Today in unquestionably great decisions:

I know we've talked about this whole "Elon Musk wants to install brain implants" thing before, but now he's actually gone and done it. 

Um...hurray?

He usually dots all the "I"'s
and crosses the "t''s, right?

Ok, let me walk that back. Elon Musk didn't surgically implant devices into somebody's skull. Presumably a doctor or a surgeon of some kind did, and then only with express consent and what I'm sure is reams and reams of waivers and contracts signed in triplicate. But Musk is, as is usually the case, Tweeting about it, because, again, it's his company or whatever, and he likes to cultivate that Tony Stark: futurist persona which is, well, it's whatever. 

Pictured: that time Elon Musk
broke his unbreakable windows.

But it's his company, right? And he's not exactly famous for making business decision that aren't, well, terrible, right? May I direct your attention to the aforementioned Twitter. A company he preposterously rebranded to X, a name everyone either adds (formerly Twitter) or just outright refuses to use. Then there's chucking a roadster at Mars, moving to Texas, his multiple exploding rockets, and everything having to do with Cybertruck. 

It might help people walk again someday,
but I gather this killed a lot of monkeys.
Gruesomely. Like, a lot. So there's that.

Look, monkey murder aside, I'm on board with this technology in theory. If it works it could help millions of people neurological injuries, and evidently the first test subject's procedure worked. Like, the device is doing whatever the hell it's supposed to do. That first human test subject is "recovering nicely" according to the stories about this, and that's swell, but are they? And what if they're suddenly not? And what about Elon Musk's track record makes putting one's life in his hands a smart move?

Ok, fine, it's not like Musk performed the surgery himself, but then what is his role here? Is he just the money guy? Out there just putting a dumb face on the company? Or is he in some way involved in decision making? Decisions like the jumping on the MAGA train and letting terrible people back on Twitter? In either case, are these the kind of people you want to poking around in your brain? 

Wait, to be clear, he didn't perform the surgery himself, right? Right?

Today in eating our vegetables:

It flows so well...unless you need to 
pluralize a word ending in "r."

So ten year old me spent a fair amount of time and energy bemoaning that I had to learn cursive handwriting in school. I could never seem to get the tail of one letter to line up with where the next letter was supposed to start. It's the worst, although I did make some pretty valid points: I'll never use it, print is easier to read, and in twenty years, nobody's going to use cursive anymore anyway. I stand by these arguments, and would add that handwriting, as a thing people do, has declined precipitously. 

"Finally, a cis white guy weighing in..."

-no one

But, and this has no real bearing on my life as an adult childless shut-in, cursive is back. In California anyway. The governor signed a bill putting it back into the curriculum as a requirement, and I'm on board. Maybe it's just because I don't actually have to do anything, but I think it's a great idea. And since when has having no stake in something whatsoever ever stopped anyone from voicing an opinion on the internet? Never, that's when. The internet is something like eighty-percent unsolicited and uninformed opinions.

I once turned down a chance to go to
Australia for a geography competition because
I didn't want to miss Disney Afternoon.

According to science, says this article, handwriting is like really good for kids' ability to learn and retain information. Evidently, for kids, the act of writing--particularly about things they're interested in--forms stronger connections in their brains that just don't occur when typing. I, formerly a staunch and generally disinterested tween-age opponent of learning cursive, have a terrible memory and can serve as a cautionary tale about the value of handwriting. Actually, I can serve as a cautionary tale about a lot of things. I have a lot of regrets.

I say this from the privileged safety of
adulthood, but sometimes you just
have to eat your vegetables.

So why was cursive cut from the curriculum in the first place? I don't know. I suspect that it has something to do with a generation of teachers and school officials who, like me, grew up thinking it was a waste of time. Turns out that was a dumb move, because more people than ever can't find Canada on a map or tell you what onomatopoeia is. Are these things related? Probably? Who can say? What I can say is that sometimes just because something isn't difficult or not fun doesn't mean it doesn't have value or that we shouldn't ask kids to learn it. 

I can also say that no one ever improved a education by banning books. Or banning trans kids from sports. Or taking away bodily autonomy from--perhaps I'm getting off-track. All this to say, cursive is one of the reasons California is better than Flori--wait, Florida already requires cursive? Ok, well, Ron DeSantis is still a garbage human who still did all that other stuff I mentioned.

