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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.

Yeah, when typing up Wade's, I looked up the LinkedIn page for Robin Torme and I was astonished and impressed by the many, many things she's been in her life: an animal welfare activist and rescuer, anti-human trafficking advocate, a journalist, a private detective, a championship surfer, a swimsuit model, an undercover investigator. I have this suspicion that Robin is a former espionage agent who retired from active duty to focus on animal rescue.

I will finish Rembrandt's eulogy this weekend!

Trump's Truth Social money isn't going to help him out of his well-deserved legal consequences.
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/22/cashes … on-penalty

Could he wriggle out of his staggering financial penalties? He has before. But past performance is not always an indicator of present and future results.

I've been watching HD versions of EVERWOOD and the original FRASIER series. It looks like 16mm film because the image is so grainy.

It looks very authentic and textured. Some people may not like the aged look, but anyone can turn on the denoise filter on their TV if they want a cleaner picture. Of course, I'm sure the heavy grain levels is because the studio or distributor couldn't be bothered to reprocess the image beyond reassembling the film and getting the audio and colour correction back in place.

Some HD releases of shows like CHARMED had a very selective approach of noise reduction, applying different levels of noise filtration for closeups, medium and wide shots, and allowing a very light level of grain in the final image. And that's really nice, but I think it would be fine to skip that for these older titles.

But will it merge and reweave the mismatched field-frames? :-D

Given how Democrats and fundraising keep outperforming the polls, I think we can safely say the polls are off. But how off?

I cannot pretend to understand the average American voter beyond speculative armchair psychoanalysis. But wouldn't most Trump supporters be aware that Trump is a criminal and vote because they think his criminality is in their favour? Why would a conviction shake their conviction that another Trump presidency is to their benefit?

A former member of this community clearly supported Trump because Trump validated his belief that Caucasian men should always reign supreme. A criminal conviction isn't going to change his mind.

A number of Trump voters chose Trump as a protest vote. They voted Trump to express frustration at how Democrats had failed to alleviate their poverty. They voted Trump to sabotage a system of politics and government that had failed to be there for them. A Trump conviction isn't going to change their desperation and anger. A Biden presidency has not helped enough of them out of poverty or brought enough of them the health care they need.

What could anyone possibly say to them?

I cannot stress enough that the politics of ireactions and Barack Obama are not the consensus politics of Sliders.tv.

Of course Temporal Flux knew that The Spinning Topps were based on The Four Tops. :-) And TF's theory on HOF that The Four Tops on Earth Prime had their place in history occupied by The Spinning Topps is intriguing and challenging because Rembrandt is too young for The Four Tops' history to apply to him without significant revision.

The Four Tops formed in 1953 and had the bulk of their career from 1953 to 1988, with their stardom achieved in 1965 ("I Can't Help Myself"), only to have lesser success by 1967 after the departure of songwriter/producer Holland–Dozier–Holland from Motown, but they had a resurgence in 1972 during a period with ABC-Dunhill Records, and continued to have hits from 1972 to 1977 and then 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1988. Their mark on music and culture was indelible and eternal.

But Rembrandt, according to the Season 4 Online Slide, was born in 1955. "Into the Mystic" says his last performance with the Topps was in 1986, "As Time Goes By" says he was 17 when he was singing with "The Shandells" and referred to as "Little Rembrandt", which would be 1972 or 1973.

Did The Spinning Topps, at some period between 1972 - 1986, achieve everything that The Four Tops did between 1953 and 1988?

This may or may not be the cause of the error that Temporal Flux notes in his Online Slide comments on HOF: The Online Slide says that "Can't Help Myself" was written by The Temptations, a 1960s-originating group. TF points out that song was actually written by The Four Tops, whose place in Earth Prime is presumably occupied by The Spinning Topps.

But The Spinning Topps, given Rembrandt's birth year in 1955, could not have written a 1965 hit song as Rembrandt would have been 10 years old and he's never been presented as that much of a prodigy.

