Various and Sundry

Enjoying your Road Trip on a Deeper Level

School’s out for so many people and summer road trips are going to be on many minds in the weeks ahead, so since while working on a post featuring a CGP Grey video next week, I thought I’d drop this here. As with many of his videos, I knew some of this information, but Grey gives you so much more detail, like the odd exceptions. It’s something to think about as you’re driving on the…

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Various and Sundry

Babylon 5: Billy Pilgrim Edition

Okay, so we’ve had several sci-fi stories where the main character slips between timelines and times in their lives (looking epecially at you, Picard in “All Good Things…”), but they specifically mention Sheridan being “unstuck in time” which is absolutely a Slaughterhouse Five reference. Also, for folks who have checked out the Babylon 5 Viewing Guide, this is almost certainly a film to check out after checking out the series. If you don’t believe me,…

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Various and Sundry

“AI” is BS (and NSFW on several levels)

Come on, between a key demand of the Writer’s Strike being the regulation of AI in screenwriting and some of my other posts about AI this year, did you really think I wouldn’t share this half-hour comedy screed from Adam Conover? It may be foul-mouthed, but it is funny. However, if you’re looking for a TL;DR one might sum it up as such: And did I mention it’s foul-mouthed? Beware around kindern and co-workers who…

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Various and Sundry Writing

More Context for the 2023 Writers’ Strike

So the not-quite-a-week-old writers’ strike is still on my mind, in part because much of the online forums I visit are full of, well, writers. So here’s a few more resources that I feel give you a bit more context about what’s being demanded, how the studios usually respond and what is officially on the table. First up, an 8 1/2 minute video from Nerdist that sums up the strike: If you’ve been following other…

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Various and Sundry

It’s the structure of the economy, stupid!

Some of you may recall an article I linked to back in February which documented how there’s now a business model, most evident in the technology sphere, that has been optimized without the customer in mind (well, assuming the customer doesn’t want a crap experience). Well, turns out the Cory Doctorow article is part of an overall book called Chokepoint Capitalism, and he talks about some of the findings in the book with fellow disenchanted…

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Producing Various and Sundry

How The Mandalorian’s sets go beyond Green Screen and Old-School Rear Projection

As some readers know, despite focusing more on audio fiction these days, I still am keenly interested in how films are put together, especially when it comes to speculative fiction stories… as they almost always employ some tricks to show the fantastical with as much thrift as craft. Last year, I learned more about how the latest version of Dune departed from traditional blue and green screens. I’ve heard a lot about the “virtual sets”…

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Various and Sundry

The Final Act of Worf’s Klingon Opera

I never wanted a Next Generation (TNG) season eight out of Star Trek: Picard as many fans did, but I did want more satisfying closure with the Next Generation characters than was offered by Nemesis. With that in mind, I’ve enjoyed this latest and reportedly last season of Picard, still underway. As Dylan Roth explores for Polygon, perhaps no character deserves closure more than that of the quintessentially non-Merry man: Worf. As a huge Deep…

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Various and Sundry

I’m Afraid the Force is with this Mashup, Dave

Look, I wasn’t looking for this. You weren’t looking for this. But the Internet finds ways of creating things we weren’t looking for. So enjoy one of the classics of sci-fi (2001) cited occasionally by some for why they don’t like sci-fi mashed up with another one of the classics of sci-fi (Star Wars) cited continually by too many as something that “ahktshually, isn’t science fiction.”

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