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2021-02-05 20:54:38

It's a little known secret that the Navy does indeed have the technology to create sliders, specifically a fabricator that uses the magic of 3d printing to produce mini hamburgers. I in fact think Michael Mallory faked his death because a rogue nation wanted him to use his technology to make Big Macs and Michael staged a car accident and fled the country rather than go up against McDonalds.

2021-02-05 07:25:44

Well, the showrunner has said: she doesn't object to recasting Kate. What she objected to was:

Having Ruby Rose's Kate trick Alice into locking herself into Arkham Asylum and earning Alice's vengeful wrath.
Having Ruby Rose's Batwoman try to ally herself with Jacob Kane only for Jacob to turn on her, pull a gun on her and vow to hunt her down and kill her.

Followed by

Having Wallis Day's Kate Kane be the one to face down Alice now trying to kill her.
Having Wallis Day's Kate Kane be the one to unmask as Batwoman in front of Jacob Kane and reveal her true identity.

The tacit argument made by "Whatever Happened to Kate Kane" in having those arcs resolved by Kate's plane crash is that to have a new face confronting Alice's now-murderous feelings towards Ruby Rose's Kate is visually disconcerting. And that to have Batwoman unmask before Jacob Kane to reveal Wallis Day's face instead of Ruby Rose's face is also visually disconnected. (I'm just throwing in Wallis Day's name as a fan based dreamcasting.)

There's also the issue that Ruby Rose spent a whole year working with Rachel Skarsten and Dougray Scott. There is a familiarity and rapport and sense of family that was created over the course of many, many, many episodes. A new actress could fake it, that's what acting's all about -- but there's a naturalism that takes time to build and it's not going to exist after a one-week readthrough. There would be the odd sense that an arc that originated with Ruby Rose's Kate Kane is now concluding with some other Kane daughter.

However, if Kate is offscreen for awhile, the creators would then have the option of bringing in a new actress to play her, explaining that the plane explosion required some facial reconstruction and skin grafts (to explain why the new actress looks a little different and doesn't have the tattoos) -- and because of her absence, the performer would be building her relationships with Ruby Rose's supporting cast just as the character would be rebuilding them.

Looking at Season 2 so far: Kate's diary entry and letter were read by the character reading the message when TV convention usually has the person who wrote the message reading the voiceover. This tells me: BATWOMAN cannot get Ruby Rose to do so much as a voiceover, that every effort to send her a microphone and a voice recorder has been rebuffed. This tells me that the relationship between Rose and production is so hostile and acrimonious that she is never returning to that set.

If they don't want to recast Ruby Rose, then I think the simplest solution is that Safiya is lying, she doesn't have Kate and Kate really did die -- but in some brief LEGENDS crossover, Ryan gets sent 80 years into the future and discovers an in-her-60s Kate Kane (played by another actress who is older but looks and sounds like Rose) who reveals that some CRISIS-related whatever transported her out of the plane explosion and 50 years into the future where she resumed her career as Batwoman after Ryan had retired, becoming the Bat of the Future that the Monitor called her, then retiring herself and training a successor.

Ryan can return to the present and assure Mary and Luke that Kate will return some day. Just not today. (Like Sisko in DEEP SPACE NINE!) And fans are assured that Kate will return (off camera, in the future, long after the actual BATWOMAN TV series concludes).

2021-02-04 16:04:56

... has there been any news as to who is playing Plastic Man in the next season of THE FLASH?
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-flash … t-season-7

2021-02-03 21:54:51

Biden is a politician and he signed up to be hurt. Everyone should feel free to take a swing at him. It's the president's job to be the country's punching bag; it is without question the worst job in America and Biden is a deeply average and mediocre human being (as are most of us).

My question is -- will a Trump trial hurt the people? Or will it help them? Will it heal the country? Or will it deepen its wounds?

I honestly don't know, you're a deeply polarized nation.

2021-02-03 21:47:40

I think they are hinting that Kate is alive because a story in which she goes missing simply demands that the characters try to find her. They can't possibly succeed. And I think Mary gave voice to that: Kate isn't coming back. Even if she survived the plane explosion, she would have had to survive the fall, then survive drowning -- the audience knows Kate isn't coming back, but if the characters don't exhaust every avenue to find her, it becomes a weird Season 4 situation where the sliders inexplicably don't make Wade their number one priority.

Even if the story goes nowhere, it's still somewhere the characters need to go -- or we'll forever be rewatching the scenes where they don't the way I rewatched "Mother and Child"'s "We don't have time" moment over and over and over again to the point of writing the Rewatch Podcast five emails about it and talking about it even today like it was the second most traumatic event of my life (the death of Professor Arturo being the first).

I think they are hinting that Kate is alive because the optics of killing off the most visible, most popular (and only) lesbian superhero on TV at the time is simply untenable. Gay people have oddly high body counts on television. And BATWOMAN's creators cannot bear to add to it even if Slider_Quinn21 would forgive them for doing it.

I also think that... once Kate has been offscreen for a while, there will be some reconsideration as to whether or not they can recast her. But I don't know that for a fact.

2021-02-03 19:25:51

I've concluded that I just don't understand the CW's business model. BATWOMAN has been renewed for Season 3. It's averaging 700,000 viewers. Three episodes into the year!

Well, I adore the show, but I can't pretend I grasp the economics here.

2021-02-03 17:19:59

My country has declared Proud Boys a terrorist group, and they'll be listed among incels.

Canada's done lots of other stupid crap lately, though. Wakanda, we are not.

2021-02-03 17:02:00

BATWOMAN, FLASH and LEGENDS have gotten early renewals for a 2021 - 2022 season. SUPERMAN AND LOIS are getting boosted from 13 episodes to 15.
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/cw-renews-w … s-add-eps/

2021-02-01 08:50:12

Regrettably, the archive of the former Bboard seems to have failed. We still have the files, but it looks like Hosting Check's mismatched database errors -- which crashed the old Bboard in the first place -- reached a state of permanent failure. For this reason, I've removed links to the previous Bboard as there's no point linking to threads that don't load. Thankfully, in 2015, Temporal Flux chose the excellent Dreamhost for our present home that has remained stable and reliable.

2021-01-31 16:45:24

I felt a hankering to watch "The Guardian" today. I have the Universal version of Season 3 on DVD. (I also have the complete series from Mill Creek, the Dual Dimension set of Seasons 1 - 2 and a box of press clippings from the offices of the Sci-Fi Channel.)

I popped the Universal disc for "The Guardian" into the external blu-ray drive for my desktop computer -- but I accidentally scraped and scratched the disc. It is no longer loading properly. Now that the only episode I really care about in the Season 3 set is damaged on its disc, I can now throw out the Season 3 set. It is the season of hell and I'm relieved to be rid of it.

I put the Mill Creek disc with "The Guardian" in my blu-ray drive, ripped the episode with Handbrake, then copied the file to my iPad. I have to say, the Mill Creek release looks really good on my iPad (2017 with a Retina display). Despite the high resolution of the iPad screen, the DVD quality looks good enough on a 9.7 inch screen in a 4:3 ratio.

Anyway. This remains one of SLIDERS' finest hours, marred only by the fact that it was clearly filmed in Pasadena instead of Vancouver when the script calls for the sliders to be wearing their Season 2 outfits and engaging with the gray and chilly physicality of British Columbia and to look like flawed human beings and not magazine models. Wade's lip gloss and Quinn's leather jacket are particularly alarming.

It's strange: when writing my own SLIDERS scripts, I didn't turn to this episode to get Quinn's voice and body language in my head. I prefer to use "As Time Goes By," partially for the aesthetics, but because Quinn is flawed and makes mistakes and screws up whereas "The Guardian" is somewhat insistent on Quinn never taking a wrong turn and never being out of his depth.

That said, every page I've ever written for Quinn is clearly modelled on this episode: Jerry (and John's guidance) present Quinn as someone with wisdom and perspective that seems to be entirely too much to be contained within Jerry O'Connell's form. There's a weighty, thoughtful presence to Quinn in this episode, beautifully balanced between world-weariness and a joyful sense of wonder. Quinn Mallory in "The Guardian" is the perfect science hero, the perfect slider -- probably too much so. This version of Quinn is never truly challenged, never out of his depth, never presented as a character whom we should doubt or question.

I've never watched this DVD on my 55 inch TV with my blu-ray player, but I'm sure it looks horrible.

