As a rule, the Bad Advisor does not tend to take on questions she believes to be fake, but this rich trove simply had to be addressed. (And as a certified cat lady, herself, the Bad Advisor feels the need to avenge her people.)
So with that said: It’s Bad Advice Tuesday over at The Establishment!
Read the Bad Advisor’s response to this and two other people who need a fairly solid comeuppance here.
Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may very well be the greatest role-playing game sourcebook of all time. I’m not even being slightly hyperbolic. It is a book that talks about everything from dinosaurs to time travel, from wizards to parallel dimensions.
I suppose I should start a little further back: do you know that Palladium published the TMNT game, called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness? Well they did, and while the game is built on the rickety foundation of the Palladium system, the “Bio-E” mini-system for mutating your character from everyday animal into an anthropomorphic version is incredibly elegant. Transdimensional TMNT takes the “Strangeness” part of “…and Other Strangeness” and cranks it up to eleven. The real kicker, though, is that it has perhaps the most cogent system for time travel that I’ve ever seen, period.
One of the things that makes TMNT and Other Strangeness (and many Palladium games) wonderful and frustrating are all the random tables. Everything from your background to your animal species is rolled up on a table. Sure you could just pick, but where is the fun in that? If you did that you’d never find out that chickens can see ultraviolet, and create a mutant rooster gambler who marks his cards with UV paint. Transdimensional TMNT’s random character backgrounds are…phenomenally surreal and wonderful.
This includes rather tame stuff like accidental hitchhikers and animal samples from the Jurassic or Cenozoic, mutated by the raw forces of time travel, sure. It also includes…being a magically altered witch’s familiar! Or a “brain-edited” traveller from the far future, sent to make historical observations on the past. Yes! You could be a Howard the Duck-style visitor from another dimension where everybody is a duck-person like you, rather than an ape-person like our Earth has; heck, you can be from an Earth where Neanderthals survived and Sapiens didn’t; you know how much I like that.
Then, in one of the greatest examples of giving the customer what they want: the rules for making mutant dinosaurs! Heck yes I want to pay 10 Bio-E for my mutant stegosaurus to have “Temperature Control Plates.” Not content to stop there, we get a bunch of other prehistoric critters to mutate, too. Woolly mammoths, sabertooth tigers, glyptodons, terror birds, brown paper packages tied up with string…these are a few of my favorite things. Ready to rest on their laurels? Not a chance! Rules for mutant humans— that is, devolving into grey alien-like humanoids—and for other mutant hominins are icing on the cake, complete with a host of psychic powers to pick from.
All gonzo excellence aside, It is Transdimensional TMNT’s time travel mechanics that really force you to take a second look at it, though, with your serious pants on. Now, a disclaimer here: I don’t know how much of the time travel concepts come from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird or Erick Wujcik, but what I do know is that they are really quite cunning. The analogy used is that of a coiled up garden hose. Imagine that the flow of water through the hose is time, moving at 1 second per second. Fighting against the flow isn’t really effective, but if you were to sneak out of a loop of the hose and into the one below, you’d end up in a different “Twist” of time. (Twists themselves coil up into Cycles; I’m simplifying here) Now, like a hose, the coils on the bottom are bigger, and the coils up top are smaller, meaning closer to current history you can jump from century to century—giving your players a chance to hit the historical highlights—and farther in the past they are big enough to go with broadstrokes for things like the Cretaceous or Permian or, heck the moments after the Big Bang.
Meanwhile, the flow of time through the proverbial hose keeps moving forward! If you leave 2018 CE at 6:00 PM, go back to 162 BCE and spend three hours there, you’ll come back to 2018 at 9:00 PM. The constant motion of time resolves all those nasty paradoxes and issues of cause and effect. You can have the timeline hopping shenanigans without having to worry why Cloud didn’t give Aeris the Phoenix Down about trying to go back in time to stop the villain before his evil plan even started. The Grandfather Paradox problem still exists, and they have rules for Temporal “Kickback” for when the bad guy gives the Confederacy a crate of AK-47s and changes the future, but if you are more of a Predestination Paradox type like myself, or adhere to the “self-correcting time stream” space opera concept, you can go with that, too.
The story that Transdimensional TMNT chooses to tell by describing the future Twists that you find as you go forward instead of backwards is, I think, really compelling, and weaves various disparate elements of continuity together. There was a very popular spin-off line from TMNT and Other Strangeness called After the Bomb, which posits quite simply that after WWIII, the fallout of the nukes, bioweapons, chemical weapons, et al mutate all of the surviving animals (and mutate insects to fill their old ecological niches). As far as elevator pitches go, that is a pretty strong one; After the Bomb includes Mutants Down Under, the Australian expansion, Road Hogs, for all your Mad Max-y needs, Mutants in Avalon, if you want to ride a giant snail and meet a mutant raven King Arthur, Mutants in the Yucatan if flamingos and vampire bats are your style…just a host of great pulp ideas. So it is no surprise that it is the first Twist ahead in the future.
The clever interweaving doesn’t stop there. Did you know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go to space not infrequently? At least, starting with their Mirage run they did, and Turtles Guide to the Universe covers the cosmic playground for the RPG. One of the most dangerous places to end up is on a Wild Planet, where mutagens have gone crazy, making the whole planet a hyper-evolved deathtrap. Guess what? After the Bomb was the start of that trend, and the next stop on the time-train is, you guessed it, Earth as a Wild Planet. A nice little bow-tie on the TMNT universe, I think. Here, at the Wild Planet of Twist 2, you’ll also meet one of my favorite NPCs of all time: the young mutant fox piloting the space shuttle that rescues the PCs, Gary Morbriar.
See, the great thing about Gary Morbriar comes up in the Twist 3, the Terminator-style machine world apocalypse that grows from the death-droids designed to tame the Wild Planet. Here, young hotshot Gary Morbriar has matured into a senior officer with a creepy robot snake “advisor” around his neck and just a smidge more mutation. The non-linear notes are what make the scene, though: “He will be happy to see the characters again (incidentally, he’ll recognize them and call them by name, even if, the way the game has been going, they haven’t met him before.)” That’s right, Gary Morbriar is Transdimensional TMNT’s River Song, circa 1990.
The next Twist is even more grimdark: War! A war so wild that a chain of hydrogen bombs ripping across the face of Eurasia is described as harmless sensor cover for the Ultan I-Beams. Whatever that means. Gary Morbriar is here again, covered in cybernetic implants, mutated even further. After the War, though…there is a peace of sorts. An Earth covered by wilderness reclaiming the ruins of…well, everything. Where the only people left are…humans. Strange, “Garden of Eden” style humans, hyper-intelligent and hyper-primitive.
Gary Morbriar appears here as a hologram, shifting between his previous incarnations. Beyond that is a “Dark Eden” Twist, where the humans start evolving to fill the niches occupied by animals—giant herd humans on the plains, small arboreal humans in the trees, amphibious humans…and the Night Hunters, human predators. Past that, though is the Third Millennial Barrier. Time travel, whether spells or machines, just doesn’t work past that point, and if you keep trying? Well, an apparently omnipotent power will give you an indirect message to knock it off—say by disassembling your time machine and burying the pieces in the wall to spell out “BUZZ OFF!”
I’m really only scratching the surface of the book, here. It has rules for building a time machine and vehicle, so you can build your own Delorean. Rules for making wizards (!) and magical Time Lords. Hey, if you want to read “Time Lord” and think of Gallifrey, I won’t stop you. Also included are rules for historical weapons and gear, sample adventures and even an excerpt of the Donatello mini-series where he meets a fictionalized version of Jack Kirby…complete with “Kirby King’s” statistics. He is a 9th level comic artist, in case you were wondering. So yes, Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is exactly what it looks like: a game where you can play as a mutant dinosaur wizard fighting post-apocalyptic robots. Seriously, it is probably the greatest sourcebook of all time.
Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was published in 1989 by Palladium Books.
This article was originally published in March 2013.
Mordicai Knode had a mutant porcupine assassin named Spike Q. Seta when he was 12 years old who ended up retiring to an alternate universe where Genghis Khan’s empire never fell and because a utopia. You can follow him on Twitter or Tumblr.
It’s a bit in on 2018, but I wanted to start the year in #1’s and one-shots with something that brings my love of comics and men who wear no pants fighting over belts, together. Boom! Studios is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of WWE’s most awesome and ridiculous match by examining fan favorite moments in […]
Farmer witch and wolves under the moonlight!! Thank you very much for the support and happy new year everyone!
Character & mecha designs by Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuo Otsuka for “Conan, the Boy in Future” TV series (1978)
Energized by the successful passage of tax cuts, some Republicans are eying a new target: entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. House Speaker Paul Ryan is leading the charge, arguing that the only way to break the cycle of rising deficits and surging debt is to reduce entitlement spending.
Political resistance is likely to be fierce, not only because these programs are massively popular, but also because President Trump opposed any such cuts during his campaign. Even if the political hurdles can be cleared, though, the bigger problem is that this push for entitlement reform attacks the wrong target.
There is no wide-reaching entitlement funding crisis, no deep-rooted connection between runaway debts and the broad suite of pension and social welfare programs that usually get called entitlements. The problem is linked to entitlements, but it’s much narrower: If the U.S. budget collapses after hemorrhaging too much red ink, the main culprit will be rising health care costs.
Aside from health care, entitlement spending actually looks relatively manageable. Social Security will get a little more expensive over the next 30 years; welfare and anti-poverty programs will get a little cheaper. But costs for programs like Medicare and Medicaid are expected to climb from the merely unaffordable to truly catastrophic.
Part of that has to do with our aging population, but age isn’t the biggest issue. In a hypothetical world where the population of seniors citizens didn’t increase, entitlement-related health spending would still soar to unprecedented heights — thanks to the relentlessly accelerating cost of medical treatments for people of all ages.18
What’s needed, then, is something far more focused than entitlement reform: an aggressive effort to slow the growth of per-person health care costs. Or — if that’s not possible — some way to ensure that the economy grows at least as fast as the cost of health care does.
America’s long-term budget problem is very real. Already, the federal government has a pile of publicly held debts amounting to around $15 trillion, or about 75 percent of the country’s entire gross domestic product. That’s the highest level since the 1940s, yet the debt burden is expected to double by 2047 and reach 150 percent of the GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.19
It makes sense to list entitlement spending among the culprits for the growing national debt, given that these programs have grown from costing less than 10 percent of the GDP in 2000 to a projected 18 percent in 2047. Part of this is simple demographics: As America ages, more of us become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, thus driving up expenses.20
But there’s a crack in this demographic explanation: It only makes sense for the next 10 to 15 years. That’s the period of rapid transition when graying baby boomers will boost the population of seniors from around 50 million to more than 70 million. A change like that should indeed produce a surge in entitlement spending as those millions submit their enrollment forms.
By 2030, however, this wave will start to ebb, leaving the elderly share of the population at a roughly stable 20 to 21 percent all the way through 2060, based on the size of the population following the boomers and slower-moving forces like lengthening lifespans.
But think what this should mean for entitlement spending. As the population of seniors levels out in those later years, costs should naturally stabilize — at least, if demographics were really the driving factor.
This is exactly what you see for Social Security. The CBO expects total Social Security spending to leap up over the next decade but then settle at just over 6 percent of the GDP, at which point it will cease to be a major contributor to rising entitlement spending or growing debts. Social Security is thus a minor player in our long-term budget drama; if you cut the program to the bone, shrinking future payouts so that they won’t add a penny to the deficit, the federal debt would still reach 111 percent of the GDP in 2047.21
Likewise, cuts to welfare and poverty-related entitlements like food stamps and unemployment insurance are unlikely to improve the debt forecast. In fact, spending on these entitlements has been dropping since the high-need years around the Great Recession and is expected to shrink further in the decades ahead — partly because payouts aren’t adjusted to keep up with economic growth, and partly because the birth rate has been falling and several programs are geared to families with children.22
But the scale of the problem is totally different when you turn to health care. Spending on entitlement-related health programs — including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies required by the Affordable Care Act — will never shrink or stabilize, according to projections. The CBO predicts these costs will grow over 65 percent between now and 2047 — and then go right on growing after that, heedless of the fact that the percentage of the population that’s over 65 should no longer be increasing.
Demographics aren’t responsible for the projected explosion in health care costs. More important than the growing number of elderly Americans is the growing cost per patient — the rising expense of treating each individual
The CBO found that the lion’s share — 60 percent — of the projected increase in health spending comes from costs that would continue to increase even if our population weren’t getting older.
The reasons for this are many, including the rising cost of prescription drugs and the fact that hospital mergers have reduced competition. But since 2000, per capita health costs in the U.S. have, on average, grown faster than the GDP. And while these costs rose more slowly after the Great Recession and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, analysis from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services suggests this slower growth rate won’t last.
Which is bad news for these programs, because if the problem were demographic, it’d be easier to solve. By mixing the kind of program cuts Republicans generally support with targeted tax increases favored by some Democrats, you could meet the short-term challenge posed by retiring baby boomers and raise enough money to cover the larger — but stabilizing — population of eligible seniors. But with ever-rising costs, there is no stable future to prepare for. To keep these programs funded, you’d need a wholly different approach — indeed a whole new perspective on mounting federal debt and the role of entitlements.
The future is a race between rising health care costs and economic growth, a race that the economy is losing. Each time health costs outpace the GDP, it creates what the CBO calls “excess cost growth,” which feeds the federal debt. If the government could close this gap, the long-term budget outlook would be a lot rosier.
There are two ways to solve this issue: Either contain health care costs — say through price regulation or more competitive markets — or boost economic growth enough to pay for this expensive health care. Success on either front would make health care spending look more manageable over future decades and lighten the debt load.
Few of the proposals that commonly fall under the heading of entitlement reform target the health care cost problem, which limits their ability to reduce the long-term debt.
Even when they do address health care, often the result is to shift — rather than solve — the problem. Say lawmakers decide to dramatically cut Medicare. That would indeed ease the government’s debt problem. But the underlying dynamic — the race between health costs and the GDP — wouldn’t really change. Seniors would still need health care, and per-person costs would likely still grow (maybe even faster, since Medicare is a relatively efficient program).
On top of all this, there’s also a deep-seated political barrier: It’s no good if one party picks its favored solution only to watch the other party dismantle it when they next take over. You need political consensus to make changes stick, and America is notably short on consensus right now.
In the end, though, it won’t do to just throw up our hands. Absent some workable solution, spending on health care will sink the federal budget, generating levels of debt that would hold back the economy and potentially spark a global crisis of confidence in the United States’ ability to borrow.
If Republicans are serious about addressing this challenge and reducing America’s debt, they need to find an approach to entitlement reform that can both reduce out-of-control health costs and also survive under Democratic governance.
The home of Wall Street announced on Wednesday that it will be divesting its massive pension fund from fossil fuels. That hits fossil fuel giants where it hurts
Over the years, the capital of the fight against climate change has been Kyoto, or Paris – that’s where the symbolic political agreements to try and curb the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions have been negotiated and signed. But now, New York City vaulted to leadership in the battle.
On Wednesday, its leaders, at a press conference in a neighborhood damaged over five years ago by Hurricane Sandy, announced that the city was divesting its massive pension fund from fossil fuels, and added for good measure that they were suing the five biggest oil companies for damages. Our planet’s most important city was now at war with its richest industry. And overnight, the battle to save the planet shifted from largely political to largely financial.