Pictured: California Governor Gavin Newsom signing
a bill to improve education rather than making life even
more difficult for trans kids. 

I'm 100% Pro Holodeck, however...

Look, I know technology and invention doesn't work this way, but still, sometimes it feels like instead of a fancy treadmill for VR we could devote our innovative skills, as a species to something like, I don't know, clean energy? Or maybe curing diseases?

"The money's in the treatment, not the cure so...no?"

-The American Healthcare Industry

Sorry for all the gifs, but it's just
easier to show you what I mean.

To be clear, I am one-hundred percent pro-holodeck and this weird treadmill thing the excellently named Lanny Smoot, a Disney Research Fellow (whatever that is) is demonstrating is pretty neat. It's made up of these tile-things which allow a person, or several people, to talk around in different directions without actually moving. Sure, I can go nowhere by just standing still, but combined with say a virtual reality helmet or those giant LED wall displays they film Star Wars in front of, it's basically a real-life holodeck. 

Above: canon. Filthy, filthy canon.

A what? Sorry, I forget that growing up, some of you might have gone outside from time to time. The Holodeck is that room on the Enterprise that can simulate any environment and let you interact with holograms of anyone, living or dead, real or fictional from anywhere and any when. It's a technology that Commander Riker uses, without shame, for holo-sex. Like, in the episode "The Perfect Mate" a sexually frustrated Riker actually calls the bridge to tell him where he'll be. I didn't catch this watching as a kid, but decades later, there it is: canon.

As long as you're swimming around in the money
bin, and not playing out Mrs. Beakley/Duckworth
slashfic, I guess it's ok...Riker, looking at you...

Ok, time to walk this back a bit. It is a step--pun purely unintended and vigorously denied--in the right directions. And that's super, but this technology is not a holodeck. You can't conjure up a sentient, hard light hologram of Professor Moriarity or anything. Not yet, but the often terrifyingly power of the incentive of capitalism means that Disney will be throwing money at Smoot's project until that's exactly what you have, with all the implications that carries with it. Implications like everyone locking themselves up in their DisneyDecks™ and avoiding real life.

Well, I take that back. A little. It would be, and I say this as a grown-ass adult who plays video games, a less sedentary form of entertainment. One of the first applications of something like this is probably going to be a really fancy Peloton that lets you stroll through famous or fictional landscapes. But it's also true that we could, you know, go for a walk and Disney could plant some trees or something. I mean, they are based in Florida. 

And as much as I'd love to see Ron DeSantis have to airboat his way to
work every morning, one: he'd probably enjoy it and he deserves no happiness
in life and two: the flooding will ruin a lot of decent people's lives too. 

Behold Me: A Finisher of Things!

Above: the physical manifestation of
the lies we tell ourselves and others.

I'm not like a new year's resolution person, but I've decided to try and be the kind of person who finishes things. I don't always do that, and I'm wondering if that's what's holding me back, you know? No? Oh, yeah, sorry, that was out of context. Take books for example. I read a reasonable amount, but way more if you count the books I just start. First there's the tier of books of which I make it half way through, and then the even rarer three quarters finished, and then up at the top of the pyramid, the ten percent of books I actually finish. All of them sitting on my shelf, suggesting that I'm far better read than I am.

Just shelves and shelves of partialy completed books, and I ask myself why? Why do I get so far only to lose interest or forget about them?

I'm not pro-manifest desinty, but I'll never understand why anyone
got as far as Missouri and said: yes, that's far enough. Let's stay here.

Comedic humiliation back then was slime-
based rather than psychological as it is today.

I don't know if it's my attention span or--wait, no--it's definitely my attention span. A childhood of half-hour cartoons interrupted by frequent commercial breaks that shifted the focus from the Ninja Turtles or Transformers or whatever to Cap'n Crunch or Gak. Gak for the uninitiated, is a blob of neon-colored slime sold by Nickelodeon to cash in on the "kids love brightly colored gross stuff" craze of the eighties and nineties. We loved slime, evidently. 

Pictured: Me, marveling at how Persona 5
clocks in at over one-hundred hours.