2021-01-31 12:26:41

I didn't and don't have time to rewatch the entire BABYLON 5 series in its remastered format -- but I did rewatch "And the Sky Full of Stars" from Season 1, in which Sinclair is kidnapped and forced to revisit the closing moments of the Earth-Minbari war by an intelligence officer convinced that the Minbari surrendered to Earth for nefarious reasons. The episode is amazing, a polite homage to the PRISONER episode "Once Upon a Time" in forcing the lead to revisit past memories and arranged as a vivid, abstract psychodrama stageplay.

And the remaster is a capable, professional job. They have redone the film transfers to get a good amount of colour and sharpness but kept the image in 4:3. This means that the special effects shots could also be lightly upscaled and maintain the same aspect ratio -- in contrast to the original DVD releases which presented the episodes in 16:9 widescreen and cropped the 4:3 special effects shots, making them blurry and misframed.

The remaster aims lower than other projects, doesn't attempt to make BABYLON 5 look like it was made today as a pastiche of 90s sci-fi television, doesn't attempt to make BABYLON 5 look modern and current, doesn't make BABYLON 5 look painstakingly restored and rebuilt -- the remaster just makes it look properly preserved as a 90s show that is presentable on a high definition TV.

I'd like to see something similar done with SLIDERS' first two seasons. I don't think SLIDERS would benefit from redoing all of its effects as that would simply add new flaws to the existing visual issues. But I'd like to see the master tapes rescanned to the highest possible bit rate and lightly upscaled to 720p via artificial intelligence algorithms. It would never look like a true HD release, but it'd be presentable (albeit not as presentable as BABYLON 5).

2021-01-30 23:54:57

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/3 … eam-464017

Trump has lost his impeachment defence lawyers. Not that it matters. He could just represent himself. Senate won't vote to convict him.

2021-01-30 23:33:14

I didn't realize that. Thank you.

**

Anecdotal anecdote: I used to get a severe cold every other month. After some dietary changes and supplementation, I would get a severe cold once in the fall and twice in the winter.

But for 2020, I have had no severe colds. No sick days in the winter. No sick days in the fall. I had to dig up my HR records to confirm this, but the year the pandemic hit was the first year I didn't take a single day off work for illness.

It's because I've been wearing a mask. At the start of the pandemic, I was on construction dust masks that I'd spray with disinfectant after each wearing. Then I moved to surgical masks as they became available. Since the fall, I've been largely on KN95 masks whenever going into buildings that aren't my home. Three-ply surgical masks with a PM2.5 filter added in if I'm running short on KN95s. Three-ply cotton masks with a PM2.5 filter in the filter pocket if I'm going out for a walk or taking out the garbage or recycling. Masking didn't just protect me from COVID-19; it kept me from getting any illnesses at all. If I get to March 2021, it'll have been my first 12 months ever without taking ill.

Even after a vaccination, even after the pandemic is lifted, I'll be wearing a mask at the start of fall and at the start of winter. (Three-ply cotton with a PM2.5 in the pocket.)

2021-01-30 23:10:11

Minority opinion here: I like Season 1 of BABYLON 5. I also like the pilot movie, THE GATHERING, although I've only ever seen the home release version which was re-edited and used the score from the TV show when the originally aired version didn't. I definitely agree that Seasons 2 - 4 of BABYLON 5 are the high point of the show whereas Season 1 has a somewhat stiff lead actor (although I really like his gravitas and presence) and doesn't quite indicate where all its running arcs are going (although most are indeed going somewhere).

Season 1 has a lot of stuff I love: Sinclair saying humanity must go to the stars because when Earth is inevitably consumed by the sun, all human achievement will be lost unless humans have shared what they have to offer with the universe. An array of Earth religions honoured. Sinclair trapped in a simulation of the Earth-Minbari war and confessing that he doesn't know why the war ended, only that he saw madness and horror only for the triumphant enemy to choose peace. I like it. Most people don't.

Season 5 is a bad year, however, as Season 4 anticipated a cancellation and aimed to conclude everything only to get renewed. Thankfully, the series finale (filmed to be the Season 4 finale but withheld for Season 5) offers a good conclusion to everything. The spinoffs are also unfortunate: a TV movie leading into sequel series that was cancelled in mid-storyline, a pilot movie that went nowhere.

Anyway. I cannot stress enough that the views of ireactions do not reflect the consensus of Sliders.TV. In fact, my view that Season 1 of BABYLON 5 is good and that THE GATHERING is good does not reflect the consensus of Sliders.TV and is completely in the minority of BABYLON 5 fans.

2021-01-30 20:59:50

Biden's upped his vaccination goal to 150 million people by his 100th day in office. It's still too low for herd immunity. America needs to get 300 million by then to reach herd immunity.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021 … ccine-goal

Fauci during a town hall was asked about the US government getting N95 masks to every person in America. He said that N95 masks are too uncomfortable and that people would not wear them consistently, so whatever masks people wear have to be comfortable enough to be worn constantly.

There's a fair point to that. I wear KN95 masks myself (a variant on an N95 mask that has earloops instead of the straps wrapping around the back of the head). I can't get my own mother to wear a KN95 mask. She says she cannot breathe through it. I've gotten her to wear surgical masks (hydrophobic, electrostatic filtering like the N95, but without the 360 seal of an N95).

The other problem with supplying an N95 or surgical mask to every person in America: these masks cannot be conventionally washed. Soaking eliminates the electrostatic charge that gives these masks their strong filtration properties. Spraying them with disinfectant has the same effect. The only real way to reuse is to, after each wearing, put the mask in a paper bag or envelope for 72 hours, let the virus reach non-viability during that period, and then put it back in your mask rotation again. This is rather complicated for the general public to adopt to a near-universal level, and you also need to have enough KN95s to rotate between them while putting any worn ones out of circulation for three days.

But the US government could still supply masks. The simplest mask that would work for the widest number of people: it would be a 3-layer cotton mask with a nose-wire (to create a seal and prevent glasses from fogging up) as well as a filter pocket and adjustable earloops (to fit as many people as possible). Such masks are intended for use with a PM2.5 filter in the filter pocket. A PM2.5 filter is activated charcoal in a slip of cloth that offers both physical filtering and electrostatic filtering like an N95 (albeit without the wide coverage and 360-seal of an N95).

If America could supply every man, woman and child with (a) 10 3-ply masks with a nose wire and a filter pocket (b) 360 PM2.5 filters and (c) instructions to wear the mask once, throw out the filter, disinfect the mask, replace the filter and wear it again -- everyone would have a year's worth of gear to protect themselves from the heavier viral load of the new COVID-19 variants as well as each other.

It wouldn't be as good as the N95 or KN95 mask because the seal on such masks is not as tight or along the entire perimeter of the mask, but the PM2.5 filter would be pressed against the nostrils and mouth and that would have to filter at least 70 - 85 per cent of particles -- certainly below the 95 per cent filtration of an N95 but well above the level of a cotton mask with no filter that serves to contain droplets from the wearer but wouldn't protect the wearer from exposure.

I've written a letter suggesting as much.

2021-01-30 11:48:36

Pretty exciting! :-)

I ran a SLIDERS contest once in a fit of enthusiasm. It was on March 21, 2015 -- 24 hours to the 20th anniversary. The four page screenplay to Part 1 was done. But Part 2 -- it still wasn't ready and I needed to go through it and rewrite all the dialogue to better capture the actor's voices. Except as I was about to do this final pass, this ridiculously loud party began blasting music through my floors. I called the building super, the police and the army, but as they were busy with real emergencies, I was forced to leave my home and rent a hotel room and lock myself in with my laptop and just hammer away at the script.

As I was typing, it occurred to me that I had a lot of miscellaneous characters -- Rembrandt's Accountant, Teacher #4, Cop #2, Librarian #1, Book Store Customer #6 -- and I should make all of these characters doubles of guest stars from the original show. I proceeded to, in a burst of lunacy, decide to hold a contest. Anyone who could identify all of these returning guest-stars in SLIDERS REBORN's debut scripts would receive a DVD box set of SLIDERS. My zero dollar project was now $180 overbudget.

