Grokipedia v0.2 observations

I was poking around on Grokipedia v0.2 on Nov. 25, 2025 to contrast it with Wikipedia. I was not evaluating its political orientation. The media reports that its political attitude is a primary point of interest but not for me.

Here are some observations.

GP tends to have long sentences that could be refactored into improved prose. There are a lot of comma splices. The style can be stilted and unnatural. The articles seem to be consistently too long. They include redundant content and repeat the same information in different sections of an article. Each topic has two or more subtopics. This contrasts with Wikipedia pages, which often have a flat outline and make judicious use of sub-topics and, rarely, sub-sub-topics, Grokipedia articles are always subdivided into two levels. The text of each Wikipedia article has been individually organized in a logical fashion. Grokipedia’s organizing principle is usually hidden. In addition, the section headings are long which makes them hard to scan quickly as you review a page.

GP only includes pure URLs as its citations. Wikipedia includes the date that the reference was accessed along with other information such as title, source and publisher when its available. Wikipedia can include citations that are not available online or are paywalled (for example in books or bibliographic databases) when the information is not available freely. Wikipedia heavily uses archive.org’s Wayback archive to preserve access to references that are gone or altered. A pure URL doesn’t help me grade the quality of sources or decide whether it is relevant to my purpose for visiting the site. When I did go to Grokipedia citations, it was be difficult to find where the referenced information was located. It also is a valid question to ask whether the citation actually supports the statement being cited or is it being misinterpreted.

With only a direct URL for the citations, Grokipedia will be brittle as the internet churns and pages come and go. Theoretically, a Grokipedia page could regenerate with new material, but that fragility inhibits consistent content over time. When source material is deleted, Grokipedia can’t stay current.

GP has some formatting issues. One ugly example was the mathematical page Brauer Group that had red errors in the mathematical equations. When you mouse over a citation index ([15] for example), the domain name popup is centered and hidden behind the mouse. In addition, because the target is small, you can’t move the mouse to uncover the domain. My mouse is big, but Wikipedia aligns the popup when you mouse over an internal link to the right of the mouse and there is enough room to move the mouse out of the way. When you mouse over an actual citation in Wikipedia, the entire citation is presented directly above the index number. In the body of an article, GP’s headings and subheadings are too similar in size and font weight so that they blend together. Although there is a line between top level outline elements, it is such low contrast that it’s not actually visible. This defeats the goal of adding a visual cue that a new section has begun.

GP has sparse internal links. Where Wikipedia has many cross links to other Wikipedia articles, GP has dramatically fewer. For example, I didn’t see any crosslinks in the article about Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In most articles there are many obvious places to put an internal link that aren’t used.

Although it contains an edit history for each page, that feature is not very useful. You can’t put edits in context. If the edit is complicated, you can’t interpret it. Of the several pages I visited, there was only one edit and it was still being reviewed. Allowing users to thumb up/down to an edit as Grokipedia does might be ok for Reddit, but an encyclopedia requires more detailed evaluation. It’s not clear what will happen when a page with edits regenerates.

The pages are white on black. Since many of the pages are very long, that makes them hard to follow along. As I scroll on the page, I lose track of where I am. The page map on the left has all of the text in the same font size and weight which makes it hard to identify the top-level outline entries. Since the lengths of the outline entries are long, they are usually folded onto two lines, making the page map even harder to scan.

Although, I’m sure Grokipedia v0.3 will have improvements, right now I wouldn’t use it as a replacement for Wikipedia. Grokipedia is written by an anonymous, evolving blob and there is no one to intervene. I can visualize the Wikipedia community because I know there are people behind the scenes. In addition, I can find Wikipedia projects that I can contribute to there and be a contributor as well as a user.

Wikipedia is organic and uses principles compatible with Douglas Engelbart’s Language, Artifacts and Methodology to augment human intellect. Why reinvent the wheel?

Review: Mon Oncle (1958)

Jacques Tati directed the movie Mon Oncle (My Uncle) which was released in 1958 in French. Tati plays the protagonist, Monsieur Hulot, an eccentric man whose sister, Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie), is married to industrialist Charles Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola). Hulot is the uncle in the title to the Arpel’s son Gérard (Alain Bécourt). The overarching plot is simple: Charles is supposed to find his brother-in-law a respectable job that can keep him busy and out of trouble. A lot of silliness occurs in pursuit of that goal.

