Canned Dragons

If you are as interested in media trends and their implications as I am, an article in The New Atlantis about how Jon Stewart laid the foundations for the type of show we see from Tucker Carlson may be the most fascinating thing you read all year. Its author, Jon Askonas, an assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, makes the case in a provocative and insightful way. He takes aim at polarization in new media and how Stewart unintentionally built-up this polarization.

You can flatter your audience over and over every day by showing them proof of how insane the people they despise are becoming. You can tell them what they want to hear about how everyone else is just hearing what they want to hear. You can even build an entire new media business model on this.

Askonas nails how The Daily Show effectively ridiculed other new shows and always portrayed itself as above-the-fray because it was billed as a humor show on a comedy network. The fact that the show was preceded by fare like Crank Yankers gave them plenty of license to get away with things that no one else could. Under Stewart, the Daily Show perfected the art of nailing their opponents with a well-guarded secret process of digging up just the right archival footage to humiliate them. Tucker Carlson learned his lesson when Stewart came on Carlson's show Crossfire and savaged the hosts. It was after that encounter that he began to hone his craft.

Carlson hosts hard-hitting interviews, field segments that underline the outrages and absurdities in American life as his audience sees it, and clip compilations that emphasize the show’s underlying themes. He is a master at sifting through masses of information to find the material that shows how hypocritical, foolish, and insane his adversaries are. Just like Stewart, Tucker has the receipts.

Though I'm admittedly not a fan of consensus comedy, I think Stewart is ultimately less culpable for the rise of Carlson than Askonas would have you believe. Stewart legitimately believes in what he broadcasts. The same cannot be said of Carlson, who manipulates the news and his audience for his own popularity. He is a performer, and he knows fully well what he is doing. Stewart may have come up with the process, but it's Carlson who truly weaponized it in ways that are dangerous for the republic.

This is a long piece (40 pages printed), but it's well worth the time it takes to get through it.

This week's Friday Night Video is a bit of a departure from other recent entries in the series. There's no electroclash or spunky cover reworkings. It's a new track from Welcome Wagon. Welcome Wagon are label mates of Sufjan Stevens and purveyors of a similar religiously-tinged folky aesthetic. With lyrics taken mostly from the gospel of Matthew and featuring comforting additions like "God holds your hand," the song centers around the passage in Matthew in which Jesus assures us that God knows how to give good gifts to His children. The text comes a chapter after Jesus tells his followers not to be anxious about anything, that God will provide for our needs. The title of the track specifically references the verse in Matthew that implores us to pray.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7)

The words from the passage are repeated in spoken word at the end of the song, giving emphasis to their power and hopefulness. There's no irony here, and, as a comment on YouTube stated, Welcome Wagon "lean straight up."

The new Welcome Wagon album, Esther, will be out 11/4 on Asthmatic Kitty records.

I feel blessed to have come across a clean recording of Chvrches' version of Prince's messianic "I Would Die 4 You." I was blown away the first time I heard this cover years ago on Soundcloud. It's such a perfect rendition of a groundbreaking song. There is no video of the actual in-studio performance of this track, so the YouTuber who posted this substituted a montage of concert footage. It is heavily centered on front woman Lauren Mayberry (I barely saw the dudes in the band), but it's a nice collection of clips and syncs up pretty well with the audio.

This is my favorite cover Churches has done, and they've got quite a few to choose from.

I never stop wanting to love the New York Times and they never stop stopping me by publishing dopes like Ross Douthat, David Brooks and Maureen Dowd.

We typically don't want to hear from those with whom we disagree. I use the word "we" very deliberately because I'm just as guilty as anyone else. I'm likely to rage-quit a publication or even a whole network after encountering too many views that don't jive with mine. Encountering opposing views is necessary, though. We should encounter different opinions in the same publication — and not just to get us out of our echo chambers.

Publications should feature different voices because it's the only way they can engender widespread trust. I've been critical of Ross Douthat in the past, but frankly, the New York Times needs the views of someone like Douthat. Without the people named in the above post, the publication risks becoming a monoculture.

Why has trust in journalistic institutions dropped so much in the past few decades? People don't trust them because their reporting has become one-sided and normative. Andrey Mir calls this post-journalism. People realize when they are not just reading news reports, but spin in favor of the publication's preferred ideology. I can't take reporting on hot button issues from Fox News or NPR at face value because I know they've got an agenda.

By including a variety of opinions, the NYT insulates itself from at least some of that criticism. They aren't shy about admitting this, and as long as they give voice to different perspectives, their claim will have credibility. The message that they post at the end of opinion columns by writers like David Brooks says it clearly.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles.

It may sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow, but I'm coming to the understanding that we need to hear from all different kinds of people.

