Friday Ephemera
Today’s word is elegance. || Today’s other word is barkour. || Yeah, okay, it’s pretty big, I guess. || Banana in orbit. || He does this better than you do. || And she does this quite well. || Don’t tell your mother. || Rotary mobile phone. || Whiskey decanter of note. || The Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships. || Win $2,000 at the Takhini Hot Springs Hair Freezing Contest. || Korean classic film archive. || Snake makeover. || “Mathematics operates with unearned privilege, just like whiteness.” || Scenes from the North. || How to confound face recognition. || The glamour of flight. || And finally, “The more leftwing you are, the more likely you are to have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness.”
Alert! Important news from the P R of California!
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/02/13/at-risk-youth-replaced-with-at-promise-youth-california-penal-codes/
1. Update your vocabularies immediately
2. There’s no more crime in CA. Come on over!
Oh, hat tip Instapundit…
Glimmer of hope.
Science ! I guess, though, if you have a brain growing male bits, you would have a genuine dickhead.
God the 80’s were spectacular – yes, yes they were. I still yearn for a spiral perm… When they became unfashionable, somehow it marked the end of my youth. My kids don’t understand why I like this song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38xNqZvBJI. I finished school in 1985 and had children in ’92 and ’94 – so I think it was written for me.
Update your vocabularies immediately
The belief in the power of euphemism – even bewilderingly inept euphemism – is almost funny.
Episode four is slightly better than its predecessor, in that something actually happens
I only made it to the end to see Seven of Nine.
I only made it to the end to see Seven of Nine.
Ms Ryan is wearing well. I must discover her secret.
And yes, I don’t think anyone could fairly call this series gripping. So far, it’s a drama without suspense.
That said, I did sort-of like one of the scenes in an earlier episode, in which Picard gets chewed out and f-bombed by one of the many hard-faced women now running Starfleet. Given the description of what happened on Mars and the tactical vulnerabilities, Starfleet’s position seems quite sensible, really, and Picard is the one who seems self-righteous and dangerously unrealistic. If the series were going to slyly throw shade at Picard’s grandiose moral chest-puffing, that would be fine, and long overdue. But whatever they’re going to do, I just wish they’d get a move on.
At the moment, now almost halfway in, they’re still coasting on nostalgia for earlier iterations of the franchise.
“At-risk youth” was already a euphemism for juvenile delinquents which itself was a euphemism for a euphemism for a euphemism for punk. Which I’m guess was itself a euphemism at some point. But hey, we got good feelz.
which itself was a euphemism for a euphemism for a euphemism
Ah, but the previous euphemisms were insufficiently euphemistic for modern needs. To maintain the current, near-hallucinatory levels of pretence, we must depart even further from any residual whiff of reality.
“At-risk youth” was already a euphemism for juvenile delinquents…
Yeah, but “at-promise” is positively Orwellian, I am so old that I remember “promising” meant someone was on the cusp of attaining success in some field, not the cusp of 5-7 in the slammer.
I think there is some English at-risk there, not to mention that whole, “criminal acts are just a mistake”, concept.
A ‘mistake’ as you call it is just a thing that happened. It’s true. You cannot refute a fact.
“No educators, no law enforcement will no longer be able to call our young people who make a mistake ‘at-risk,’”
said by someone who has never even toured a juvenile detention facility or attended juvenile court.
You cannot refute a fact.
You are right, of course, “some people did something”. I hang my head in shame and will report for regrooving.
I hang my head in shame and will report for regrooving.
I’ll just leave this here.
” At-risk youth” was already a euphemism for juvenile delinquents which itself was a euphemism for a euphemism for a euphemism for punk. ”
“Juvenile delinquency” appears in the 1950s ‘West Side Story‘, where one of the gangs mocks the term roundly.
“In my opinion juvenile delinquency is merely a social disease.”
“Hey! I gotta social disease!”
Maybe you had to be there….
My kids don’t understand why I like this song
I didn’t even have to click the link to know that was Bowling for Soup.
The first time I heard it on the car radio I nearly went off the road I was laughing so hard, a feat only ever equaled by Pop Music 101.
they’re still coasting on nostalgia for earlier iterations of the franchise
Star Trek is, I think, done. TNG and DS9 had some interesting variations on the formula, Voyager was riven by creative conflicts between Paramount and the showrunners, and Enterprise was already just retreading old ground.
The writers clearly had no idea what to do with Discovery, and Picard is no better. I don’t think this is fixable. The problem isn’t bad writers, it’s that Star Trek is a particular set of themes and tropes and they’ve mined out the premise. Nearly every SF TV show of the last fifty years has aped the basic structure and often the formula of Trek; there just isn’t anything new left to do with the concept. And unlike properties like Lord of the Rings or Dune, there’s no incredibly detailed fictional universe to explore with different characters or eras.