Continue reading...Rockhopper penguins, bleeding heart baboons and a flying fox are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Vast 1.8m sq km fishing-free zone would protect species, such as penguins, leopard seals and whales, and help mitigate the effects of climate change
A global campaign is being launched to turn a huge tract of the seas around the Antarctic into the world’s biggest sanctuary, protecting wildlife and helping the fight against climate change.
The huge 1.8m sq km reserve – five times the size of Germany – would ban all fishing in a vast area of the Weddell Sea and around the Antarctic Peninsula, safeguarding species including penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.
The city’s top bagels keep evolving
The bagel may or may not have been invented by Germans living in Poland in the 14th century, but here, it’s associated with Jewish American cuisine, as well as being one of the city’s most iconic foods. Revered by people all over the country, it’s rare to find a faithful duplication elsewhere. True bagels are boiled briefly before being baked. (Turn one over: If it has a grid pattern on the bottom, it was first steamed rather than boiled.) Chewy, glutinous, and highly caloric, a lone bagel is a meal and a very satisfying one, especially when schmeared with cream cheese and layered with lox or another form of cured fish.
Even today the bagel continues to evolve, as several points on this map will demonstrate. Here are some favorites, including some stunt bagels, all good enough to be wolfed down whole without any topping at all.
Recovery of an MMO Junkie is a charming anime about a romance that develops between two MMORPG players, only without the need to trap them in the game. It’s a refreshing series in many ways, with one notable reason being its portrayal of its NEET main heroine.
NEET (“Not in Education, Employment, or Training”) is originally an English term that migrated over to Japan and is one of the many terms used to describe Japanese youths as a way to admonish their lack of drive. In response to this negative image, many anime, manga, and light novels have NEET protagonists rise to the occasion, get the girl, and save the day. However, even when they’re portrayed as lovable losers who become winners in a new world, they still have that aura of initial failure about them.
However, Recovery of an MMO Junkie‘s main character, Morioka Moriko, is not portrayed as being a sad sack who never went anywhere. Prior to her becoming a NEET, she actually had a lucrative office career. While they never explicitly say why she quit, it’s implied that something about the job wore her down over time, and that she left it for her own sanity. Where other series’ NEETS are often presented as people who never even try to enter adult society, Moriko is someone who could have walked down that path but didn’t.
The reason Moriko being a former working adult is important is that NEETs, hikikomori, greeters, etc., are viewed as irresponsible and lazy, as if their lack of employment and romantic success falls squarely on their shoulders. MMO Junkie suggests that maybe there’s something wrong with the corporate and societal culture that grinds people down. It’s similar to the arguments we see about millennials, except it’s been going on in Japan for even longer.
The English title, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, can sound misleading. It’s not about an MMO player getting over her online addiction, it’s about an MMO player using an MMO for self-therapy to help her recover her life. When she worked, it was her nightly reprieve. When the job became too much for her, she needed more extensive healing. Even adults need time to recuperate mentally and emotionally.
Check out this video that celebrates some of the highlights from an excellent year in feature animation.
The post Here Are Some Of The Films That Made 2017 An Incredible Year For Feature Animation appeared first on Cartoon Brew.
Plus, a ‘Clueless’-themed brunch — and more intel
Desserts from Asia are going strong around New York City: The latest addition to Canal Street Market will be a kakigori shop, a Japanese shaved ice treat often topped with fresh fruit and other toppings. Bonsai Kakigōri, popping up on January 9th in the Chinatown food hall, will change its flavors seasonally, but expect options like goat’s milk caramel with sea salt and a persimmon cardamom lime version. Though Taiwanese shaved ice has been growing in popularity in NYC, kakigori isn’t as prolific. But it might be on its way: Last month, an ambitious dessert counter called The Little One opened, also serving kakigori with flavors like hojicha caramel and lime zest.
Bilevel Midtown gastropub 5th & Mad is hosting a Clueless brunch on Saturday January, 20th — where diners are encouraged to wear their best outfits inspired by the ’90s film. The restaurant will have games, the movie playing in the background, and themed food and drink like a Luke Perry and a Dionne. Tickets cost $40 and include a brunch dish, dessert, and bottomless prosecco from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. A $75 ticket comes with a whole bottle of bubbly. The same restaurant has also previously hosted a Meal Girls-themed brunch.
Lively Chelsea neighborhood American restaurant Motel Morris now offers lunch and a late-night menu. The spot from former Red Cat chef Bill McDaniel serves an extended bar menu with dishes like pimento cheese deviled eggs, tuna tartare with black sesame, chili with sriracha potato chips, and a fried chicken sandwich topped with celery root and a cabbage remoulade. Costs range from $9 for malt vinegar fries to $19 for a burger with black garlic barbecue sauce, cheddar, onion ring, bacon, and picked jalapeños. See the full menu below.
The end-of-year to beginning-of-year restaurant closing bonanza continues. The East Village location of popular Latin restaurant Yerba Buena has closed after close to a decade in the neighborhood. Owner-chef Julian Medina — who was accused of sexual misconduct last year — plans to flip his West Village restaurant Toloache into a new outpost of Yerba Buena this summer. Over in LES, taqueria El Luchador shuttered this week due to a broken water pipe, and it’s not clear when or if it will reopen. It’s been open for a year and a half.
In this absolutely ludicrous video on Page Six, Kardashian regular Jonathan “foodgod” Cheban visits Bayside, Queens pizzeria Krave It for a pizza topped with fries, onion rings, burger patties, bacon, burger buns, deep-fried Oreos, and powdered sugar. It makes no sense and looks obscene, but Cheban claims to like it: “This is yummy,” he says. For a more appetizing-looking pizza, look here:
Motel Morris bar menu by Eater NY on Scribd
In an unexpected executive order on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump abruptly dissolved the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which he’d set up after alleging with no evidence that he lost the popular vote because of millions of illegal votes. In a statement, he said the Department of Homeland Security will take up the commission’s mantle while avoiding the “endless legal battles” that bedeviled the commission in its brief existence. (For a history of the commission’s many woes and stumbles, see ProPublica’s chronology.) But experts say the scrutiny and resistance that the commission faced will persist. They are skeptical DHS will achieve the results Trump claims.
“Having watched the commission go up in flames, I don’t know that DHS personnel would be eager to follow their lead,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola University School of Law and former Department of Justice civil rights official. “You don’t normally want to be the second person to jump on a live grenade.”
Echoing Trump, commission co-chair and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told multiple news outlets on Wednesday night that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, would use the voter rolls already collected by the commission and compare them to a federal list of non-citizens — something he’s discussed as a possibility since the commission’s formation was announced in March. (It didn’t convene its first meeting until July.)
Dale Ho, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, scoffed at the idea, saying that DHS had the authority to begin such a match months ago when the commission first began to collect the data. “Why haven’t they been doing this the entire time?” he said. “I don’t think anyone should be particularly impressed.”
Ho said the non-citizen list maintained by DHS is flawed. It includes only non-citizens who’ve interacted with DHS, according to Ho. Names remain on the list, he said, even after people on it have become U.S. citizens. “You may have been a non-citizen who interacted with DHS five years ago, then naturalized and registered to vote, and you would appear to be a non-citizen under this match,” he said.
After the state of Florida sued to access the DHS database in 2012, the agency said the database was not foolproof and told the Miami Herald it was “not designed” to be used as a check on non-citizen voting. Ultimately, Florida’s use of the database resulted in a flawed analysis that the governor and secretary of state later apologized for.
Levitt said DHS would understand the limitations of such a match, and may be hesitant to take on an imperfect project that would face the same scrutiny as the commission, creating a “sizeable distraction” from their real priorities — especially since the White House has already begun to distance itself from the work of the commission.
Indeed, anonymous White House insiders took to the media on Wednesday night to distance the administration from the commission. One senior advisor told CNN the commission was a “shit show” that “went off the rails,” and said Vice President Mike Pence should have viewed the commission “as a shit sandwich and treated it like a book report.” Another official blamed the commission’s formation on Steve Bannon (who was essentially excommunicated by the White House yesterday), calling the commission a “blundered Bannon rollout” that “should’ve never been in place.”
