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Hillary Clinton is an extremely controversial figure even among Democrats especially with her voting record on war and her fervent support of Wall Street and big banks. Anyone should be allowed to question her supposed commitment to democracy without being attacked.

Grizzlor is allowed to find speeches boring regardless of who is delivering them; that in itself is not racist or sexist. I think to call it that without more evidence is an escalation and a leap. I mean, nobody called you or me racist for hoping President Biden would stay in the race and not feeling ready for the very qualified PoC Kamala Harris to take the lead.

I don't think every show needs to run 100 episodes -- but every TV series should have at least 100 stories to tell or it's not a TV series. If a show can only last three seasons, it shouldn't be a show, at least not to me. (Mini serieses, I think of as a separate category.) To say LOST should only have run three seasons would be, to me, an indictment of LOST as a TV show. I think it probably had around five years in it, and they seem to have done well enough with six seasons if Slider_Quinn21 enjoyed it.

I wonder what Slider_Quinn21 thought of the DVD epilogue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMjPzV2RvO8

I would say: my criteria for a favourite show is a highly personal list of attributes and others may disagree. I formed the list by looking at how LOST is Slider_Quinn21's favourite show. LOST was, judging from Slider_Quinn21's posts, a good product. It lasted long enough to become a part of his life; it didn't degrade or devolve to the point where it couldn't tell its stories or complete its narrative goals; it had a conclusion.

I recall watching LOST up to the point when Jack returns to the island and is met by Jin, at which point, I was looking for something more life-affirming out of TV shows and less... unnerving.

While I didn't watch LOST past Jack's return to the Island, it might be argued: LOST was an ensemble show touching on various lives and rotating through them, and LOST was about unknowable mysteries that might have no answer. Therefore, dropping or losing characters, blind alleys, and an emphasis on characterization over mystery is not necessarily the show becoming subfunctional/dysfunctional but rather an avoidable part of exploring its core themes, some less rewarding than others.

I can't speak to this definitively, but around the point I stopped watching LOST, I did feel that the mysteries of the Island would not become more meaningful if we learned that it's the site of a crashed alien spaceship that warps time and space and manifests anomalies based on the internal conflicts of the humans in proximity. That strikes me as reducing the unknowable to sci-fi technobabble terms, when the show does better by using the paranormal nature of the island to illustrate the character conflicts -- while leaving the exact means of manifestation unknown.

That said, isn't there some sort of DVD/Blu-ray short film that 'explains' 'everything'? Knowing LOST, I assume the explanations are as confounding as the mysteries.
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/lost-epilo … -questions

**

I think, for me, ONCE UPON A TIME is my equivalent of LOST: a complex set of arcs and plots alternating between flashbacks and present day scenes, except ONCE UPON A TIME had the benefit of its mythology -- Disney versions of fairy tales -- already being established long before the show premiered. In contrast, LOST had to create its own mythology and had a much longer ladder to climb. I think ONCE UPON A TIME's whimsical, gentle, sweet tone proved a better match to my tastes and longings and insecurities and neuroses than LOST.

At the end of the day, what I want out of TV (and life) is BROOKLYN NINE-NINE: lighthearted hijinks from highly competent people working to make the world a little nicer one day at a time. (See also: PARKS AND RECREATION, ANIMAL CONTROL, THE ORVILLE.)

My niece would also point out that I have an obsession with TV shows about troubled women fighting crime (WYNONNA EARP, THE BLACKLIST, BLINDSPOT, CORONER, AGENT CARTER), but aside from WYNONNA EARP, I would have to call each one of them flawed favourites. I would have a separate category for flawed favourites, some of which are only flawed in minor ways and some which are catastrophic disasters. (I need to rewatch WYNONNA EARP to decide if it is a favourite.)

**

Why do I say a show needs to last four years to qualify as a favourite show? I think four years is the point where the show has become a part of my life. The Arrowverse was a part of my life. At three years, I'm still thinking that the show is a temporary situation; at four years, it feels long-term.

**

I didn't think about THE SIMPSONS, or SOUTH PARK, but I guess I think of those as being in a class of their own, separate from live action TV shows.

Well, as the article notes: AI is pretty overhyped. The artificial intelligence we have now isn't actually that intelligent, its outputs are inaccurate and unreliable and unstable, its capabilities are exaggerated, its use is limited, its applications are narrow, its productivity increases are small, it's hitting a plateau of advancement, it's dependent on human generated data that can be cut off.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-mon … telligence

The AI in our upscaling programs might be AI in terms of matching the algorithm to the image or video, but the actual algorithms for each element or texture in the image strike me as human made and human tested. AI still can't wrangle a decent version of the Season 1 episodes of SLIDERS.

I deliberately use low power AI models because (a) they're free and (b) they don't use as much electricity. I'm primarily using GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o Mini and Gemini 1.5 Flash right now.

GPT-4 was originally offered for free via Microsoft Bing (renamed Copilot), but due to the electricity cost of 0.0005 kWh per message, Microsoft had to put it behind a paywall and eventually discontinue it in favour of the cheaper GPT-4 Turbo at 0.00005 kWh per message.

Copilot has about 140 million users and each free tier user gets 100 messages per day, so Copilot on GPT-4 at 0.0005 kWh per message was using 7,000 MWh daily, enough electricity to power over 200,000 homes in America for one day.

GPT-4 Turbo was not as capable or powerful as GPT-4, but Turbo was faster and the fact that it only needed around 10 percent of the electricity used by GPT-4 (with 140 million users using the equivalent of powering around 20,000 homes in America per day) made it a sustainable free model.