Interestingly if you look up "gak," you'll find that it's used as slang for cocaine which, given the era, also seems appropriate. All this to say, that I think I've illustrated my point vis á vis my attention span, so back to how I so infrequently finish things. I have a similar problem with video games, but I think that may be more the fault of how dang long they are now. Not to get all "back in my day," but back in my day, games took anywhere from a couple hours to maybe thirty? Thirty five? Now they're like, eighty to a hundred.

But whatever. This last week I finished a book and a video game on the same say and it felt great. It created the illusion that I'd done something with my life. I found that feeling invigorating, and I want more. More I say! So that's my resolution which, while distinct from a New Year's resolution, just happens to correspond roughly to the start of the new year. Do with that what you will.

Although, realistically, I'll probably never finish Persona 5. 
I mean, one-hundred hours. One hundred goddamn hours. Of time.

Same difference

One of the most embarrassing faux pas a person can commit in nerd circles is to confuse Star Trek and Star Wars because there is some kind of supposed rivalry between the two because of the similarities in title and that they're both set in space. But what I'm asking are they that different? Are they, really?

"Them's fighting words."

-gatekeepy nerds

The Tarantino Trek movie is evidently
not happening? Which I'm not mad about. 

I know, I know, we just talked about a new Star Wars movie announcement, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the announcement yet another Star Trek movie. Yeah, another, other, Star Trek movie. Brining the total of announced, but as yet not started Trek movies to four? So this is the not the Picard movie Sir Patrick Stewart has been talking about, and it's the Quentin Tarantino thing, nor is it Star Trek 4: This Time No Whales, although it is evidently set in the alternate timeline established in the J. J. Abrams movies which is confusing, but we'll get to that. 

"I mean, we're right here..."

-the cast of Star Trek's 

origin story

This is a prequel set "decades before" the 2009 movie and serves as an origin story. An origin story to a movie that was already an origin story for Star Trek which, for those keeping score, already has an origin story. Which, isn't a problem for me, I'll see whatever they crank out, but do you see what I mean by confusing? Here, allow me to get pedantic: the 2009 movie set up a parallel timeline which allowed J. J. Abrams to make changes to established canon and the look of the Star Trek universe without upsetting the fans, which it 100% did anyway, even if the movie was pretty fun. Still with me?

Pictured: That time Robert Zemeckis
invented the multiverse and made movies
needlessly more complicated forever. 

What's confusing to people like me (who maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of a fictional narrative universe instead of having a personality), is that if it's set "decades before" the events of that movie, then it sounds like it's set in the Prime timeline and not the new, sexier parallel timeline where Spock cries a lot and makes out with Uhura. But whatever, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that it's to be directed by Toby Haynes who also directed a bunch of Star Wars: Andor episodes. 

As with any Abrams joint, you'll want to
be sure not to look directly at the movie.

And this won't even be the first time the two series had a director in common. J. J. Abrams directed the aforementioned 2009 Star Trek, and in doing so kind of remade Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (farm boy with a magic destiny and no dad versus a bad guy with planet killing super-weapon) before jumping over to Disney and directing Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens...which is also basically Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. But the similarities don't end there.

Above: the mercifully not canon time the crew
of the Enterprise teamed up with the X-Men.

Both Star Wars and Star Trek consist of both live action and animated television series, including some specifically aimed at younger audiences (Star Wars: Resistance, Star Trek: Prodigy). Both have revisited characters decades after their previous appearances. Both have roughly the same number of theatrically released films (twelve each if you include The Clone Wars movie). Both have extensive tie-in material including books and comic books and both have rendered large portions of their respective expanded universes non-canonical. 

They've even started to look alike. Star Trek Discovery had a very Star Wars-y space battle in the Season 2 finale, and Ashoka opened with the crew of a New Republic spaceship doing a star trek. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that the increasing number of similarities between the two Star things, Trek and Wars, along with the way they kind of influence each other, makes confusing them a lot less worthy of ridicule. 

Look at 'em all, hailing vessels, scanning for
life forms, just generally trekking...through the stars.

Just bear in mind the shoveling...

They say you can't go home again, and that's patently untrue. You absolutely can go home again, it's just that it usually raises uncomfortable questions like "who are you?" and "what are you doing in my house?"

"I'm closing the door now, goodbye. Please don't make me call the cops."

-the current tenant

Show me hardwood floors and I'll tell
you whatever you want to know.