While I was watching the film, I was mindful of the theme that modernity is providing waves of technology for a modern homemaker to be proud of. That is a subtext of the reality that the Arpel’s move through. Their house is strikingly spartan. It has minimal furniture with no decorations nor signs of personality beyond its touches of automation. Outside, the garden is stark with only tiny patches of lawn and concrete stepping stones amidst gravel patches. The stones form paths from the outer gate to the house and small places to entertain guests.

The one embellishment of the yard is a ridiculous fish fountain. When a visitor presses the buzzer to request entry, Madame Arpel turns a knob to release a stream of water from the fish’s mouth. Next, she pushes a button to unlock the outer door. There is something peculiar about the fountain because it is never the same height and when it is turned off, the water hesitates to stop. Once the guest leaves, the fountain is turned off right away. Later, it’s the origin of a lot of silliness when it’s damaged by Mr. Hulot’s ever-present umbrella.

Newly invented technology is a theme in the “modern” world that the Arpel’s belong to. At his work, the phones are treated as fancy novelties. Mr. Arpel’s boss, Monsieur Pichard (Lucien Frégis) has his importance indicated by having two doors in his office that he can direct staff and visitors to choose. The factory makes kilometers of rubber hoses with a complicated machine that Hulot manages to crash. At home, the Arpel’s kitchen is controlled by a few mysterious buttons. Monsieur Hulot tries to open one of the cabinets and can’t find the correct (unlabeled) button in the console to get a snack. Suddenly, a cabinet to open and reveals a pitcher. Hulot accidentally discovers that the pitcher bounces satisfyingly. The glass that was in the same shelf didn’t bounce as well. A recurring theme is that the button is an essential feature of modernity. They can be found all through the house.

Mr. Hulot’s world is quite different. It’s a world of interesting people, their games and everyday amusements. Nothing is new and the market is full of (expensive) food options. His apartment is on the top floor of a three-story building. To get there, he follows a maze-like path to the roof. The windows in the house let the viewer see the stairs and corridors he passes on his trip. The first time he makes the trip, his slow, seeming random, progress is intriguing. Hulot introduces Gérard to this traditional world as he brings him home from school. Gérard has friends who are fond of pranks. For one trick, when cars are returning from dropping the kids off at school, the kids make a noise as if a stopped car was hit from behind, causing the consternation of the driver. Another game is to distract people walking so that they run into a lamp post.

The filmographer Thomas Flight has a recent video In Praise of Comfort Films which reported that Mon Oncle has the most cute dogs in a movie. The dogs are running the neighborhood and looking for whatever dogs look for. According to IMDB, the dogs came from a local pound. It reports that Tati found adoptive homes for the dogs after the movie was finished, promoting them as movie stars. The Arpels are wealthy and their home contrasts with the background images of generic, industrialized apartment buildings.

Although the movie is subtitled in English, the first few minutes of the film don’t have any dialog, just music and the activity of the everyday world that Hulot belongs to. The film was pretty funny with lots of LOL moments. The transition from traditional life to the technological world of modern cars and Arpel’s factory is full of dissonances. It seems that every opportunity for Hulot to fit into the future was a complete failure, but it didn’t affect Hulot’s playfulness and humor. A final show of opulence is the Arpel’s new pink and purple Cadillac, offering a ride into the future for Hulot.

Mon Oncle is really funny. It won a 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. The version that I saw was the French Language version with English Subtitles and not the dubbed English version. The disk was released by Criterion and also included a humorous short “L’ecole des facteurs” (The Postman’s School) that has Tati as a newly trained bicycle postman. Tati made several movies with Monsieur Hulot of which Mon Oncle is the most successful.

I was surprised that my search for the movie in the statewide library consortium, Evergreen, only found two copies of the film. I was really glad that one of them was in my local library. The library has a section of “Binge Boxes” which provide a wide selection of themed collections to binge watch with the whole crew. Mon Oncle was in the “Criterion 3” binge box.