One theory to which I'm partial but which doesn't work for the timeline is that The Spinning Topps achieved equivalent achievements to what the Four Tops did between 1986 to 1994 -- after Rembrandt had left them.

But it's unlikely that The Four Tops' 60s - 70s hits would have had the same impact in the late 80s and early 90s. It makes more sense to put achievements similar to The Four Tops into the late 70s for The Spinning Topps and put them between the late 70s to 1986.

I have been working on writing Rembrandt's eulogy for Tracy Torme. While the Professor, Quinn and Wade had a very metatextual perspective on honouring their creator, Rembrandt's eulogy is instead going to be a story about how he met Tracy Torme in the early 1980s, and how a twentysomething Tracy inspired Rembrandt to do something new with his talents, and how Tracy Torme changed Rembrandt's life forever and created a bond of friendship between them for which Rembrandt has always been grateful.

I know nothing about music, so I have been doing a lot of research and reading to better understand Rembrandt's life: he was born in 1955, according to the Season 4 Online Slide. But where was he born? What was his first encounter with music that made him embrace James Brown soul and R&B but also Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky and the other classical greats? What was his inspiration to drop out of high school and join the band The Shandells as under the diminutive stagename of "Little Rembrandt"?

How did the Topps first meet and form? What were their first successes? And why did Rembrandt leave them?

Searching for similar figures in real life history is where I learned what most people probably knew already, that The Spinning Topps are a reference to The Four Tops.

Being able to use the real life history of The Four Tops and Levi Stubbs has been both help and hinderance because The Four Tops started decades before The Spinning Topps could have even met. But it also shows how music is such an integral part of Rembrandt Brown, Cleavant Derricks and Tracy Torme, and how much Tracy Torme loved music and Rembrandt to attach Rembrandt to musical history in this way.

District attorney Fani Willis will stay on the Trump case so long as she cuts all ties with Nathan Wade.
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/15/georgi … ultimatum/

I'd take that deal if I were her.

Was it wrong for Fani Willis to date Nathan Wade? Not legally, the state of Georgia allows lawyers on opposing sides of the same case to be married, so lawyers dating on the same side of the same case should also be fine. But it was foolish and unprofessional because the optics make the lawyers extremely vulnerable to nuisance motions like what Trump's lawyers have unleashed. Trump's lawyers have capably engineered a whole crisis scandal over this, and the simplest solution is to send Nathan Wade out of public law and back to the lucrative world of private legal practice.

Well, Democrats did not select Robert Hur as the special counsel. The US Attorney General selected Hur, and the US Attorney General is neither a Democratic nor Republican office of government. The attorney general is the people's lawyer, not the incumbent's lawyer. Except... they often have been the incumbent's lawyer, so unfortunately, there's a contrast between the way things should work which is often not the way they actually work.

Biden selected Merrick Garland as the attorney general. The attorney general is supposed to operate with full independence from the president. However, under Trump, AG William Barr was blatantly Trump's enabler and lawyer, manipulating every potential prosecution for Trump in Trump's favour. Biden selected Merrick Garland who had been Obama's pick for a Supreme Court justice, who had a reputation for being a strident person of integrity, honour and commitment to the rule of law. Garland vowed that he would be a lawful and non-partisan lawyer for the people.

In practice, Garland has been timid and hesitant. He did not pursue charges against Trump's obvious crimes and lower level prosecutors have been the ones to do the work. Garland's determination to seem 'non-partisan' has instead made him turn a blind eye to treason and left him so weak that Republicans can walk right over him, making him a Republican-enabler whom Biden now regrets appointing.

And in this case, Garland's commitment to being 'non-partisan' had him select a Trump appointee to seem 'impartial'. But Garland's efforts and non-partisan impartiality invariably have him weighting things in favour of corrupt Republicans. Hur, to what should have been no one's surprise, used investigating Biden as a chance to curry favour with Trump and smear the Democrat president.

