. If you’re thinking “Who the hell goes to the beach in Canada on the last week of December?”, then two things:

1. You clearly haven’t been following me long enough; I do this kind of stuff all the time.

2. It was the warmest day of the week, it wasn’t bad.

My first stop was in the marshlands. They had this tower you could go up and look out from the top of. The sky was mostly overcast, with bits of blue peeking through. And the clouds were moving FAST.
It has rained the night before; which meant that every trace of anything having ever walked on the beach before was erased. It felt like walking on the moon. In the direction the wind was coming from, a thin slice of gold lit up the sky…
Knowing I was truly alone; I let music fill me as I walked. @
jboogiejustin filtered in my earbuds, syncopated with the sounds of the surf and the buffering of the wind.
The coastline was golden and inviting, but dipping my hand in revealed it was anything but. Maybe if I had some heated towels and warms arms waiting for me in the car, I might have risked a swim. But not this time.
The clouds churned as I walked; the band of gold growing wider and wider. I headed south along the beach, knowing it could take me forever. I wasn’t going to get another workout today, so I walked until I got tired.
I found a heavy log nestled among some dune cliffs, and sat to meditate as the light grew.
As I sat, the light exploded around me as the sun shot through the opening in the clouds. Instantly everything felt warmer, and I closed my eyes, basking in its glow. This shot is completely unedited; the colours are exactly as they were.
The sun wasn’t long for this hemisphere; and though this was its first appearance of the day, it was ready to rest. The wind picked up, sending waves chopping upward as the sun lit them. The log was cold all alone, so I left it.
It seemed impossible to take a bad photo at this point, nearly everywhere I went seemed stunning. Walking back took much longer, I kept stopping to drink everything in.
As the sun crested the horizon, the water grew dark and glassy, a mirror refracting the dark swirling clouds above.
As I crossed the dunes, the magic faded behind me, and the sky drew dusky. A rustling caught my attention as I pulled my earbuds out. A red heart lay tangled in the branches of some driftwood. The air grew cold and crisp. I breathed deep and walked on.

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Goodbye, Facebook. It’s you, not me.

I talked about it before, but within a couple weeks I’ll be gone from Facebook.

It’s going to be complicated to disconnect, because I’ll have to turn off Messenger, and Instagram, and a bunch of other services. The sheer volume of applications and sites that use Facebook for me to log into is astounding.

Why are you quitting?

There are a bunch of reasons people quit, from proven studies about how Facebook worsens your mood, to how addictive it is. Some people quit because of how toxic people can be on here, or how invasive the advertising is.

However, the main reason I’m quitting is because of their egregious record on privacy. I recently downloaded my Facebook data (which you can do too), and I was shocked at how much information they tracked.

Here’s how to do it if you’re interested:

  1. Click at the top right of any Facebook page and select Settings.
  2. Click Download a copy of your Facebook data below your General Account Settings.
  3. Click Start My Archive.

It may not work immediately. It took me a couple tries to get my data.

Another thing you should check is if credit card info is stored on there, which you can do by clicking on Settings > Payments.

I’m also disturbed by how little they tell you about new policies or changes, and how easy it is for them to give your data away to the highest bidder.

Zuckerberg has been consistent in his message that he does not care about people’s privacy, so long as he can make money.

There are other companies that do that too, but Facebook is a beast that harms other through my interaction with it.

So it’s about privacy?

Mostly. I also really dislike the way they deal with cyberbullying, fascism, and racism. Facebook is lax in all those areas. Even though I’ve done things like report the account of the Maryland KKK member who fired a gun at anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, his account is still active.

Facebook is NOT a great place for activism outside of groups, which I’ll remain active in. I’ve been monitoring the views on my regular wall, and with each algorithm change, those go down.

Not only that, but they’ve REALLY changed their course on a lot of things. For example, here’s an interview with Facebook’s CEO saying “This is their information, they own it”.

Then, not even a full year later, Zuckerberg stated: “The age of privacy is over”.

But what about your family?

I have a lot of stuff on here, which I’ll slowly be cleaning out. It’s been over a decade that I’ve had facebook, there are family photos, all kinds of stuff. And there really isn’t another place like facebook yet, where nearly everyone is on it. It’s sad to lose that.

But I’d rather not be complicit in a system that harms people. And my being here keeps other people here. So I’m cutting ties.

So what does this mean going forward?

I have a lot of groups that I manage on here; like Naskapi Radio — (418) 585–2111 and #BaltimoreUprising. I’ll still manage those.

I also have several businesses that I manage on here, from Zerflin to a bunch of my own clients who pay me to help them with social media. I’ll keep doing that.

I’m going to be slowly archiving and deleting my content on here, especially photos. I have a giant photo collection on here, which Facebook uses to identify all of you. That makes me sick, especially since they can sell that data to other people.

I’ve made my last Facebook post ever. Unless they do some serious work to change, this is it.

Can I talk you out of it?

Nope. Though you’re welcome to talk to me about it, just not on Facebook. This decision has been 3 years in the making.

Where can we find you?

That’s easy. My website has links at the bottom left to every social media I’m on. I’m sure you’ll find something we have in common.

What if Facebook is the only social media I have?

I actually have a mailing list. You can sign up for that here.

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#24PropheticWords • The False Prophets are Here • @TheSlateProject

“False Christs and false prophets will come and perform great wonders and miracles. They will try to fool even the people God has chosen, if that is possible.” –Matthew 24:24

When I began reading the Bible on my own, it was from tattered gold-covered copies of the Good News Bible that sat on shelves in the back of our tiny church. Someone had donated them long before my family had arrived in the village we lived in, and they’d seen years of uninterrupted use. 

  Continue reading “#24PropheticWords • The False Prophets are Here • @TheSlateProject”

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Conspire. Jude 20–21

Conspire. Jude 20–21

Who said a black man in the Illuminati?
Last time I checked, that was the biggest racist party
Last time I checked, we was racing with Marcus Garvey
On the freeway to Africa ’til I wreck my Audi
And I want everybody to view my autopsy
So you can see exactly where the government had shot me
No conspiracy, my fate is inevitable
They play musical chairs once I’m on that pedestal
—Kendrick Lamar, Hiiipower

Continue reading “Conspire. Jude 20–21”