"Qui plume a, guerre a." — Voltaire
I subscribe to the Substack of Michael Jochum, drummer and astute observer of life. I don’t read all his missives, especially when I have a reading backlog, but I try. One he wrote a few days ago, “The Permission to be Cruel” was unusually powerful for me. It is on the theme of “the cruelty […]
Welp, it took less than a decade for someone to find a way to one-up (or, more accurately, one-down) the Sad Puppies fiasco at the Hugos. Their “hold my beer” stunt happened last October, at the 81st Worldcon in Chengdu, China. A lot of science fiction authors had protested awarding the bid to Chengdu because […]
One of the things that makes a good reporter good is their ability to discern meaningful patterns in a wide range of available data. The key word there being meaningful. I would expect chatbots to be great at pattern recognition. That’s how they string stuff together. And I would expect people to be favorably disposed […]
So I’m no longer a reporter. I decided to quit before I was fired. If you want to know why, read this and this. The paper I wrote for doesn’t exist anymore, except as a token tab on a website. The editor who had hired me — and who was suddenly and unexpectedly escorted out […]
In a recent New Yorker essay, staff writer Masha Gessen argued that the press should not boycott the White House in the wake of the Jim Acosta debacle (“After the White House Banned Jim Acosta, Should Other Journalists Boycott Its Press Briefings?,” Nov. 9). As a reporter who covers government, and by extension politics, I […]
Late last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer announced that he will soon succumb to cancer. The Post respected his wishes to keep the news low-key, and in the editorial board’s tribute to him noted that “[h]is unsparing judgments were cheered by some readers while angering others,” yet “few could disagree that he […]
I was reading an article on the subject of the “right to repair” movement a little while ago and it got me thinking about why this apparently commonsense concept comes across as almost quixotic in a country that prides — or used to pride — itself on its self-reliance. First of all, while I understand […]
When it was revealed that Jodie Whittaker would be the thirteenth Doctor, I was thrilled — I’ve been waiting for this ever since 1981, when Tom Baker wished good luck to his successor, “whoever he — or she — may be.” But of course, being something of an old-school Whovian, I recalled that this is […]
Something I whipped up this evening in response to a recent discussion in the Facebook group of the Star Trek TNG podcast “The Greatest Generation.” The topic was a 20-minute fan edit of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. One of the participants raised the question: Is it possible to make a fan edit of the […]
I say “showed up” rather than “marched” because we arrived at the Ellipse by the Washington Monument early, around 9 am, and left shortly after noon, as the crowds were really starting to come in. As we joined the thin stream of departing early birds — soaked, cheerful, signs streaked with runny ink — we […]