From what I can tell, the current GPT-4o model uses around 0.000025 kW per message, but I use the free GPT-4o Mini which I think uses 0.00000214286 kW per message and also Gemini 1.5 Flash which I think uses 0.000000714286 kW per message.

If those models had 140 million daily active users, GPT-4o would be using enough electricity to power about 10,000 American homes per day, GPT-4o Mini would be using the equivalent power of 1,000 American homes per day, and Gemini 1.5 Flash would be using the power of about 300 homes per day.

I'm pretty happy with GPT-4 Turbo for searches, Gemini 1.5 Flash for analysis and GPT-4o Mini for more creative outputs.

Please note: aside from GPT-4, the power usage of the other models is not known, and these estimates above are drawn from noting that on Poe.com, resource usage is measured in "compute points" with GPT-4 at 3,500 points per message. GPT-4 Turbo uses 350 points, GPT-4o uses 175, GPT-4o Mini uses 15 and Gemini 1.5 Flash uses 5. The estimates are assuming a linear relation between points and electricity usage that may not be the case and is a simplification for discussion.

Honestly, a lot of this reads like magical thinking, just the assumption that AI technology advances effortlessly and exponentially. I'm not saying it couldn't, but it's still an assumption.

An interesting article about how Kamala Harris isn't at the mercy of the press in the same way Biden so often was: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … vance.html

And the Hindenburg was a bit of a mishap.

I'm pretty impressed that the second half of PRODIGY's first season sets up a situation where Admiral Janeway is going to be hunting down the kids as terrorists, only to quickly ascertain that the kids are all survivors of slavery and child labour who have blundered into a bad situation and are in desperate need of help.

I don't remember Janeway being written this well on VOYAGER, but she should have been.

(I have set aside $5 for Greg as I have lost the bet.)

**

Why wasn't STAR TREK: PRODIGY presented as the flagship show it deserved to be? It certainly had the quality and mainstream appeal and entry-level storytelling to work for a general audience instead of only STAR TREK fans and only children. But it somehow became an unwanted artifact that became an easy target for a tax writeoff.

Divisions of Labour
The problem, from what I can tell: PRODIGY was divided between many separate parts of Paramount Global, necessary for a CG animated TV show of this nature: it was produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Brothers Hageman Productions, and CBS Eye Animation Productions, it was streaming on Paramount+ in October 2021 and then airing on Nickelodeon in December 2021.

This combination of money, resources and talent was vital for producing a high quality animated show of this nature. The need to have streaming alongside broadcast was part of situating PRODIGY as a children's show funded in part by a children's programming studio. It's what enabled PRODIGY to look as wonderful as it did.

Divisions of Marketing
But the result is that all profit is therefore split across all these highly involved companies, and there is no single corporate branch with primary control of PRODIGY. And with ownership and leadership split across Paramount+ for streaming, the Nickelodeon channel for broadcasting, Nickelodeon Animation Studio and CBS Eye Animation Productions, the marketing decisions were also split.

There was no corporate structure that would enable Paramount+ to see how great PRODIGY was and present it as their flagship streaming show: it was Nickelodeon's show too, and to be broadcast on their kid's channel while filling out the Paramount+ streaming catalog. Ultimately, the things that made PRODIGY achievable, the teamwork and collaborations that enabled PRODIGY to exist at all and look as great as it does -- they were also the factors that meant Paramount+ was in no position to market it as their flagship STAR TREK show even if the content would have justified it

Divisions of Profit
Due to the involvement of the Paramount+, Nickelodeon channel, Nickelodeon Animation, Brothers Hageman Productions and CBC Eye Animation, profit from PRODIGY would likely be divided among all five as well as with Roddenberry Entertainment.

This is in contrast to DISCOVERY, PICARD or STRANGE NEW WORLDS where the profit division is likely just between Paramount+, CBS Studios and Roddenberry Entertainment. PRODIGY's divided origins, despite being creatively spectacular, also meant divided profit -- and it could be that Paramount+ received a much smaller share of PRODIGY's revenue compared to their other shows.

Divided and Expendable
My hypothesis is: since PRODIGY was the TREK show where Paramount+ had the least control over marketing and distribution, the least ownership of the property and had the least claim to the profits, it was deemed most expendable for a tax writeoff.

Usually, too many cooks leads to a lousy meal. It looks to me like with PRODIGY, all the talents and companies involved produced an amazing show, but it also produced a tangled web of ownership, marketing and profit sharing that ultimately led to PRODIGY being orphaned as no specific branch could fully take the lead in selling the show to a wider audience for mainstream success.

Perhaps under different circumstances, Paramount+ could have seen how PRODIGY was something special and bought a greater level of interest in it to sell it to the world as a flagship show. Unfortunately, with streaming revenue hitting a ceiling, the stars simply weren't aligned for PRODIGY.

I feel that this post has made me understand my father better by explaining why war movies speak to the human condition.

Something you seem to have seized on: the special effects makeup for the original PLANET OF THE APES movies was not very convincing. However, you seem to note: this made the events and the ape characters and the war feel less real and more like an allegorical sketch as opposed to a violent reality. The primitive effects made these war movies seem more like an abstract impression of war.

I am guessing that WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES with its modern CG-enhanced makeup and costuming and prosthetics and motion capture presented a depiction of ape-human war that looked less like an illustrative approximation and more like a documented reality, and that crossed the line.

That's just my guess.

This is an area where I don't really know enough to comment, so I am grateful for your observations.

I hope we are all edified and enlightened by this perfunctory non-analysis of the PRODIGY brand that tells us nothing beyond where it supposedly ended up, offers no insight as to how it got there, and is given by someone who has never had anything but derisive disdain for PRODIGY sight unseen.