Merrick Garland is unfortunately fearful and weak, and by all accounts, the Biden administration is frustrated and furious with him. They are outraged that he didn't prosecute Trump's obvious crimes; they are appalled that he had so little standard of evidence for Hur's assertions about Biden's memory.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/0 … s-00140813

Hindsight is always 20/20. In the year 2021, Merrick Garland seemed like a great choice for the attorney general. And regardless of how inept and inactive he's been from 2021 - 2024, Democrats didn't select Robert Hur. Merrick Garland did. And yes, Democrats chose Garland -- but they had no idea how spineless he'd turn out to be.

That said, it's possible they should have, but I read a bit about Merrick Garland in 2021 and I thought he was a good hire. So I was wrong too.

I'm suspicious of the idea that Joe Biden should be above being questioned or criticized.

His support for Israel's continued military attacks on civilians and fueling this ongoing assault on an unarmed population is shocking. The Hamas attack on Israel was an abomination, but the Israeli military response has done little to circumvent Hamas while harming even more innocent lives. It's possible that Biden sees the arms sales and support as a means of maintaining some position of influence or negotiation to conclude an Israeli military response that he saw as inevitable, but Biden is unquestionably complicit in a moral horror subsequent to the original atrocity of the Hamas attack on Israel.

Then there's Biden dismissing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden bumped fists and made friends with an unrepentant murderer. There may be practical and diplomatic reasons for doing that too; Biden may have determined that the US was in no position to find justice for Khashoggi and had economic and strategic advantages for declaring MSB immune as a head of state that would save more lives while pursuing justice for Khashoggi would have been unattainable and endangered more people. I'm not sure. But the idea that Biden can't be criticized is not something to which I would ever subscribe.

But Robert Hur's portrayal of Biden's memory was deceitful and flat out false.

Biden is better when he yells.

**

I got a booster today for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella. Measles seems to be making a comeback.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-kn … d-in-2024/

Wade's eulogy for Tracy Torme at his funeral. Not written by AI.

I've written a lot of dialogue for Quinn Mallory over the years in fanfic. And I like to think that I understand the character, but one thing eludes me: I do not understand Quinn's love for professional sports. I didn't realize this when writing SLIDERS fanfic, but looking back: I have habitually avoided sports in how I wrote Quinn.

I've written three scripts and one novella for the early-20s Quinn ("Slide Effects", "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition", SLIDERS REBORN 1 & 4) and five scripts and a novella for the version who is in his mid-40s (SLIDERS REBORN 2 - 3, 5 - 6). I've gotten some nice compliments on how my version of Quinn sounds like Jerry O'Connell, particularly in how I insert breaks and pauses and points of emphasis, and I also capture Quinn's body language and the way Torme wrote Quinn's improvisational heroism and nature as social crusader. And yet...

There is not a single sports reference in any of Quinn's dialogue in my stories. There are only two references to fitness: in the first SLIDERS REBORN script, Quinn says he had to quit drinking because it was making him put on weight (just like Jerry O'Connell); in the fifth SLIDERS REBORN chapter, Quinn says he had to quit caffeine because it kept triggering flashbacks of "Strangers and Comrades".

Part of this is because I myself do not understand or have any interest in professional or amateur sports. I have zero interest in soccer, football, hockey, rugby, badminton, tennis, wrestling. I just don't care. My utter disinterest in sports is best summed up by Garfunkel and Oates' hypersardonic three minute comedy song, "Sports Go Sports":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fraSdN-PG8

At the same time, I wrote my 44 year old Quinn as basically being Tom Cruise in the latest MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies and my dialogue for him indicates that Quinn does work on his fitness and health, and sports must be a part of that in same way, but in a way that I didn't explore at all in my writing.

While I have zero interest in sports, I feel that sports are clearly an important part of the Quinn Mallory character, albeit one that I didn't understand. As conceived and presented by series co-creator Tracy Torme, sports are one of Quinn's obsessions, just as Torme himself loved surfing and football and hockey. Torme used a pan across Quinn's bedroom to establish Quinn shared Torme's interet in athletics.