Review? Allegory? Commentary?

Film reviews explain and summarize the contents of creative expression. The results of an influential director’s efforts include a potent message. A film can donate an original idea to a culture’s growing lexicon. A review takes those ideas and puts them in a broader context. Film analysis is its own style of literature.

Film reviews not derived from a separate work would stand on their own. Rather than describing a released movie, it presents ideas from an imaginary film. It offers the film as an allegory or commentary while actually containing only the reviewer’s ideas.

A clever review can couch an important idea in a compact form. The review framework deflects the responsibility for the ideas to an imagined director. Generally, a review is neutral conduit for an idea. However, the text may adopt the review vehicle and make it a discussion about a controversial topic.

A successful review of a potential movie might be more palatable to our modern 5-minute attention span than a 3-hour cinematic masterpiece. Some essays might succeed as an analysis of potential films. An ingenious review could contain its own powerful message.

The Wild Robot (2024)

A helpful robot needs to have a purpose. Roz wakes up on the shore of an island with no one to ask for her help.

The beautiful graphics of The Wild Robot are appealing. Even in the trailers, the art design elements of the film are evident. The story shows Roz developing in her relationship with the island’s wildlife. Her initial attempts to be useful end up catastrophically and cause all of the animals to fear her. Eventually Roz learns how to communicate with the animals and they interact with less conflict.

The corporation which sent the robot presents a utopian vision of life in the future. They have shiny mockups of robots and corporate cities in their marketing materials. They resemble futuristic designs by Disney from the 60s. They offer perfect robots to do everyone’s work and liberate citizens. It was interesting the how the Universal Dynamics marketing videos in The Wild Robot have a similar cadence and tone to the corporate messages from Buy n Large in the animated film Wall-E.

When the city was disrupted by “contamination” by wildlife, the robots react violently. They override their purpose of enhancing the city and start damaging it to defend their (presented as) idyllic synthetic environment.

There are some pointed moments in the film such as the scenes that show the Golden Gate Bridge. The explanation for an extreme winter is also left unstated. The wildlife on the island seems to be healthy and Roz helps them thrive. The baby opossums are pretty funny when they meet Roz.

The movie is unusual in that the title screen occurred at the end of the film. The openings of DreamWorks films show the studio’s logo of a boy fishing off the crescent moon. Here, the animation leading up to that logo included vignettes alluding to other DreamWorks films before resolving to the logo.

The Wild Robot is very violent. When it is amongst anthropomorphized animals, it doesn’t seem to hit as hard. However, the interactions with Universal Dynamics always devolve to extreme violence, causing explosions and fires, firing guns at the animals with one animal’s death all but shown in an especially intense moment of conflict. Roz is defiant in her relationship to Universal Dynamics and titles herself a Wild Robot when they try to retrieve her. It’s always a source of tension when she uses the module to help them retrieve her.

The Wild Robot is definitely a movie worth watching.

Review: Playtime (1967)

The 1967 film, Playtime, directed by the French director Jacques Tati, was a project that was burdened by Tati’s grandiose vision for the film. He went over-budget with a tardy production schedule. This comic movie uses ludicrous situations that put the characters off-balance to create goofy humor. Without an overarching plot, Playtime is a sequence of scenes that don’t flow logically. They’re each silly and have unexpected turns.

One message of the film is that people are absurd. Early, the movie shows the main character trying to set up a meeting with a businessman. Eventually, he gets sidetracked by an industrial exhibition. After that phase of the action finished, much of the movie takes place at the grand opening of a nightclub with many silly mishaps. The humor in the movie is often visual. The dialog is primarily French with sub-titles but some speakers use German or English.

A theme of the movie is that glass can be a barrier and transparent at the same time. Seeing through glass walls leaves one isolated as an observer unable to participate in events that are so close. A door can be invisible until someone passes through it. At the nightclub, eventually a glass door was just a golden handle held by a doorman. Although a guest shattered the door, the greeter was acting as if the glass was still present. The glass shards were swept away but “the show must go on” so the door was simulated for the guests.