Nobody won. Nobody won because nobody could identify Rembrandt's accountant, a distinguished older gentleman named Marc with an English accent. (It's the Seer as played by Roy Dotrice.) People could easily pick out The Ranger and The Poacher from "In Dino Veritas," Amy from "The Chasm," Ms. Hanley from "The Guardian," Sheilah Brice from "Slide Like an Egyptian" and "Heavy Metal," Arlo from "Please Press One" -- probably because of search engines and IMDB because where characters didn't have first or last names, I gave them the names of their actors (Alessandra Petlin who played The Ranger in "Dino" received her actress' name, Mark Sheppard's Jack from "Net Worth" was named Jack Sheppard, "El Sid"'s Sid played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan became Sid Morgan, Garry Chalk's Lieutenant Graves from "Time and Again World" became Garry Graves). Slider_Quinn21 told me that he could feel my joy leap off the page when he read the words, "It's Pavel! From the Pilot! And a few other episodes!"

Anyway. I owe SLIDERS fans a DVD box set and I'm happy to see to it that Cez's Season 6 will let me provide one at last.

2021-01-26 20:10:19

Well. I love the 2017 TOMB RAIDER movie. I've never finished one of the games, but I was really impressed with Alicia Vikander's abdominal muscles and boxer's bearing and hyperferocity in combat. It's cool that your love of the games got you a trip to Los Angeles!

I think it's really cool that you put your real life into your story. I think that's something SLIDERS writers are compelled to do; we want to bring the sliders into our world because on some level, they have the technology to come here and on a more intimate and personal level, the sliders are our friends. We travelled with them on a frightening and enlightening journey. We connected with them through grief and joy. We care about them and want to see Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo stick together through thick and thin no matter what's happening on camera or behind it (thanks, Annie Fish).

I really relate to this. When writing SLIDERS REBORN, I was developing my relationship with my niece Lauren and wondered how Quinn Mallory at age 44 (which he would be in 2015) would handle dealing with a loudmouthed, strident, bold teenaged girl with the volatility of a firecracker and a mean right hook. And I gave Quinn a teenaged daughter. The sliders are our friends; we want to see their milestones. We want to see them grow and bond and connect and move forward and know that they'll be okay. We want to know that it's not that embarrassing for us to get punched off our chairs by a teenaged girl when we say the wrong thing because Quinn Mallory's daughter can also knock him on his ass with an angry fist.

Sliders.

2021-01-26 16:57:46

Episode 2 of BATWOMAN. Once again, the writers are in an impossible situation: they have a season of BATWOMAN and they've lost the actress who plays Batwoman and for reasons that I grudgingly understand, they do not feel comfortable recasting Batwoman at this time with showrunner Caroline Dries saying that she thought it could only be jarring if character confrontations started by Ruby Rose's Kate Kane were concluded with some other actress' Kate Kane.

And with episode 2, we have another problem: if some new person, some nobody is going to be Batwoman now -- won't the show feel totally disconnected from Season 1? But episode 2 does something incredibly clever: it observes that Season 1 was very much about an absence, the absence of Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane constantly journaling to Bruce, asking this offscreen figure if she was making him proud, if he would approve of her, if she was good enough to take his place.

Season 2's second episode makes it clear that Season 2 is very focused on the void left by Kate Kane's absence. The city demands that Batwoman stand up to the Crows and protect the people. Alice has gone crazy(er). Sophie and Julia's romance has been shattered. Jacob Kane is so damaged he's terrorizing the only daughter with whom he can still be on speaking terms. Just as Bruce's disappearance left a void in Gotham for Season 1, Kate's absence has left a hole in Season 2 that characters once again circle, gingerly step past, stare into nervously or fall into completely.

This is something I really understand. I was 13 when I watched "The Exodus" and I think everything in my life after that to 2015 was a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo. Every anxiety, behavioural difficulty and psychological paralysis was the result of having watched a father get his brain sucked out before being shot and exploded, of being unable to confront and address this traumatic and terrible loss.

Season 2 truly feels like part of Season 1 despite losing its lead character. Just like Season 1, Season 2 is about all the ways people react to another absence: Mary wants the comfort of knowing someone will be Batwoman. Alice is disturbed that the Batwoman is wiling to kill her. Jacob is angry that someone would impersonate his daughter. And Luke declares that Ryan is but a temporary substitute until Kate's return when we know Ruby Rose is never coming back. He isn't ready to confront the truth and to be fair, he has good reason to think Kate's alive.

I don't really approve of the decision to not recast Kate. Paradoxically, I would approve of these stories as a path to recasting Kate -- by having Kate disappear in the plane crash, all the characters reacting to her death, various people standing in for Batwoman -- and then having a recast Kate return after 4 - 6 episodes, and account for the new actress not having Ruby Rose's tattoos saying that the plane crash necessitated skin grafts. They're probably not going to do that; they're still using photos of Ruby Rose as Kate Kane.

But even so: Episodes 1 - 2, despite being in a difficult and untenable situation, are extremely well-written, well-performed and well-produced. Being good counts.

2021-01-24 20:33:41

I really like all of WANDAVISION. It expresses something I think a lot of people are going through right now as viewing figures for streaming services skyrocket due to long term isolation. People are escaping into TV and film and often, that escape is into nostalgia for days past. The Vision is dead. We saw him die twice. But here he is, alive and well, enjoying domestic bliss with Wanda. Something is wrong. Something must be wrong. WANDAVISION does a great job of presenting the cheeriness of a sitcom from a previous century but with hints of a sinister reality concealed by pastiche and homage.

It's interesting. I wrote a story where Rembrandt came out of the vortex to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting for him. He said this couldn't be happening. The Professor reminded him that they were all sliders and that nothing is impossible. The next script was set 15 years later with the sliders living normal, happy lives, not addressing how they all came back to life and returned to a home untouched by Kromaggs until the fourth installment. The details aren't important, SLIDERS REBORN declared. What matters is what's true: that in our darkest hour, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo will always come back to save us. SLIDERS REBORN asks you to believe that what was lost will return.

WANDAVISION doesn't believe in that. The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't believe in that. In the comic book 616 universe, all the Avengers die and come back to life three or four times a decade and never seem to age. In the MCU, Tony Stark died, Steve Rogers grew old and retired, the Red Skull regretted being a Nazi and sought redemption, Banner embraced the Hulk and found a happy medium, Black Widow died and so did Vision. WANDAVISION expresses understanding for how comforting it can be to remember how things might have been.

WANDAVISION sympathizes with what appears to be Wanda's grief for the Vision leading to her living in the comforting low stakes existence of a false television reality -- much as many of us are taking comfort by binge watching media content. But WANDAVISION is also absolutely clear: to obsess and drown one's self in past memories that never were and to long for what is gone and never was and never will be is suffocating and in some ways dangerous, preventing Wanda from addressing and resolving a very real loss in her life.

2021-01-24 20:08:27

This is a really interesting storyline from TF. I have somewhat pigeonholed Temporal Flux as the social satire and comedy conceptualist, but it's an error to forget that he is just as capable with action, danger, risk, paranoia and sci-fi technology concepts. This is less Temporal Flux is Torme/Weiss mode and more TF doing Marc Scott Zicree but far darker and more dangerous than Zicree ever got. There's a certain savagery to the sliders accidentally unleashing a destructive nuclear blast in the process of escaping it. There's a bleak horror to someone missing their 29.7 window and then missing it again.

Not sure if this is where the story ends, but it's incredibly disturbing and stirring and frightening and damn it, Temporal Flux, I was about to go to bed.

2021-01-23 19:43:54

Very interesting article on minimum wage.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019 … -be-raised

Not sure if its assertions are true. It could certainly just be telling me what I want to hear.

**

I upset someone today. I logged onto a Discord to ask a blogger whose work I enjoy if he'd be reviewing Something. The channel was expressing a lot of grief over the disaster zone that is America right now. I thought I could say something kind by sharing the values I've generally absorbed from CAPTAIN AMERICA comic books -- that Americans are good people who have an incredible capacity to work together to solve their problems, that they have, like any society, made some disastrous choices, but that the American ideal of equality and freedom from monarchs and feudalism and a strong middle class and leadership chosen by people rather than birth is something special and I'm sure that America will find its way again.

The blogger told me that such views of American exceptionalism were repulsive and appalling and offensive that he would ban me from his channel if I kept typing and would likely ban me from his channel regardless and I thanked him for his writing and left and won't go back.

I guess I misread that. I was -- I thought -- being polite in that when your friends (or people with whom you wish to be friendly) are upset, you highlight their strengths and express confidence that they can solve their problems. But I'm going to have to rethink whether or not it's the crowdpleaser I thought it was to say that "Americans are good people who will pull together."