This person has nothing to say about PRODIGY beyond presumptions, assumptions, and a pathological need to voice their barely-veiled scorn for PRODIGY (which they have never even watched) at every opportunity. They need to reiterate that their scorn is shared by the people who funded it. They haven't watched PRODIGY, but any time it comes up, they really need to remind us that they didn't watch it and have total contempt for it in order to act out their incredibly obvious narcissistic personality disorder.

In reality, a lot happens before a show or a movie is viewed as something on which a streamer or a studio should take a writeoff, and to present PRODIGY's undermarketing as a tax avoidance measure is simplistic, trite, and to repeat this claim demonstrates a painful ignorance of co-production, demographic targeting, brand management, marketing, and distribution -- all of which contributed to PRODIGY's narrow reach, all of which happened before Paramount+ detached themselves from the series.

BATGIRL was written off for a lot of reasons beyond the tax dodge, which included WB realizing that whether or not James Gunn accepted the job of running DC, their original post-FLASH movie plans were not going to happen and BATGIRL was the premiere of a run of films that wouldn't go past BATGIRL.

And the PRODIGY writeoff was the result of circumstances that took place well-before Paramount+ washed their hands of PRODIGY. To claim all explanations are in the writeoff itself is simplistic and myopic. The writeoff itself does not explain what went wrong, it was merely one incident along the way to a Netflix burnoff.

I've been looking into this further and from what I can tell, part of the issue is the partnership between Nickelodeon Animation Studios and CBS boxed in how the show could be marketed. The expectation was that PRODIGY was going to be a niche-within-a-niche show; a show for STAR TREK fans who were extremely young STAR TREK fans.

But the show that ended up being recorded and animated ended up having significantly more mainstream appeal to all ages than was expected of a children's TV series.

The creators had underpromised but overdelivered, producing a show that, due to the quality of their work and the cleverness of their simplification/distillation of STAR TREK, could have as much appeal to a general audience as opposed to only children and STAR TREK fans.

Unfortunately, the show had already been assigned a marketing strategy that was treating PRODIGY like the animated JAMES BOND JR. of the franchise, failing to realize that this supposedly niche-within-a-niche series was actually good enough to sell as the flagship show. This unfortunate positioning made it an easy target for a tax writeoff.

There is more to explore on this and I'm eager to delve into it further, if only to reinforce what Slider_Quinn21 saw: PRODIGY is something special and turned out to be far more than what its investors expected it to be.

I am not qualified to review how the new economic developments are going to impact the election and am waiting on more news.

This was something Simon Rosenberg said, speculatively, on Twitter. I can't find his tweet now, but his view was that Trump has gained much of what he sought from re-winning: immunity and funding for his legal battles.

It wouldn't be up to President Kamala Harris to prosecute Trump; it's entirely on an independent Department of Justice. That said, I would expect that if Harris is elected, she'll fire Merrick Garland for incompetence and seek to appoint someone more driven.

Yes, we should all value a certain someone's valuation of PRODIGY after their incisive, analytical opinions on it so far.

And we should all trust an assessment of PRODIGY's brand and marketing potential when it comes from someone who has a laughably obvious prejudice and bias towards it without ever bothering to watch it.

Also, do you have an explanation for your bizarre response on August 13, 2023?

You wrote about the SNW musical:

I responded:

You responded with a truly peculiar remark:

Except the season finale... didn't change Chapel and Spock's breakup and merely had a tender moment of rescue for them before Chapel left for her new job with Dr. Roger Korby to whom she is engaged to be married by the time of THE ORIGINAL SERIES (and Korby has been cast for Season 3 of SNW). And Spock was still publicly humiliated before his shipmates. Which means the missive on Chapel/Spock was not rendered moot at all.

So what exactly were you trying to say a year ago? Was there any information or reasoning behind your response? Or was it just derision and scorn for the sake of it?

(I would like to wager $5 USD that any response will include at least one all caps passage, enraged ranting, and something or other about Wil Wheaton. Although to whom I'd pay the $5, I'm not sure... )

PRODIGY is really good. I don't understand how Paramount + could undervalue this show.

**

THE ORVILLE is indeed going to start production -- but not filming -- of Season 4 in January 2025:
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/the-orville … l-podcast/

But who will actually be in it? Who will write, direct and produce it?

At this point, the January start is merely to assemble crew, start on writing, finalize cast contracts, devise shooting schedules -- and given that Seth MacFarlane is working on another show, it's impossible to say when scripts will be ready and filming will begin. However, there will be a fourth season and Seth MacFarlane will be in at least a few episodes while overseeing all of them.

I promised RussianCabbie that I would read the new X-Files novel and review it. Well:

The X-Files: Perihelion is a novel by Claudia Gray set after the events of Season 11. Overall: it's an effective season premiere story doing what every season premiere should do: it re-establishes the characters, concept, formula and setting; it addresses the gap of time between the last installment and this one; it sets up the arcs for the stories to come; it identifies which previous story arcs are in play for this season; it lays the concerns of the previous season to rest.

Opening Act

However, it's the first installment of a larger story ending with Mulder and Scully preparing to take on the new threat for the rest of this run of books -- except Perihelion is the only X-Files novel that's been announced. There is no certainty that this novel is going to be anything more than an opening act for a larger storyline that may or may not be completed. It's like filming season opener of The X-Files and broadcasting it with no announced plans to film the rest of the season, or in this case, commission and write the rest of the books.

