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Agreed.

I would say it's important to exercise humility and critical thinking, and to differentiate subjective opinion from verifiable facts, fundamentals and principles.

In terms of sources: yes, anyone can say anything on YouTube or social media or post anything online. Therefore, we need to distinguish claims and assertions from knowledge. We need to recognize what's theory, what's fact, and when someone is presenting theory as fact.

When you're reviewing claims and assertions, are they presented with sources? Do the claims distinguish from sourced information and interpretative application of that information? Can we verify the sources are ones that offer actual medical and scientific research?

Are the claims operating within the basic principles of the fields in which they're engaged?

In terms of masking: electrostatics goes back to 8 BC and remains a fundamental area of science for extremely commonplace applications like air conditioning (filtration) and printers (photoconducting drums for positively charged image printing).

In this field, I have actually been impressed with YouTuber Aaron Collins, a mechanical engineer who uses an aerosol generator (that pumps sodium chloride particles into the air) and a particle counter with a probe that can be tightly punched through a mask. This allows Collins to measure the amount of particles outside the mask and the amount inside the mask, and report on the filtration.

This isn't just someone making claims; this is someone filming his test process and presenting results that make sense within the study of electrostatics. Collins also specifies that mask efficacy depends on a decent seal, and what seals well for him may not seal for others. These are assertions with evidence.

Someone may say electrostatic masks don't work and cite studies that consist of self-reported data. We might ask: do these claims exist within the realm of physical reality? They are saying that the laws of physics and the fundamentals of electrostatics cease to apply within a half-inch of the mouth and nose.

Does that sound plausible? Or does it sound like someone conflating theory with knowledge and tunnel vision with expertise, prioritizing social sciences over physics?

The responsible amateurist differentiates theory from evidence, and identifies or specifies what is an assertion and what is verified fact. The responsible amateurist accepts mask studies of self-reported data, but categorizes them as a study of human behaviour, not particle physics, reconciling both to observe: there are issues with human usage of masks, but behavioural studies don't overrule basic fundamentals of electrostatic attraction and repulsion.

If I tell you that oxybenzone, homosalate and octocrylene are potentially unsafe chemicals in sunscreen and that only titanium and zinc are known to be safe, you can Google those chemicals. You'll find this corroborated by the websites for the National Library of Medicine, the American Medical Association, the US Food and Drug Assocation, the National Institutes of Health, and the European Commission's Public Health branch.

You'll also see that there is nuance to be had: homosalate, avobenzone and oxybenzone are not proven to harm humans, but they absorb through skin, are detected in bodily fluids weeks after application, and have been found to be harmful in animal studies. While their effect on humans is not fully researched, animal study data is concerning, which is why titanium and zinc lotions, not deeply penetrating skin, are preferred by some.

By the same token: some medical professionals argue that oxybenzone should be avoided, but the rest are present in such small quantities in sunscreen that they are not harmful.

And when you can't find any corroboration within the basic principles of the field or from medical research, only other claims and assertions, then it isn't fact and shouldn't be presented as such. It is theory. And theory without at least a factual foundation is simply nonsense.

And going back to politics: after the Robert Hur DOJ report on Joe Biden's improper storage of classified documents was released, the internet was filled with clickbait articles declaring that Joe Biden was having serious memory problems and Robert Hur's report proved it.

But if you actually read Hur's report, you would see that the majority of people whom Hur interviewed had forgotten as much as Biden; that Hur excused all of them as having naturally forgotten events decades past -- except when writing about Joe Biden's memory at which point Hur declared he was senile.

The responsible reader should read the clickbait articles with suspicion. A responsible journalist would provide Hur's examples of Biden's failing memory, but then compare them to how Hur portrayed the memory failures of everyone else in Hur's report. And if a journalist doesn't look for those points of comparison, then they are irresponsible and inept.

According to the AP News on Dr. Fauci's House appearance:

Well, 'exponential' growth implies that the technology even works as claimed in the first place. But it doesn't. Text generations are dependent on prompts where the user has to write a detailed breakdown of what they want in order to produce a rambling, incoherent rough draft that they have to polish extensively. Image and video generations are clumsy combinations of previously existing images without perspective, lighting, or composition.

I think it's really stretching for AI-purveyors to be bragging about artificial general intelligence or artificial superintelligence. Right now, we're at artificial narrow intelligence, and even that limited degree is propped up by humans doing all the gruntwork: training the models piece by piece, cleaning up and editing the content it generates, producing its results and hiding the human labour involved. AI right now is a very narrow illusion of intelligence. Exponential advancement from a con game of 'intelligence' is simply a more advanced con game.

AI is a helpful assistive tool where, if you have an outline in bullet points, AI is great for converting those points to a working rough draft (a very rough draft) to be rewritten. AI is great if you took a photograph and want to enhance its inherent strengths. But the claim is that AI can self-generate great content, and it can't even self-generate 'okay' content. And when AI producers claim it can drive a car or run a grocery store, they're hiding how it's humans behind the curtain, doing all the work.

Well. Resuming our tradition of Quinn writing campaign messages:

I cannot stress enough that this is a work of fiction and not written by AI; Quinn Mallory's political views as presented by me are so far outside canon that to call them fan fiction is giving them too much weight; the views of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV, and if I am wrong on this one, then I owe Slider_Quinn21 an Alamo movie house gift certificate.

Also, in 2016, Quinn told Slider_Quinn21 to vote for Joe the Tiger Guy and Slider_Quinn21 has said he will always regret it.

I wonder how sentencing will go.

**

At this point, my theoretical conclusion is that the poor poll performance for Biden is specifically targeting Slider_Quinn21.

The method: create numerous low-budgeted, low-labour polls of the electorate that deliberately focus their sample size on Republicans and calculate the results to overcount Republican support and undercount Democrat support.

As these polls are designed to alter the overall average of cumulative poll results, these polls aren't checked for accuracy and reliability. Because these polls are deliberately fast and loose, they are cheap and quick to produce in greater quantities than independent polls that are costly, slow, and subject to rigorous review.

Polling is generally based on pooling the polls, Democrat and independent and Republican, and calculating an average. In the 2022 midterms, Democrat analyst Simon Rosenberg described an "unprecedented campaign by Republicans to flood the polling averages in the final month to create this impression of the red wave" that never came.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics … -democrats

The goal seems to be to demoralize Democrats with bad polling and lead them to waste valuable and additional resources (time, money, labour) on candidates and districts that the polls say are in trouble, but are actually well-positioned to win.

Meanwhile, candidates and districts that are in very-tight but still-winnable races are deprived of the resources that would let them be more visible and present to voters and eke out more votes to win.

The goal seems to be to make Slider_Quinn21 unhappy.

That's the theory I'm going with. But I could be wrong.

I cannot emphasize enough in the name of Quinn's sweater vest, Rembrandt's red sweater, Maggie's checkered top and Colin's cowboy outfit that the opinions of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV and if I'm wrong, I will script Parts 7 - 8 of SLIDERS REBORN.

You know, your comments about Batman have made me realize something about myself: I have a blindspot when it comes to Batman. I tend to overlook when something has gone horribly wrong with him, and I normalize it when I shouldn't. And since it's me, it obviously ties into the cancellation of SLIDERS and the death of Professor Arturo.

