The letter obtained by the Post also includes a long list of questions the campaigns would need the networks to answer. The questions cover who the moderators are, how long the debate is, and who will qualify for the debate. They also list things that networks should not include like “candidate-to-candidate questioning,” “reaction shots of members of the audience or moderators during debates,” and “behind shots of the candidates showing their notes.”
The campaigns also asked that the networks ensure that the debate venue remain at 67 degrees and offered suggestions for bathroom breaks during the debate.
Over The Garden Wall
So let’s try this again, shall we?
I didn’t actually take last week off from writing this non-newsletter, despite what it looked like to outside eyes; instead, I wrote it as usual, and just as I was about to post it, everything disappeared. I’m not entirely sure what happened — all of a sudden, I had to log in again out of nowhere, and then when I did, everything was gone. This being the one place where I don’t write outside of the WYSIWYG window (even now!), that meant I had the option of saying fuck it and moving on, or starting over. I think I made the right choice. Anyway, what you missed was lots of pondering about social media in general and Twitter in specific, brought on by thoughts of what constitutes a “safe space” on the Internet these days. I didn’t come to any conclusions, so we’re probably better off all ’round that that didn’t come to anything.
**
This was in last week’s edition of Warren Ellis’ Orbital Operations newsletter, which also tied in with where my head was at, at the time:
[I]n a more fractionated and less operable digital-social world, maybe newslettering is the fallback into a functional tribal living. People used to complain about “walled garden” technologies that weren’t on the open web, but, ultimately, people like walled gardens. Choosing to tend a small communal garden is preferable to being pissed on for daring to walk outside, or letting just anybody in and dealing with them pouring flat lager on your bushes and shitting in the cabbages.
**
In the aftermath of all this, Bleeding Cool ran an exchange from a private email group for the purposes of… actually, I’m not entirely sure. Proving that there’s a smear campaign against the site, perhaps? But, of course, the exchange doesn’t prove any such thing, instead demonstrating that some people are concerned about the same thing and talking about it. Which… happens all the time, on a number of different topics.
The takeaway from the piece wasn’t the uncovering of a conspiracy, but that secret email spaces weren’t secret, if someone wanted to take that away from you. Which, I guess, we all knew already, because — and now I’m also thinking about the reported doxxing of Ku Klux Klan members’ personal information today, which turned out to be false info — there’s no such thing as a safe space online. And yet… and yet…
(The other takeaway from the Bleeding Cool story is that Bleeding Cool is petty and egotistical; the headline for the piece was even “Leaked, A Private Correspondence About Bleeding Cool,” underscoring the self-obsession of the whole thing. It’s not a good look for the site, especially as the subject that was being discussed was one of genuine concern — whether or not the former editor-in-chief of the site, who has now gone on to work as an editor at Dark Horse Comics, abused her position to downplay negative stories about Dark Horse in the waning days of her tenure. The combination of blanket dismissal and cries of paranoia really isn’t a good look for the site.)
**
On an entirely different note: there’s going to be a new Star Trek TV show, it was announced today — although “TV” is one of these terms that’s increasingly inaccurate: it’s a show that’ll premiere its pilot on television, then switch to web for the rest of the series. It’s news that’s at once a no-brainer (It’s Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary next year, after all; leverage that brand!) and surprising, mostly because it seemed like it would never happen, with the franchise having moved almost exclusively to the big screen. The response has been amusing, because I’ve seen countless people offer up suggestions on what happened after Star Trek: Voyager, the latest television series in terms of chronology from the mythology, and I’ve just been thinking oh my God, people, there are entire novel series that go beyond that, we’re past the Typhon Pact already. I am a nerd.
And yet, I love the Star Trek novels. Part of it is nostalgia — I read them as a teenager, before picking them up again relatively recently, thanks to the library — and part of it is simply that I love the expanded universe of it, the political nature of the books as they go on, watching the writers spin out entire franchises based on throwaway lines or unexplained plots, knowing they can get away with it because no-one but the hardcore fans are really paying attention.
Along those lines, I can share something that amused me greatly about Star Trek fandom and licensed tie-ins recently; I was reading The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, because I am a nerd, and it’s exactly what it says on the tin: a re-telling of Trek mythology from the point of view of the fictional Captain of the equally fictional U.S.S. Enterprise. The best part of the whole book, which is pretty lackluster overall, is the decision on behalf of someone in the production chain to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier an apocryphal tale.
Actually, that’s not true; what’s great is the way in which the book spends a lot of time and energy not only telling you that Star Trek V didn’t “happen,” but also making fun of the movie. The conceit is that Star Trek V was a movie created within the fictional Star Trek universe, and as such is filled with inaccuracies and outright dumb moments that our real heroes would never have suffered through. It’s such a very strange, very fannish impulse that it was far funnier than it had any right to be, and for very different reasons than what was likely intended.
Thinking about it again, it’s petty and unnecessary in a similar way to the Bleeding Cool thing: an exertion of so much effort than saying “Oh, I’m not bothered at all” and playing it cool comes off as unconvincing and forced. Perhaps this isn’t just about the Internet and social media, email groups and whatever else we get from technology. Perhaps we’ve never really had the safe spaces I imagine.
Weird Mental Headcanon #1
Barry Allen is never ahead of any trends. In fact, he’s normally somewhere between six months and a year behind everyone else, despite the best efforts of everyone else around him. He’s an anti-hipster, perpetually late to everything but amazingly enthusiastic about his love for it when he finally discovers it.