From TV to Print

All in all, Gray does a good job of picking up the pieces and handling the transition of The X-Files from live action television to prose. Her grasp of Mulder and Scully is more verbose than a TV performance... but less verbose than, say, one of Chris Carter's florid voiceover monologues. Gray establishes that while it has been three to four months since the 2018 Season 11 finale (as a pregnant Scully is starting to show slightly), the book is still set in 2023 - 2024 (as established by continuity and cultural references).

Picking up the Pieces

Gray follows up on Walter Skinner's situation after he was run over by a car in Season 11. Gray provides an amusing rationale for why the FBI urgently reinstates Mulder and Scully: since "My Struggle IV", the bureau has been overrun with terrifying and disturbing cases that absolutely no FBI agent wants to deal with.

Gray establishes that despite Mulder and Scully having been circling each other for 30 years and now having moved back in together, their relationship remains as challenging and difficult as ever, with Mulder having never settled into his new bedroom due to thinking he'd eventually share Scully's room with her and then realizing he's been overoptimistic.

Gray's humour is subtle, low-key and guarded with many jokes not being played as comedy, maintaining the aloof, low-key tone of the show. Gray also recontextualizes Scully declaring at the end of "My Struggle IV" that she no longer considers William to be her son on the grounds that he was an experiment and some form of artificial insemination and not Mulder's offspring, presenting it as a coping reaction of grief and loss rather than a genuine sentiment.

Breaking Tradition

Where Gray creates a massive break with the tone of the TV show, however, is the myth-arc. Perihelion features the most overt manifestation of science fiction superpowers that I have personally seen in this franchise. Perihelion establishes that the mythology going forward is about dark forces marshalling supersoldiers whose abilities are overtly those of what you would see onscreen in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, with some being threats to Mulder and Scully and some being allies.

The prominent display of superpowers is a far cry from how the TV show generally kept the paranormal and supernatural and science fiction at a guardedly distant distance (for budgetary reasons and to maintain the visual look of a police procedural).

Admittedly, Mulder and Scully have been at the periphery of sci-fi aliens and superhumans for 30 years; Gray may be well within reason to stop playing coy. Even so, this is a very distinct shift away from the usual content restrictions of The X-Files and makes Perihelion less like the original TV show and more like Fringe or a 2000s-era X-Men film from FOX.

Specificity Over Obscurity

Gray also breaks with the established narrative style of the mythology. Where the mythology on the TV show was presented as mysterious and obscure (and often frustratingly contradictory and vague), Gray is overt and specific. Gray lays out very clearly: what the new conspiracy group wants, what their plans are, the main players in this organization, and the overall motivations of most of the key figures.

This clarity may feel mismatched and completely at odds with what The X-Files was as a TV show. Alternatively, it may feel welcome and appreciated after the confusion of Colonization and the Spartan Virus and Project Crossroads and William, each item there retconning a previous story element. I am somewhere in the middle.

Turning the Page

In addition, Gray makes no attempt to reconcile Colonization with the Spartan Virus or the Spartan Virus with Project Crossroads or to address any of the continuity confusion from Season 10 retconning Seasons 1-  9 or Season 11 retconning Season 10. Gray instead declares unambiguously and several times: the Syndicate is defeated. Whatever their plans were (Colonization, Spartan Virus, something or other with William) -- those plans are over and done with.

I considered this to be a relief and a release from the shackles of the past. Not every reader will feel the same way.

Gray also definitively and firmly establishes that the Cigarette Smoking Man is no longer on this mortal coil, and that the page has turned on whatever it was he was or wasn't doing. The old myth-arc is over. The new and specific and unambiguous myth-arc will be the mythology going forward.

However, it's very clear that Gray's interest in The X-Files mythology is more an obligation to be addressed diligently rather than anything resembling a lifelong passion. Instead, Gray's ardent devotion and loyalty is to Mulder and Scully.

Professional MSR

Gray explores every layer of their relationship with loving warmth and a subtly comedic criticism, observing their perpetual patterns: friendship and avoidance, passion and denial, cohabitation and distance, trust and secrecy. Gray's portrayal of Mulder and Scully's relationship is far more in-depth and nuanced than simply seeing them as the believer and the skeptic.

Gray delves into how every aspect of how their relationship affects their professional lives, their personal diets, their approaches to health care, their attitudes to home decor. Gray explores layer upon layer of the joyful nightmare that is Mulder and Scully's association. The Mulder/Scully dynamic is so central to Gray's vision of The X-Files that the mythology, well-handled or not, is merely one of many beachheads in the Mulder and Scully relationship.

Unpromised and Uncertain

The conclusion of Perihelion is, frustratingly but somewhat understandably, not a conclusion to overall arc. Instead, it is a lead-in to an ongoing series of X-Files novels, none of which have at this writing been announced, none of which are guaranteed to ever exist.

At $28 USD, Perihelion is a steep investment when a Disney+ subscription or a movie ticket costs less; it's hard to say how well the book needs to sell in order to justify a sequel. Disney's recent attempt at a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Audible series, Slayers, didn't generate sufficient return for a follow-up.

The X-Files comic books from IDW actually sold worse when the show was airing its revival seasons to the point where the show's brief return ended up ending the comic book tie-in line. And after Season 10 of The X-Files rendered the supposedly canon IDW publishing line out of continuity, there is no way to seriously claim that Perihelion is canon. A revival with showrunner Ryan Coogler is in development and has not, despite speculation, established whether it's a sequel to the TV series or a reboot.

There is the risk that Perihelion will be a beginning with no middle or end... which makes it hard for me to say that any X-Files fan should pay $28 for what's effectively Chapter 1 with no promise of Chapters 2 - 6 to come.