I don't see the appeal of sports, so I fail to grasp what Quinn likes about them or why they matter to him or whether or not he plays them. But it is clearly an important part of the Quinn-character, and a part that I have edged around, dodged, evaded and downplayed, not because it doesn't matter, but because it's a handicap for me. A handicap so engrained that I honestly never thought about it until recently, when Torme passed away and a number of posters talked about how much Torme loved sports and how Torme gave that same trait to Quinn.

What is the appeal of watching professional sports? A web search tells me that the appeal is enjoying physical peak performance in human bodies, the strategy and tactics of a game, the drama and unpredictability of a competition, the emotional investment in a team, the social aspects of being a spectator.

Is there a scientific angle to why Quinn likes sports? It might be Quinn's fascination with statistical analysis, physics of trajectory and aerodynamics, game theory strategy, and also nutrition and fitness as Quinn clearly cares about working out and being physically active and agile.

I never got into it. I never touched on it. People like my Quinn Mallory a lot and I'm very proud of how well I wrote him. Tom of REWATCH PODCAST remarked that he could always hear Jerry O'Connell's voice in his head when reading my SLIDERS stories, and I think that my ability to pastiche the way Jerry delivers Quinn's dialogue with weight, contemplation, (performative) improvisation, intellectual delight and inspiration would often obscure how some key facets of Quinn were missing.

I frequently drew on "The Guardian" in the scenes where Quinn is mentoring his younger self, and speaks with both gentleness and forcefulness, and that inner confidence and emotional vulnerability matched with scientific knowledge defines Quinn to the point where capturing that makes any discrepancies seem trivial or non-existent. I am at the point where Quinn seems to write himself and I just document what he would have to say. More truthfully: I ask myself what I think Quinn would say or do and then try to find the words that present that, but that presentation can be limited by my own perceptions, interests and limitations. And sports is one of those limitations for me.

My interpretation of Quinn often used performance and pastiche to hide its failings, and I find my aversion to sports to be a very interesting flaw in my work on the character.

I brought in Nigel Mitchell to help me create parallel Earths for SLIDERS REBORN, but I probably should have also found someone to help me write sports references for Quinn. :-)

Interesting video on what may be skewing the polls from Farron Cousins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4F5HTBcwPc

Well, Biden feels calm and confident.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024 … t-campaign

And so begins the sequel that no one (except maybe Kyle) wanted to a movie that nobody (aside from Kyle) could stand to watch the first time.

Oh God.

I've started running a new round of conversions using pneumatic's script for SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09. However, this time... while I'm using pneumatic's script to reweave the files and reduce the jagged, flickery lines and add some of his sharpening -- well, I've elected to just output 720x540 files, albeit at the 23.97 film framerate. The reason for this: upscaling these faded videotape files to 720p or 1080p has only led to disappointment and nitpicky distraction.

For every crisp shot, there's a blurry, fuzzy one that Topaz and nnedi3 just can't improve. It's too schizophrenic and it's taken up way too much time to output upscaled files and then review them and by hyperaware of how the neural network or selective algorithms did a great job with this shot but not that one.

Christopher McQuarrie talked about how in the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE film DEAD RECKONING, he was initially keen to use digital deaging on Tom Cruise for a flashback scene, but then he realized he kept focusing on whether or not the deaging looked good rather than the scene itself, and even when the deaging was good, he was fixating on the quality of the effect rather than the quality of the story. He elected to just shorten the flashback to a brief sequence of Cruise shot under dim lighting.

I feel like when the content looks as bad as a Season 1 episode of SLIDERS, even a well-upscaled sequence is undermined by the poorer scenes around it.

I think 720x540 files will at least be consistent in what they are: substandard videotape edits that were fit for cathode ray tube broadcast but lacked even a 480i level of image data, but slightly sharpened and with the jagged edges toned down thanks to pneumatic.

Well, that is the kind of store that is clearly also not existing in Canada, certainly not as a chain. Why wouldn't it exist in the US?