From 1997 - 2000, the sliders were destroyed: they lost Tracy Torme, Professor Arturo was murdered, Wade was sent to a rape camp, Quinn was 'lost', Rembrandt's fate was unknown. SLIDERS presented a fundamentally defeatist vision: teamwork, knowledge, ingenuity and improvisation were useless. Our demons and David Peckinpah would always defeat us.

Then in 2000, there was Mark Waid's JLA storyline, "Tower of Babel" in which the Justice League is attacked by R'as Al Ghul who makes Superman's skin transparent which overloads his solar storage capacity and supersenses. Ghul then gives the Flash superspeed seizures, traps Wonder Woman in a simulation of endless battle that will cause her heart to explode, uses a toxin to make Aquaman hydrophobic which will kill him if he's away from water for too long, and blinds Green Lantern so he can't use the power ring.

The League is horrified to learn: Ghul stole all these strategies and the technology from the Batcave. Batman has been creating ways to kill the entire Justice League should they ever turn against him. Batman barely manages to save his friends who promptly kick him off the team.

Waid's storyline seemed to trigger something in every other writer on Batman: Batman became a harsh, abrasive, callous, and abusive 'leader' of the Bat team. He rarely had a single kind word for Robin, Nightwing, Oracle, Azrael or even Gordon. Batman in his titles and every guest appearance made him condescending, impatient, dismissive and aggressive. His behaviour reached the point where Alfred moved out of Wayne Manor and moved in with Robin.

When Gotham City is struck by earthquakes and abandoned by the US government in the NO MAN'S LAND storyline, Batman... disappears. The city descends into chaos, Gordon and the rest of the Bat family struggle to hold things together, supervillains carve up parts of the city as their empire.

We learn that Bruce has abandoned Gotham after failing to convince government to reverse its decision. He wanders aimlessly until his ex-girlfriend, Talia, forces him to confront the situation; only after a three month absence does Batman return to Gotham and attempt to retake the city, eventually succeeding and seeing Gotham restored to the US.

Some time later, Bruce Wayne began dating TV personality Vesper Fairchild, which Batman considers merely keeping the Wayne identity in circulation. When Vesper starts to get too close to Bruce, he callously stages a nude pool party with models and lets Vesper think he's cheating on her to drive her away. Later, Vesper is murdered, and all evidence point to Bruce Wayne. Bruce is arrested, and then escapes from jail, beginning the BRUCE WAYNE: FUGITIVE era.

When Alfred, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain), and Oracle (Barbara Gordon) catch up with him, Batman informs them that he has no intention of trying to clear Bruce Wayne's name. Instead, he declares that the Wayne identity is a disguise that has become a liability, and he's done with it. He tells the Bat Family they are on their own as Bruce Wayne's fortune will no longer be available, and then Batman resumes his crimefighting career without any personal life or secret identity, using satellite bases in Gotham and stockpiled supplies and equipment.

Eventually, Batman does clear his name, but Batman's increasingly distant, aloof and dismissive attitude to anyone and everyone remains. When Jason Todd returns from the dead as a criminal-slaughtering anti-hero (UNDER THE RED HOOD), Batman is shaken but denies it's emotionally difficult.

It all comes to a head in the 2006 INFINITE CRISIS where we learn that Batman set up the deadly Brother Eye satellite network system to surveil superheroes worldwide to monitor and use as a weapon to eliminate them should they become threats. The supervillains and a parallel Lex Luthor, Alexander, take control of Brother Eye to use it against the superheroes.

Batman attempts to regain control and can't, and he has a psychological collapse, horrified by how everything has gone completely wrong: he's alienated every friend and ally, his weapons are now in his enemies' hands, and his life's work has been a failure.

The Justice League and a regretful Batman barely manage to prevent a catastrophe, but a shattered Batman confronts Alexander Luthor, grabs a gun, and is prepared to put a bullet through Alexander's skull. It only Wonder Woman who stops him.

At this point, Batman realizes that something is wrong with him; something has been incredibly wrong with him for years, and he needs to take a step back.

In 52 #30, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake have a discussion, and they realize what they've turned a blind eye to for too long: Batman has had a nervous breakdown. Dick believes that Batman's mental health crisis began with the death of Jason Todd followed by the Joker shooting Barbara and crippling her. The emotional trauma of both were then compounded by the physical trauma of Bane breaking Batman's back. Batman felt helpless.

The grief, pain and paranoia led to Batman creating the anti-JLA countermeasures that alienated him from his closest friends. The US abandoning Gotham City saw Batman walk out on the city as well for three months; despite returning, he later abandoned the Bruce Wayne identity and all his friends. Then the horror of Jason Todd returning as a murderous lunatic and losing control of the Brother Eye system were the final cracks in Batman's crumbling psyche.

Dick says that they had overlooked it; they saw Batman as invincible, unbreakable, devoid of doubt or fear, to the point where they dismissed his increasing isolation, abuse and sociopathy as Batman being Batman. Even as Batman abandoned his city for three months, alienated his friends, abandoned his friends, abandoned his own true identity -- they thought it was simply his focus on crimefighting. They didn't realize that Batman had lost faith in friendship, teamwork, trust, and even in himself. Batman's agony and depression had swallowed him whole and even Batman himself didn't notice.

In a ritualistic ceremony in a vacant desert without the costume or any weapons, Bruce confronts the tribe of Ten-Eyed Swordsmen who battle him and all his demons. When Dick and Tim catch up to him, Bruce is serene. He says that the darkness in his soul has been shorn away. "Batman is gone," he tells them.

When we next see Batman, he's back in Gotham City and has a decidedly more upbeat and positive attitude, and the embittered and miserable Batman of 2000 - 2006 has become a passionate, imaginative adventurer with grand ambitions for making the world better.

When I was reading these comics from 2000 - 2006, reading all these stories of Batman's escalating sociopathy -- Batman's cynicism seemed like sanity to me. After SLIDERS, Batman's attitude seemed like a completely rational approach to the world.

Batman abandoned all liabilities and distractions; he dismissed friendship as frivolous, teamwork as tenuous, and trust as temporary and therefore meaningless. He wrote off Alfred, Gordon, Dick, Tim and Barbara. He assumed the worst of all circumstances and all people. And at the time, Batman's isolationist approach seemed (to me) like the only way to survive a world that could do such horrific things to Barbara Gordon and Jason Todd, or Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo.

But looking at it now, it's obvious to me that Batman was either losing it or his writers had (due to being overly enamoured with "Tower of Babel"). It's obvious to me that Batman abandoning his personal life and all his relationships was not a strategic decision, but an act of self-destructive bitterness and grief where he pre-emptively lost hope and faith in people and gave up on them in advance of them letting him down.

I failed to see that Batman was not being written correctly or that Batman's sanity was deteriorating. I couldn't see it because of my own mental health issues.

It occurs to me that I have a recurring inability to spot it when Batman is having a mental health crisis (or when the writers are having one). I have a tendency to normalize it due to my own psychological shortcomings, and Slider_Quinn21's comments have really made me see that.