And I take comfort in that sometimes. Life is about moving forward, not back. But I've been struggling recently with a sense of nostalgia...wait, is it still called nostalgia when it's financially based? Like, I've been pining for the days when I spent less than seventy percent of my income on rent ever since my old apartment back in my hometown popped up on Zillow the other day. Yes, I look at places on Zillow in my hometown, even though I have no plans to move back there again. Why? Because I love to torture myself, and torture myself I did. 

"That will be all your money please."

-landlords

I like where I live, I do, but it's expensive. I live in Santa Cruz...well, that's not true, I live twenty minutes outside of Santa Cruz, because in town they'll ask twenty-five hundred for a studio. With a straight face. I'm not an economist, but what I think has happened is that this once sleepy little beach town was discovered by tech people with offensive amounts of disposable income. They buy or rent here, driving up the cost of living, and commute to San Jose to do whatever tech people do. Code, I guess? 

And we have whatever nightmare 
fuel is going on here.

Whatever it is, the result is San Francisco rent without any of the nightlife, art, restaurants, and culture of the city. But Santa Cruz is fine. It has natural beauty, my friends live here, my job is here, it's fine. Oh, and the beach is nice, although I don't surf. A fact that seems to befuddle and enrage the locals who view it as some kind of prerequisite, but whatever. It's fine. Fine but, like I said, expensive. Like, bananas expensive, so when the two bedroom I rented in Rochester, NY turned up on the real estate site for what I think is either exactly the same, or at least very close to what I paid back in 2008, I was given pause. 

The kind of pause that makes me wonder if putting up with the months long winters of upstate New York might be a reasonable trade-off for--what's that thing adults are supposed to be able to achieve at some point in their lives? Financial stability? I'm unfamiliar with the concept myself, but I'm given to understand it's something to aspire to.

But then again, the shoveling...dear God, the shoveling...

Movie or get off the pot.

"A new Star Wars movie? The world must
know my thoughts! Quickly, to the internet!"

-me, evidently

Did you see that there's going to be another Star Wars movie? Yes, another other one. Wait, come back, don't worry, I'm not going to express an opinion about it. Anyway, I guess this one is based on the Mandalorian. You know, that western-themed Star Wars series that got better the further it got from the western-theme? And that's objective fact, not an opinion. So to be clear, I'm not complaining about the announcement of another Star Wars movie. I like Star Wars, and I like more of things I like, and if Disney wants to pump out another one, that's great, I'm in. 

Again, not complaining, but eleven
is a lot. Maybe wait until plans are
a bit firmer before making the logo?

But I am having a little bit of a hard time believing the announcement of another Star Wars. I mean, I believe the announcement exists, I just think there's a decent chance that the film, which is impossibly titled The Mandalorian and Grogu, will not actually make it to movie screens. Or, failing that, Disney Plus. I say this because there have been a lot of Star Wars movies and TV shows announced over the past few years. Like, a lot, a lot. Like, eleven.

But what if he re-cut Rebel Moon in black
and white and changed the aspect ratio?

There was the Patty Jenkin's Rogue Squadron movie, the Zach Snyder thing that turned into Rebel Moon and was, by all accounts terrible, then there was supposed to be an entire trilogy directed by Rian Johnson but then toxic fans got all butt hurt that he made Luke sad in The Last Jedi, and because Disney likes money, they caved and gave The Rise of Skywalker to J.J. Abrams who tried to retcon all the cool stuff Johnson did and--sorry, I'll stop, you don't need me re-nerdsplaining why The Rise of Skywalker was the worst.

My point is that at this point there've been half a dozen Star Wars movies announced since Episode IX, and exactly zero have made it past the announcement phase. Zero. Which is fine. Make ten more, make no more. Either way, I need a commitment here.  I can't take this emotional rollercoaster. 

This, but with emotions instead of nausea.

Today in a qualified round of applause:

Above: Friedman, seen here probably 
thinking about unfettered capitalism.

I'm not like, usually one to applaud the actions of a giant corporations. Usually if a company is doing something right, it's because there's some kind of financial reason. I think this is the dead hand of Milton Friedman reaching out from the past with his "corporations have no moral or social obligations to anyone but the shareholders" nonsense. Which, fine, I get the logic, but it's a cynical way to exist as an entity, and probably the root philosophy behind everything that's wrong with everything.  