Realistically and truthfully, Americans are an alarmingly white-centric, prejudiced society hostile to objective scientific information and inexplicably certain that genetic origins make them exempt from any consequences after engaging in assault, armed insurrection, bioterrorism -- but Americans are also a nation of scientific minded engineers, civil rights leaders, thinkers, philanthropists, social justice activists, public servants and people who believe that they can govern themselves (even if they often screw it up).

No other society would have created the superhero. As a neighbour to America, I sometimes watch in consternation and dismay, but I also look on at times with admiration and respect and I think any friendship will see the pendulum swing back and forth between the two. I do believe in American exceptionalism -- but I believe that every society has some point of exceptionality. I don't believe in exclusive exceptionalism.

2021-01-23 14:33:48

I think that in the future, it will be jarring to go from the BW Season 1 finale to the Season 2 premiere. But in the moment of a first viewing, the premiere gave voice to all the fans’ frustrations. Jacob Kane is just as upset as the viewers that he won’t get to face Kate/Batwoman and address how he unknowingly declared his beloved daughter his enemy. Alice is just as furious as the fans that she won’t have a final confrontation with Kate. These scenes, while powerful, operate on the audience already knowing that Ruby Rose is out and not being recast (yet). The premiere doesn’t even get Rose to read her letter to Sophie in a voiceover and bows to the reality of a terrible and unthinkable casting situation.

I suspect that a rewatch won’t put the real world situation at the forefront and the story will have to stand for itself and... well, it’s an anticlimax. It’s a disappointment. And it’s something of an unavoidable failure even if the writers are doing their best.

The premiere gave a very strong argument for why they couldn’t recast Ruby Rose: we saw Ruby Rose’s Kate face down Jacob and Alice, so to have the subsequent confrontation feature __________’s Kate resolving issues originating with Rose’s Kate would have been mismatched and jarring with an uncanny valley effect of seeing someone who isn’t Ruby Rose address Rose’s supporting cast and emotional arcs. So they had the new Batwoman be someone who within the story isn’t Ruby Rose and isn’t Kate Kane addressing those characters and storylines.

The Batmobile was made for Season 1 and I’m guessing Tommy would have stolen the car and Kryptonite and forced Kate to pursue him for both. But when the pandemic shut down filming, production kept the car for Season 2. I imagine they only planned to use it for the Season 1 finale without necessarily insisting on reusing it for Season 2 since Kate’s motorcycle is so associated with her. Now it’s an open question.

2021-01-23 00:06:10

The way the National Guardsmen are being treated is a national disgrace. 5,000 troops made to stay in a parking lot with one power outlet and one washroom that had two stalls. And there is no COVID prevention procedure and over 200 of them have gotten sick.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/2 … tol-461220

I'm not sure if Biden is personally responsible for this, but he is organizationally responsible for addressing and resolving it.

That said, this outrage and frustration feels familiar and I'm almost relieved because I thought God had forsaken me in allowing me to have a few hours in relative calm over the state of America.

2021-01-22 20:32:38

Oh thank God. Criticism time!

Biden's vaccine plans are pedestrian at best. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2224 … n-100-days

2021-01-22 20:05:22

Biden honeymoon with me persists as Dr. Fauci is at last unmuzzled and says he's free to speak on the pandemic with full support from the White House:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/us/p … cCwj4Jc_aI

Biden warms my heart declaring to his appointees that abuse and harassment will not be tolerated among his staff and is an on the spot firing offence. He also swears them in via Zoom because he doesn't do superspreader events.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/202 … ot-vpx.cnn

Senate stalled.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/2 … lay-461348

I should say, I felt as happy with my Prime Minister after his election. But now, he's had three ethics violations, bought an oil pipeline despite his commitment to climate change reform, given up on electoral reform because he's barely holding a minority government, just had to fire his Governor general for abuse and harassment...

2021-01-22 18:25:20

I joined! Thanks, buddy!

2021-01-22 18:22:11

I agree: using "Darkest Hour: Ticking Clock" allowed you to bypass the need for a more extensive homecoming. They already made it home in a previous story and knew they were home, now they get to go back and stay. It's an effective choice and a good use of an otherwise very odd story in SLIDERS canon, to put it mildly.

This is something a lot of SLIDERS writers do -- including myself. We want Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back. But we are also inclined to make use of the SLIDERS mythos despite its positively diseased state in Seasons 3 - 5. We want to turn an incoherent mess of haphazard incompetence into a meaningful tapestry. I get the sense you actually liked the comic books, however, and did not hold them in any disregard at all.

I definitely did that in my own SLIDERS writing to a degree -- which is to say that when I needed a lady scientist, it was wasteful to use anyone other than Diana Davis. When I needed a gunslinging action girl, I brought in Maggie. When I needed Quinn to confide in a hallucinatory friend, I chose Mallory. When I needed a monotone voice for an artificial intelligence, it was Colin's voice. When in an unwritten Part 7, I needed some technology to instantly heal someone of a genetic dysfunction, I used the nanites from "New Gods For Old." The finale for SLIDERS REBORN features the dinosaur, the super-intelligent snakes, the breeder parasites, the fat craving zombies, the animal-human hybrids, the underground predators, the scarab, the giant worm, the remote controlled cars that shoot lasers, the dragon and the magic sword and the Dream Masters.

Transmodiar pointed out how odd this was and this is common among all SLIDERS writers. Despite preferring the first two seasons of SLIDERS, despite seeking to remove the third, fourth and fifth seasons, SLIDERS writers seem to invariably gravitate towards incorporating Maggie, Colin, Mallory and Diana. Why?

My thinking is that when we resurrect Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, we are engaged in a revolutionary act of optimism. We are declaring that our worst moments don't have to define us. That the most traumatic events in our lives are not our lives as a whole. That whatever we've lost can be found again, that what is destroyed can be rebuilt, that the people we care about can find a way to return and that the sliders will always come back.

It is a fundamentally forgiving perspective on SLIDERS and this gentle redemption seems selfish and selective if restricted solely to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. Despite the fact that Maggie, Colin, Mallory and Diana weren't part of the original sliders, to exclude them is ultimately not a very SLIDERS-esque attitude because SLIDERS is not an exclusive series where privilege and position are restricted only to the chosen elite. SLIDERS is about a computer repair technician, a salesgirl, a washed up musician who specializes in a dated musical form and a genius professor who never received the recognition he deserved. SLIDERS is an inherently welcoming show that will, in its truest self, welcome both the original and the alternative characters back into the story.

2021-01-20 19:53:59

It's strange for me to say this as a SLIDERS 'writer' -- but I am not good at world-building. I've written "Slide Effects," "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition" and SLIDERS REBORN ("Reprise," "Reunion," "Revelation," "Reminiscence," "Revolution" and "Regenesis") -- and the world-building in REBORN is actually quite solid with many throwaway worlds in "Reunion," three brilliant concepts in "Revelation" and a clever presentation of a merged reality in "Regenesis." None of that was mine; I paid SLIDERS fanfic writer Nigel Mitchell to come up with all the alt-worlds in REBORN. (Well. He wouldn't take any money. So I bought all of his books on Amazon and will buy any book he ever releases for the rest of our lives.)

However! I have a Theory of SLIDERS. Specifically, it's David Peckinpah's Theory of SLIDERS. His theory is that SLIDERS is a TV show where every week, the sliders slide into a different genre of film or TV. They slide into Westerns, Victorian murder mysteries, Christmas comedies, game shows, horror movies, monster movies... it's at this point that Peckinpah's cocaine and heroin addiction seemed to take hold and he got stuck doing horror and monster movies.

However! I maintain that the idea itself -- that the sliders could slide into different formats, genres and different kinds of stories every week -- is not inherently bad but in fact a very effective formula for SLIDERS.

