Here’s a video that was posted on October 4th and has been making the rounds. I’ve seen Jim Meskimen before (he’s phenomenal) and I’ve seen “deep fakes” before, but this is quite the combo. We live in interesting (and potentially scary) time.
I saw Ad Astra this past weekend, which is doing its part to make sci-fi hard like vibranium not squishy like flubber Scientist James O’Donoghue decided to make an animation to demonstrate how “warp speeds” worked in Star Trek, its various incarnations known for loving science… while certainly not being beholden to rigidly adhering to known norms because writers. In any case, even though vast distances can be crossed in three days or three weeks…
I stumbled across this longer article from BBC Scotland going into the impact of the Vikings last year, well after Leif Erikson Day and thought, “Why not use it for later?” And so I scheduled it for far in the future, much as my Norwegian ancestors put up blog posts and salt cod for later use.
While I don’t currently work in the non-profit realm, I spent many years working at theaters that were, almost invariably, non-profits. The anthropology of theaters is worth another post (or really, a book), but suffice it to say that pretty much all the theaters I’ve ever worked at started based on the zeal and passion of a handful of people. They were artistic start-ups, if you will. Time and again, I saw theaters that hit…
Trying to make a living –or just some nontrivial income– from your creative endeavors seems like a monumental task. At least it feels so for me. Luckily, for me, I enjoy some of the minutiae of process and procedures and figuring out devilish details I can repeat so all that small stuff is not stuff I sweat over. Then I constantly get reminded about how much I don’t know. Also I don’t have enough time.…
This past week at work, talk drifted to Tolkien and constructed languages, or conlangs, because that’s how we roll. Now, I’m not about to present any paper to the Language Creation Society. It takes a lot of time to create a full, working language. For Rogue Tyger, I have actual world languages stand in for the various human and alien languages, otherwise I’d be up to half a dozen conlangs by now. Nevertheless, I find…
I’ve never been to a Worldcon, but I’m thinking I ought to for when it’s in my backyard. George R. R. Martin, however, has been to just about every Worldcon he could for several decades running. This year’s WorldCon is in Dublin, so the Irish Times caught up with him and he mused on WorldCons and fandom and all sorts of things. If you want more of Martin musing on his career and art, you…
Continuing this week’s series of video posts, I came across this video from The Atlantic that touches back to an earlier article I linked to about work becoming people’s faith. I’ve long been interested in work-life balance and finding joy or at least satisfaction in work, perhaps because, as mentioned in the video below, conventional wisdom is no longer satisfied with jobs or, to a certain extent, no longer even satisfied with careers. No, it…
While not all, it seems an inordinate number of games these days — including games targeting kids — are designed to be addictive in ways that may not be in line with Federation ideals, so to speak. Do I mix franchises? yes I mix franchises. My fandom is vast. It contains multitudes.
Back in March, I had a longer post discussing the notion of comics as “idea incubators.” This isn’t my brilliant idea, it’s coming from comic veterans. Now as a storyteller is general and a fan of comics in particular, I’m perhaps predisposed to like this argument. However, I think it’s important to remind the bean-counting set that humans like stories. Audiences flocked to Avengers: Endgame because they had invested in the story and characters, not…