In terms of why it no longer exists in Canada, there are clearly a number of factors. Factory Direct bought refunded-returned items from Best Buy and Amazon and Staples and whatnot for pennies on the dollar (an exaggeration), engaged in cursory inspection, discarded any items that were clearly too broken to sell, and put the rest on the shelves. A $800 smartphone retailed for $400, and went down by $50 a year, and Factory Direct made a good profit on that for a long time.

I personally never had a bad experience, but some Factory Direct customers reported that their products were defective and had to be exchanged repeatedly to get a working item. I suspect that Factory Direct's inspections of their inventory were limited, and they relied on customers exchanging defective items rather than pre-sale quality control.

For a long time, their sales were strong enough to withstand it, but Factory Direct may have built a bad reputation if too many customers had too many exchanges to the point where customers started paying more money elsewhere so that they wouldn't need to do repeated exchanges.

In 2020, Factory Direct probably saw increased sales of electronics due to people staying home, and may have overpurchased in anticipation for rising sales in 2021 - 2022 only for inflation to hit hard in 2023.

There's the fact that Factory Direct couldn't really raise their prices very much. If refurbished products go up in price, then the value of buying refurbished versus new is eliminated. Also, in 2023, Factory Direct's main customers were probably shopping there less. People on already low budgets who were now finding anything from Factory Direct now too expensive for them and viewed Factory Direct as a luxury.

People with more disposable income had probably always bought the full-priced latest and greatest. People who were tech-savvy enough to see Factory Direct for the great deals that it had may have also preferred to buy their items from online retailers who shipped products directly to buyers' homes and didn't require an in-store visit.

The people who once turned to Factory Direct for affordable tech were probably not buying any tech at all. In addition, Factory Direct didn't own its locations; it was renting those properties, and the rent against diminished profit led to an unsustainable situation.

Personally, I think Factory Direct offered amazing value, selling 2 - 4 year old smartphones that were so powerful that they wouldn't really suffer in terms of performance, while admittedly missing out on the latest screen refresh rates and low light camera lenses of newer technology. What could Factory Direct have done to survive?

They might have considered ending their existence as a bricks and mortar shop and taken their business entirely online, although it would have required more extensive review of their refurbished goods to avoid wasting shipping costs on exchanges.

They might have been able to focus exclusively on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Factory Direct was probably wasting its shelf space and time on selling blenders, coffeemakers, kettles and ice cream makers.

In a world of $2,000 smartphones, laptops and desktops, Factory Direct might have been able to carve out a niche in offering $300 - $800 prices on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops that were refurbished, 2 - 6 years old, not the latest and greatest, but affordable and good enough to run the latest and greatest software and apps even if the hardware was a little aged.

I wonder where I'll go now to find refurbished items.

SPOILERS FOR THE S2 FINALE OF QUANTUM LEAP

I hope it's not the end, but if it is, it is lovely.

I'd certainly agree that no studio considers it a financial success for a show to only run two seasons. However, that's two seasons with a strong conclusion. If QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 is cancelled on Addison and Ben's joyful reunion and running off into a new adventure, then QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 joins a number of other short-lived shows that had an adequate and reasonably passable conclusion: FAKING IT, FREAKS AND GEEKS, TRINKETS, AWAKE, BRISCO COUNTY JR., MANTIS, LIFE UNEXPECTED, PUNKY BREWSTER REBORN and SAVED BY THE BELL REBORN.

It is a far more forgiving fate than being shot and blown up, being sent to a rape camp and being transformed into the jukebox machine from the movie BIG and being exploded, getting merged with another person and 'lost', and being sent into an unstable vortex, fate unknown, and ending on a cliffhanger.

If this is the end, I feel that the final scene is quite beautiful and perfect in its way. Addison and Ben are reunited. Then we see Addison's little smile as an explosion in the distance goes off, signaling threat and danger. Addison smiles because she isn't afraid, but instead delighted to be with Ben and to be adventuring with him now. They run off into this latest leap.

They have found their way back to each other. They are together. And they are going to be just fine.

If we compare QL2.0's "Against Time" to "The Exodus" and "Genesis" and "The Unstuck Man" and "Requiem" and "The Seer", I feel we should be grateful.