Tags: sequence

Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking - Farnam Street

Unless we know why someone made a decision, we can’t safely change it or conclude that they were wrong.

The radium craze | Eric Bailey

The radioactive properties of React.

The Rise Of Skywalker arrives on Disney Plus on the fourth of May (a date often referred to as Star Wars Day, even though May 25th is and always will be the real Star Wars Day). Time to begin a Star Wars movie marathon. But in which order?

Back when there were a mere two trilogies, this was already a vexing problem if someone were watching the films for the first time. You could watch the six films in episode order:

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack Of The Clones
3. Revenge Of The Sith
4. A New Hope
5. The Empire Strikes Back
6. The Return Of The Jedi

But then you’re spoiling the grand reveal in episode five.

Alright then, how about release order?

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Return Of The Jedi
4. The Phantom Menace
5. Attack Of The Clones
6. Revenge Of The Sith

But then you’re front-loading the big pay-off, and you’re finishing with a big set-up.

This conundrum was solved with the machete order. It suggests omitting The Phantom Menace, not because it’s crap, but because nothing happens in it that isn’t covered in the first five minutes of Attack Of The Clones. The machete order is:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Attack Of The Clones
4. Revenge Of The Sith
5. Return Of The Jedi

It’s kind of brilliant. You get to keep the big reveal in The Empire Strikes Back, and then through flashback, you see how this came to be. Best of all, the pay-off in Return Of The Jedi has even more resonance because you’ve just seen Anakin’s downfall in Revenge Of The Sith.

With the release of the new sequel trilogy, an adjusted machete order is a pretty straightforward way to see the whole saga:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Phantom Menace (optional)
4. Attack Of The Clones
5. Revenge Of The Sith
6. Return Of The Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. The Last Jedi
9. The Rise Of Skywalker

Done. But …what if you want to include the standalone films too?

If you slot them in in release order, they break up the flow:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Phantom Menace (optional)
4. Attack Of The Clones
5. Revenge Of The Sith
6. Return Of The Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. Rogue One
9. The Last Jedi
10. Solo
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

I’m planning to watch all eleven films. This was my initial plan:

1. Rogue One
2. A New Hope
3. The Empire Strikes Back
4. The Phantom Menace
5. Attack Of The Clones
6. Revenge Of The Sith
7. Solo
8. Return Of The Jedi
9. The Force Awakens
10. The Last Jedi
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

I definitely want to have Rogue One lead straight into A New Hope. The problem is where to put Solo. I don’t want to interrupt the Sith/Jedi setup/payoff.

So here’s my current plan, which I have already begun:

1. Solo
2. Rogue One
3. A New Hope
4. The Empire Strikes Back
5. The Phantom Menace
6. Attack Of The Clones
7. Revenge Of The Sith
8. Return Of The Jedi
9. The Force Awakens
10. The Last Jedi
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

This way, the two standalone films work as world-building for the saga and don’t interrupt the flow once the main story is underway.

I think this works pretty well. Neither Solo nor Rogue One require any prior knowledge to be enjoyed.

And just in case you’re thinking that perhaps I’m overthinking it a bit and maybe I’ve got too much time on my hands …the world has too much time on its hands right now! Thanks to The Situation, I can not only take the time to plan and execute the viewing order for a Star Wars movie marathon, I can feel good about it. Stay home, they said. Literally saving lives, they said. Happy to oblige!

Hertzsprung-Russell diagram animation | ESA/Hubble

When I was in Düsseldorf for this year’s excellent Beyond Tellerrand conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Nadieh Bremer, data visualisation designer extraordinaire. I asked her a question which is probably the equivalent of asking a chef what their favourite food is: “what’s your favourite piece of data visualisation?”

There are plenty of popular answers to this question—the Minard map, Jon Snow’s cholera map—but we had just been chatting about Nadieh’s previous life in astronomy, so one answer popped immediately to mind: the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.