The arts? Sorry kids, we just don't have
the money. Say, have you thought about
joining the army? We've got tanks!

Anyway, my point is that when a business takes a stand on something, it's usually because they feel that it's more profitable than it is to do otherwise. But the BBC, right? Like, its funding is partly public partly from oversees licensing of its programming, so it's not like an ABC or a Netflix, but more like PBS. I think. I don't know, I'm not an expert on publicly funded arts, I'm an American and we refuse to fund anything that doesn't have blast radius. So a qualified round of applause for the BBC. You heard me: qualified. 

"Waaaah! But my worldview!"

-transphobes*

Ok, but what did they do right? They shut down internet trolls that's what. Doctor Who internet trolls, no less. Because out of the however millions of people who watched the episode "The Star Beast," a hundred and forty four of them complained about Donna Noble's trans daughter existing. Presumably by filing an online complaint from the basements and rapture bunkers from which they monitor the internet and all streaming media for signs wokeness and the queer agenda or whatever. Behold:

"As regular viewers of Doctor Who will be aware, the show has and will always continue to proudly celebrate diversity and reflect the world we live in. We are always mindful of the content within our episodes. So sod off."

-The BBC's official statement in respo-

Huh? Fine, I added the sod off bit

But, I mean, the sod off is implied...

Whoa...hold on...

Well done. But you may have noticed that I said "a qualified round of applause." What's giving me pause is their summation of the complaints found on their complaint page:

"We have received complaints from viewers who object to the inclusion of a transgender character in the program and from others who feel there are too few transgender people represented."

-The BBC, giving me pause

Wait, what? I have no doubt that there very well might be viewers writing the BBC and pointing out that one trans character is a start, but not there yet. And they would be correct. So while I applaud the BBC for firing back at the shitty transphobes, but I'm not sure they needed to both sides, this, you know?

Sixty years and exactly one named trans character? The too-fewers have a point.

*not this specific child, this is just a pic I found online. I'm sure the kid's fine and not at all an actual transphobe. Probably.

But what about the rubes?

Pictured: noted space cowboy and
bootleg boner pill pusher, Jeff Bezos.

So the FDA evidently demanded that Amazon stop selling these things called male energy supplements which aren't supplements at all but erectile disfunction drugs. Yeah, they go under several different names, but they were found to contain the same active ingredients as erectile disfunction drugs like Viagra. You know, the things people need prescriptions for, but because Amazon will sell anything, anything, no questions asked, they were being sold without a prescription. 

Although you really have to fall for the
rubes who ordered and then took these
aggressively shady "supplements."

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't like Amazon and things like this are part of the reason why...things like this and not paying taxes, strangling competition, making their employees crap in bags--it's a long list, but suffice it to say I'm not a fan. To be clear, I'm not a fan of pharmaceutical companies either, and I am in no way rooting for them here. My issue is the bypassing of regulations, not screwing Pfizer. The FDA exists to protect the kind of rubes who will buy shady pills off the internet. 

They--Amazon, not the rubes--do the same thing with those bootleg gaming consoles. Yes, I make lots of things about video games, but hear me out. I'm talking about the knock-off NES's that boast thousands of "retro classics," of which not a single one is in anyway licensed. They get away with this by throwing up their hands and pointing out that they're sold through Amazon, not by Amazon. See what they did there?

"It's-a me, Dr. Plumber! Come buy-a some pills!"

-not a doctor

Oh quit being so dramatic, you can
live without free (but not free) shipping.

Whether it's video games, or drugs or those weird public domain ebook pyramid schemes, their defense is that it's the third-party sellers who are hawking the "Big Guys Extreme Power" and "X Max Triple Shot Energy Honey" (no, really, that's what it's called), and not Amazon per se. But I'm not sure I see the distinction. Amazon is platforming those third-party sellers and taking a cut, so by any reasonable standard, they're responsible and I guess what I want to know is how come nobody does anything about it? Huh? Not us. Obviously. We can cancel out Prime accounts, but apart from that, we're powerless randos, but someone should do something, right?

Like I said, I'm pretty biased against the company already, and yes, this is just another screed against them, but I just find this "let's do this clearly illegal thing until someone calls us out on it, and then blame 'third party sellers'" galling. 

"We can't possibly control what people sell on Amazon."

-a guy who can 100% control

what people sell on Amazon