I would have liked:

A mumblecore episode
A spy thriller episode
An improv episode
A film noir episode
A scripted episode filmed live
A single-person storyteller episode
An episode where the four sliders recount four contradictory perspectives of an adventure
An episode from the perspective of inhabitants on a parallel world with the four sliders only appearing at a distance or in one scene
A standup comedy episode
A mockumentary episode
A martial arts movie episode
A superhero episode (where all the 'superpowers' are vortex technology)
A musical episode
A sketch comedy episode

2021-01-20 19:31:09

QAnon weeps that Trump didn't have some masterplan to stop Biden's inauguration, founder gives up.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/2 … day-460926

Domestic terrorists shocked that Trump wouldn't pardon the cons and marks he got to riot in his name to try to stop electoral votes counting, astonished that Trump only pardoned those from whom he hopes to get money or help avoiding prison.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/01/20/cap … didnt-get/

Local SLIDERS fan relieved that he accurately predicted that Trump would give up and spend his final days in the White House eating hamburgers and French fries and looking at the ceiling in bed.

http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=11034#p11034

2021-01-20 19:19:09

January 20, 2021 will be a significant day in American history. It's the day LEGO SLIDERS SEASON 6 released its finale!

I haven't been a huge fan of the SLIDERS comic books, but when Cez shifted to original stories, SEASON 6 really notched up, in my opinion. The finale is a great success: it presents the original sliders and the alternative sliders side by side and gives closure to one set and a continuing adventure for the other.

The only real criticisms I'd have of SEASON 6 are for the parts that Cez didn't write. The comics were a peculiar product borne of writers and artists who weren't sufficiently familiar with the series, who prioritized the comic so indifferently that they often didn't finish drawing their pages. Regardless, the comics were used, and while I disagree with that, Cez' original work makes clever use of plot points from "Darkest Hour: Ticking Clock" in order to set up a path for the original sliders to get home -- while also offering a path for the alternative sliders.

The echoes of "The Exodus" are an effective mirror, using that ghastly SLIDERS episode for an emotional SLIDERS finale. Cez has a real gift for taking some of the worst points of the SLIDERS mythos and reversing their effect. The flat emptiness of "The Exodus" is reworked into an uplifting moment of peace as well as grief, and it creates a strong thematic link with "Slide Effects" also recreating moments of the past (intentionally or not). The epic widescreen action format is effective in trouncing the Kromaggs and Zercurvians and the more intimate moments with Arturo and his double confronting each other also work well, especially in the Lego format. The Lego does a stirring job of presenting Arturo-2's scenes with his double and the final image is truly victorious, triumphant and uplifting.

It's a good ending for a series that embraces both the original and alternative sliders and the use of the Golden Gate Bridge at the end is stirring, iconic and powerful. It's a lovely choice to get the original sliders home while the alternative sliders still search, leaving the series both at a peaceful end and with the adventure continuing.

2021-01-19 09:23:41

Incredible! It must be hard to get a new job in a pandemic. Congratulations!

2021-01-18 22:47:00

BATWOMAN works. [spoilers]

The creators made a very interesting choice: just as Ruby Rose abruptly ripped herself out of the show, Kate Kane is suddenly torn out of the show in a plane crash, presumed dead (no body) -- leaving Kate's supporting cast reeling from the shock just as the viewers are stunned, hurt, confused and disoriented.

When Ryan Wilder, played by the brilliant actress (and stunningly beautiful woman) Javicia Leslie finds the suit in the plane's wreckage and puts it on, Luke and Mary are furious and angry, calling Ryan a thief and impostor and unworthy to wear the cowl just as the viewers are angry to see a new person in the lead role of the series. Alice is furious that she has been denied her revenge on Kate. Jacob Kane, Kate's father, is forced to confront how his last scene with Kate had him holding a gun on her and vowing to hunt her down with no chance to ever take it back.

It reminds me of "Applied Physics," the only script in Season 5 that truly addressed Jerry O'Connell's absence with the characters horrified at Quinn's disappearance and his replacement by a stranger, except in this case, the entire episode and seasonal arc is about everything Kate brought to Gotham City by observing its absence. Kate's military training and precision is gone; Ryan's deranged ferocity is dangerous and a liability. Kate's militaristic sense of duty is gone; Ryan is a malfunctioning seeker of vengeance. Kate's confidence in her team is gone; Ryan doesn't trust Luke and Mary and doesn't want to work with them.

And at the end, Kate's father and ex-girlfriend Sophie collapse in grief, having to mourn Kate without ever getting closure and resolution with her -- just like us.

Stories can often get away with difficult or unworkable premises if they can reflect truth -- the truth of what the performers or the storytellers or the audience are experiencing individually or collectively. In this case, BATWOMAN has captured the feelings of the audience, and has committed to working through these feelings with the viewers.

I hope they can keep it up. I strongly disagree with their refusal to simply recast Kate Kane, but they've done a good job with removing Kate from the show.

2021-01-18 16:35:48

First two episodes of WANDAVISION.

WTF?!?!!?!?!?!?

Okay, back to work. :-)

2021-01-16 20:28:18

When I saw that Andrew Yang was running for mayor, my first thought was, "I'm very happy for Transmodiar and I hope this is the start of something amazing."

2021-01-16 13:52:53

I just watched WORK IT, a truly visionary film on Netflix. It features teen idol Sabrina Carpenter playing a high school student trying to start a dance troupe despite having no dancing ability whatsoever. It is a moderately charming teen dramedy that follows the formula of any sports film with an underdog learning a new skill for a competition. It's adequate and serviceable if you like this sort of thing. It's fine. But the really important thing about this film is that Sabrina Carpenter's character is a scientific minded, calculating, systematic thinker and problem solver whose name is Quinn.

2021-01-16 10:16:29

TLDR: If you're currently using cotton masks, it's time to switch to medical grade masks with liquid resistant layers, electrostatic filtering and a nose wire to seal the mask to your face. COVID-19's developed some highly contagious variants with higher viral load.

Very concerned about masks right now. Anti-maskers like our suicidal death cultist Kyle declare that masks don't work, don't prevent COVID-19 -- but the reality is that it depends on the mask.

When the pandemic first hit, North America was unprepared, supplies of medical grade masks were needed for hospitals, so the population was encouraged not to use up the supply. As a stopgap measure, non-health workers were later asked to wear non-medical face coverings; masks made of cotton with earloops.

I don't believe these face masks protect the wearer. I've been examining them closely and when I hold cotton face masks up to a dim lightbulb, I can see the outline of all the threads. Droplets containing the COVID-19 virus wouldn't be stopped by an absorbent layer of cotton that has gaps visible to the human eye.

They would protect the person around the wearer, however, in that if the wearer coughed or sneezed, the large sized droplets from their mouth would be blocked by their own mask. Which is why it helps if people wear them: they prevent a COVID-carrier from transmitting even if they themselves are unprotected.

During the shortages, my mother was wearing disposable non-surgical masks -- these masks look like a surgical mask but made of what's basically tissue which has the same failing as a cotton mask: no resistance to droplet absorbsion. And unlike a cotton mask, these disposables were too thin to be washed and reused. A cotton mask could at least be reused after being sprayed with disinfectant.

I did, however, find a way to augment cotton masks by slipping in a PM 2.5 activated charcoal filter. Positioned over the nose and mouth, the filter could block any droplets that passed through the mask. However, this still leaves a problem: cotton cloth masks lack a nose wire to clamp the mask over the bridge of the nose. Without a clamping wire, there is a gap on both sides of the nose where droplets can make it in, possibly slipping past the charcoal filter. And worse, my mother would never remember to put in the filter if it fell out.

The cloth masks with filters have been adequate, likely reducing viral load in any exposures. However, we're now seeing new variants of COVID that are more transmissible -- but I still see people on the streets and in grocery stores with cloth mask after cloth mask -- often intricately patterned or colour coordinated to their clothes -- and with medical grade masks now more available, I think it's time to move from adequate protection to the best possible protection.

I'm on a rotation of KN95 masks with a charcoal filter added. KN95s have a full seal around the entire perimeter of the mask. My mother says she can't breathe through them. I've put her on a rotation of surgical masks -- these are 3-layer masks with water-blocking layer upfront, an electrostatic layer underneath to catch any particles, a cotton layer against the face, a nose wire for sealing, and I've clipped in charcoal filters for her as well. These surgical masks aren't as tight as the KN95, but it's the best mask that I can get her to wear.

The trouble with these masks: if you spray them with disinfectant, they lose the hydrophobic and electrostatic properties. So after using each mask, I put them in a paper bag marked with the day of the week and let them sit there for a minimum of 72 hours for any virus on it to die.

I still have a bunch of cotton masks with a filter and I'll use them if passing through the hallway of my condo building to check mail or take out garbage and recycling because there are few if any people around, but I wouldn't wear these for any situation with more than one other person present.