Levitt said DHS would likely face far more scrutiny than the commission if they did attempt that data analysis. “DHS is a real agency with real appropriations from Congress and real oversight authority from Congress,” he said. “They have to be very careful to keep to the purpose for which money is appropriated — OIG [the agency’s inspector general] and internal auditors take those responsibilities seriously, and their general counsel will be strict.”
Matt Dunlap, a Democratic member of the voter fraud commission and the secretary of state for Maine, also said scrutiny — including his own — would continue. This fall, Dunlap sued the commission, asserting that it had left him out of its deliberations. Last month, a judge found in his favor, ruling that he was unlawfully excluded from the drafting process related to the controversial letter sent by Kobach to the states requesting voter data, and from meeting planning. The judge also ruled the commission must turn over documents Dunlap requested, which Dunlap says he will continue to demand even though the commission is no more.
In his years as a public administrator, Dunlap said he’s never seen as much public interest as he did with the commission. He’s convinced that DHS would face the same pushback. “People don’t want their elections messed around with. They want them left alone,” he said. “If Secretary Kobach thinks he can escape public scrutiny of his work by exclusion and cloaking it even deeper, I think the American people may have a surprise waiting for him.”
Kobach snapped back at Dunlap on Wednesday night, telling news outlets that Democrats both on and off commission “lost their seat at the table” because of their protests. For his part, Dunlap professed to be unbothered. “Good luck, buddy — the curtain has been pulled away,” he said. “Everyone is watching now.”
Kobach did not respond to a request for an interview related to this story.
Other groups who filed suits relating to the voter fraud commission also say they will continue their scrutiny. For example, the Brennan Center has sought to compel the Department of Justice, DHS and the Office of Management and Budget to disclose information regarding their work with the commission. Myrna Perez, the leader of the center’s Voting Rights and Elections project, says they will continue to pursue these disclosures.
The ACLU also sued the commission, alleging that it failed to follow federal disclosure laws. Ho says these issues have not disappeared just because the commission no longer exists. “It doesn’t mean they get to shred everything now,” he said. “I still want to know what it is they’ve been concealing from the public, and I think the public deserves that.”
Experts also say that, if DHS takes on the role of investigating voter fraud, it could harm work it is doing with states to shore up cybersecurity and prevent foreign intervention. Late in the Obama Administration, election infrastructure was declared “critical,” which allowed DHS to better help states collaborate with the federal government. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said states initially viewed DHS intervention as federal overreach, but have now begun to productively work together. If DHS takes the lead on “a wild goose chase” to sniff out fraud, Becker argued, the necessary work of improving cybersecurity will suffer. “If DHS is being tugged in a different direction by the White House itself,” he said, “that could have a really detrimental impact.”
An intense winter storm has caused electricity outages for tens of thousands of Americans. Some 65,000 homes and businesses along the US east coast are without power. The storm is the product of a rapid and rare drop in barometric pressure known as bombogenesis, or bomb cyclone. Heavy snow has pounded the east coast from Maine as far south as North Carolina, taking out power lines, icing over roads and closing hundreds of schools
Continue reading...I love planners. I love organizers. I’ve always been drawn to anything that promises to Tame the Chaos, because there is a staggering amount of internal chaos that comes with having an ADHD brain. It’s incredibly satisfying to me to “get organized.” But staying organized — that’s another matter.
Turns out, my brain is used to the chaos, and feels uncomfortably boxed-in by the same rigid systems I’m drawn to through the shiny promise of “you’ll finally have your s&*$ together.”
I usually give a new system 2 weeks before I’m back to the freedom of random post-it notes and lists and notebooks full of ideas and epiphanies that I will…never find again.
So when I heard there was a system that could give me the organization my brain craved *without* sacrificing the freedom my brain needed…a system that didn’t require remembering passwords or paying a monthly subscription fee or buying refill paper or anything, really, except a notebook and a pen…a system designed BY someone with ADHD… I wanted to shout its praise from the rooftops.
I settled for my YouTube channel. You can see the full extent of my enthusiasm here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLnY9L1c-M
I dove in headfirst and never looked back.
Well…I tried.
As I began to use my bullet journal, I noticed some limitations — what if I couldn’t find my bujo/left it at a friend’s house/am currently waiting tables and can’t carry it around with me? Where am I supposed to capture my awesome ideas then?
What if my schedule keeps changing? There’s only so much white-out you can use without getting frustrated at yourself for not being able to stick to what you had planned. Which for ADHDers, happens…often.
Cool, I feel super relaxed and confident about my schedule and…“wait, what do you mean we have a big important meeting today? It’s not in my bullet journal!” (The bullet journal is…not great at syncing schedules).
Turns out, I still need a digital calendar I can share with my team. I still need a whiteboard to quickly hash out a show schedule for the month and make adjustments as necessary. I still need a notepad on my phone to dump stuff when my bullet journal isn’t by my side. My bullet journal is not the One Tool to Rule Them All I hoped it would be. Which would have been terribly disappointing…
Except, in the time it took me to figure that out, my bullet journal was quietly doing amazing things for me.
Here’s what I really love about the bullet journal, after having used one for a year, and why I will probably always keep one:
It’s amazing at reducing my mental load.
I notice a huge difference on days when I offload to my bullet journal vs. days I try to keep everything in my head. I’m less overwhelmed, I have less anxiety — both of which are common issues for ADHD brains. Not only do I feel better, I also *work* better because my working memory is freed up for actually working, rather than trying to remember all the stuff I’m supposed to do.
It’s given me a relationship with myself.
Everything in my bullet journal, I put there. It’s an extension of me — my thoughts, ideas, what I find important and want to be a part of my life. As someone who’s often been swept into the current of other people’s lives and wants and goals, it’s good to have a touchstone to what I want, who I am, what I’ve accomplished. Yeah, I can do that in my phone or my computer, but those are tools I use to connect with the rest of the world — my bullet journal is a way for me to connect to me.
It’s a fantastic litmus test — if I’m too busy to update my bujo, I’m too busy.
It’s really easy for ADHDers to take on too much, because we tend to be enthusiastic about new things…and also underestimate how long those things will actually take. Not having time to plan is the canary in the coal mine that lets me know I’ve got too much on my plate and I need to say no for awhile.
I’m still 100% in love with the index.
It blows my mind every time I scribble something random and *can find it again later*. It’s so simple it’s brilliant. And hey — I can still write on post it notes!
It helps me prioritize.
The executive function deficits that come with ADHD can make it challenging for us to plan, prioritize, and sustain effort toward our goals. Which means we end up putting a LOT of effort into life that never really pays off. With the help of my bullet journal — even though I am FAR from perfect at using it — I’ve gotten better at spending my time and energy on stuff that matters, and I’ve made more progress toward my goals in the last year than I ever imagined was possible. I got to quit my day job to become a full time YouTuber and ADHD advocate, and even gave my first TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiwZQNYlGQI
I’m grateful for what the bullet journal system has helped me learn about myself and accomplish, and I’m excited to see what 2018 will bring.
The post Bullet Journal For ADHD appeared first on Bullet Journal.
First impressions are great but what about our thoughts after we’ve watched an entire series week to week? We figured our listeners might want to hear our final impressions as well so we’ve created the Case Closed Review podcast. Just like the S.W.A.T. Reviews, these are mini-podcasts and completely off the cuff.
Final impressions of Kino’s Journey -The Beautiful World- from Lerche. It is streaming on Crunchyroll. DOWNLOAD
Final impressions of MAGICAL CIRCLE GURU-GURU from Production I.G. It is streaming on Crunchyroll. DOWNLOAD
Final impressions of Recovery of an MMO Junkie from Signal M.D. It is streaming on Crunchyroll. DOWNLOAD
British rail fares will rise again this year and Californians will be able to buy marijuana legally for recreational purposes
Saudis and Emiratis will pay more tax, the Swiss will pay less, Brits will start taking more expensive train journeys and China will stop taking in the world’s rubbish.