I know I’m a heretic for saying so, but Abrams Trek was the best recent thing to happen to the franchise; they had a vision and committed to it, and it was both recognizably Trek and a new style and tone.
I know I’m a heretic for saying so, but Abrams Trek was the best recent thing to happen to the franchise
[ Quietly hides breakables. ]
there’s no incredibly detailed fictional universe to explore with different characters or era
Oooooo… that sounds like a challenge! There are some sci-fi properties out there with very interesting world building. From totally “not-Earth” of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn or Stormlight sagas, to the “our world, just tweaked” of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter or Grimnoir stories.
That’s just scratching the surface.
The one thing I’ll give Netflix and Amazon credit for, is that making stand-alone series out of books, or adaptions has really gotten good.
Oooooo… that sounds like a challenge!
I just meant Trek doesn’t have that. There’s certainly no shortage of such out there in literature.
I’m still waiting on any adaptation of Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber to make it out of development hell. Asimov’s Robots trilogy would be a good fit for HBO given their success with Westworld. Since Amazon seems to be doing humorous fantasy these days Robert Asprin’s Myth series or John DeChancie’s Castle Perilous would be a fun romp.
It’s a pity Disney bobbled John Carter as badly as they did, as there’s a ton of material in there.
I’ll be upfront about my biases and say that I’m not a huge fan of Sanderson or Correia’s writing (although I like Correia personally). I don’t think writing up one’s college D&D campaign qualifies as good fantasy lit, although I concede it’s a popular genre.
Sanderson’s Stormlight saga started out really well, and well written to boot. But it has slipped a little in the follow ups. Still (IMHO) one of the better ones around. He has a very dedicated fan base that follows his every word – and he’s a very dedicated fan-interactive writer.
But if you like world building, may I suggest Jack Vance as a credible alternative. Noy huge all encompassing sagas but scenarios that included gems of detail. There’s more than a few films possible from his works, the Dying Earth collection cries out for a decent attempt at film making.
there’s no incredibly detailed fictional universe to explore with different characters or era
Discworld.
may I suggest Jack Vance as a credible alternative
I tend to feel that Dying Earth is mostly weird for the sake of weird. Which may well be a viable target for adaptation, if you just go for visual spectacle. I think Lyonesse probably has more mass market appeal.
Discworld
Been done several times already. And is also not part of Star Trek, as I pointed out.
Much of the Discworld corpus is parody of pre-existing work, though, which only works if the audience is already familiar with what’s being parodied. I don’t think that’s the case and would explain why the existing adaptations have been largely forgettable.
The writers clearly had no idea what to do with Discovery, and Picard is no better. I don’t think this is fixable.
Discovery was bewilderingly bad. So bad, in fact, so comically incoherent in tone and particulars, that some people chose to hate-watch it.
Picard isn’t that awful – Discovery warrants its own category of badness – but it isn’t well-written, not least in terms of dialogue, and the structure and pacing aren’t good. We’re talking pretty basic stuff. From peering at social media, interest is waning somewhat and if I had to summarise a general reaction, the word meh comes to mind. Unlike some critics of the series, I don’t mind the departure from the expected feelgood tone, but what the writers and producers are doing isn’t being done terribly well. Again, it isn’t gripping, or anything close to gripping. And that matters.
Regarding the Abrams reboot films, I enjoyed the first one – the opening scene in particular was nicely done – and I thought the cast were good. But as things went on the writing became weaker and by the third film, I was decidedly underwhelmed. Whether this means the basic premise is exhausted, I couldn’t say. Though I don’t have any compelling ideas as to how things might be fixed.
I don’t think writing up one’s college D&D campaign qualifies as good fantasy lit, although I concede it’s a popular genre.
Joel Rosenberg did this the right way with his Guardians of The Flame series.
Guardians of The Flame
Let’s just say my position on the topic remains unmoved.
About the only implementation of the concept I can tolerate is the anime Ashes of Grimgar, in which suddenly being tossed into the world of their favorite fantasy game turns out to be horrifyingly traumatic to the protagonists, and for some of them not entirely survivable.
…in which suddenly being tossed into the world of their favorite fantasy game turns out to be horrifyingly traumatic to the protagonists, and for some of them not entirely survivable.
That is what happens in Rosenberg’s series.
I’m not going to argue my literary preferences. I’ve read Rosenberg, and suffice it to say that there’s a level of script immunity required simply to keep the main characters alive that strains my suspension of disbelief.