Does an announced DEXTER prequel make Slider_Quinn21 happy?

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/dexter … 236014330/

Well, here is Biden's take on why the polls are wrong:
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/14/biden- … 4-election

I mean, Scott Bakula is a Name Actor. He's not Tom Cruise, but he has a following and he brings importance to a project. If Bakula had been in the revival, it would have been an additional point of marketing, a new avenue of publicity, and more attention that could have led to higher ratings.

Did Scott Bakula kill QL2.0 by starving it of his participation?

That said, iCARLY 2.0 and WILL AND GRACE REBORN only made it three seasons, THE X-FILES REBORN and SAVED BY THE BELL REBORN made it two seasons, and PUNKY BREWSTER REBORN only got one.

**

I guess, the thing that makes QL2.0 kind of disappointing for ending where it did: it retroactively presented Dr. Sam Beckett's disappearance in a really bleak and tragic way. Sam was lost and never returned home. Project Quantum Leap was ultimately a failure. Sam was a failure. Al was a failure.

I don't think that's where they would have left Sam and Al's stories, with or without Bakula's involvement, if they'd had more time. Certainly, the Season 2 finale of Addison and Ben joyfully reunited was meant to be a reversal: Ben is still lost, but he and Addison are together. They would have found something kinder for Sam and Al too, if they had not been cancelled.

As Dr. Ben would say, time steals from us all.

And I will say this: the slow demise and cancellation of SLIDERS really damaged my ability to connect with people. It destroyed me in so many ways. It made me bitter. It made me angry. It made it hard for me to trust again. It became too easy for me to lose hope and faith in human beings and TV shows.

QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 was cancelled, but the unplanned finale it provided made me feel glad and grateful for the time I had with it, and made me feel like cancellation was something I could move through without feeling defeated by it. For that, I thank Martin Gero and his team.

I agree that people didn't buy the military aspects of Maggie, but that is the character. She's a military officer. She's a fighter pilot. She's an intelligence agent. She was a spy. It's ultimately the only framework for the character beyond "played by Kari Wuhrer", so it's the place to start, and it should inform her characterization in the way Captain America being a soldier informs that character's clothing, dialogue and mannerisms.

Marc Scott Zicree did a lot of work on the Maggie character and he identified that Wuhrer was much more endearing as a lighter presence rather than a harsh one. But while he was on SLIDERS, he also worked Maggie's military background and strategy skills into her characterization a bit more. I also liked how Chris Black delved into Maggie's military family background while also leveraging Kari's musical skills and had her sing. Ultimately, the military origins are the best starting point for Maggie when it comes to trying to define the character -- and aesthetically, that should have been at least subtly reflected in the character's fashion.

And the purple hair and punk rock look that Kari wanted for Maggie -- well, Maggie was a spy. The story could be that she had to assume the look and role in an undercover mission during a slide... and something about it spoke to her and she stuck to it. But again, that's playing to Kari's interest in music, and the way a character looks should speak to the character's life and background and formative experiences. And for Captain Margaret Allison Beckett, that is her service in the armed forces.

RussianCabbie pondered how QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 would be remembered, if it'd be considered a success or failure, if cancelled after two seasons (which it was).

I thought it was, creatively, a very successful show. But I confess: I will never watch it again.

It's not because it wasn't good -- it was very good and sometimes great -- but it didn't have a climactic, conclusive finale. It was a set of strong episodes that ended in another strong episode that offered a nice note of grace. But that note wasn't an ending as much as a new beginning.

QL2.0 is a story with a beginning, a middle, and a pause, as opposed to a beginning, a middle, and an end. Given how many cancelled shows just cut off (SLIDERS), a pause is admirable and a high achievement. It was the best the creators could do in the situation they were in with the resources they had to hand.

It just wouldn't be worthwhile for me to go on that journey again because the journey didn't go somewhere wholly satisfying. But I'm glad and grateful for the time I had with QUANTUM LEAP 2.0.

I am not a Zack Snyder fan and did not watch REBEL MOON... but did it really look cheap? I always thought of Zack Snyder as only doing projects with lavish spending.

I suspect that a Zack Snyder CAPTAIN AMERICA movie would have used Ultimate Captain America, a version in comics developed by writer Mark Millar. This version of the character was less Chris Evans and more... Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in 24.

The ULTIMATE version of the Marvel universe is set in the 2000s vs the 616 Marvel Universe originating in the 1960s. This alternate continuity was Marvel attempting a then-present day reboot of Spider-Man, X-Men and the Avengers, which were rebranded as The Ultimates to avoid competing with the 616 Avengers title.

Mark Millar radically reworked Captain America for the ULTIMATE line. The Ultimate version of Steve Rogers was not a gentle, good-hearted superhero, but instead a somewhat jingoistic and nationalistic soldier with superpowers who gladly supported the George W. Bush administration.

Ultimate Steve Rogers made sexist remarks and had hints of racism (such as when he was frozen during WWII, woke up in 2000, and didn't Nick Fury could be in the army because Fury was black). Rogers had no hesitation in using lethal force when his 616 counterpart was written as having not even killed anyone during WWII. Rogers was willing to torture and flat out murder America's enemies. This version of Rogers also participated in the US Army covering up their involvement in the Hulk attacking New York City and killing several hundred people, and later called French people cowards for surrendering in WWII.

Millar wrote a lot of nuance into Rogers: when a teammate violently abused his wife, Rogers hunted him down and beat him into the hospital. Rogers treated his colleagues and civilians with respect, politeness, and worked hard to prevent civilian casualties. Rogers was, ultimately, not a superhero as much as a soldier whom the US Army presented to the public as a superhero. Rogers' priority was always victory for America over right and wrong.

Millar's nuance enabled Rogers to be enjoyable for people on both sides of the political spectrum. One side saw Rogers as their icon and hero; another side saw Rogers as a satirical indictment of the military industrial complex and the glorification of war.

However, a lot of Millar's version of Rogers is dependent on the reader noting the distinction between Rogers and the 616 Steve. Without that contrast, Millar's Rogers might not be as interesting.

After Millar left the ULTIMATE line, subsequent ULTIMATE writers seemed to really struggle with writing Millar's version of Rogers. Some wrote him as a government tool without the nuance; some wrote him like his 616 counterpart. But over time, Ultimate Steve Rogers also lost his reason to exist.

Post-Millar, the 616 writers folded quite a bit of Millar's version of Rogers into the 616 Steve. Steve's WWII war service was rewritten to have had Steve use lethal force in war and combat, and in the present day as well, although he wouldn't kill if he could avoid it.

The 616 writers began to highlight Steve's skills as a master strategist and tactician were highlighted to make him more distinct than other street level superheroes like Daredevil. Steve's military role was used to put him in more espionage thriller stories instead of straightforward superhero adventures. Steve remained a gentle man of peace, but the writers gave him some of the Ultimate Steve Rogers' militaristic edge and made the solder aspect of Steve more prominent. However, Steve in the 616 universe was always a superhero first and a soldier second.