These are some of the changes that will take effect as the world ticks over into a new year.
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Just after World War II two very different films were released, a bare year apart, that attempted to grapple with postwar America. It’s easy to look at It’s a Wonderful Life and either see a heartwarming classic or a pile of treacle begging for a snarky rejoinder, and it’s easy to look at The Bishop’s Wife and see mainstream Christmastime fluff. But both films hide a far more interesting message, which becomes clear when you compare them with other holiday classics.
One of Christmas’ greatest traditions is arguing about how far the holiday has fallen from the pure ideal Christmases of yesteryear. It’s too commercialized! It’s too materialistic! There is a war being waged upon it! And yet, when we actually look back at the history of our most beloved Christmas movies, we see that the holiday has always, with two big exceptions, been shown as a day of materialistic excess, glittery and expensive as Snoopy’s prize-winning doghouse.
How does Miracle on 34th Street end? The Real Santa Claus makes sure that adorable little Susan gets a nuclear family and the exact suburban house that she wants. (As a New Yorker, this ending horrifies me. You’re never getting that Fifth Avenue apartment back, girl—think about what you’re doing.)
A Christmas Story? The kid gets the toy he wants, after opening and being dissatisfied by an enormous (pre-War, end-of-the-Depression) haul under the tree.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation? The entire plot is triggered by Clark Griswold’s boss’ decision to withhold Christmas bonuses, and the film ends with Clark not only getting the bonus, but also a sizable raise.
Home Alone? The insanely rich McCallisters pull the plug on their Paris vacation to come home and celebrate in their palatial estate with Kevin. (As of last year, that house was estimated to cost $2,103,245.13.)
White Christmas? A retired general’s poorly-thought-out real estate venture is saved.
Trading Places? An upper-class stockbroker, a broke conman, and a working-class sex worker team up to game the market—ending with all of them fabulously rich.
Elf? A fabulously rich children’s book editor (LOL forever) makes a killing publishing books about his long-lost son, who was raised by Santa’s elves.
Even the ur-Christmas story, A Christmas Carol, is not about a rich man giving all of his wealth away – it’s just about him learning to share it. The Cratchits go from poverty stricken to getting a Christmas windfall, and Bob’s promotion and raise almost certainly mean that the whole family will be solidly middle class by the time Tiny Tim is ready to woo—a huge deal in early Victorian England.
The Little Drummer Boy, gets a semi-happy ending from Rankin and Bass when it ends with a miraculous sheep-healing.
Emmett Otter’s Seasonal Depression Jamboree Jug-Band Christmas ends with Emmett and his mom getting a steady gig as a lounge act.
And what of the Grinch? That absolute gold standard for “presents do not equal Christmas,” ends with the Whos getting all their stuff back. Essentially, their joyful singing of Welcome Christmas” was exactly the catalyst for the Grinch returning their jing-tinglers and sloo-slunkers: the material stuff was the reward for transcending materialism.
And yes, a few of these movies nod toward being more giving and caring—Trading Places is explicitly about not judging a person’s intelligence by their social class, and Frank Cross gets his Scrooged lessons by learning to care for homeless people and traumatized children.
But.
They also all end with the protagonists in either the same comfortable financial situations as before, or even significantly better ones. These fantasies usually unspool while the protagonists are being told that Christmas is about more than presents—but everyone still gets presents or bonuses or better careers. Thousands of people who are racking up credit card debt, putting things on layaway, and doing serious financial yoga to make sure there are gifts under the tree end up sitting down to watch holiday classic together and seeing a goddamn avalanche of rich people. Or at least people who can heap presents under the tree with no outward concern.
The all-time classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and a slightly less well-known Christmas classic, The Bishop’s Wife (1947), are the two films that don’t give in to this.
It’s a Wonderful Life was based on a story called “The Greatest Gift” (1943) by Philip Van Doren Stern. The short story is, first, very short at only 4,100 words, but second, not really focused on economics. A depressed man wants to kill himself, a shabby angel shows him what life would be like without him, he realizes he’s been an idiot and asks the angel to restore his life. There is a subplot about a bank robbery, but Mr. Potter isn’t a banker, he runs a photography shop.
The movie is about money at every level.
When young George lights the cigar lighter in Mr. Gower’s shop, he says, “I wish I had a million dollars!” as his dearest hope. (Let’s also note that George is already working when he’s what, 12 years old at most?) When he’s initially planning to go to Europe, he’s going to work his way across the Atlantic on a cattle boat, and has been “hoarding pennies like a miser” to be able to afford the trip and college after it. When Harry goes to college in his place so the family can keep the B&L afloat, George spends those four years years downsizing his dreams, but he still hopes to escape Bedford Falls, and when he brother returns George is looking through the want ads for manual labor gigs that will take him to oil fields or ranches across the country.
After George and Mary are married, we learn that he’s saved money for their honeymoon, but his ideals have eroded—and they’re bound up in wealth. No longer is he going to “build things” or even work with his hands in order to see a new part of the country, now he’s going to: “shoot the works. A whole week in New York. A whole week in Bermuda. The highest hotels. The oldest champagne. The richest caviar and the hottest music and the prettiest wife.” It’s not the time away from the grind, or the time with his wife he’s celebrating—it’s the markers of wealth that the two will enjoy during their two weeks away. Each time he makes a morally sound choice: saving the Building and Loan, giving Harry his college money, thwarting the bank run. But each time you can tell that he’s fallen a little further in his own estimation, if not in that of his wife, or friends, or children.
The whole battle throughout the film is between rich banker Henry Potter, and George Bailey, who starts out middle class (enough money for a comfortable house and a maid’s wages, but not enough money to send the boys to college) but seems to fall considerably throughout his own life (a ramshackle fixer-upper, no maid, old car, four kids to feed) until by the time he’s in his mid-thirties he seems considerably worse off than his father—even before the $8,000 loss that triggers his suicide attempt. George finds himself dedicating his life to his father’s business, the Bailey Building and Loan, which enables the poorer people of the town to take out home loans rather than live in Potter’s tenements, because Pa Bailey, and George after him, operate on the idea that those who believe that “do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community” deserve to do it “in a couple of decent rooms and a bath.”
Potter, meanwhile, is a cartoon rich man with no moral compass, no ideology driving him, who sees the Baileys as dangerous idealists. But he’s not like the mayor in Footloose who wants to ban dancing, or the men of The Handmaid’s Tale who want to police women’s sexuality—Potter’s oligarchy is purely financial. The closest Potter gets to an ethos is the belief that if Bedford Falls’ working class have access to money it will warp them: “What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry-eyed dreamers like Peter Bailey stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas!”
When George goes groveling to Potter, the man breaks him down to a dollar amount—“Have you got any stocks? Bonds? Real estate? Collateral of any kind?”—and scoffs at George’s $15,000 life insurance policy when he learns that he only has $500 equity.
Five hundred dollars? And you ask me to lend you $8,000? Look at you. You used to be so cocky! You were going to go out and conquer the world! You once called me a warped, frustrated old man. What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. No securities –– no stocks –– no bonds –– nothing but a miserable little five hundred dollar equity in a life insurance policy. You’re worth more dead than alive.
And George, forgetting his family, his friends, the ideals that he inherited from his father, and which he has championed throughout the film, agrees with Potter. His life is worthless because his bank account is worthless. His first conversation with Clarence is marked with economic worries. Obviously he has no reason to believe Clarence’s claim to angelhood, and it would be pretty weird if he did, but even taking that into account, their first conversation is so based in George’s obsessions with money and appearances it shocked me watching it again this year:
George: Well, you look about the kind of angel I’d get. Sort of a fallen angel, aren’t you? What happened to your wings?