Professional and Enjoyable

But, setting that aside, Claudia Gray was assigned to write an X-Files novel that picked up the pieces after Season 11 and set a stage for subsequent stories, and she has produced a professional, enjoyable product that achieves her assignment. If there is no sequel, I will, of course, expect that Disney issue every reader a full refund and a letter of apology from Mickey Mouse.

That's an opinion. The actual reality: any concept is sellable.

It's all a matter of how a creator uses the concept, how the creator infuses it with relevance, topicality, imagination, emotion, characterization, and meaning. There is no such thing as a bad idea or an outdated idea or a dumb idea, just an idea that is misused, misapplied or unfulfilled.

For a practical example: the average person may think the steam engine is "outdated" and "dumb" in the twenty-first century. While that use case is dated, the ideas within steam energy remain essential: steam transfers heat to spin turbine blades in any modern power plant; it's essential for food processing; it creates vacuum conditions to test orbital components for satellites. Steam maintains uniform temperature in pipelines, dries concrete and stores thermal energy.

If we enjoyed any canned food recently, it was batch-sanitized in a pressure cooker using steam. If we are using electricity, we are depending on a modern power plant which, whether nuclear or oil or coal, turns water into steam for turbine rotation and electrical generation.

I concede: this discussion isn't about steam. It's about the Fantastic Four and responding to the remark: "... a completely unsellable franchise, The Fantastic Four. Their powers are so outdated and dumb."

Well, the Fantastic Four's concept is that they are a family of superheroes. This concept of the superhero family has in fact proven to be current, clever and extremely profitable: THE INCREDIBLES (2004) is a movie about a superhero family: it is one of the greatest movies ever made both in terms of writing, performance and visual realization. THE INCREDIBLES (2018) grossed $1.2 billion worldwide. The family of superheroes concept is extremely sellable.

The Fantastic Four's powers are only outdated if they are used in an outdated way, and they don't have to be. Reed Richards' power of stretching any part of his physiology means that he can stretch his brain, rework his organs and adapt to any physical threat or intellectual challenge.

Sue Storm's power is to bend energy: she casts energy fields that can manipulate seemingly any form of energy whether to deflect or refract or convert: that energy includes light, gravity, force, and potentially more. The invisibility is merely the most immediate application of her ability.

Johnny Storm's power is to manipulate combustion: the capacity to control thermodynamics means control of any chemical reaction. It means the ability to control cell biology, equilibrium and momentum, and any aspect of internal or external chemistry.

Ben Grimm's superstrength is less scientifically complex, but his appearance has made him an icon of body dysmorphia, an extremely present and relevant concern as society becomes more aware of transgender identity and rights.

The Fantastic Four's powers are not outdated or dumb. However, a person's creative application of their powers might be narrow, unimaginative, limited, myopic, small and closed-minded.

An unimaginative person might reduce Reed to stretching instead of contemplating his tensile biology and intellect and the applications of tractable physiology (like adjusting his lungs to breathe oxygen in water or to convert himself to a fluid form). They might see Sue only as an invisible girl instead of exploring her ability to bend and refract light and other forms of energy (such as turning light into force and blades or sound into momentum and gravitational lift).

They might see Johnny as a fire-defined superhero instead of considering the power of remote control of chemical reactions (where someone with this power could make someone suffocate by reversing cellular respiration or electrocute them by converting the body's chemical energy into electrical power).

They might see Ben as an aggressive rock monster instead of a symbol of feeling at odds with your own body.

Tim Story's FANTASTIC FOUR movies were adequate but lacking in imagination. Josh Trank's FANTASTIC FOUR movie failed critically and financially, but it was not an example of the concept being "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable"; it was an example of how it was foolish for a studio to film a movie with a script that was not only unfinished but written for a budget that the studio reduced mere days before production began.

That's an opinion based on speculation; until there is an actual movie to watch, it is a presumptive assumption.

Here's an objective truth: Robert Downey Jr. is widely regarded as the greatest living actor of his generation. He is beloved. Now he wants to take on the challenge of being hated in the role of Dr. Doom. A doubtful person may feel the audience won't see him as anyone Stark. I say that the master thespian is eager for the challenge.

Could he fail? Of course. But Robert Downey Jr. has failed at many things and most things in his life, and his success in recent decades has been an interesting fourth act after many disasters. If he fails... I'd still be interested to see him do that.

Here's another objective truth: the Marvel FANTASTIC FOUR could certainly turn out "outdated" or "dumb" or "unsellable". Projects can fall short. But if the film turns out to be "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable", it won't be due to the underlying concept of a superhero family.

No character or concept is 'unsellable'; it's merely that creators may sometimes fail to sell it because their approach did not fully explore the inherent possibilities in a compelling way, or because their approach was out of step with the viewing climate of the era, or because their storytelling craft was impaired, or because the marketing department sold it to an unreceptive audience.

I encourage people to never think of ideas as too old or stupid or useless, especially your own. What's "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable" is more likely the attitude of the person rather than the idea itself.

Ideas are not good or bad in themselves; it is how they are applied and executed that should be evaluated. Even the idea of fascism is valuable; if we read MEIN KAMPF with the right mindset, we can learn to identify and battle authoritarianism and hatred.

I will end by noting that anyone on this board is quite keen on a certain quantum quartet, a makeshift family of science heroes, and the Fantastic Four are genre-defining science heroes. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo look on in respectful envy at Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben.

