A couple posts I read this past weekend inspired me to update my “Writing” section, but before I get to that, here are the posts in questions. Ken Levine on the difference between amateur writers and pros. Ken Levine is, as one might expect of a veteran writer of shows like M*A*S*H and Cheers, pithy and to the point. I’ve heard both the anecdotes before, though I don’t think I knew the sources. Mark Evanier…
This interview, by Vox‘s Sean Illig with journalist Johann Hari, came out in February… and then I finally checked it out in March… and now I’m only posting about it in May. The way I finally got to it was actually to listen to it, because the article is actually a summation of a more detailed slightly-more-than-an-hour audio interview. It’s full of useful insights especially… dang, I might need to listen to it again.
So based on last week’s post about the schadenfreude over the disruptor Netflix being disrupted, here’s a piece by Joy Press for Vanity Fair about the changing landscape of streaming TV. Now, once you read the article, you may find the title above a tad click-baity, but the article is predicting possible directions for the industry to go. Many of those directions look to be safe, one might even say traditional, avenues in terms of…
Note: This post and the related links abound in spoilers for Ted Lasso, season 2. This past weekend, my wife and I finally finished the second season of Ted Lasso, the comfort-food comedy-drama that is nominally about soccer, but really seems to be a backdoor effort to assemble a Gen X mixtape playlist whilst making equal numbers of jokes and pop culture references every single minute. The gentle yet foul-mouthed comedy of season one remains,…
It could be because each micronation origin story is chock full of ingredients ripe for a quirky biopic, but I love learning about micronations. And there appear to be no end to them popping up. In fact, the Internet seems to have given some of them a new lease on life… or sovereignty. Over on BBC Future, Jessica Mudditt explores the ongoing existence of micronations, with some particularly deep dives into the origins of Atlantium,…
So, the news that Netflix lost subscribers last week has generated more online articles this week than… well, new shows dropping on Netflix any given week (spoiler: it’s a lot). It seems many people are delighting in the fact that the streaming disruptor is now finding its plans disrupted. Now, I’ve been a Netflix subscriber going back to when they were only DVDs by mail. In fact, I still get DVDs by mail in addition…
I’ve been offline for much of the past few weeks, but –in a sense– that’s okay, because the Internet can be dark and full of terrors… and terrible misinformation. Luckily, there are some energetic folks who have just may have found their calling, or a significant first act, learning how inane conspiracy theories and misinformation propagate on the Web. Learn more in this long-form article by Oscar Gonzalez for c|net. And stay curious… and skeptical.
Okay, so now that I think about it, maybe I haven’t always posted stuff like this, but if feels like a yearly update of “how to combat the time-wasting scam peeps spamming you on your phone” is warranted. This year’s edition is from Wired.
Part of the silver lining of experiencing a horrendous global pandemic has been people re-examining how they do things. I referenced Joe Pinsker’s article for The Atlantic last year, which is well worth a read if you haven’t checked it out already. Well, Alex Christian over at the BBC has an article exploring what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and some of the challenges of moving to a four-day workweek. The main issue is making…
Many of you have seen the sentiment expressed in the title above, but it’s always worth remembering… and remembering we, as a species, will likely figure out how to go faster than the speed of light before we break the above constraints. A post by writer Mark Evanier reminded me of how these constraints can often come into play in the writing world, which led to a good musing on his part: How does one…