Category: reason

Review: Weedcraft Inc.

It’s only natural for the growth of “cannabusinesses” to inspire a management simulation game like Weedcraft Inc. This marijuana manufacturing game by Devolver Digital challenges you to start with an illegal basement grow and build up a small empire.

It’s no simple feat. Players research and develop strains, manage the temperature and humidity, experiment with soil quality, appeal to different types of customers, investigate the competition, figure out how to keep the police at bay, supervise employees, and even ultimately go legit with fully permitted medical marijuana operations.

While Weedcraft Inc. is not terribly realistic, it does help the casually curious grasp that growing marijuana as a commercial product is not something you can just stumble your way through. It’s probably not a game you’d want to play stoned. It even has a storyline that delves into the diverse politics surrounding the drug war and marijuana legalization. Your customers are the expected frat boys and metalheads but also cancer patients and veterans struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The game doesn’t actually teach you how to grow weed, yet when it was initially released, YouTube and Facebook blocked ads for it as violations of their “illegal drug” policies.

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Review: Weedcraft Inc.

It’s only natural for the growth of “cannabusinesses” to inspire a management simulation game like Weedcraft Inc. This marijuana manufacturing game by Devolver Digital challenges you to start with an illegal basement grow and build up a small empire.

It’s no simple feat. Players research and develop strains, manage the temperature and humidity, experiment with soil quality, appeal to different types of customers, investigate the competition, figure out how to keep the police at bay, supervise employees, and even ultimately go legit with fully permitted medical marijuana operations.

While Weedcraft Inc. is not terribly realistic, it does help the casually curious grasp that growing marijuana as a commercial product is not something you can just stumble your way through. It’s probably not a game you’d want to play stoned. It even has a storyline that delves into the diverse politics surrounding the drug war and marijuana legalization. Your customers are the expected frat boys and metalheads but also cancer patients and veterans struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The game doesn’t actually teach you how to grow weed, yet when it was initially released, YouTube and Facebook blocked ads for it as violations of their “illegal drug” policies.

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Review: Yesterday

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel, an alumnus of the never-ending British soap opera EastEnders) is a going-nowhere singer-songwriter in an English resort town. One day some friends give him a new guitar as a present. To try it out he plays one of his favorite songs: “Yesterday.” His friends love it, and assume Jack wrote it. Jack is astounded: the Beatles wrote it, of course. It’s a famously great song, he says. The friends snicker a bit. “Well, it’s not Coldplay,” one of them says.

Yesterday imagines a world in which the Beatles don’t exist. Oh, they did exist, but that was before a mysterious space-time hiccup in which lights briefly went out all over the world – an event that Jack missed because he’d been hit by a bus and was unconscious at the time. Now he seems to be the only person who still remembers the fab Liverpudlians and their glorious music. Imagine the possibilities.

It’s best not to interrogate this setup too closely. Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Steve Jobs) and screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral) are frankly confecting a sweet little fable here, and they would probably sigh and roll their eyes at any attempted nitpicking.

Jack is a good guy, but he’s unable to resist the tremendous, but of course ethically indefensible, opportunity that’s been laid before him. He’s tentative at first. Trying out “Let It Be” on a living room piano for his parents, he discovers that even the Beatles’ most celebrated songs don’t command instant respect these days. His suburban mom and dad (Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar) are an awful audience, talking through his performance, fiddling with their phones, answering the doorbell. But Jack’s “manager,” Ellie Appleton (Lily James, of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), who has been his biggest/only fan since they were kids, is clearly prepared to support him to the end. (Jack, obviously an idiot, has never picked up on Ellie’s winsome love vibe—which is actually the hardest part of this story to swallow.)

With Ellie enthusing and a young producer named Gavin (Alexander Arnold) arranging studio time, Jack records a song called “I Saw Her Standing There.” It’s pretty good. Next he plays something called “In My Life” on a local TV show, and shortly thereafter Ed Sheeran—the Ed Sheeran, by God—shows up at his door offering Jack a slot on his upcoming European tour. This might not have been a great idea, because out on the road Jack’s storming rendition of “Back in the USSR” proves a hard act to follow. But Sheeran accepts this stoically: “I was always told someone would come along who’d be better than me,” he says.

