I found out last night that Facebook allows me to automatically cross-post to Threads, so I switched that on.
Find me on Threads at @mitchwagner@threads.net. You can follow me there from Mastodon or elsewhere in the Fediverse.
I like this a lot. Anything I can do to broaden my vast social media empire without having to do a lot of cut-and-pasting makes me happy.
Like I said yesterday, I’m consolidating where I post on social media just to avoid all the cut-and-pasting and fussing. I’m limiting my meme and social media posts to Facebook, Tumblr and—now—Threads. Here I am on Tumblr and Facebook:
Reviewing my notes app I find the following, which I wrote to myself at 9:29 last night:
Dogs
Cats
Monkeys
I do not remember writing this. Why did I leave this note for myself?
I loved the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100
I used a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer in the 1980s, and loved it.
I worked for a community daily newspaper, the New Jersey Herald in Newton, NJ, 1985-89. I drove 40 minutes each way from the newsroom to cover city government meetings in Vernon, NJ. After the meeting, I’d write my article on the Model 100 in the lobby of the city municipal building.
To submit the article, I’d use a gadget called an “acoustic coupler.” This was two suction cups with speakers and microphones inside them, attached to each other by wires and plugged into the computer by another wire. I’d drop a bunch of quarters into the phone—later I used a calling card—punch the number into the phone, attach a suction cup each to the earpiece and mouthpiece of the payphone, press a couple of buttons on the Model 100, and the article would upload automatically to the newspaper publishing computer. It took a minute or two to finish. Connetions were shockingly slow then. When the article was done, I’d call in to the newsroom to double-check to be sure the article made it and then hop in my Honda Accord and drive back, chain-smoking the whole way.
When I arrived at the newsroom, my editor would have already edited the article and it would be ready for my revision.
I suppose I’d like to play with a Model 100 for a minute sometime in the future, but I have no desire to own one today. Today’s technology is so much nicer. Still, the Model 100 was great for its day.
Photo by NapoliRoma - Own work, Public Domain, Link
The Hugos There podcast discusses “A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeline L’Engle — Good episode. I want to reread the book now. I haven’t read it since I was a kid. I recall bouncing off the mix of science fiction and fantasy. I could relate to Meg, a weirdo who desperately wanted to be normal and fit in.
Helen Keller remembers her life before she became conscious of her self. “Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am.”
After the previous episode, why hasn’t the Doctor learned to watch where he’s walking?
Sure, Ruby, after wandering through the cold, gray and stark British countryside, seek shelter in the rural pub with a creepy name and sign. That never ends badly.
Why did the Doctor disappear? We don’t see him interact with the old woman, or hear him scream and run away. We don’t see him vanish. He’s just gone, with no explanation, and then returns with no explanation.
What was that woman saying to people that was so awful that even Ruby‘s mother abandoned her? Ruby’s mother’s love for Ruby is unconditional, but is undone with just a few words. The look of disgust and hate that Ruby’s mother gave her from the car was awful.
Apparently, a lot of people who are struggling with adoption issues in real life are having trouble with RTD using it as a McGuffin in the show.
I don’t think it matters what the old woman said. I think it was a magic spell.
The writer Charlie Jane Anders used a similar gimmick, explained away with science fiction rather than fantasy, in “Victories Greater Than Death.”
The Welsh people in the pub were great, the way they messed with Ruby and the audience. The bit about paying with the phone was doubly clever because Ruby (and we, the audience) could wonder if she’d traveled into the recent past, or some alternate timeline. But nah they were just messing with her.
Why 73 yards precisely? Why was Ruby so limited in that fashion?
73 yards = 66.66-recurring meters.
Ruby was already a supernatural figure before the episode started. Who was her mother?
Three of this season’s episodes have been among the best I’ve seen on Doctor Who, and two have been among the worst. There have been none that are merely good or ok or meh.
This is a campfire story. It scares you deliciously while you’re in it, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to.
Roger ap Gwilliam had no platform, no agenda, no issues. He just really wanted to fire a nuke.
The episode had no opening credits.
RTD has said he doesn’t want to be limited by science fiction, he wants to do fantasy. I love his work but the distinction between much science fiction—particularly Doctor Who—and fantasy is rubbish. Doctor Who is all just technobabble; the “sonic screwdriver” is a magic wand, the TARDIS is a magic wardrobe/portal, and so on. RTD wants to swap one variety of gibberish for another. But if that lets him continue telling great stories, I’m OK with that. (The same goes for Star Trek, btw—it’s not scientific and never was. And I love it.)
I heard some of these observations on the Doctor Who Flashcast.