COVID-19 is spreading more easily and the new variants have more viral load. We can't count on cotton anymore. I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's coils, Wade's leather jacket, Rembrandt's new boots and the Professor's waistcoats that the personal views of ireactions do not reflect the -- wait, you know what? This is not a personal opinion. This is a statement of fact. Friends, protect yourselves and those around you. Get the good masks.

2021-01-15 19:26:53

TemporalFlux wrote:

In truth, I don’t like it; but something is going to change now, so it’s choosing the best of those options.
It would be easier for me to swallow the basic income idea as long as it’s handled like our unemployment system where you must show you are trying to get a job in order to receive the benefit. I don’t want people sitting around doing nothing and getting paid as much as the people working their tails off. That’s fundamentally not fair.

Well, for anyone over 67, I’d want them to be able to do nothing.

For anyone under 67, I think universal basic income would also need universal housing that’s like the student dorms I used to live in — a bed and shared showers and bathrooms for an entire floor — so that if you did nothing, you wouldn’t be on the street, but you wouldn’t have any luxuries without employment to build them.

That said, I don’t subscribe to the idea that the unemployed in this economy (and pandemic) choose not to work.

I wonder who’ll be right on this. Temporal Flux’s intellect is greater than mine, but that also means his errors are correspondingly larger. Slider_Quinn21 knows more than I do, but he has been on opposite ends of this argument.

Anyway, if Temporal Flux is right about minimum wage, I will fly out to his town to buy him dinner at the Olive Garden and if Slider_Quinn21 turns out to be right, I will fly out to Austin and buy him dinner at the Alamo Drafthouse (or whatever equivalent of these institutions exist by the time going to America is anything but some sort of weird suicide pact).

2021-01-15 16:44:04

Did Temporal Flux just advocate for universal basic income? Never again will I think of him as right-leaning.

UpJohn.org takes the position that a minimum wage increase will see the cost passed onto the customer -- but that the cost will likely be about 1.8 per cent (0.36 per cent for every 10 per cent increase).

But I defer to Slider_Quinn21 and Slider_Quinn21's economics degree to tell me if this paper is trustworthy. https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/260/

2021-01-15 16:22:28

Eeeeeek, Quinn restored!!!

**

I have to say, I am deeply disappointed in Transmodiar. I was hoping he would chastise me for saying Wade Welles could not be held captive, saying I have a ridiculously overinflated view of the sliders' abilities.

**

I always liked Recall and Transmodiar's idea that the commandant in "Genesis" telling Quinn that "once a woman's had a Magg, she can never go back" was just a jibe to upset Quinn and that the real rape camps were sterile, sexless labs (much like my personality at times).

I have always been deeply, deeply uncomfortable with Wade being in a rape camp. The term "breeder camp" is, to me, an unacceptable euphemism because Peckinpah (apparently) couldn't get away with saying "rape" on television at the time. Peckinpah wanted to hurt Sabrina Lloyd by raping her character. When a fan in pre-Season 4 online chat asked Kari Wuhrer how Sabrina would be written out, Kari Wuhrer said, "With some fun and humor: you see, she's good breeding stock."

There is a special place in hell for men who abuse women with rape jokes -- but given that Peckinpah was reeling from the grief of his teenaged son's death and in the throes of a serious drug addiction at the time that would ultimately kill him, I no longer hope that he's in hell. I hope he found peace and found his way back home.

There is a special place in hell for women who abuse other women with rape jokes -- but Kari Wuhrer apologized to Sabrina Lloyd and Lloyd accepted it. Also, Wuhrer found her career take a serious hit when her breast implants malfunctioned and she had them removed, and her career took another hit when she got fired off a soap opera for being pregnant and not being conventionally attractive to the male gaze. Maybe that was her hell and she's served her sentence and been released.

Wade Welles should not have been put in this position, should not have been used this way.

But paradoxically, I also find it incredibly offensive and upsetting to retcon Wade's rape out of the story. I think it is outrageous to say that women need to forget having been raped. And yet, I have done it twice in my own SLIDERS stories: "Slide Effects" declares that the Wade we saw from Season 3 onward was a double -- an amalgamation of 37 doubles -- which indicates one of the 37 Wades was raped, just not the Wade we met in the Pilot and whose adventures we followed for the Tracy Torme years.

Most women aren't going to discover that their trauma and assaults were actually a hallucinatory telepathic prison and also experienced by a double from a parallel universe.

SLIDERS REBORN declares that there were two timelines: one where the original sliders experienced four years of wonderful adventures together, but then Dr. Oberon Geiger's Combine experiment ripped Quinn and all his doubles out of existence and corrupted reality, retroactively altering the past into the version of SLIDERS that we saw on TV with monsters, magic, the invasion of Earth, Wade's capture, etc. -- and then the disembodied post-"Requiem" Wade is reset and restored to her original timeline self, a version who has no memory of the corrupted timeline.

Most women probably aren't going to have reality rewritten around them to excise having been attacked.

I can't defend my writing (and Transmodiar might say I shouldn't, haha). At least "Convergence" indicates that the Kromaggs were just trying to upset Quinn and of course they wouldn't have done anything to damage a valuable intelligence asset like Wade Welles. They would have had far more important uses for her.

In my stories -- I simply did not feel that Wade or the readers would be well-served by giving David Peckinpah's violent fantasies about Sabrina Lloyd any more oxygen. But I do not defend the offensive implications of that decision.

**

A final word: one of the characters in SLIDERS REBORN is Laurel, Quinn Mallory's teenaged daughter. She's based on my niece and when I was writing SLIDERS REBORN, she assumed veto power over anything and everything involving her character. There was a scene where some men corner Laurel and try to rape her and Laurel discovers she has fighting skills she didn't realize she had.

My niece told me that she'd appreciate not being put in such a scene because the threat of rape had a weight and horror that was well beyond what my lightweight sci-fi sitcom adventure could portray appropriately. I rewrote the scene so that Laurel would be cornered by men seeking to harvest her organs which turned out to be far more disturbing and suited to the story.

2021-01-15 15:47:46

It's possible that I am missing something that Temporal Flux has seen or I am missing some nuance to Temporal Flux's opinion because the idea that all prices double if minimum wage doubles seems -- to me -- to be based on the assumption that the only cost incurred by businesses is employee wages. Surely wages are just one financial factor among rent, power, telecommunications, materials, fuel, supplies, facilities, equipment, advertising, etc.

But I think I would defer to the person with the economics degree to weigh in on that one.

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's bumper stickers, Wade's nametag, Rembrandt's entombed shrine and the Professor's bow tie that the views of ireactions do not reflect the consensus views of this forum.

2021-01-15 12:23:21

I didn’t think the Wade in “Convergence” was a clone — but many Season 6 writers have taken that tactic because “Requiem” indicated that Wade’s body had been destroyed but her consciousness was somehow still in existence.

When writing my own SLIDERS stories, I’ve generally decided that I don’t want Wade to be a rape victim and I also have trouble believing that the Kromaggs would have even been able to hold Wade captive for more than a week. This is Wade Welles we’re talking about.

And you and I clearly agree that it’s absurd that the master manipulator Kromaggs would have wasted an asset like Wade by sending her to a rape camp when they had plans for Quinn; they would likely have made her a sleeper agent and returned her to Quinn to spy on him as opposed to creating a clone to pretend to be his brother.

2021-01-15 11:14:02

I have done a bit of work with people in the $15 and Fairness minimum wage campaign, so TF and I are on opposite ends of this debate.

The position papers I’ve read on this note that corporations have marked as little money for wages as possible to mark as much money for profit as possible and have plenty of flexibility on setting prices. With currency conversions and fuel and material prices, wages have a negligible effect. Corporations are perfectly capable of allocating a small percentage of their gross to paying workers a living wage while still keeping most of it for themselves.

In addition, corporations that don’t pay employees a living wage force employees to rely on the government safety net for food and health care, a bill that the taxpayer ends up shouldering. Walmart and Amazon should not be depending on government welfare for its workforce. They have the money.

Small businesses in Seattle saw increased patronage after a wage increase because people had more money to spend on them. Quinn’s university, Berkeley, has offered a study concluding that any price increases in New York State after a wage increase were within a rounding error relative to inflation that would have happened anyway.

I think any business that won’t pay a living wage is no business at all and any business that can’t pay a living wage should never be in business. I think that any job that doesn’t pay a living wage is not actually a job but indentured servitude.