Writer Ed Brubaker, possibly in response to Millar having Rogers call the French cowards, wrote a 616 issue where Steve visits France and talks about how, in WWII, he was inspired by how the people of France kept fighting the Nazis even when the government had surrendered. Steve describes how, when France was finally liberated, he attended the military victory parade in uniform, but stood among the people and not the military, saluting French soldiers instead of marching with them.

Despite Millar's Captain America being very different, his take on Captain America ultimately informed and improved the original version, and I think it was a good thing.

I suspect that Snyder, if he had been asked to do a Captain America movie, would have done the Jack Bauer version of Captain America as written by Mark Millar, and he wouldn't have cast Chris Evans. He would have cast someone with a more aggressively masculine screen presence like Dwayne Johnson or Chatum Tanning.

I hear you. I agree with you. You're right. I should have responded and asked you to clarify and done what a civilized person would do.

I'm sorry. The next time you say something that offends me, I will ask you to clarify instead of what I did before.

**

I'm freaked out by everything: the Supreme Court case (despite George Conway's reassurances), by Judge Cannon (although that was less on Democrats and more on Merrick Garland's slowness and timidity), by the polls (despite Democrats overperforming).

I find myself thinking about what Sherlock told me.

Not to mingle threads, but in situations like these, I find myself reading the Marvel comic, POWERLESS, set in a universe where none of the superhero characters have any powers. Matt Murdock is a recovering addict, a lawyer who is completely outmatched by crime boss Wilson Fisk. Peter Parker is a survivor of radiation poisoning and his terrified of corrupt industrialist Norman Osborn.

There are no superheroes in this world, just ordinary people, and the entire comic is a solemn reflection on how we often take joy in escaping to a world where good triumphs over evil, and no one ever really dies (except Karen Page and Uncle Ben) -- but in real life, sometimes we're the hero, sometimes we're the villain, sometimes we can save the day, and sometimes, we are powerless.

I guess this was a long-winded way of saying that I'm limiting myself to a half-hour a day to read political news because the whole thing is so scary.

Anyway. My 'case' has been to throw myself into my dayjob and edit photos for nice ladies.

The first two seasons of SLIDERS and the first five seasons of THE X-FILES were basically neighbours filming in Vancouver. And I certainly think of SLIDERS and THE X-FILES as existing on the same multidimensional axis.

**

What are you enjoying about the books you've been listening to?

**

Every couple years, I like to re-read the SEASON 10 and SEASON 11 comic books. They had a slightly more muted, low-key (and rushed) finale than I would have liked, but they mostly resolved their stories except for two loose ends.

**

I still have the two IDW X-FILES prose anthologies from the SEASON 10/SEASON 11 era of 2013 - 2015 to read.

I'm going to say no. I think, for SLIDERS to be effective in contrasting parallel worlds with our world, the sliders' home Earth needed to be almost aggressively mundane even if it wasn't exactly our own specific Earth. If the sliders' home Earth is the center of a confusingly contradictory alien invasion plot in addition to housing vampires, werewolves, poltergeists, demon children, talking tattoos, talking dolls and that Flukeman thing, then the wonder of parallel worlds is diminished.

But also... I cannot get a handle on the Earth in which THE X-FILES took place, and nearly every season just baffles.

The alien mythology episodes position THE X-FILES as being set in a sci-fi biotechnology universe where all paranormal events are the result of alien technology and genetics experiments and their biological properties being harvested and transplanted in some way.

However, the monster of the week episodes often present THE X-FILES as a supernatural universe in which demonic forces and incomprehensible beings of darkness and monstrosity exist just outside human perception and manifest as vampires, werewolves, the walking manifestation of Death, that goat eating thing near the Mexican border, and present a world where genies can rewrite reality, writers can make their fictions appear as flesh and blood, and people have other inexplicable powers.

Some of the monsters of the week do approach pseudoscientific explanations of genetic anomalies or unusual brain and biological structures, but these sit awkwardly next to episodes with witches and magic golems which are explained through folklore and mysticism.

It's like the separate universes of SUPERNATURAL (magic) and FRINGE (technology) have somehow crashed together and THE X-FILES, somehow ricocheting between the rules of either universe, never establishes any rules for its own universe. And THE X-FILES pre-dates SUPERNATURAL and FRINGE!

The fictional alt history of THE X-FILES is also baffling. The original backstory was that in the late 1940s, the black oil Purity alien race attempted to invade Earth only to be warded off by threats of nuclear armageddon and a treaty to organize the human race for Purity to infect as parasites to reproduce, efficiently and without resistance for maximum production while the conspirators would be spared.

Season 10 abruptly changed this to claim the alien invasion was a hoax and a distraction from the real conspiracy of unleashing the Spartan Virus for population control.

Season 11 changed this again by claiming that the original invasion plan was real, but the aliens lost interest in Earth due to global warming and resource depletion (although the only resource they cared about in the original arc was human bodies). Season 11 also had the conspiracy not unleashing their population control virus for no stated reason whatsoever and instead being concerned with a manhunt for William Mulder.

I have no idea what is going on in the parallel Earth featured in THE X-FILES. Is it a sci-fi universe or a magic universe? Is the mythology about alien colonization of human bodies, population control of the human race, or something or other with William? Are the monsters based in genetics experiments or in supernatural powers?

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that whatever's going on there is not happening on the sliders' home Earth.

I am very sorry that you had a terrible week.

I'm going to focus exclusively on the content regarding masks.

I guess that revision to personal perception changed it from an attack on me to a broad summary of anecdotes about personal experience with maskers who aren't me.

I wear a mask for my own health and safety. And my safety measures include buying masks that do not require others around me to mask. No mask enthusiast needs to take issue with someone not wearing a mask.

Yesterday, I had to leave my car at a mechanic and took the bus and train home, wearing a mask to avoid another pneumonia-inducing cold. The overall public perception of mask wearers outside of this forum is not my problem. Being called "terrorist sympathizing" for my masked transit ride home on this forum is my problem.

I guess 'didn't mean you!' is sufficiently apologetic.

Personally, I would have been satisfied with, "I apologize for calling mask-wearers like you terrorist sympathizers. That was a typo. I meant to say you're a twitchy hypochondriac. I also called you obnoxious and anarchic. I stand by that, and I also find you annoying and aggravating."

On Flawed Mask Studies

You previously said masks didn't work and pointed to various studies. But your claim was false because every mask study you cited used:

• Non-sealing surgical masks or non-electrostatic cloth masks as opposed to the KF94, N95 and ASTM Level 3 cup-style, bifold or trifold masks worn by actual mask enthusiasts

• Test subjects who admitted that they often forgot to wear their masks at all

The only thing the studies proved is that weakly-protective masks are weak in their protection and that people have trouble wearing them consistently, and that mask mandates aren't very helpful if too many masks lack filter and seal..

They proved nothing about the actual efficacy of electrostatic masking with correctly sealing, high filtering KF94, N95, and ASTM Level 3 cup, bifold or trifold masks.

On Clickbait

Since you discounted and dismissed that, I don't believe you actually fully read or understood those studies. I think you either skimmed them or only read clickbait articles that inaccurately summarized those studies by 'journalists' who didn't understand what masks those studies used or how poorly the test subjects adhered to the testing stipulations.