Watched INTERSTELLAR over the weekend, and was struck once again by the emotional pitch of our popular arts at the moment. I sometimes wonder if people in the future will look back at what we’ve made over these first fifteen years of the 21st Century and ask, why is everyone crying all the time?
Ryan made the announcement inside a closed-door meeting of his colleagues where they had collected to eat Chik-Fil-A sandwiches and plot a path forward.
Proof that political reporting is as in-depth as ever. From here.
I’ve Been Trying Hard Against Unbelievable Odds
I’m writing this while waiting for the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to drop, because that’s just how I roll. Well, that and writing things like “that’s just how I roll” while cringing inside, thinking no, I’m too old and too white and too non-bro to even say that as some kind of arch-joke, what have I become to myself. Suffice to say, my attention may be wandering at times during this one.
(I’m waiting for it for work-related reasons, I should add; otherwise, I’d go off and have a life and watch it later.)
**
As if my complaints last week that I was getting old wasn’t a sign that I’m getting old, the fact that I woke up on Wednesday morning having somehow pulled a muscle in my foot while asleep, making walking particularly painful and difficult definitely rammed that message home. To this day, I have no idea what actually happened to my foot. Tuesday, it was fine, Wednesday, putting my weight on it was as if someone was trying to crush it under a particularly heavy rock.
The strangest part of the whole experience, though, came on Saturday. By that point, the pain had essentially faded to “occasional twinge when you least expect it, but it’s more or less okay really” status, but I couldn’t stop limping as if it was as painful as ever. It was muscle memory, I guess, but the strangest example of it I’ve ever experienced — in the space of just three days, my right leg had apparently forgotten how to walk normally, and was instead doing this pre-emptively protective thing so that I wouldn’t put my entire weight on my heel entirely unconsciously. I spent the next day or so purposefully thinking and this is how we walk, step, step, step, step every time I had to go somewhere. Chalk this up to the ever-shrinking attention span of today’s generation, etc. etc.
**
Except, of course, I’m not “today’s generation”; I spent a bunch of time last week thinking about the whole Millennial thing, prompted by writing about the whole millennial pledge kerfuffle for Wired, and ended up in some kind of strange mindset thinking about how generations actually work, anyway. I was surprised to see so many millennials blame boomers for the state of the world on social media, and completely ignore “Generation X,” who — according to the Internet, at least — were born in the mid-60s through the late-80s. Aren’t they (we) the ones who’ve messed things up for the millennials most recently? Shouldn’t we be bearing the brunt of the anger and cynicism and suspicion and all the other bad things from today’s kids? I mean, it’s Generation X that’s in charge now, surely (Maybe Boomers are still owning a bunch of shit and all, but isn’t it more likely to be the 40-and 50-year-olds who’re actually making the bad decisions on a practical level, instead of the 60- and 70-year-olds? Or is the idea that things were already so screwed by the boomers that by the time the Gen X’ers got their hands on stuff, it was already ruined?
I could be wrong, and I’m sure that many would be happy to tell me why I am, given the chance — I love seeing on Twitter when people tell me that I’m stupid and wrong and how could I think that because they’ve thoughtfully tagged me with their disdain, he lied — but I feel like Generation X has (ironically, considering the self-obsession it displayed back in the day) become this oddly forgotten generation that’s being forgiven for all kinds of shit purely because people are too eager to blame even-older folks. Yay…?
**
Still no Star Wars trailer, for those keeping track at home. (I mean, by the time you’ll read this, you’ll have watched it seven times and gotten all the nostalgia out of your system. Or, considering how masterfully the teasers to date have traded entirely on the “It’s just like it was when you were a kid, honest” appeal, perhaps that should be getting nostalgia into your system. But still.)
**
Talking of Twitter, as I just was, I have that open right now to give me a head’s up on when the trailer is out, and it’s fascinating to watch the Canadian election results come in with landslide results like this. I’m reminded of the Scottish election results earlier this year when the SNP just decimated their opponents, winning all but three seats in the races they were running in, but without my inherent distrust of the SNP.
(Why do I have such a distrust of the SNP? I can’t really explain it, beyond believing that the line between “patriotism” and “xenophobia” is almost impossibly fine and being really freaked out by the zealotry with which SNP supporters talk about the party. I’m almost jealous of those who do believe in the cause that much, to be honest; I wish I had that much faith in any political party, but I don’t.)
This does feel like a year of “shock” election results, though; the Canadian results, the Scottish results, even Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide win as the leader of the UK Labour party. There’s something in the air, even if I’m not necessarily sure if it’s the kind of leftwing swing that’ll cross over elsewhere — mind you, Bernie Sanders is a lot more popular than anyone expected, so maybe so. It does make me wonder what next year’s US elections are going to be like, though. I expect emotional carnage, if nothing else.
**
Recent reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Recent listening: Moondog’s 1969 album Moondog, which remains really amazing. It makes me realize I need to find some more wonderful classical and jazz to listen to when I’m in the mood.
I mean, seriously, you guys.
**
Still no Star Wars — I honestly believed it was dropping at 5:30, but it’s now almost an hour later and no sign — but I’m going to wrap this up and post it, because I’m approaching 1,000 words and that’s more than enough of me going on, even with some Moondog to keep it light. If anyone is reading this, I hope you’re doing well, and if you’re not, then at least the end of the bad times are in sight.