I also think that Temporal Flux is a very smart guy whereas I am only average and if TF has concerns, we should listen to him and take what he has to say seriously even if you or I may not agree with his conclusions. Democrats predicted a 2020 wipeout victory. TF shared the Primary Model prediction that Trump would win the election and pointed out: the high turnout of voters who participated in a primary to choose Trump as the nominee indicated the high enthusiasm for Trump — an enthusiasm that proved true and critical when Trump got 74 million votes, losing only to Biden getting a small 9.45 per cent more, and with losses in the House and a tie in the Senate.

Ignore Temporal Flux at your peril. As always, the views of ireactions are (obviously) not the consensus of Sliders.tv and TF is a hell of a lot better at math than I am.

2021-01-14 18:57:36

pilight is right. One psycho in the White House is reason enough to fix the rules. The next president with a vindictive streak for losing an election might not be as stupid, incompetent and inept as Donald Trump.

2021-01-14 18:54:55

Many Season 6 writers have tried to resurrect the cast one 'episode' at a time -- and it still doesn't quite work because there's something very artificial about it. It makes sense to have Rembrandt come out of his vortex to find the original Professor who finds a way to return to "The Seer" Earth to split the Quinns.

But then it becomes contrived that the Professor and Quinn can shortly retrieve Colin who quickly reveals that he's a Kromagg-created clone and spy who reveals that the Earth in "Genesis" wasn't the Earth in the Pilot. And that Wade turns out to be alive with her appearance in "Requiem" being a clone as well. There's no rationale for why all these events happen in rapid succession except that they're on the writer's to-do list, but there's also no narrative purpose to having a lot of sidequests with the Season 5 cast when the end goal is to restore the original cast.

"Slide Effects" by Tracy Torme does well to have all the characters restored by Page 1 simply by having time rewound to the Pilot with everyone alive again. And "Convergence" does well to have the original sliders encounter the Season 5 sliders and experience these events at a slight remove where they're learning about an alternative set of sliders and their story.

There's another issue with resurrecting the original cast -- the situation demands an explanation for why Seasons 1 - 2 had alternate histories but Season 3 suddenly had dragons and vampires and Dream Masters and breeder parasites and shapeshifting serial killers. Some aspects of Season 3 can fit into the Season 1 - 2 mythos as advanced technology -- the killer robots and the zombies being genetically mutilated humans -- but Season 3 flat out declares that magic swords and telekinetic vampires and supernatural fogs and immortality-granting slugs are a part of the SLIDERS multiverse. Yet, Seasons 4 - 5 abruptly features no magic at all and insists that any fantasy elements are technological. What's going on here?

"Slide Effects" guardedly indicated that all the monsters and such were the result of the Kromagg mixing and matching the experiences of different sets of sliders and warping various details into the version we saw on TV. But one wonders -- why did the alternative sliders experience all these odd paranormal events where the original sliders only ran into Dream Masters and dragons?

Temporal Flux once half-seriously offered an explanation: Logan St. Clair altered the timer in "Double Cross." The timer originally used a laser-gyro system to serve as the geographic spectrum stabilizer, keeping the sliders within two miles. Logan put in a whispering gallery system which widened the range to 400 miles. If I recall correctly: TF suggested that it also widened the multiversal range of the timer; that the multiverse may be arranged in 'stacks' of universes; the Earths in Seasons 1 - 2 were in the same stack and operated on the same scientific principles whereas the whispering gallery shifted the sliders into encountering multiverses in other stacks containing monsters and magic and abominations like Colonel Rickman and Maggie Beckett.

The PVTOnline Season 6 fan fiction embraced this idea wholeheartedly. When the timer switched to the Egyptian timer, the sliders cannibalized the original device for parts to keep the new device working and they continued in the same paranormal stack until after "This Slide of Paradise" when Quinn's repairs to the timer to track Rembrandt and Wade repositioned them within a stack of technology driven parallel worlds.

2021-01-13 20:30:49

The Lego is gorgeous. There's a wonderful sense of seeing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo, Maggie, Colin, Mallory and Diana -- all in the same story, all together, all sliders, all legitimate and important and with a place in the SLIDERS mythology.

This is something most SLIDERS fan projects just can't pull off. It's difficult because any story trying to pick up the plot threads of "The Seer" has to address resurrecting the Professor, rescuing Wade, splitting the Quinns, explaining Colin, liberating Earth Prime from the Kromaggs -- and all of these stories are completely separate plots with their own individual core themes and emotional points. Even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would take a look at this shopping list of tasks to be accomplished in one story and kill himself again.

So "Convergence" does something clever by piggy-backing off "Slide Effects." "Slide Effects" was effectively triggering a system restore on SLIDERS, activating a backup of the original SLIDERS made before the Professor's death. "Convergence" then has original sliders encounter the Season 5 sliders -- and by making it clear that the Season 2 sliders are not the Season 5 sliders but a separate set entirely, "Convergence" is clear that our sliders have accidentally slid into somebody else's TV show and are looking at a version of their lives where everything went horribly wrong.

This is a very neat approach. I have read every Season 6 fanfic and I think "Convergence"'s approach in having the Season 2 and Season 5 casts meet each other as doubles is truly unique among SLIDERS stories, and that's even before the beautiful Lego work.

2021-01-12 00:22:49

One person shows up to the anti Twitter purpose on Trump’s behalf.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/11/2222 … latforming

2021-01-10 19:28:25

Grizzlor wrote:

TemporalFlux wrote:
This is why I watch this stuff my co-worker sends me. This is gold!
https://www.simonparkes.org/post/10th-january-update
The pope has been a hologram since last year! There has *got* to be a Sliders story in there!
That PURPLE background, clearly written in HTML 1.0, doesn't throw you off??????????

Why are the secrets of all humanity so often imparted by people who haven't learned the secret of WordPress? (The secret is that 20 bucks USD and an eBay account will get you all the templates and plugins you need to craft something that mimics a professional-looking web design. I feel this knowledge was Transmodiar's most vital contribution to my life even though we all know it was his dialogue revisions to SLIDERS REBORN.)

**

Biden won the election. I now resume my customary criticism of America's Grandpop (which is not necessarily an insult as Biden reminds me of my grandfather, a man of moderate ability and immoderate decency who didn't always know what to do but would always find SOMETHING he could do that needed doing however small or large it might and he would make sure to be useful, supportive and present).

Grandpa passed over Bernie Sanders for Secretary of Labor, choosing Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh. This pissed me off. A lot. But Biden provided his explanation and I shall let minds better than mine consider its value.

Joe Biden:
When I say our future will be made in America, it will be a future built by American workers. A future with historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, manufacturing, and so much more that is going to create millions of good paying jobs. Marty knows worker power means encouraging unionization and collective bargaining -- not just saying you can have the union, but saying that the government should encourage the formation of unions.
It also means protecting pensions, ensuring worker safety, increasing the minimum wage, ensuring workers are paid for the overtime they have earned -- like we fought for in the Obama-Biden administration but this administration has weakened -- and making sure we have a trade policy where, for every decision we make, unions are at the table focused on winning good jobs for American workers.
This is one of the most important departments to me. I trust Mayor Walsh. And I am honored he accepted.
But I also want to say I did give serious consideration to nominate my friend Bernie Sanders to this position. I am confident he could have done a fantastic job. I could think of no more passionate devoted our life to working people in this country.
But after Tuesday's results in Georgia, keeping Democratic control of the United States Senate and a tie vote, Bernie and I agreed -- as a matter of fact, Bernie said: We cannot put control of the Senate at risk in the outcome of a special election in Vermont. He agreed we could not take that chance.
We also discussed how we would work together, travel the country together, helping Marty and me working with men and women who feel forgotten and left a behind in this economy.
We work closely on our shared agenda of increasing worker power and to protect the dignity of work for all.
I want to thank Bernie for his continued friendship and leadership and look forward to us working together with Marty. He thinks I made a good choice.

Biden also said of the attack on Capitol Hill by people who apparently no longer want America to elect its leaders:

Joe Biden:
Initially I was going to talk about the economy, but all of you, all of you been watching what I've been watching. At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault — unlike anything we've seen in modern times. An assault on the citadel of liberty. The Capitol itself.
Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America. Do not represent who we are. What we're seeing are a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness.
For nearly two and a half centuries, we the people, in search of a more perfect union, have kept our eyes on that common good. America is so much better than what we've seen today. Notwithstanding what I saw today, we're seeing today, I remain optimistic about the incredible opportunities. There's never been anything we can't do when we do it together.