I have seen you use clickbait representations of reports over the actual reports before. I saw you do it in your reaction to the release of the Robert Hur report on Joe Biden, where you read clickbait sensationalism about it, and then declared, "It's over.  Biden has to step aside.  The special counsel describes him as effectively an old geezer who soon will forget his own name.  I do not know what other RED flag is needed at this point???" https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 398#p15398

On Sources and Clickbait

Later, you confessed, "Of course I didn't read the report!" which revealed you were reacting to clickbait instead of actual information, and taking the clickbait as fact. https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 436#p15436 The actual examples of Joe Biden's supposedly poor memory in Hur's report showed that Biden's memory was as 'poor' as everyone else interviewed, yet Hur seized upon Biden's memory alone. The actual transcripts revealed that Biden's memory ranged from average to above average but was never poor or non-existent.

Your comments on the supposed failure of masks and Joe Biden's memory strike me as very similar to your previous fixation on Dr. Anthony's Fauci's "gain of function" research (which was a fiction).

To me, your claim that masks don't work based on those studies looks to me like you reading clickbait articles written by 'journalists' who were misunderstanding or deliberately misrepresenting the scientific studies or reports they were using as sources.

"Scientific Studies Prove Masks Don't Work" was more attention seeking than, "Scientific Studies Prove Weak Masks Offer Weak Protection. Scientific Studies Also Reveal That It Is Really Hard To Get People To Consistently Wear Masks To Study Mask Wearing."

On Electrostatics and Particle Physics

No mask study will change the very simple fact that electrostatic filtration is highly effective at capturing particles and droplets. If you live in a home or ride a bus or a train with heat and air conditioning, you are relying on air filters and the study of electrostatics.

An air filter is the culmination of many fields of scientific study across centuries, encompassing electrostatics, particle physics, atomic physics (atomic as in atom-sized, not explosive), particles, antiparticles, electrons, positrons, all employed in commonplace air systems and electrostatic masks.

A study that used poor masks and non-compliant test subjects is not going to disprove the Standard Model of particle physics and the existence of static electricity.

Mask Enthusiasts and Social Anxiety

I suppose I should say something about the mask enthusiast community.

I would say that a lot of the posts I see in mask forums give the impression that many who wear masks have an untreated or poorly managed anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, are on the autism spectrum, and either have a social phobia or generalized social anxiety.

I've seen a lot of mask enthusiasts post unhappy accounts of how they were picking up a takeout order and saying, "Everyone was staring at me" and "The customer service worker gave me this ugly look and rolled her eyes at me" and "No one wanted to make small talk with me because I was wearing a mask" and "I've been cut off from my social circle because I wear a mask and they don't" or "My roommates all refused to wear masks outside their bedrooms, I can't believe they would do this to me."

To me, that isn't mask enthusiasm as much as a serious mental illness -- paranoia, anxiety, projection -- and also social ineptitude. These mentally ill people with social difficulties are masking their illness and handicaps with masks (haha).

They have seized upon their mask-wearing as making them a target when the reality is: most customer service reps want to move through transactions quickly; the small-talk deprived person was probably not very sociable or willing to take initiative and project openness to interaction; unless a home is a health care facility, residents shouldn't be required to mask; and the people telling these stories clearly have poor social skills but are blaming anti-mask sentiment.

Mask Enthusiasts and Narcissism

There is also a subset of mask enthusiasts who look down upon others for not wearing masks, somehow ignoring that the KF94, N95 and ASTM L3 masks worn by the serious masker seal and filter very effectively. Other people masking would not give the masker any additional protection. To me, this is not mask enthusiasm but narcissism, the desire to see others as subhuman while elevating the narcissist, and masking is both pedestal and a mask for the narcissistic personality disorder.

In Closing

None of that is my problem. I just use those communities to look for places to buy the masks I want, and I mask because I don't want to get colds, flu, COVID or pneumonia, and going unmasked on the bus and train home is not worth getting sick for me.

As for all the other comments regarding anarchists, anti-Semites, radical-left, conformists, so-called progressive pols, Black Lives Matter, buffoons and college campuses... none of that seems to have anything to do with masks, so I'll just leave that alone.

Anyway. Sorry again about your no-good, terrible, horrible, very bad week.

To better days.

It's really tough. Fan gatherings are a leisure activity. And it's hard to spend on hotels, meals, travel and such for leisure.

I think the last movie I saw in a movie theatre was MADAME WEB and only because my job gave me a gift card. The last movie I saw in theatres on my own dime was MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING. It just does not make sense to go to a movie theatre and pay for a $15 ticket, parking, concessions, gas and such when I have an adequate TV at home with an okay speaker system.

It may not make financial sense for a lot of people to travel to a fan convention when they could use message boards, Facebook, Reddit, podcasts and ebooks for a facsimile of meeting cast and crew and attending discussion panels.

On another note: Claudia Gray's upcoming X-FILES novel, "Perihelion", costs $28 USD. https://a.co/d/4C4yXFc

Twenty. Eight. American. Dollars. Look, Claudia Gray may be a splendid author and "Perihelion" may be the greatest literary achievement since HUCKLEBERRY FINN. But even then, it would not be worth $28 American dollars in the year of our Lord 2024. It cost less to watch MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING in a movie theatre than it does to buy "Perihelion".

(I actually preordered the ebook from a Canadian bookseller for $12 USD awhile ago.)

This remark is unacceptable. Mask wearing has no correlation to terrorism and terrorist sympathies. "Obnoxious" and "anarchist" is opinion and anyone can call me that falsely or accurately.

But calling a mask wearer a terrorist sympathizer is a nonsensical conclusion and a deceitful attack.

You have been warned repeatedly about false statements regarding masks. You were very clearly informed that if you continued to make false statements regarding masks, you would be banned for a week. You were further told that if you made another false statement, you would be banned for a month. The third instance would result in a permanent ban.

Grizzlor, you will apologize for your false accusation in your next post in this forum or you will be banned for a week upon your next post in this forum.
**

(Wow, that was dramatic.)

On a more informal note: I could fairly be called obnoxious, and I obviously have some anarchic tendencies (and no one who enjoyed Alan Moore's V FOR VENDETTA can claim they don't). But calling me a terrorist? For sharing a shopping experience that I described as convoluted but cheap?

Who does that?

When I first discovered the excellence of Korean masks, they were an entire four-sided rack at the Korean grocery store. But last year, masks only took up two sides of the rack. And in the past month, the rack is gone; I now have to go into the back warehouse area where they sell expired, marked-down items. Now I'm buying masks almost directly from the manufacturers.

I will note: the ability to acquire high quality masks at sensible is incredibly convoluted. If you try to buy them at local hardware stores, the markup is absurd, often at $4 - 6 USD per mask whereas a manufacturer on GMarket will charge you anywhere from 32 - 60 cents a mask. No one should have to spend $40 - 120 USD a month on masks that cost maybe 10 - 20 cents to make.

Why mask? I wear masks before going into certain public places, because I do not believe certain tasks and activities are worth risking COVID or even colds by doing them unmasked. My last cold led to pneumonia. It was my first one in three years, but pneumonia was exhausting.