Over the course of nearly two hours, the movie sometimes feels like it’s overrunning its premise; and when Kate McKinnon shows up as an uber-cynical record-company rep, her sour presence, so often bracing, seems out of place in such a sunny film. But the love story between Patel and James, while shamelessly manipulative, is also irresistible. And Patel, who does all his own singing, also does these famous songs justice (his rendition of “Help!,” taken at punk-rock velocity, is a worthy footnote to the original track). Props must also be paid to Sheeran, who has a warm comic touch and is the very soul of self-deprecation. (His suggestion that Jack change the name of his song “Hey Jude” to “Hey Dude” is very nicely tossed off).

Yesterday is a movie that seeks only to make you feel warm and marshmallowy inside, and maybe love the Beatles a little bit more. Resistance is pointless.

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Review: Yesterday

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel, an alumnus of the never-ending British soap opera EastEnders) is a going-nowhere singer-songwriter in an English resort town. One day some friends give him a new guitar as a present. To try it out he plays one of his favorite songs: “Yesterday.” His friends love it, and assume Jack wrote it. Jack is astounded: the Beatles wrote it, of course. It’s a famously great song, he says. The friends snicker a bit. “Well, it’s not Coldplay,” one of them says.

Yesterday imagines a world in which the Beatles don’t exist. Oh, they did exist, but that was before a mysterious space-time hiccup in which lights briefly went out all over the world – an event that Jack missed because he’d been hit by a bus and was unconscious at the time. Now he seems to be the only person who still remembers the fab Liverpudlians and their glorious music. Imagine the possibilities.

It’s best not to interrogate this setup too closely. Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Steve Jobs) and screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral) are frankly confecting a sweet little fable here, and they would probably sigh and roll their eyes at any attempted nitpicking.

Jack is a good guy, but he’s unable to resist the tremendous, but of course ethically indefensible, opportunity that’s been laid before him. He’s tentative at first. Trying out “Let It Be” on a living room piano for his parents, he discovers that even the Beatles’ most celebrated songs don’t command instant respect these days. His suburban mom and dad (Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar) are an awful audience, talking through his performance, fiddling with their phones, answering the doorbell. But Jack’s “manager,” Ellie Appleton (Lily James, of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), who has been his biggest/only fan since they were kids, is clearly prepared to support him to the end. (Jack, obviously an idiot, has never picked up on Ellie’s winsome love vibe—which is actually the hardest part of this story to swallow.)

With Ellie enthusing and a young producer named Gavin (Alexander Arnold) arranging studio time, Jack records a song called “I Saw Her Standing There.” It’s pretty good. Next he plays something called “In My Life” on a local TV show, and shortly thereafter Ed Sheeran—the Ed Sheeran, by God—shows up at his door offering Jack a slot on his upcoming European tour. This might not have been a great idea, because out on the road Jack’s storming rendition of “Back in the USSR” proves a hard act to follow. But Sheeran accepts this stoically: “I was always told someone would come along who’d be better than me,” he says.

Over the course of nearly two hours, the movie sometimes feels like it’s overrunning its premise; and when Kate McKinnon shows up as an uber-cynical record-company rep, her sour presence, so often bracing, seems out of place in such a sunny film. But the love story between Patel and James, while shamelessly manipulative, is also irresistible. And Patel, who does all his own singing, also does these famous songs justice (his rendition of “Help!,” taken at punk-rock velocity, is a worthy footnote to the original track). Props must also be paid to Sheeran, who has a warm comic touch and is the very soul of self-deprecation. (His suggestion that Jack change the name of his song “Hey Jude” to “Hey Dude” is very nicely tossed off).

Yesterday is a movie that seeks only to make you feel warm and marshmallowy inside, and maybe love the Beatles a little bit more. Resistance is pointless.

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Brickbat: Walking on the Sand

The California Coastal Commission has fined the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Half Moon Bay $1.6 million for blocking access to public beaches near the hotel. The commission found the hotel blocked access by failing to post signs alerting people that the beaches are open to everyone, not just guests, and by parking the cars of guests and golfers in spaces it is required to keep open for people who aren’t customers.