I have never seen THE BOYs. Sorry. On the subject of another show I've never seen:

How does Slider_Quinn21 feel that there will be another new DEXTER show set after NEW BLOOD that resurrects Dexter and features Michael C. Hall?

https://nerdist.com/article/michael-c-h … n-prequel/

I have never seen the show. But I have always been absurdly interested in what Slider_Quinn21 thinks of it. Having skimmed an article, the consensus is that DEXTER lost its way in later seasons when the concept (serial killer fights crime, tries not to get caught) had exhausted nearly every variation. The original showrunner, Clyde Phillips, left. In his absence, the show became stale while the writers were unwilling to cross the line into Dexter from being caught and facing consequences. As a result, the show had explored Dexter as much as it could, wasn't willing to move to the next chapter (exposure), and just stalled and stopped until cancellation. Slider_Quinn21 didn't hate it to the degree that a lot of DEXTER's fans seemed to, but acknowledges that the quality slipped, possibly for entirely different reasons. The DEXTER finale was loathed by everyone except Slider_Quinn21.

Then came a mini-series, NEW BLOOD. Original showrunner Clyde Phillips returned and was finally willing to cross the line, expose Dexter's 'morality' as a self-serving sham, have Dexter kill an innocent person -- and then Phillips killed Dexter off. This was the end. Except that now, it's not.

However, there is one thing that might be reassuring: Clyde Phillips made the announcement that Dexter would return in RESURRECTION. He would not make the announcement if he weren't working on it, and his absence is where the original show slipped and the mini-series rebounded. So that's something.

I have never and will probably never watch the show, and I only care about DEXTER as far as knowing what Slider_Quinn21 thinks about it. But I strangely care a lot.

The timeline of the FOX X-Men universe is one of the most muddled in existence: in certain movies, characters are too young or shouldn't have been born yet; some characters are duplicated; and backstories don't seem to line up. I think I can offer an explanation: time travel and altering history in X-Men doesn't result in linear branching, but instead, intersecting timelines.

But let's go through the biggest timeline problems first.

The Originals

The first four X-Men films (X-MEN, X2, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and the prequel X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) offer a reasonably cohesive sequence of events for the X-Men from 1979 to 2006 (with flashbacks for Wolverine going back to 1832).

However, beginning with FIRST CLASS (2011), set in the 1960s, some mild gaffes emerge: Xavier and Mystique didn't acknowledge each other in first three films but are now adoptive siblings in this prequel. FIRST CLASS also features Moira MacTaggert and Emma Frost as adult women in the 1960s... but an adult Moira was seen in the 2006 THE LAST STAND and a teen Emma was in the 1979-set X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE film.

The first meeting of Magneto and Xavier as adults does not match Xavier saying he met Magneto as a teenager and saying Magneto helped Xavier build Cerebro. And when Xavier uses Cerebro to find mutants, he sees children who look like Cyclops, Storm and Jean Grey -- who, being in their 20s and 30s in the first three X-MEN films set in the 2000s, should not even have been born yet in the 1960s (although the presence of an 18 year old Cyclops in the 1979 ORIGINS movie confuses this).

THE WOLVERINE (2013) doesn't seem to have any continuity issues with previous films, being focused on Wolverine, although Professor Xavier is shown to be alive and in his own body when THE LAST STAND implied that he had been put into someone else's body.

First Class: Reboot or Prequel?

The intention was for FIRST CLASS to be a reboot with Easter eggs cameos from the previous film series, but the sequel DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) rescinds this. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST features the original cast of the first three films and the FIRST CLASS cast, making FIRST CLASS a prequel, timeline be damned. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST also shows Professor Xavier alive as he was in THE WOLVERINE with no explanation, THE LAST STAND be damned.

The end of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST shows a bright future for mutantkind in the year 2024. The original film actors are used to play the 2024 selves of the prequel actors: James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Xavier and Magneto in 1973 will indeed become Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen by the 2000s, and the presence of James Marsden and Famke Janssen as Scott and Jean establishes that the child versions glimpsed in FIRST CLASS will become the adult versions of the original films.

Too Young or Not Yet Born

However, with the next X-Men film, APOCALYPSE (2016), we hit a strange situation: it's set in 1983 and features Cyclops, Storm, Jean and Nightcrawler as teenagers, but 1983 is about a decade too early; they would have been a decade older in the original films if they were teens in the 1980s. This might be dismissed as the original cast not playing their actual ages.

But even more peculiar: the winged mutant Angel is a teenager in 1983 -- but the character was already in the 2003-set THE LAST STAND, and he was a teenager there too. At this point, APOCALYPSE is showing characters in 1983 who should either be much younger or shouldn't even exist yet, and there's no reason why the time travel adventure of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST would make people exist earlier and still synchronize with the 2024 happy ending of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.

That said, X-MEN (2000) claims to be set in "the near future", not 2000, but claiming it takes place after 2000 would mean that the APOCALYPSE characters should be even younger.

Then we come to the 2016 DEADPOOL movie which features a version of Deadpool that is separate from the version seen in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. In addition, Colossus, who previously appeared as a teenager in X-2 (2003), is shown as an adult in this 2016 film, but Colossus now has a heavy Russian accent. Presumably, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST meant that Deadpool and Colossus had different lives, and these contradictions are justified.

The Logan Outlier

The next continuity peculiarity is LOGAN, a 2017 film set in 2029 which tells the story of Wolverine's death. The movie confusingly claims that no new mutants have been born since 2004 thanks to X-gene suppressants in the food supply, and that all the X-Men aside from Xavier and Logan are dead due to Xavier losing control of his powers. This simply does not track with the DAYS OF FUTURE PAST 2024 ending showing mutant children as young as 10 at the X-Mansion, and Wolverine and Xavier are made up to look much older than five years.