For a lavish dinner with my favourite actress or for her birthday party, I will accept the risk of being unmasked in a restaurant or in her house with her friends.

But it is not worth it for me to get sick due to being unmasked while paying for fuel inside the mini-mart at the gas station, or being unmasked at the grocery store, or being unmasked picking up a hamburger to go, or being unmasked retrieving an order from a print shop, or being unmasked to buy a cup of coffee to drink elsewhere.

These are my personal strategies and assessments for my personal health and safety. No one else needs to follow them. My masks filter both ways.

I dare you to call me a terrorist for that -- again -- and see what happens.

This is a response to Slider_Quinn21's post in the politics thread:

https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 731#p15731

Trigger Warning: Discussion of sexual assault

I had to take myself off Twitter after Musk bought it. My feed was filled with nonsensical, clickbait videos to which I hadn't subscribed. Anyone I followed was buried under the presence of people who'd paid to intrude upon my feed. I'm sorry that you struggled and suffered for your Twitter experience. I didn't struggle with Twitter, but I have had some negative relationships with other social media in a fashion similar to what you describe.

As someone who loves silly kid's TV on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, and as a fan of BOY MEETS WORLD and the retrospective podcast POD MEETS WORLD, I was taken aback by the POD MEETS WORLD episode 2/19/24 in which actors Rider Strong and Will Friedle confessed that they had supported a rapist. Rider and Will explained that as teenagers, they had become friends with a dialogue coach and guest-star on BOY MEETS WORLD, a man named Brian Peck. He was in his 40s while the boys were in their teens, but they enjoyed Peck's company so much. He became a constant presence at their parties, in their homes, and they asked for him to be hired on many post-BMW productions as a dialogue coach.

In 2004, Peck approached Rider (now 24) and Will (27), telling them he was being charged with raping an underage boy. Peck told them that he had been working with a 17 year old boy who had pressured Peck for sex, and Peck "gave in", and the boy's mother reported him to the police and he was now on trial. Peck told Rider and Will: he would plead guilty and accept his sentence, but he asked Rider and Will to write letters of support to the judge. Peck emphasized that the boy had been 17, nearly 18. Many former friends of Peck reported that he told them the same story, emphasizing that the boy was nearly an adult.

Rider and Will said that at the time, they thought of how at 17, they had dated women in their 30s. They wrote letters of support for Peck; Rider wrote that Peck was a good and loyal man and that any wrongdoing could not have been on Peck's side; Will wrote that Peck must have been pressured and coerced.

Will went to court to support Peck on the day of Peck's sentencing. Will found himself in a crowd of famous Hollywood actors, directors and producers on Peck's side of the courtroom. On the other side was an 18 year old boy, who would later describe how he'd been 15 when Peck raped him. The boy was seated with his brother, stepfather, a friend, and his mother. The mother stared down all the celebrities and shouted at Peck, "There you are with all your famous friends -- and it doesn't change what you did to my son!"

Will realized Peck had played him. Peck had raped the boy, and maneuvered Will and Rider into writing letters of support for Peck. Peck had lied about the boy's age (17) to play on how Will and Rider had dated thirtysomething women at 17. 

The boy delivered a victim impact statement, which would normally be directed to the rapist. But the boy directed it to Will and those next to him. "I will forever have the memory of this person doing what he did to me," the boy spat at Brian Peck's friends, at Will. "And you will forever have the memory of standing with him for what he did to me." Peck was sentenced to 16 months in prison for lewd acts with a child, and released after four.

Will and Rider cut ties with Peck, ending any friendship with him. Will never saw him again. Rider saw Peck briefly at a party seven years later and had a panic attack and fled. Will and Rider, on their podcast, described how Brian Peck had infiltrated their lives and tricked them. They said they had been approached by a documentary seeking comment, and how they had instead preferred to address the matter on their podcast. Rider ended the podcast in an incoherent, meandering ramble about INTO THE WOODS. Will said he wished he could sit down with the survivor and tell him how sorry he was.

The documentary, QUIET ON SET, was released shortly afterwards. The two episodes were about abusive behaviour from Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider's (ALL THAT, THE AMANDA SHOW, iCARLY, DRAKE AND JOSH, VICTORIOUS), and how two production assistants on Schneider's shows had been arrested for sexually assaulting children during the show. Two PAs... and a dialogue coach named Brian Peck. And Peck's victim had agreed to speak in the documentary about what Peck did to him.

At the end of a second episode, a figure in a blue blazer approached the camera, out of focus, then seating himself in a chair and into the frame. It was Drake Bell, the former teen star of DRAKE AND JOSH and the voice of Peter Parker on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, now 37 years old.

Drake had made a name for himself as a teenager from his comedic brilliance on THE AMANDA SHOW and DRAKE AND JOSH, and become infamous in recent years for drunk driving, bankruptcy, and being arrested and charged for sending sexual text messages to a teenaged girl. Drake stared at the camera with an attempt at a smile and a fretful tremor in his bearing, a grief-weary terror towards what he was about to say.

In the third episode, Drake told the story of his life: his beginnings as a child actor, the way Brian Peck, a dialogue coach, took a young Drake under his wing and drove Drake to auditions and had Drake sleep over at Peck's house, and how 15 year old Drake woke up morning to find Peck raping him, which Peck continued to do for months, while Drake was too afraid to report it or tell anyone, fearing that Peck, who seemed to know every actor and producer and director in Hollywood, could destroy his career.

Drake told the story of how, one night, at his girlfriend's house, Peck phoned him, demanding that the 15 year old Drake accompany the fortysomething Peck to Disneyland. Drake declined, explaining he was with his girlfriend and her family, and hung up. Peck called Drake's phone over and over again. Drake didn't pick up. Peck called the landline at the house over and over and over again, until the mother of Drake's girlfriend took Drake aside and told Drake that something was very wrong. "A fortysomething year old man does not call my daughter's boyfriend like that." Shortly after this, Drake told his mother, and his mother called the police.

Drake described his horror in court at how much support Brian had in Hollywood, and how Drake spiraled afterwards: drugs, verbally abusing friends and loved ones, driving while drunk, recklessness and desperation, and things he couldn't remember and was afraid to find out. Drake described how, for the documentary, the team had successfully unsealed the casefile and Drake saw that 41 famous Hollywood stars and creators, including Rider Strong and Will Friedle, had written letters claiming that Peck's victim must have been the aggressor.

Drake briefly touched on how, in 2021, he was charged for sending sexual texts to a minor. He pleaded guilty to child endangerment and disseminating material harmful to a minor, and was sentenced to two years of probation and 20 years of community service. However, newspapers incorrectly reported that he had been charged with sexually assaulting a teenager and that he was a registered sex offender, which was repeated as fact. "I did what was asked of me, but the media grabbed a hold of so much misinformation, and it absolutely destroyed me," said Bell.

The documentary ends with the child actors who featured expressing the wish that child actors receive protections and safeguards in their line of work, and with 37 year old Drake Bell and his father standing outside the studio. Father and son seem to be in a muted state of sorrow and shock. "It's just hard," says Drake, "going back over all these old memories."