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Brickbat: Walking on the Sand

The California Coastal Commission has fined the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Half Moon Bay $1.6 million for blocking access to public beaches near the hotel. The commission found the hotel blocked access by failing to post signs alerting people that the beaches are open to everyone, not just guests, and by parking the cars of guests and golfers in spaces it is required to keep open for people who aren’t customers.

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Debate Dems Wage Intergenerational Warfare and We Are Here for It

In a post-debate quickie podcast, Reason‘s resident millennial/xennials Peter Suderman, Stephanie Slade, and Katherine Mangu-Ward slice and dice the two nights of Democratic Debates. We discuss the surprisingly fast escalation of the health care debate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s shining anti-interventionist moment. And since Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie weren’t on the podcast, we join tonight’s Democratic hopefuls in fomenting a little intergenerational warfare. We also pick winners and losers. (Hint: Suderman and Slade think Kamala Harris won, but she’s still a cop.)

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Debate Dems Wage Intergenerational Warfare and We Are Here for It

In a post-debate quickie podcast, Reason‘s resident millennial/xennials Peter Suderman, Stephanie Slade, and Katherine Mangu-Ward slice and dice the two nights of Democratic Debates. We discuss the surprisingly fast escalation of the health care debate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s shining anti-interventionist moment. And since Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie weren’t on the podcast, we join tonight’s Democratic hopefuls in fomenting a little intergenerational warfare. We also pick winners and losers. (Hint: Suderman and Slade think Kamala Harris won, but she’s still a cop.)

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Kamala Harris Can’t Stop Promising To Do Things Via Executive Order

Executive orders on executive orders! If Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) becomes president, expect a lot of them.

Near the start of the second Democratic primary debate, the presidential hopeful said she would usurp executive authority to reinstate protections for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from deportation.

“I will immediately, by executive action, reinstate DACA status and DACA protection to those young people,” she said. “I will further extend protection for deferral of deportation for their parents and for veterans…. I will also immediately put in place a meaningful process for reviewing the cases for asylum and release children from cages and get rid of the private detention centers.”

President Donald Trump successfully weaponized this issue because his predecessor, President Barack Obama, implemented DACA via executive action—a sobering reminder of the flimsy nature of such directives, which can be overturned when a new commander in chief enters the Oval Office.

Harris also threatened to use executive action to curb gun use if Congress does not act within the first 100 days of her presidency. An executive order would be put in place to establish “comprehensive background check policy,” she said, and she would also require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “to take the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law.” Another executive order would ban imports on assault weapons, she said. Such measures have failed to pass Congress for years.

Harris’ rhetoric on Thursday night matches her past statements expressing support for executive action on both guns and immigration.

But she did change her position (once again) on whether she would abolish private health insurers by implementing Medicare for All. In a January CNN town hall, Harris said she supported the measure, then walked those comments back almost immediately after. Tonight, though, she was in favor again—one of two candidates to raise their hands when asked by moderators if they would eradicate all private insurance companies.

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Kamala Harris Can’t Stop Promising To Do Things Via Executive Order

Executive orders on executive orders! If Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) becomes president, expect a lot of them.

Near the start of the second Democratic primary debate, the presidential hopeful said she would usurp executive authority to reinstate protections for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from deportation.

“I will immediately, by executive action, reinstate DACA status and DACA protection to those young people,” she said. “I will further extend protection for deferral of deportation for their parents and for veterans…. I will also immediately put in place a meaningful process for reviewing the cases for asylum and release children from cages and get rid of the private detention centers.”

President Donald Trump successfully weaponized this issue because his predecessor, President Barack Obama, implemented DACA via executive action—a sobering reminder of the flimsy nature of such directives, which can be overturned when a new commander in chief enters the Oval Office.

Harris also threatened to use executive action to curb gun use if Congress does not act within the first 100 days of her presidency. An executive order would be put in place to establish “comprehensive background check policy,” she said, and she would also require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “to take the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law.” Another executive order would ban imports on assault weapons, she said. Such measures have failed to pass Congress for years.

Harris’ rhetoric on Thursday night matches her past statements expressing support for executive action on both guns and immigration.

But she did change her position (once again) on whether she would abolish private health insurers by implementing Medicare for All. In a January CNN town hall, Harris said she supported the measure, then walked those comments back almost immediately after. Tonight, though, she was in favor again—one of two candidates to raise their hands when asked by moderators if they would eradicate all private insurance companies.

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