There doesn't seem to be any explanation for how Wolverine's mutant powers and healing factor, as strong as ever in even in the dark future of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST's 2023, is suddenly failing in 2029 when Logan has been alive since 1845 and healed from all injuries. (We'll come back to this later.)

Director James Mangold insisted that LOGAN was set after DAYS OF FUTURE PAST while actor Hugh Jackman said that LOGAN was set in a parallel timeline.

Then we come to DARK PHOENIX (2019), set in 1992... where Xavier and Magneto still look like the youthful James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender even though we're only eight years away from the 2000-set X-MEN movie where they looked like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Xavier and Magneto are far too young and Scott and Jean are a little too young. McAvoy and Fassbender were playing the 60s versions of Xavier and Magneto in FIRST CLASS (2011), and have only aged eight years by DARK PHOENIX (2019) while the 2019 film is set three decades after FIRST CLASS.

Too Early or Too Soon?

DEADPOOL II further confuses things: set in 2018, we see Deadpool exploring the X-Mansion wondering where the X-Men are. One shot of the X-Men team shows that they're avoiding him -- and the shot shows the young X-Men of APOCALYPSE and DARK PHOENIX when the 2018 film should in fact show the adult cast of the original three movies. Also strangely, despite DEADPOOL II being set in 2018, Deadpool refers to the death of Wolverine in LOGAN which was established as 2029.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024) further confuses things: set in 2024, it declares that the events of LOGAN and Wolverine's death have already happened, even though this third Deadpool film is set five years too early for Logan to be dead.

Furthermore, referring to the events of LOGAN as being in the past, the second and third Deadpool movies both feature Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Colossus, Yukio, all X-Men at Professor Xavier's school. This is despite LOGAN declaring that all of Xavier's students were dead, that no X-Men aside from Wolverine and the Professor were still alive, and the X-Mansion was no longer in operation. This simply doesn't track with all three Deadpool films presenting the X-Men as being at their 1970s - 1990s ages (somehow) and with the X-Men being very much an active superhero team and school.

What the hell is going on here?

Why do the prequels fail to line up with the originals? Why are characters born too early in the prequels? Why are characters duplicated? How can mutant births have been suppressed since 2004 when the X-Mansion is filled with young teen mutants in 2024? How can the X-Men be dead and their team shut down in LOGAN only for the second and third Deadpool films to refer to Logan's death as a past event while featuring an active X-Mansion and three young X-students?

Time Travel

The answer seems to be in two parts. First: there's time travel in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST to change the future. And in DEADPOOL II (2018), Deadpool gets his hands on a time machine which sends him to alternate timelines as well as back and forth on his timeline. He saves his girlfriend Vanessa and his friend Peter from death. He then crosses into a parallel universe and shoots actor Ryan Reynolds dead before Reynolds can perform in the GREEN LANTERN movie. He crosses into the X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE film and kills his alternate counterpart.

In the extended cut, Deadpool then goes back to 1889 and attempts to kill an infant Adolf Hitler in a maternity ward. Deadpool has clearly been engaged in extensive changes to the timeline (whatever the hell that timeline even is).

There's a lot of time travel here, and non linear thinking offers a theory.

Batman Displays His Knowledge

And in a separate universe, those of us who watched THE FLASH (2023) were treated to an interesting scene where Batman (Michael Keaton) explains time travel to Barry Allen.

BATMAN: "You're from an alternate timeline?"

BARRY: "Yes."

BATMAN: "In which you and I are friends?"

BARRY: "Yeah, you're -- you're, like, probably my best friend."

BATMAN: "Yeah?"

BARRY: "Well, but you're a bit -- You're, uh... Chronologically different. Older. And that-- that's what I can't understand; I traveled back in time from here to here, and yet somehow, everything's all changed... back here. Like, when you were born, so --"

BATMAN: "Well, time isn't linear, right?"

BARRY: "Right."

BATMAN: "At some point, you probably saw a movie that told you that if you went back and changed the past, you'd create a kind of a branched timeline."

(Batman holds up two strands of uncooked spaghetti. He places them on the table, side by side in parallel.)

BATMAN: "New present. (lightly bending the second strand to curve away from the first, creating a Y shape) And new future."

BARRY: "Yeah."

BATMAN: "Well, time doesn't work like that. That's not how time works. When you go back and change the past, you create a fulcrum."

(Batman re-positions the spaghetti so that instead of forming a Y-shape, they now intersect on the table and form an X-shape.)

BATMAN: "You put yourself on a whole 'nother strand of spaghetti. New future. New past. It's retrocausal. Echo goes both ways. Actually, echoes many ways. What you did was: you changed the future. And you changed the past. If a person is stupid enough to mess with time, what you eventually end up with is the multiverse. Some strands runs almost parallel. There will be inevitable intersections. And others that are just wildly divergent. What it is --"

(Batman pours a pot of cooked spaghetti into a bowl, the strands now curved and intertwined with each other in layers throughout the bowl.)

BATMAN: "Is a hot mess."

(Batman pours spaghetti sauce on the pasta.)

I suspect Batman's explanation of why changing the past changes time in both directions applies to the FOX X-Men 'universe' which, as Batman would point out, has become a multiverse. Batman offers a theory of time travel where branches do not form a Y shape, but instead form an X and then see multiple Xes -- intersections -- resulting from time travel.

Batman's implication is that when Barry changed the past by saving his mother, he 'rotated' his original timeline, causing it to intersect with the universe of the 1989 BATMAN movie, leading to Ben Affleck being replaced by Michael Keaton. When Barry changes the past again at the end of THE FLASH, he rotated the timeline once more and it now intersected with the timeline of BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997) and Keaton was replaced with George Clooney.