Clarence: I haven’t won my wings, yet. That’s why I’m called an Angel Second Class. I have to earn them. And you’ll help me will you?
George: Sure, sure. How?
Clarence: By letting me help you.
George: I know one way you can help me. You don’t happen to have 8,000 bucks on you?
Clarence: No, we don’t use money in Heaven.
George: Well, it comes in real handy down here, bud!
Now it’s become popular to trot out the idea that Pottersville is more fun than Bedford Falls, or even that it will be better off, financially, in the long run. But what always marks Pottersville for me is that self-respect, and respect for other people, is clearly in freefall here. Everything has been monetized and there is no room for deviation from the capitalistic norm. Uncle Billy’s locked up because his grief-fueled eccentricity can’t survive in Pottersville. Ma Bailey has to turn her home into a boarding house. Violet, whose freewheeling sexuality seemed to find a surprising amount of acceptance in Bedford Falls, has had to monetize her body in a much harsher way.
There’s no support system for Mr. Gower or the Martinis. Love and family can’t survive in the face of Ernie’s poverty. Mary Hatch, unwilling to go Violet’s route, has to take the only other role that this society will offer an unwed woman. There is no place for George Bailey or his father in this world, because here you’re either “rabble” scrounging up just enough money to survive, or, presumably, you’re getting rich from the rabble’s work. We don’t even see the rich of Pottersville, because George doesn’t socialize with their analogues in his own world. All of the people he cares about are considered worthless, replaceable cogs.
This is the message we expect from a work of populist cinema that was actually investigated by HUAC for possible communist messaging, so I was surprised to see a similar message show up in The Bishop’s Wife. In many ways an innocuous piece of Christmas-time fluff, The Bishop’s Wife centers on Henry Brougham, an Episcopal bishop who is extremely overworked and exhausted from his work trying to raise funds for a majestic cathedral. This has taken a toll on his family life—especially his marriage to the young and beautiful Julia. When he prays for guidance (literally says “show me the way”) an angel named Dudley is sent to help him.
Rather than simply miracling a cathedral into existence, or inspiring rich people to shower the parish with money, Dudley simply acts as Henry’s humble assistant—at least, while other people are around. Every time Henry is alone with him, the angel challenges his ideas and lectures him, and when that fails, he begins to—there’s no other way to say this—seduce Henry’s lonely wife, Julia. Dudley “borrows” the scarf the family maid got for Henry’s Christmas present last year; he takes Julia to lunch at the restaurant where Henry proposed and then goes skating with her—essentially hijacking a date Henry had proposed; he befriends Professor Wutheridge, a friend from the couple’s youth; he starts spending quality time with Henry’s daughter. In the end, Henry realizes that his true treasure has been with him all along—the love of his family and friends.
The film could have stopped there and been a heartwarming, fantasy-tinged Christmas classic. Robert Nathan’s original 1928 novella doesn’t even go this far, and instead focuses on Julia’s dissatisfaction with her marriage and her romantic fixation on the angel. But the film goes in a different direction entirely. Henry isn’t the cold older man he is in the book—he and Julia were genuinely happy and romantic together once upon a time. And that time was when they were poor, working in a shabbier parish, and just making do on his salary as a priest. Julia and Professor Wutheridge muse on the earlier period in their lives in Wutheridge’s apartment, a tiny, cluttered two-room walk-up in a bad neighborhood. We visit Henry’s old church, St. Timothy’s, which is small and dilapidated, but whose members love it. The church’s choir is made up of scruffy boys who are about one scuffle away from being Dead End Kids, but when they sing together they turn into the Mitchell Boy Choir. The first hour of the film hints at its message, but it’s when we see Dudley alone that things really kick into high gear.
He waits until Henry is at yet another schmoozey meeting with rich people to enact the last part of his plan. He glances over Henry’s Christmas Eve sermon, considers it for a moment, then tosses it into the fireplace to burn, and begins dictating his own sermon directly to the typewriter, which magically types it up. We only hear the opening—something about an empty stocking and an aunt who wants an orange squeezer. Next he goes behind Henry’s back to visit Mrs. Hamilton, the rich woman who has been dictating the building of the cathedral, and seems to want it to reflect her late husband’s memory more than that of any saint.
Dudley does some angelic snooping and speaks with Mrs. Hamilton about her lost first love, a poor composer whom she rejected in favor of the rich George Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton only married George because she feared poverty, and now she’s burning money to honor him with a church—not because she believes in the church’s mission, or wants to help build an edifice to the glory of God, or wants to create a place for people to worship, but only to assuage her own guilt over marrying for wealth. Once Dudley shows her this, she undergoes a complete Scrooge makeover. When Henry and Julia arrive at the Hamilton mansion for Christmas Eve dinner she embraces Julia, insists that both of them call her by her first name, and announces that she’s giving her money to the poor rather than to the cathedral fund. This turnaround stuns Henry, who believes that Dudley is a demon come to ruin his life.
But Dudley points out that Henry asked to be “shown the way.” Nowhere in his prayer did he say “help me build a giant cathedral with a rich lady’s money.” Dudley then erases the family’s memory and heads off to his next assignment, and Henry delivers the sermon that Dudley wrote, believing it to be his own work.
Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking. Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry. A blazing star hung over a stable and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries; we celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, the sound of bells and with gifts. But especially with gifts. You give me a book; I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry could do with a new pipe. We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled… all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s his birthday we are celebrating. Don’t ever let us forget that. Let us ask ourselves what he would wish for most… and then let each put in his share. Loving kindness, warm hearts, and the stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.
So what do these two films have in common? Tucked away in their white middle-class devotion to family and Christianity is a slightly more radical definition of Christmas than what usually makes it into the movies. The protagonists mostly don’t get what they want, and when they do, there are giant unforeseen consequences.
George and Henry both make off-the-cuff requests for giant things: non-existence and guidance respectively. Both of these requests are granted, but the way they’re granted forces the protagonists to look at their values, and how those values relate to money. George has to grapple with the fact that he has tied his sense of self-worth so completely into a dollar value that when he loses money and is told by an cranky rich bastard that he’s “worth more dead than alive”, he agrees and marches right off to the nearest bridge. Henry comes to realize that he, a man of God who is responsible for the moral lives of everyone in his parish, became so caught up in proving himself with the cathedral project that he alienated his family and expected a divine being to act as his financial advisor. Rather than offering moral leadership and unconditional love, he allows his role as bishop to be defined by a rich elitist, and his marriage to be compromised by his pursuit of a physical monument rather than an emotional or spiritual one. Instead of looking at the cathedral project and realizing, as Dudley says, “That big roof could make so many little roofs,” he charges ahead, and it takes divine intervention to stop him.
In both films the idea that “Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more” is not immediately followed up by an affirmation of materialism. Sure, George has enough to cover the $8,000 loss—but he’ll need to pay all of it back, right? Sam Wainwright agreed to advance him up to $25,000, which means that George will have to somehow live even more frugally to make sure that he can get everyone their money back. The bank examiner joined in the singing, and the cop tore up the warrant for George’s arrest, but do you really think Potter’s going to let him off that easy? He’s still on the board of the B&L. He can still get George fired, or jailed, and if anything the rabble coming to George’s rescue is going to make the old man hate the Baileys even more, so this is, at best a temporary happy ending, materially speaking.
Meanwhile, Henry doesn’t get his cathedral, and The Bishop’s Wife ends with a reminder that none of the rushing around and shopping and decorating matters at all—Christmas is supposed to be about love, kindness, and, (most interesting to me look at a film from 1947) tolerance. The characters are happy because they’ve been divinely mindwiped, but the audience knows that Henry didn’t get what he wanted, that Julia was kind of emotionally unfaithful to her husband, and that Dudley himself has fallen in love with Julia, and left (extremely reluctantly) to preserve cosmic order and ensure the Broughams’ happiness.