One segment in the film showed some apartments that were designed like department store windows. The rooms were on ground level with a fishbowl wall of glass giving full view into the residents’ lives. In one apartment, I was reminded of family Super8 movies showing travels and family reunions. The host tried to set up a screen to share travels but was rebuffed when the guest left suddenly.

The extra features of the disc emphasized the impracticality of Tati’s production of the film. Tati built a huge city-like sound stage of buildings and asphalt roadways for a modernist town. Tati had hoped other directors could use the same set. However, not long after the shooting was finished, the whole structure was destroyed. The commenters reported that on some days Tati would waste the day waiting for the sunlight and clouds to be just so. The cast might end up waiting and idle for much of a day.

The hapless architect was blamed for the mishaps at the not-quite-ready nightclub. The restaurant manager reports to him many flaws: The pickup window for the waiters was too small for serving plates; a bar that had ornamentation at the level of the bartender’s head; a tile in the newly finished dance floor stuck to a maître d’s shoe. One running gag was a waiter who tore his pants. As the evening progressed, that waiter waited outside and replaced defective shoes, a belt and tie that other waiters needed. Another ongoing joke showed that the chairs left deep crown-shaped creases on men’s suits. A sorry-looking baked fish was repeatedly seasoned with a flourish when staff passed by, but the fish was never eaten by anyone.

The action begins and ends with tourists traveling to an airport. The Eiffel Tower is shown in the distance to locate the action in Paris. The sets are constructed out of grays and blacks, straight lines and flat surfaces. It shows humans in a dehumanized setting. People don’t seem out of place, but nothing feels welcoming. The film is not showing a place where people would want to stay.

One strength of the show is how memorable it is. Even though is has primarily physical gags and silly situations, I can look back and see much of the movie in my memory. Rather than being based on a wide environment and varying settings, the film’s world was rigid and demanding. The world of Tati’s Playtime is strange and alien.

Film Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

A movie reel I believe the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was successful. It led me to think about how I can apply Fred Rogers’ lessons to my life. It showed how I might be a better person, one who is honorable and positive.

This story about the children’s television host Fred Rogers is not biographical. In other words, it’s not a biopic like 2018’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? This present film is inspired by an article in Esquire magazine, Can You Say…Hero?, written by Tom Junod and published in November 1998. The movie imagines how Rogers might have interacted with the journalist as Junod researched the article.

Early in his interactions with Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), the film’s version of the Esquire journalist, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is cynical. He wonders how much of Fred Rogers is real and whether his kindness is a performance and not sincere. The question isn’t directly answered. Viewers can watch the film and come to their own conclusions. Fred’s persistence in developing a relationship with the writer changes the journalist’s attitude. He ends up writing a positive article that doesn’t match his reputation for writing biting celebrity pieces.

One central conflict in the movie is between Lloyd Vogel and his father Jerry Vogel (Chris Cooper). The film follows the Vogels as they develop a relationship with Rogers. Fred Rogers presents the Vogel’s conflict as an opportunity to apply forgiveness. Despite his positive and prayerful attitude, Rogers doesn’t try to force the Vogels to reach a picture-book reconciliation.

In this film, Fred Rogers portrays an alternative view of what it means to be a man. One doesn’t need to be hard and rigid. You can care about other people yet stay true to yourself. Fred Rogers is persistent in meeting with the journalist, but they connect on Roger’s terms. Through that effort, the film shows that the humanity of both of them is worthy of honor.

This movie had many strong emotional moments. It is a film that I want to see again.

Impression: Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Thought bubble
The local AMC theater has been playing old movies for a few weekend showings. They have a couple different classics each week. That’s how I saw the original How to Train Your Dragon.

This afternoon I went to see the 1991 Disney Beauty and the Beast. They had it on twice today and the 2PM showing fit my schedule. I was the only one in the theater.

I don’t understand the economics of a movie theater. Much of their cash flow comes from concessions. They probably get money for the trailers that the show. They also have revenue from advertisers. Tickets haven’t been a substantial source of income for the movies I go to. Usually there are four or fewer in the audience. Is the fee for advertising prorated for the size of the audience?