Parallel Lines

My guess is that the X-Men 'timeline' is actually five different timelines, and every odd shift in the film is due to Wolverine and Deadpool's changes causing temporal rotation.

The first X-MEN timeline is the first three films (X-MEN, X2, THE LAST STAND and the first two Wolverine films (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and THE WOLVERINE). This first timeline also includes the dark future scenes of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST in which the X-Men are on the losing side of the human-mutant war as the Sentinels are exterminating all mutants.

The second timeline is FIRST CLASS, and this timeline is a parallel reality from the first timeline. This second timeline has a different version of Xavier's childhood (Mystique) and Xavier and Magneto's friendship. This second timeline has Cyclops, Storm and Jean already young children in the 1960s.

Temporal Rotation and Temporal Intersection

When Wolverine travels from the dark future of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST to 1973 to prevent the Sentinel program, Wolverine finds himself in a past that is now a combination of the first and second timelines, the result of temporal rotation. Merely occupying his past self's body has led to a temporal intersection between the first and second timeline. Xavier and Magneto's lives, pre-1973, have had the first timeline's version replaced with the version in the second timeline.

When Wolverine changes the past so that the Sentinel program is prevented, there is a second instance of temporal rotation. In addition to creating the happy 2024 ending where mutantkind thrives, the timeline has now intersected with a different X-Men timeline in which Scott, Storm, Jean, Angel, and Nightcrawler were now born in the 70s and teenagers in the 80s, creating a third timeline.

Children of the Atom

Then we have the time travel events of DEADPOOL II. Each instance of time travel and each instance of Deadpool changing history has rotated the timeline and created a new intersection each time. As a result, DARK PHOENIX sees the third timeline intersect with an alternate timeline. An alternate timeline in which, I theorize, the radiation that empowers mutants was released at greater magnitudes in the 1960s.

In FIRST CLASS, the mutant Sebastian Shaw declares: "We are the children of the atom. Radiation gave birth to mutants. What will kill the humans will only make us stronger." I would suggest that increased radiation exposure in this timeline means that mutants in this version of reality age at a slower rate than in previous timelines.

I would further suggest that LOGAN is set in a timeline where the radiation that created mutants was significantly lower than in other timelines, meaning Logan's healing factor in this timeline never reached the higher peaks of alternate Logans.

Final Timeline

Because DEADPOOL II has Deadpool travel and alter history so many times, the events of LOGAN, which are set in a parallel universe, begin to intersect with the current version of the X-Men universe.

As a result, we now have a fifth timeline which includes a slightly different version of the events of LOGAN, one where Wolverine gave his life to save Laura Kinney -- but in a universe where X-Men team are very much an active superhero team and school with Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio and Colossus, and mutants are still being born.

Presumably, the Logan of this timeline was exposed to some X-gene suppressant that prevented him from healing after saving Laura.

As a result, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is set after Logan died to save Laura, but the X-Men and Professor Xavier are still around, and they're aging very slowly (as indicated by James McAvoy playing Xavier in DEADPOOL II).

Anyway. Batman's theory of temporal rotation and intersection is what I'm going with.

If you read all of this, I owe you a Coke.

Yes, and now his campaign manager is refusing to commit to that.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p … 235068484/

He's in, he's out, he's in, he's out -- until he actually shows up, his claims are meaningless, as are claims based on assumptions and personal biases over facts.

The current tactic from Republicans: they want to sue the Democratic Party to force Joe Biden onto the ballot. They're sinking millions into this maneuver. I don't know why. It isn't going to work. They can't sue a political party to nominate a candidate who has stepped down.
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/23/illegi … out-obama/

This description could apply to any newspaper, website, think tank, magazine or cereal box. I hardly think any one person is responsible for Republicans becoming the party of Trump, but the people who left the party in disgust are not failures.

Anyone with the intellectual capacity to interrogate their previous beliefs and communities and turn away from a cult of fascism is truly exceptional. They demonstrate a clear cognitive edge over, say, people who operate on clickbait, assumptions, personal prejudices, brags, boasts, and self-important predictions over events with a 50-50 outcome. Whatever their faults, they at least have the sense not to get triggered into screeching, "The election is over!" at every headline that troubles them. That's better than a lot of people.

Regardless of provenance, the editorials presented in The Bulwark offer extremely interesting ideas and at times contradictory views for how to (re)build and maintain a healthy democracy of representational government.

Interesting ideas for enriching the American Dream of truth, justice and a better tomorrow can come from lots of different places. Even David Peckinpah had great new ideas for SLIDERS. If anything, it was his laziness preventing him from up with more great ideas and his preference for old movie ripoffs over new ideas that tripped him up creatively.

**

Simon Rosenberg says a VP pick matters before reviewing polls. I'm not sure he's right. But since he is an expert analyst who knows his stuff (as opposed to a clickbait skimmer or some random typing up his thoughts on a message board for a TV show from 1995), I am going to defer to him.

**

Will Trump debate VP Harris? I have no idea; he might keep far away or he may get desperate for attention or a polling boost and show up. Anyone who makes a definitive claim about Trump debating or declining is making an assertion based on assumption. If they're not wrong, it's not because they were prescient; it's because they had a 50-50 chance of being right.

Trump is not a planner, and even his insecurity will steer him towards confrontation to bolster his ego as often as it will send him cowering at a safe distance.

**

I don't know that the popular vote/electoral vote is really anything more than an interesting data point. It's a fact, but it's also a fact that has had no effect on who actually becomes president.

That boast will age poorly if she loses in November.

If she wins, it'll be a factual statement of capability and competence.

I am hoping for the latter.