"Better days ahead of us," his father tells him.

"Yeah, I keep hearing that," says Drake quietly.

"Keep listening to it," his father urges him.

Shortly after the documentary was broadcast, Drake Bell responded to the POD MEETS WORLD episode, stating: Rider and Will had ignored the documentary reaching out to them, and only made their podcast because the documentary had warned them: their once-sealed letters of support for rapist Brian Peck had been unsealed and would be released.

Drake further declared that Will Friedle had worked with Drake on the animated ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and Will never said a word to him about the matter, presenting Will's regret and desire to speak with Drake to be a lie.

Drake did not accept Rider and Will's remorse, declaring that Rider and Will knew what Peck had been charged with and wrote letters of support anyway.

Fans of BOY MEETS WORLD and Rider and Will collided with Drake Bell's supporters on Reddit. BMW and PMW fans argued that Drake Bell was not an innocent person whom Rider and Will had allowed to suffer, but a violent maniac whom Rider and Will had understandably steered clear of after seeing all the stories about Drake in the press.

They pointed to Drake Bell's own criminal charges for child endangerment and disseminating material harmful to a minor. At sentencing, Bell's accuser said Bell had been grooming her from age 12, demanding nude photographs, sexually assaulting her at age 15 twice (once in a hotel room while her aunt was outside the room; once in the backseat of a car while her aunt was in the front) and sending her his own nudes.

BMW and PMW fans also noted that three of Drake Bell's ex-girlfriends had accused him of beating them, trying to drown them, threatening them, and destroying their phones.

I spent about two weeks entirely too interested in all of the above, wading into Reddit discussion upon Reddit discussion, alternately condemning and defending Will, Rider and Drake. From a public relations standpoint, it was a fascinating challenge: to note all the horrible things that Will, Rider and Drake had absolutely done -- while defending them against the things that they hadn't. It was professional development for me.

My take is that Drake Bell did not sexually assault his then-15 year old accuser (19 during the sentencing video), but he absolutely sent her sexually charged text messages. In the sentencing for his charges, which was over Zoom and posted on YouTube, Drake's lawyer notes that Drake is not being charged with sex crimes, but for his texting, and notes that the police interviewed witnesses at the fan events where the accuser said Drake assaulted her.

The lawyer said that these events were filled with witnesses around Drake Bell at all times -- and Drake's accuser, who is on camera, nods emphatically in agreement with the lawyer, agreeing there were witnesses present throughout. Drake's lawyer then says each witness reported that Drake and the girl were never alone together as she claims, and the girl stops nodding and freezes up, as though she realizes she non-verbally agreed with what contradicts her story.

The lawyer further established that the police had confiscated the girl's phone and computers, Drake's phones and computers, and digital forensic investigators had total access to their social media accounts. There was no digital evidence or witness account of any sexual photographs or any attempt to meet and assault the girl; there were, however, sexual text messages to a minor.

From my perspective: if the police had taken the devices of accuser and accused, forensic investigators would have had access not only to their accounts, but also had access to all device and account activity via deep recovery methods and subpoena.

They would have have retrieved any file or message, whether deleted by the user or not. And if there were any evidence of Drake enticing a minor to sexual activity, any prosecutor in a post-Weinstein era would have been enthusiastic and eager to make their careers on prosecuting a former Hollywood actor as a child predator.

Judging from the charges and Drake's own confession, prosecutors had him dead to rights with what they charged him: child endangerment and disseminating material harmful to a minor. But his sexual messages must not have contained any attempt to meet her in person and away from her guardians' supervision, or they would have charged him with more and easily won. They had his devices and accounts, after all.

But sending sexual text messages to a minor is still wrong, and while Drake claims she messaged him first and he didn't realize the girl's age, I find it doubtful that he didn't know she was very young from their text exchanges and her photos. The prosecution clearly found that doubtful too given the charges they pursued.

Outside of Drake's lawyer, there was also Drake's childhood story of how he was targeted, groomed, isolated from all support systems, and then raped by a master manipulator. Drake effectively received a master class in child predation. It struck me as absurd and ridiculous to think that Drake Bell, with his experience of predation, would assault a target whose aunt was in the front seat of a car while Drake and the target were in the back. Or that he would do so with the target's aunt just outside the room. I did not believe this girl's story.

Drake would later be asked why he texted a fan so intensely based on nothing more than finding her Instagram photos attractive and thinking she was an adult, especially when he claimed not to have known her well enough to have learned her age. Drake, in the MAN ENOUGH podcast, would explain that his trauma as a child made him feel like he wasn't a real man, and that any time someone female expressed interest in him, he would pursue it without finding out how old they might be or if they were even compatible, to try to prove his masculinity to himself.

Drake Bell was further accused by three ex-girlfriends of savagely beating them, although those didn't progress to criminal cases. One ex might lie, but three? It was clear to me that Drake was indeed a domestic abuser. Drake denied it, saying he did not understand why his ex was accusing him and he was shocked and hurt.

But he later confessed in many interviews to missing time and suffering from severe memory loss. It is extremely common for child trauma victims to be triggered and enter fugue states where they are aggressive and violent and then emerge with little memory of what they did and to deny all accounts and witnesses.

I suggested that Drake denying having beaten women might not be a lie as much as impaired recall, and that his attacks, while unjustifiable, may have been due to a memory of his rape being inadvertently triggered.

I said that I did not know if a man can ever find redemption and atonement for beating women who couldn't fight back, but if anyone were to be forgiven for it, it would probably be a survivor of a childhood sexual assault whose trauma warped his sense of boundaries and damaged his ability to manage his impulses and control his actions.

And regarding Will and Rider: Many felt that their podcast apology was not really an apology at all; there was no message addressed to Drake Bell. Many accused them of not really caring about Drake Bell at all, having been silent for 20 years and having intended to stay silent until the documentary unsealed their letters, and then caring more about addressing their fans than addressing the wronged party.

I couldn't disagree with that, but I argued: Drake Bell's name had not been publicly released. It is highly unethical to out a survivor of sexual assault until they are ready to tell their own story. They had been trying not to name Drake Bell in their podcast, but in avoiding anything that might identify them, they took it too far and failed to address him at all, failing even to speak to the unnamed party whom they had hurt.

Will and Rider had misjudged and mis-stepped, but I argued that it was not out of uncaring or indifference, but due to weakness. They were scared to confront what they had done 20 years previous; they were scared to go on camera with the documentary and be confronted by Drake Bell; it was weakness and fear, not malevolence.

I argued that if we only want art from the perfect and fearless, we won't have any art at all. I did not see anything admirable in how Will and Rider had conducted themselves, but their behaviour had not been contemptible as much as gullible in writing the letters and incompetent in addressing the letters. There is no one who hasn't been fearful, weak, gullible, and incompetent at some point in their lives.

Drake Bell would later tweet that Rider Strong had contacted him privately, and that Drake forgave him.