In first run movies, the tickets are a big deal. Perhaps they just need to keep the doors open. It lets them make a net profit with the help of big movies while keeping the venue relevant by having a big selection that only few people watch. I usually go in the afternoon. That might give me a distorted perspective on how many are in an evening audience.

Perhaps the older movies are playing on behalf of Disney. It could be market research for their streaming service? Is there a corporate connection between AMC and Disney?

So, Beauty and the Beast was an ok movie. There were several songs. None of them stuck with me after the show. All of the characters were really rough caricatures and I couldn’t really identify with any of them. Of course, here’s not a lot of character development you can do in 84 minutes. I didn’t notice “adult” content that was meant to go over the heads of kids but be meaningful to adults (unless it went over my head too).

With 1991 being the release year, they could use technology to do some of the animation. I don’t think they did much. In the intro, you could see layers move as the perspective shifted on the trees; a good hint that it is cel animation. The characters were drawn primarily with cel techniques. A group of four or five animators were responsible for each character.

There was one place where you could see that they had help from computers. During the dance scene with Belle and the Beast, the stars, windows and chandelier were too complex to do as traditional cel animation. It was most obvious with the changing perspective as the camera went past the chandelier. I think the computer give the animators a starting point.

I noticed that this had a similar structure to the Aladdin that starred Robin Williams. The villain has a sidekick who is loud and obnoxious and is only played for comic relief. The sidekicks are throw away (and annoying) characters. There’s probably other tropesthat both films use.

It was a nice film for the AMCs A-List membership so that my only expense was the travel.

Review: Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)

Globe
Dora Explorer Márquez is a precocious girl who loves the jungle. Madelyn Miranda plays young Dora. She and her professor parents, Cole (Michael Peña) and Elena (Eva Longoria) are explorers. They encourage her inquisitiveness and enthusiasm. When Dora is six, her older cousin Diego (Malachi Barton) moves to the city with his parents which saddens Dora.

Dora’s parents have been trying to find Parapata, The Lost City of Gold. Once the parents find enough clues to locate the mysterious city, they emphasize that they are not treasure hunters. They are only in pursuit of knowledge to find the city. Despite Dora’s protests, her parents do not bring her with them in their search. They send her (now older and played by Isabela Moner) to the big city to live with her high school age cousin Diego (now played by Jeff Wahlberg).

At the high school, Dora’s unlimited positivity is scorned by stereotypical high school students. She knows more than the other students. She especially annoys the stuffy Sammy (played by Madeleine Madden). On her first day, Dora also meets the awkward Randy (played by Nicholas Coombe).

On a school field trip to the natural history museum, those four teenagers reluctantly form a team for the class treasure hunt at the museum. A staff member lets the team into a restricted basement to see ancient Egyptian relics. That was not the best move because treasure hunters who are on the trail of Parapata kidnap the four. They hope the kids will find Dora’s parents and unwittingly help them find their bounty.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark-style, they must escape dangerous traps beforeo they find the treasure. Randy names these challenges “Jungle Puzzles” that he is familiar with from computer games. The obstacles require the four to develop bonds of friendship and trust to succeed in the quest.

The film is filled with lots of lighthearted humor. Even the villains are more humorous and bumbling than scary. Dora’s pet monkey Boots adds more humor to the film with his playful resourcefulness. The film has its moments of suspense but Dora and her friends handle them with grace.

Dora is a really enthusiastic and positive person. The hidden gold is the attraction for villains while Dora, her friends and parents do not want the wealth. After returning from their adventure, Dora and her companions have a new freedom. Their negative classmates can’t reduce their enthusiasm. Dora has the opportunity to do more exploration with her parents. However, Dora decides to leave the rain forest so that she may study the “indigenous people” of her new high school.

Review: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

a film reel As the animated How to Train Your Dragon opens, you enter the colorful world of the Vikings living in their seaside village for generations. Surprisingly, all of the buildings are new. As the story unfolds, you learn why. The Vikings, their village and livestock often get attacked by dragon hordes that carry away the animals. Dragons, being known for breathing fire, set the village alight during their attacks.