I’m not saying this to bum you out—quite the opposite. The films have to have these notes of discord to highlight their messages. These two films re-center the Christmas story in a way that strips all of the trappings away and shows us that American Christmas, even in our fictional lily-white conservative postwar past, was always about cash on the nail—and that we should question that fact constantly. If a man as good as George Bailey can’t detangle his sense of self-esteem from his financial status, where does that leave the rest of us? If a bishop puts his entire life at risk to flatter and placate rich people, what hope does a regular street-level heathen like myself have? I’m not such a starry-eyed idealist that I think societies can function without money, but is it too much to ask that we define ourselves by our morality, our care for others, our artistic work, rather than a number in a bank account? And maybe more Christmas films could posit the idea that maybe, perhaps, Christmas—and human life—mean a little bit more?
Having said all this, Leah Schnelbach still hopes to find a present or two under her tree—she’s only human. Come sing fah-who-for-aze with her on Twitter!
kateDidn't realize Incredibles 2 and Wreck-It-Ralph 2 will both be out in 2018.
While 2017 was certainly a banner year for movies and television—it brought us Wonder Woman, American Gods, and Spider-Man: Homecoming, to start—we would argue that 2018 is looking even brighter. J.J. Abrams adds another mysterious chapter to the Cloverfield saga, Philip K. Dick gets an anthology series, and the Incredibles finally get back into their supersuits. Between Annihilation and A Wrinkle in Time alone, next year will be truly mind-expanding.
We were surprised at how long this list was, from the aforementioned big movies to the return of such beloved series as The Good Place, Star Trek: Discovery, The Handmaid’s Tale, and much more. We’ve got a lot to look forward to next year.
The comeback was wobbly, which makes one curious as to whether The X-Files can truly return to form at all. Guess we should see where this goes? —Emily
What Emily said! —Leah
I’m just here for the comic relief Monster of the Week episode. There is at least one of those, yes? –Sarah
This show has already done the impossible multiple times since it came back for its second season, so I can’t wait to see what it does next. —Leah
Initially I was wary about season 2 basically rebooting itself every week, but after episodes like “The Trolley Problem” and every moment of the philosophical deep-dives into Janet’s existence, I’m still a fan. —Natalie
After they pulled off their return following that jaw-dropper of a season 1 finale, I was all in. The Good Place is pretty much my happy place. —Emily
There has been a lot of speculation following the midseason finale, but even with that off the table, I’d still be ready for more Discovery. It may not be every Trek fan’s bag, but boy is it ever mine. —Emily
FINALLY, THEY’RE GETTING ON THE BOAT. I accept that maybe I’m the only person this excited about the Muntjac, but I have a great fondness for the Voyage of the Dawntreader-ish parts of Lev Grossman’s second Magicians book, The Magician King. This season of The Magicians looks all quest-y and exciting and I need it now. —Molly
I’ve never felt moved to read PKD’s stuff as much as Vonnegut or others, but I’m digging yet another anthology series on the airwaves—especially as it provides more opportunities for different actors, writers, and directors to play in those worlds. —Natalie
Please be good, please be good, please be good. —Emily
The first film from Studio Ponoc, the heirs to Studio Ghibli, finally hits that States this year. If Mary and the Witch’s Flower is even half as good as an average Ghibli film, it will be among the best of the year. —Leah
Time jump! New survivors! Space babies?! You know there are space babies. —Natalie
At this point each year, I realize that I’ve entirely lost track of what bananas happenings occurred in the previous season of The 100—but it really doesn’t matter, because it’s certain that more bananas things are on the way. BRING IT, SPACE BABIES. —Molly
Probably?
I actually still haven’t seen 10 Cloverfield Lane, so I’ll have to rectify that before this supposed third Cloverfield tie-in comes to theaters. Honestly, I’m glad to go in knowing next to nothing (even hints about a vanishing Earth are too much), because it’ll be entertaining, if nothing else. —Natalie
I haven’t seen either Cloverfield movie, so it might be really fun to see this with no context? Y/N? —Emily
This trailer is perfect and I have total faith the movie will be too. —Molly
We are going to be totally immersed in and absorbed by Wakanda, and that is a dream that everyone should be able to get behind. —Emily
Angela Bassett should be a Queen in every movie. Can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait! —Leah
I love Jeff VanderMeer’s work, and the trailers for this one look wonderfully creepy. I just hope they’ve captured the tone of the book! —Leah
Ditto! I’m less invested in Natalie Portman’s plotline, having read the book, but I can’t wait to see what Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez bring to their roles. —Natalie
Aside from the excitement over bringing this story to screen, having all of these women together in a movie is kind of a perfect storm. Add Oscar Isaac and you have the world’s most beautiful hurricane. —Emily
The Tick might be the thing I’m the most excited for this year. —Leah
I feel a weird possessiveness about Jessica Jones, because she’s the excruciatingly rare example of a complicated, fucked up, mistake-making, wounded, fierce, imperfect, loyal, believable female character—one who can be surly and drunk and still lovable and heroic. Her edges haven’t been filed off for televised consumption. She’s not the only woman of this type in SFF, but I can never get enough of them. (See also: Starbuck.) Having her back on screen is like having a best friend come visit from far away—it never happens often enough, or lasts as long as you wish it would. —Molly
Hell yes. Season 1 of Jessica Jones wasn’t just excellent television, it challenged all of us on staff to write incredible thinkpieces. Fingers crossed for that same synergy again this spring. —Natalie
The relationship between Jess and Trish is one of the few things that made this year livable. They are out there somewhere; things must be okay. There was not enough Jessica in Defenders, so season two needs to get here much faster. More Jessica, more Trish, more Malcolm. Give. —Emily
Wrinkle in Time wasn’t my favorite book when I was 12—that was A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Wrinkle’s longer, more complex sequel. But I still loved the first book in the Time Quintet, and read it repeatedly, and spent lots of time tracing all the connections between Madeleine L’Engle’s book series about the Murrys, the O’Keefes, and the less time-travel-addled Austins. To say that I’m excited for Ava DuVernay’s adaptation is like saying that I “like” Brooklyn Blackout cake—it’s true in the technical sense, but it’s a woefully pale descriptor. I want it immediately. I want DuVernay to adapt all the other books. I want her to write an original spin-off about the Drs Murry going off on an adventure of their own. I want a whole DuVernay/L’Engle Cinematic Universe. —Leah
Leah about sums it up, though I’ll add that I can’t get the “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” cover out of my head, and I think that’s a good thing? —Natalie
It looks so damn pretty, and seeing as a visual vernacular for fantasy hasn’t altered much on film since Lord of the Rings, I’m eager for more of it. Also, what Leah said. —Emily
I’m a sucker for kaiju, and I think the concept of drift compatibility is a unique way to create action that has an emotional element built into it. Plus people made an addition to the Bechdel Test based around Rinko Kikuchi’s fantastic Mako Mori, and I can’t wait to see her return! —Leah
But that mustache though. —Molly
It was a little disconcerting to hear the director go on about the jaeger bots capabilities at New York Comic Con as though that was the only reason people enjoy Pacific Rim. But John Boyega’s enthusiasm was catching nonetheless. I really want this one to be excellent. —Emily
Look, I really enjoyed this book when I read it, for the idea of Willy Wonka’s MMORPG filled with nostalgia instead of candy. There’s a chance that the movie will, with its use of motion-capture and perhaps too-savvy stuffing of Easter eggs, err on the soulless side. But I’m open to seeing what Steven Spielberg does for this generation of kiddos. —Natalie
This is a concept that makes sense for reading and less sense for film. Like, on film it seems like it might end up as an accidental indictment of our current zeitgeist, which I’m guessing is not what the film is going for. So… this should be interesting. —Emily