This is nonsense. I'm sorry to say this -- I like all the Americans I know and Biden's fine -- but what we saw on Wednesday is exactly what America is: a nation of privileged white people who think they can attack their own elected government with impunity and are so certain in their supposed immunity that they photographed and filmed themselves attacking a government building and carrying zipties and planting pipe bombs and carrying weapons -- encouraged by their (soon to be former) president, permitted by the very police officers supposedly there to guard the premises and allowed to walk away (although it occurred to federal agents to look up the selfies to arrest some of these people afterwards). These are privileged white people in a country that was founded on enslaving black people to do all the labour, who are enraged that being white and loud doesn't put them at the top by default.

This doesn't have to be what America will be tomorrow, but it's what it was on Wednesday and it's what it has been historically even as people have fought and suffered and sometimes given their lives to change the United States into a less appalling version of humanity. As many have said, democracy has proven to be the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried. But to claim that America is a shining, polished gem of human conduct and that Wednesday was an aberration --

Joe. Grandpa. It's a kind lie. I understand the need for leaders to talk to us as though we're who we should be instead of who we actually are. And if that's what you need to do, then go ahead, Grandfather. But even a kind lie is still a lie.

2021-01-10 16:29:51

I really appreciated Arnold's story (I can never spell his last name right) and I liked his comparing democracy to a sword that must be plunged into heat and cold to temper the steel -- but I really really really really could have done without the music.

There's certainly a precedent in fiction for the heroes battling a theocratic dystopia discovering that the supposed faith leader is a simulation. SLIDERS toyed with it a bit where the Sorcerer turned out to be a Quinn-double with a lightshow which itself was a nod to THE WIZARD OF OZ.

2021-01-10 10:54:05

I’ve heard an extremely unsubstantiated claim that one of the marchers on Wednesday was trying to steal a Capitol painting only to accidentally taser himself in the testicles with the stun weapon lodged in his pocket leaving him too immobilized to disable it and he died of a heart attack. If this is true, the incompetence of these domestic terrorists was matched by the incompetence of the police which is why it wasn’t worse.

EDITED TO ADD: The story isn't true.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/capit … n=recycled

2021-01-10 09:32:36

I feel that TF has made a very strong argument that the Department of Homeland Security should offer to host Parler and monitor it down to the last byte.

2021-01-10 02:08:09

It's an ugly place of angry, delusional people who think the Democrats stole the election (because if you were going to steal the US election, naturally, you'd neglect to bother winning the Senate by a 60-seat supermajority and barely make it to 50 seats in a pair of longshot runoffs).

**

Trump has been threatening to make his own media platform. Politico points out (a) he has no money to do this (b) he has no lenders who'd take him on (c) he has no advertisers who would want to touch his crumbling empire and (d) Amazon, Google and Apple wouldn't open their doors to him. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … ire-456888

2021-01-09 22:26:44

I was really upset when WAYWARD SISTERS didn't get picked up because I really wanted Claire and Kaia together -- but also because it's unlikely that Kim Rhodes and Briana Buckmaster (Judy and Donna) will ever lead a show and certainly not together.

I feel less sad about GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. It would have been great. But GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES needed Katherine MacNamara, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy a lot more than they needed GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. All three actresses are well-positioned for plenty of leading lady TV and film work, MacNamara in particular will leap into another action role.

There will likely be an episode of LEGENDS to resolve the arc.

2021-01-09 22:19:35

Parler may not work after Sunday. Amazon Web Services is kicking it out, citing numerous discussion threads bragging about the need to assassinate government officials, content they told Parler they had to start moderating if they wanted to stay hosted. Parler ignored the warnings and Amazon is disinclined to host a forum for terrorists. Google and Apple and Amazon all have clear policies: contents and platforms are not to incite violence and must have means of monitoring and curtailing such content. Parler won’t follow the house rules and is being evicted.

Temporal Flux may be able to explain to me why that’s unreasonable, of course. I’ve learned over the years to always keep an open mind to his perspectives. I imagine that Parler will find another host. I’ll recommend Hosting Check to them. In my view — if domestic terrorists are plotting and want to brag about their plans like a comic book supervillain kindly explaining their means and intentions to the heroes trying to stop them, why not give them a space for law enforcement to surveil? But is anyone required to give it? I personally don’t think so.

Hosting Check used to host this forum which we had to rebuild like four times due to constant crashes. “Ib, if you have to explain the joke, it’s too inside baseball to qualify as a joke.” (Thought I’d save Transmodiar the trouble.)

2021-01-09 13:54:17

TemporalFlux wrote:

But it’s not Google’s place to ban a communication channel because they believe it may incite sedition or violence. Allowing such a ban would place Google in the law enforcement and judicial role of deciding who offended and issuing punishment. Google should report their concerns to authorities and let them follow process. The FCC; FBI; DHS; judges; etc still have people appointed or hired during multiple administrations - they can do their job.
To give an example - banks. If someone is drawing out and depositing large sums of money on a regular basis, is it the bank’s place to, on their own, seize all monies in the account because it seems to them like it’s illegal, money laundering behavior. No. The bank reports the activity and lets the proper authorities investigate and follow process.
We have this system in place because one day you and I may be on the receiving end. It’s meant to be fair for everyone; and companies like Google shouldn’t have that kind of power over us. It’s like the publisher of the phone book deciding which radio stations get to stay on the air.

I have a lot of time for this argument and I really need to give it some more thought. For now, I’d note that the reason given for not carrying Parler anymore is that Parler’s policies permit efforts to plot terrorism and incite violence with no effort to curtail or report it. Twitter and Reddit have policies about not glorifying and encouraging assault. Parler doesn’t.

Google and Apple can’t really stop Parler as progressive web apps mean any website is easily an app for any device — which to me says that Google and Apple are declaring they don’t want to be involved with them, don’t want to offer them any support, but they couldn’t actually take Parler off the internet even if Parler no longer has a listing in their app stores.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. Maybe they can. Milo Yiannopoulos apparently went bankrupt from deplatforming him, although the deplatformed Alex Jones continues to hawk vitamins.

EDIT: I just put Parler on my phone via a browser homescreen bookmark and it’s functionally no different from the app and I never installed the app.

I’ll keep the account. If TF watches CNN and FOX, I can browse Parler if inclined.

2021-01-09 11:14:38

I think it’s the concern about inciting violence that makes Parler a problem. There is really nothing stopping Parler from being a progressive web app that can be installed via browser bookmark on any device, app store or no app store. I think it’s fine for any company to decline to support Parler or be complicit in Parler. I have Instagram on my iPad. There is no iPad app for Instagram, I just put the bookmark on my homescreen and it opens as a non-browser app window. Twitter has been a progressive web app for years. Oh god, now I’m giving them ideas.

2021-01-09 09:43:48

Trump tried to use his digital director's Twitter account (@GaryCoby) and later @thedonalddotwin. Twitter had of course been monitoring both accounts and promptly suspended those as well.

It's hard being a fascist, but Trump is perfectly free to post videos and updates on the White House website. He has free speech, social media is simply disinclined to lend them their megaphone.

2021-01-08 21:09:08

Trump tried to tweet from his POTUS and TeamTrump accounts. Twitter deleted the new tweets from the first and simply suspended the second account.

2021-01-08 20:17:13

Also, Kyle is so upset that his cult leader is no longer allowed to incite riots and try to overthrow democratic government on Twitter and Facebook that Kyle says he may move to Parler. I’d follow him there just to report back, but Parler doesn’t seem to be available for download (hahahahahahahahahahaah).

2021-01-08 19:20:26

Trump will not be able to use White House or US President Twitter accounts or third party accounts to circumvent his ban.

CNN wrote:

Twitter will enforce its policy against ban evasions to ensure that President Donald Trump does not circumvent his personal account's suspension, the company told CNN.
"If it is clear that another account is being used for the purposes of evading a ban, it is also subject to suspension," Twitter said in a statement. "For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, we will not suspend those accounts but will take action to limit their use. However, these accounts will be transitioned over to the new administration in due course and will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary to alleviate real-world harm."
Twitter's policy would also prohibit Trump from directing a third party to operate a Twitter account on his behalf. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/tech/tru … index.html

2021-01-08 17:40:27

News story here about the ban. Thank you for posting the news, pilight.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22218 … onaldtrump

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