Everyone in the village is devoted to their life by the sea and hunting dragons. However, it’s not long before you meet a youth who doesn’t fit in. Hiccup wants to help in the battles, but his temperament and physique aren’t tailored to the rough Viking life. Although he is an assistant to a blacksmith, he’s barely able to pick up the swords and axes they make. He is notorious for misguided inventions. Despite his reputation, in the opening battle, his catapult throws a net that catches a Night Fury.

Night Furies are rare and terrible dragons so mysterious that the books of dragon lore don’t describe them. When Hiccup finds the Night Fury that his net caught, he wields a knife to kill it. Then Hiccup berates himself when he dropped the knife and couldn’t kill the dragon—it was just as frightened as himself. He became even more demoralized and lost hope that he could ever become a real Viking. He was also confident that he couldn’t handle the shame if other villagers knew he couldn’t kill a dragon, so he kept his charge secret.

Soon, Hiccup was pushed to join the other teenagers in dragon hunter training. At first, he struggles to avoid getting burned during the challenges. He also gets in the way of the his classmates. However, the Night Fury teaches Hiccup many things that no Viking ever knew about dragons.

Hiccup’s life changed. With his inventiveness, he gets to experience the freedom of flying through the sky riding the dragon he befriended. The movie shows exhilarating flights through the clouds and exotic cliffs. During one of their flights, Hiccup and the Night Fury find a truly terrifying dragon. That dragon is destined to be the target of the Vikings’ biggest hunt.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) is a humorous fantasy that offers a story that will be appreciated by an older audience. The Viking that is different and ostracized by the others finds that he can be useful and valued for his differences.

Review: The Dark Tower (2017)

A movie reel
In the center of the universe stands a dark tower that protects the universe from chaos and destruction. Although we see the tower only briefly, the film The Dark Tower from 2017 shows repeated attacks that threaten the worlds that it protects. Earthquakes and mysterious lights in the sky are becoming more frequent in New York and other cities.

The Man in Black is orchestrating these attacks, trying to use the minds of children which he believes could destroy the tower and unleash devastation and death. The movie begins with a horror sequence showing an attack. We see the tower assaulted by an energy beam, but the tower is sturdy. Jake is woken from a troubled dream by the ensuing earthquake.

The characters of the movie, the Man in Black, played by Matthew McConaughey, the Gunslinger, played by Idris Elba, and Jake, played by Tom Taylor, battle over the tower. To connect the different sites of the story, door-like portals allow travel between worlds.

When the movie opens, children are in a playground until a klaxon sounds and alarms on a few children’s wrists activate. The kids walk robot-like into a dark building with a conical roof. Soon, the reason for their alarm becomes clear.

As the movie progresses, the Gunslinger’s prowess with a six-shooter becomes more and more amazing. For his part, the Man in Black can control other people with a whisper. For example, he can tell someone to stop breathing or probe their memories to help find Jake. Early in the film, Jake escapes from the Man in Black’s agents who are identified by a seam in the fake skin covering their face.

The movie struggles to balance the horror genre, westerns and fantasy. The three aspects dance around each other, starting the movie in horror and ending with a fantasy western style. As the story unfolds, we see more and more of the Man in Black’s powerful skills. The Gunslinger is empowered by the Gunslinger’s Creed that forms the foundation of his talents. As the film progresses, Jake discovers his own power, his shine.

At his mother and stepfather’s home, Jake is tormented by vivid dreams. He has been compulsively drawing scenes from the dreams because they are too real to be a dream. His family blames the visions and psychological distress from the death of Jake’s father. However, when Jake meets the Gunslinger, he learns that his dreams have been real.

Sometimes when I see a movie trailer, I’m not interested in learning more. This movie is an exception to that pattern. In the trailer, I saw a scene of an attack on the tower. I was hoping for more appearances of the tower, but those scenes are precious and kept brief and infrequent. Perhaps the attacks on the tower would seem repetitive and lose their horror if they were over-done.

As a film, The Dark Tower is successful and meeting its promise of a battle between good and evil. Evil seems to have the upper hand throughout the movie because of the Man in Black’s extraordinary skills. He can catch bullets and kill people with a phrase. The Gunslinger is tentative in his abilities, but Jake inspires him to continue fighting.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: