We truly are in a dark dystopian timeline

I was kind of horrified at the idea of Quentin Tarantino making an R-rated Star Trek movie — it kind of misses the point.

Star Trek is about hope. It’s about exploration and finding the right way to do things, not the easy way. It tells us how we can be better, how we too can find peace among the stars. That thematic line doesn’t seem to line up with any of Tarantino’s previous work, so unless he proves me seriously wrong, this film won’t necessarily capture the spirit of what makes Star Trek so good. It’ll just be The Hateful Eight but in space.

Now, though, something even more incongruous: they’re making a Banana Splits movie. You may remember this if you’re above a certain age, a Saturday morning live-action kids series with goofy people in goofy costumes and goofy plots which wasn’t very good, but nowadays, Hollywood is so desperate for ideas that they’re remaking any old dreck from fifty years ago.

Only to make it “fresh”, they’re remaking it as a horror movie.

I didn’t watch it when I was 12, I’m not going to watch the splatter-movie version when I’m 62.

Hey, you know what else is wrong with this timeline? David Bowie is dead, and Donald Trump is president.

Is there something funny going on at Patheos?

I was contacted by someone who said there are simmering complaints in the comments sections at Patheos — some are seeing heavy-handed filtering, in particular, that comments discussing Beliefnet or Patheos itself are getting blocked. You can see some of those concerns expressed in comments to this post by Ed Brayton. I don’t comment on that network, so I haven’t seen it myself.

Interestingly, there is a precursor to this concern from 2017. Several Patheos bloggers jumped ship back then, concerned that the religious conservatives who owned the network were meddling with the content.

Yvonne Aburrow, one of the writers who left Patheos, summed up the feelings of some of the writers: “If there are to be blog aggregators or multi-blog hosting sites, they need to be independently-owned, collective, and egalitarian. I (and many others) are just not comfortable with the corporate world being able to control our content, especially if that corporate world is too closely linked with the evangelical Christian right.”

Huh. Interesting. We recently killed the advertising on Freethoughtblogs (which was managed by Patheos!) because it was pathologically annoying and getting in the way of our ability to just write, at the expense of all of our revenue…yeah, we’re writing for you for free right now. I guess we’re living the dream of Ms Aburrow, but it also means we put a damper on any expansion plans for a while.

I challenge the Queen of England to battle!

Justin Bieber ludicrously challenged Tom Cruise to a battle…so it’s a thing now. You have to pick a famous person who is 31 years older than you to a fight. That’s getting a bit tricky in my case, since I’ve got to find someone who is 93 years old. Fortunately, I have a contender: Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. She’s 93 years old, exactly right.

I think I can take her. Pretty sure, anyway. If I win in a trial by combat, do I get to take over her throne?

Welcome to the new wasteland, same as the old wasteland

YouTube has made a serious mistake. They usually try to pretend to be above all the petty bickering going on in their medium, intervening only when “objective” criteria are violated, but they slipped and openly ignored their own rules in the case of popular asshole, Steven Crowder. He’s been spewing bigoted bullshit for as long as he’s had a channel, and one could argue that that is the source of his popularity. Now, though, when he’s called on his use of incessant racial and gay slurs, YouTube punted.

To add to the irony, it’s Pride Month, and YouTube has put up their logo in rainbow colors…while the constant assault against LGBTQ creators is in full flood, unchecked by any rules or authority.

“I think controversy and the very aggressive communities that can exist similar to Crowder, I think that drives engagement, and that drives views, and that drives advertising revenue,” he said.

YouTube, Amer said, knows exactly what it’s doing.

“When you have a platform like YouTube does, you have a choice. You can make the world a better place or you can manipulate it to make as much money as possible, and YouTube is staunchly in the place of making as much money as possible,” they said.

Is anyone surprised? That’s always been the goal of the companies that dominate social media. They aren’t altruistic in the slightest.

However, the decision to support only combative content isn’t the only way to make money, it’s just the easiest, least mindful way. It’s the same decision made by proponents of reality TV; why put any effort into quality writing, good production values, or interesting and educational content when you can throw a couple of idiots in an arena, prod them a bit, and people will contentedly watch them flail at each other?

Remind me not to do that again

Last Friday, I went to the doctor for a few minor complaints: tinnitus and a painfully spastic trapezius muscle. I got drugs! Cetirizine to shut down those spring allergies that might be worsening the tinnitus, and cyclobenzaprine for the muscle pains. Like a good boy, I took them exactly as prescribed over the weekend.

I don’t know whether I’m just peculiarly sensitive to them, or whether there was some major synergy between the two, but that was a totally lost weekend. Both say “may cause drowsiness”…I was constantly fading out and falling asleep, and I got little done. The cyclobenzaprine warns of “dry mouth”, and I was totally parched, dry mouth, dry adenoids, dry throat, dry vocal cords. I creaked when I talked. So I stopped on Sunday, figuring that hearing cicadas everywhere I go and having my chest spasm every time I coughed or laughed was less of a bother than the drugs.

Unfortunately, it’s taking a while for them to clear from the system. Here it is Wednesday and I’ve still got dry mouth (although it’s easing) and my eyes are still a bit blurry, and I’ll probably have to take a nap later today. At least I know these drugs are potent, they’re maybe just a tad too much for what ails me. I’ll keep ’em around in case I feel the urge to have the most boring party in the universe.