I got very involved in so many Reddit threads, fascinated by the challenge of acknowledging and condemning all of Rider, Will and Drake's wrongful actions: supporting a predator, silence for 20 years, the failure to apologize (Will and Rider), sending sexually charged text messages to a fan, assaulting women, drunk driving, driving while high on nitrous, shilling cryptocurrency (Drake Bell) while offering some defence of Rider and Will's intentions (or lack of malevolence) and empathy towards human weakness (Rider and Will) and how trauma can warp someone's sense of right and wrong (Drake).

Suddenly, I realized that it was constantly on my mind because it was on my tablet, on my phone, on my smartwatch and in every corner of my brain, and this exercise in professional development had become a massive time sink. There was only one solution: I took Reddit off all my devices except my personal laptop, and since I only go on my laptop for 1 - 2 hours a day and need to spend that engaging in other correspondence, my Reddit participation fell to a more sensible amount.

It was good, it was an important learning experience, I absorbed a lot from all of it... but it was time to end the lesson and study something new.

A conversation with my father:

Ruminations on the potential outcomes:
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/25/trump- … n-6-trial/

Well, he's taking lots of naps in court. I worry that'll refresh him too much.

Something is really off with the company for Trump's bond:
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/16/absurd … -his-face/

I mean, you and I made our way through Season 5 of SLIDERS and HEROES REBORN, so we clearly have a high tolerance for multiple episodes of aimless tedium that are circuitous and meandering and without a point. And in terms of aggressively poor television, I watched "This Slide of Paradise" twice in my life, so I guess I have to concede that I too would watch HEROES: ECLIPSED.

That said... I'd say that HEROES demonstrated that Tim Kring is exceptionally great at conceiving, pitching, selling and producing a show: concepts, cinematography and director teams, amazing casting, wonderful locations and high production values -- but he's been exceptionally poor at actually showrunning a series, with Season 2, 3A, 4 and REBORN revealing a lot of incoherent character behaviours, filibustering dialogue to stall and delay, and a total inability to stage a compelling climax, payoff and conclusion. TOUCH was also about the same.

When HEROES succeeded in Seasons 1 and 3B ("Fugitives"), it was because Bryan Fuller was working on the show and Tim Kring clearly saw and deferred to Bryan Fuller's genius storytelling. Fuller has become a problematic figure in recent years, but I think it shows that Kring is a great TV producer who needs to be partnered with a great TV writer-showrunner.

I made the following comments to Rewatch Podcast, who are doing a rewatch-review of the series:

Why would Peter Parker and Quinn Mallory fight... ? It seems to me that they would have a lot in common, given that both Quinn and Peter have had to deal with:

• Flesh craving zombies

• Giant slugs

• Dinosaurs

• Killer robots

• Bloodthirsty vampires

• Underground predators

• Mad scientists trying to collapse and combine universes

• Artificial twisters

• Sorcerers

• Dream Masters

• Clones of themselves

• Clones who presented themselves as brothers

• Confusing revelations about their parents and true origins which may or may not have been true

• Being 'combined' with another person in a 'merging' and then 'lost'

But I understand. You want to know who would win in a fight. Honestly, I would defer to the needs of the plot and come up with options for Peter to win, for Quinn to win, or for the fight to lead to a draw.

In these match-ups of this nature, Batman is a popular character to often be pitted against another superhero, and fans always like to have Batman win. The reason: it is fairly straightforward to have Batman defeated by the Hulk's superstrength or Thor's hammer or Ghost Rider's chains. There are more variations in how Batman could defeat more physically powerful characters.

It's more unexpected if a less powerful character defeats a more powerful one. And yet, because this is such a common approach, it has paradoxically made it highly predictable that Batman will win the fight.

We have a similar problem with Quinn and Peter where, because Peter has superpowers, there are a lot of obvious, straightforward ways in which Peter could beat Quinn, and it is more challenging for Quinn to beat Peter. But then it's obvious that most writers will have Quinn win the fight because Quinn's victory will be more challenging and Peter's victory would be very straightforward, except the straightforward is now the unexpected and the expected is the difficult -- you get my point.

So, I guess the fight unfolds this way: Spider-Man sees Quinn breaking into big box electronics store to steal parts needed to fix the timer. Spider-Man pursues Quinn, tries to escape the store only to find Spidey's webbed off the entrance and then Spider-Man confronts him. Quinn is terrified of the webbing and freaked out by Spider-Man's emotive mask and white eyes and swings wildly. Spider-Man easily dodges every punch, grabs Quinn, and throws Quinn backwards.

Quinn lands in the housewares section and Quinn realizes: Spider-Man's hands gripped the surface of Quinn's shirt without Spider-Man's fingers actually squeezing the fabric; Spider-Man has the ability to stick to surfaces by manipulating the interatomic forces of surfaces, increasing the co-efficient of friction.

Quinn starts crawling through the housewares, grabbing a toaster, ripping a control board out of a mini-fridge, yanking a lens out of a projector, and hurriedly assembling these items to the back of a microwave just as Spider-Man gets the drop on him. Quinn triggers the microwave and Spider-Man discovers he can't stand; his feet keep slipping off the floor and he is sliding all over every surface like he's been coated in grease.

Quinn has used his contraption to reverse Spider-Man's adhesion powers, inverting the interatomic forces so that Spider-Man can not stick to any surface at all. Quinn lets Spider-Man slide into a wall and then Quinn grabs Spider-Man's web shooter and webs Spider-Man to immobilize him and switches off the microwave.

Quinn then explains to Spider-Man: he's sorry for robbing the store, but there's a crisis facing this parallel universe. Quinn can tell from Spider-Man's webbing and advanced yet homemade costume design: Spider-Man is clearly a scientist, an engineer and a chemist. And Quinn needs Spider-Man's help...

After averting the crisis, Quinn and Peter elect to stay in touch and do a monthly podcast together.

I am sad that QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 is cancelled, but I feel heartened to know that somewhere out there, Ben and Addison are together and on the adventure of a lifetime. The limitless possibilities of that happy non-ending ending inspire and comfort me.

I wished, for so very long, that SLIDERS had, if cancelled, ended with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo simply still out there, together, exploring, travelling, having wonderful adventures, searching for home, while at the same time recognizing that home is, as Temporal Flux and Tracy Torme both said, not just a place but the people with whom you belong, and so long as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are together, they are home. I think that's why every fanfic I ever wrote for SLIDERS, both "Slide Effects" and SLIDES REBORN, end on the sliders eagerly leaping into the vortex together.

I'm glad that Ben and Addison got to have that. They are lost in time. But they're together and they are happy. And they are going to be just fine.

I'm sad to see this. But I'm grateful that we got two great seasons, and a happy ending for Ben and Addison.

I'd be curious to see if there's any effort to see QL2.0 picked up on Peacock or another streaming service, if only for an extra-length series finale like ZOE'S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST.

In a civil fraud trial, failure to pay means the state can engage in asset seizure.

Alex Jones was sued for harassment and defamation in a civil lawsuit by plaintiffs. Trump was prosecuted by the district attorney of the State of New York for financial fraud in a civil fraud trial.

If Trump doesn't post bond, loses his appeal after posting bond, and fails to pay the penalties after the appeal, the state can freeze his bank accounts and seize his properties. The district attorney in a civil fraud prosecution has powers that civilians don't in a civil suit.