Will Handmaids get exported to non-dystopian countries? Will Luke and Moira carry everyone out of Gilead into Canada? Will Offred call everyone “bitches” again? I never even imagined there’d be a continuation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, so I am here for this. —Natalie
This was the first show in a while that I actively watched week-to-week. I am vaguely annoyed that Hulu doesn’t dump the entire season in one go, but this story is waaaay too brutal to binge on. So bring on season 2, but oof give me more time to recover first. –Sarah
What I really want is for NBC to do West Side Story Live! but instead of Sharks and Jets the turf war is between two competing casts of Godspell and JCS, and the two Jesuses are secretly in love with each other? I doubt this version will live up to that concept, but I’ll probably still watch it. —Leah
All of these live musicals have been so weird. (See: Christopher Walken’s Captain Hook as Exhibit A-ZZZ.) This will be no different. —Emily
Wait, what. WAIT, WHAT. I am weirdly into this movie, even though they have abandoned the video game’s extra-bonkers premise that George, Ralph, and Lizzie were all humans that got transformed into giant beasties. I guess that was a bridge too far for The Rock and company. –Sarah
My excitement is equally matched by my nervousness that it will be overstuffed. But, Cap’s Beard, man. Obviously I’m in. —Leah
I’ve found myself becoming much choosier with Marvel movies as of late, and I’m worried that this one will leave me cold, but it’s such a culmination that I’m tentatively excited for how it plays out. —Natalie
*cries preemptively* *cries again looking at Tony Stark’s sad lil’ face* —Emily
Except minus a few faces…
Count me among the people who don’t see why this needs to exist? And all the behind-the-scenes wackiness makes me worried that it’s going to be a mess. But, as with Cap’s Beard, this film has Donald-Glover-As-Lando-Calrissian’s Cape, so I’ll still be in the theater on opening night. #TeamCape. —Leah
#TeamCape! —Natalie
Also #TeamCape. The rest? Very nervous. —Emily
God, yes. —Leah
Just don’t overfocus on Cable, please. And make it clear that Deadpool is pansexual. If you do that, I will watch Deadpool 18 happily. —Emily
I have so many complicated emotions about this one I think I’ll duck out of the article now. —Leah
Recent rewatches of this movie have made me realize how ahead of its time it was on superhero feels. If Infinity War turns out to be just one giant battle sequence, at least I’ll have this to look forward to. —Natalie
I want to be excited for this? Not sure I’m there yet. —Emily
I only want to go if someone gives me an ironclad guarantee that I’ll get to watch an entire cast full of people lecture a grown woman on why she needs to have children. Maybe BD Wong can engineer the dinosaurs so they can talk, and then they can lecture her, too? Cause if there’s one thing I want in my fun dino action, is a lecture on how childbirth and motherhood is the only thing that completes a woman’s life. —Leah
Ugh. Stop this train. —Emily
I will heed Dr Ian Malcom’s sage advice and stay far away from this hot mess of an island. –Sarah
Is this mostly a movie about Wasp? Because then I’m in. —Emily
I have such a fondness for John Bellairs’ gothic horror middle-grade mysteries; they were my first “older” reading as a kid. I haven’t been following the details of this adaptation, but the fact that it’s happening at all is encouraging. —Natalie
Venom from Spider-Man movies past.
Look. I know Hollywood is keen on Venom because Venom will probably mean money, but… will it? —Emily
Photo: 20th Century Fox via Entertainment Weekly
I require the moon battle to be part of this movie, ok? I’m trying so hard not to get my hopes up, given the trainwreck of the last (blessedly retconned away) Dark Phoenix attempt, and the mediocrity of X-Men: Apocalypse. But it’s Jean and I love her and I really really really want this to be good. —Molly
Get Dark Phoenix right. Do it. —Emily
Am I the only one who’s excited for this? I’m not happy about the inclusion of Johnny Depp at this point, or about J.K. Rowling’s response to people’s discomfort with him. Having said that, I love Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, and I really like how they expanded the Wizarding world in the first film, so I’m going to see this and hope they change Depp back into Colin Farrell by the end. —Leah
I am also excited for this! The first film was far more enjoyable then I’d expected, so I’m curious about where it goes… —Emily
I don’t necessarily need a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, as the movie was a perfect standalone encapsulation of goodness and badness and imperfections with just the right amount of video-game nostalgia. (Hear that, Ready Player One?) That said, as someone who grew up on the Internet, I cannot wait to see what these guys do with memes and social media. —Natalie
Yeah. I’ll take it. —Emily
Still not jazzed about DC’s continued confusion over how to make their movies play together (or not), but if they really commit to Aquaman, this could end up being a heckuva lot of fun. —Emily
Now that we had that big season 1 twist (which fans guessed laughably early in the season), I’m not sure I’m emotionally invested in most of these characters’ arcs. However, there is Thandie Newton. And I know that my husband is going to watch this anyway, so I might as well know what’s going on, if only to see what new fan theories sweep social media next year. —Natalie
Every year, I say I’m actually going to commit to watching what looks like such a dense, gorgeous series instead of just reading spoilers and wishing I were watching. So! Consider this one of my New Year’s Resolutions, in time for whenever season 4 sails back onto our screens. —Natalie
I’ve really been enjoying the superpowered teenagers of Runaways (who, incidentally, cross paths with Cloak and Dagger in the comics), so I’m optimistic that this could be another way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe that’s more relatable than the nth BATTLE FOR NEW YORK CITY. —Natalie
It’s just cruel of Syfy to have not given us a premiere date for season three yet. I love the way this series works with its source material—staying true to the major events, but without hewing too closely to the exact structure of the books. But the third book, Abaddon’s Gate, might be my favorite, and I cannot wait to see Anna and Clarissa—and [redacted] and [redacted]—on screen. —Molly
After that season 2 ending, I want to get back to the Belt now. —Leah
Photo: Steve Wilkie/Killjoys III Productions Limited/Syfy
The best show you’re not watching yet has two more seasons. It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s fully of complex characters and tragedy and aliens and green goo and excellent casting and stories about agency and power—and it’s incredibly fun to watch. Get on this bus now. —Molly
In sourcing an image for this blurb, my takeaway is that Killjoys is about a badass woman in awesome outfits coolly staring down constant guns being pointed at her. Wait up, Molly! —Natalie
Okay, but does Gary Oldman appear in it as a giant space spider? If not, no dice. —Emily
I am very angry that this show will not run for 11 seasons. I will still take a finale over no finale. But seriously, Netflix. There is very little you can do to convince me you’re not evil now for taking this cluster away from us. —Emily
What’s it take for General Mills to shelve its bold quest to make Americans eat less sugary, and therefore more un-fun, breakfast cereals? A chance to troll Kellogg’s, apparently: As a special holiday surprise, the Trix and Cheerios maker has released a brand-new cereal, spied a...More »
A Dutch company has combined two of the internet's favorite things: sleep deprivation and robots. Somnox, the world's first sleep robot, just exceeded its Kickstarter goal and should hit the market in the next year or so. The robot, which looks like a cuddly little bean, is designed to help lull people to sleep using "breathing regulation, audio and affection."
Try not to wear your Chewbacca cosplay outfit to tonight’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi screening. That will make eating the Cheetos popcorn much, much messier. In a mash-up that makes you wonder why it took so long, Frito-Lay and Regal Cinemas are introducing the world’s highest form of...More »
People in Los Angeles lost it last year when a ten-day pop-up allowed them to savor the IRL flavor of Bob Belcher–inspired burgers. Now, New Yorkers will get the same opportunity: Alvin Cailan, purveyor of Eggslut’s world-historic breakfast sandwiches, oversaw the Bob’s Burgers shop in L.A. last December,...More »
All of my squares drawings thus far, presented in no particular order! I really like drawing in this style~
If you want to get a print of one, they’re all available at my Society 6 by clicking here!