Men I Trust return with a new single to accompany their tour of the states. This one surprised me by beginning with a Factory Records sound and progressing into a chugging, propulsive post-punk ripper. A new wave guitar line comes up about a minute and a half into the track. Keyboard flourishes show up later on to add a bit more to the era-specific sounds. The video features lead singer Emma Proulx swinging in front of an intentionally crummy video backdrop with some haunting vibes.

With the exception of the vocals, this hardly seems like the same band that put out the breezy, danceable Oncle Jazz record a few short years ago. I'm not sure if this is a one-off or whether Men I Trust has a new sound, but I'm here for it. This is easily one of my favorite tracks that they have recorded. I wish I didn't have to drive to the mountains to see them on tour because I would love to catch this song live.

I have been on a sort of crusade to get more people to blog recently. If I come across a person who is interesting and has something worthwhile to share, I urge them to start a blog. I have a friend at work who, in the early days of the Ukraine war, was sending updates about the conflict to a large group of people via an email distribution list. I suggested he commit his ideas to a blog instead. At first, he wasn't into the idea. One of the reasons he gave me was that he had too much going on and he needed self-care time, in addition to all the craziness in life. I remarked to him that the activity of blogging is my self-care time.

Seriously, I can think of few things more relaxing than tinkering with my home on the web. I'm not alone. Greg Morris writes about feeling the same way in My Blog, My Escape. He finds the way for him to "switch off" is through blogging.

Some people find this in computer games, some find it in reading, but mine is writing and tinkering with my blog. I can only truly escape from the world for a bit whilst typing away on my keyboard doing my thing, and I only figured this out because I haven’t been doing it so much lately.

I know my wife wonders why I'm tinkering so much when she sees me working on my blog, but I feel justified in the fact that I am actually writing in addition to tinkering. Many people have fun setting up a blog but hardly ever post to it. I’ll admit, though, that designing the look and feel of a fresh weblog is almost half the fun. In fact, I’m revamping my blog with a new coat of paint right now (the accent color is called “Fresh Blue of Bel Air”). Pruning your blog, like gardening, is its own kind of zen. Something like tweaking the decoration of your links can inspire a feeling of craftsmanship.

Sharing your blog with others, whether it’s through a dedicated blogging network like Micro.blog or a dominant social platform like Twitter, is a method of expression that can be gratifying. You never know what is going to land with people. As I’ve read many times, and also experienced, sometimes the posts you worked the hardest on hardly seem to get any notice, while the thoughts that clutter your brain until you bang out quick statements simply to release them can pick up serious traction. It keeps things interesting when you have no idea what will resonate. The feelings that brings up are probably based on the fact that humans respond to variable reward structures by continuing or even intensifying the behavior that brings the rewards.

Can Blogging = Journaling In Public?

Blogging doesn’t have to completely shut the world out, though. It can bring the world into your frame of reference. In that respect, it’s like journaling. If you do an internet search for “keeping a journal mental health” you’ll come up with no shortage of articles extolling the benefits of journaling to improve your mindset. The following passage is from an article on WebMD.

Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. In a study, researchers found that those with various medical conditions and anxiety who wrote online for 15 minutes three days a week over a 12-week period had increased feelings of well-being and fewer depressive symptoms after one month. Their mental well-being continued to improve during the 12 weeks of journaling.

Therapists prescribe journaling to help their clients process their thoughts. Blogging can be a similar exercise. Some people blog as they would journal and the only difference is that the journal is for the public to view. Jack Baty, for example, does this quite a bit on his blog. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, which makes Wordpress, the internet’s most popular blogging software, describes journaling in the app Day One as keeping a “local blog.”

However, blogging doesn't necessarily have to be about self-disclosure. For example, one of my favorite types of content to publish is the link post. With link posts, you find things that interest you online and attempt to convey that feeling with others. Link posts force you to look outside yourself for material but also help you to analyze and make sense of what is being discussed. Then there are blogs that focus on a particular subject. I was just going through the Ghost blog directory the other day and you wouldn't believe how many blogs about tech are out there (or maybe you would). Your blog is yours, and you should feel free to publish the kind of posts that suite you.

The Mission Continues

I'm currently trying to get my 16-year-old son to take up blogging. He showed some interest, but hasn't yet made his first post. He keeps mumbling something about being busy. As a junior in high school in an accelerated IT program, he does have a lot to keep up with. I really think the practice would benefit him, though. If you can fit a hobby like blogging into your schedule, it's usually time well spent.

I will start by showing my cards here and admitting that I can’t wait to see Andor, the latest of the Star Wars shows to premiere on Disney+. The only reason I haven’t already dipped back into the Star Wars universe is that my imagination is currently in Middle Earth, where the harfoots are undertaking a perilous journey and Sauron and his juicy, sunscreen-hoarding orcs are on the move. If I weren’t so deep into the story that Rings of Power is weaving, I would have settled down in front of the big screen with the lights off and watched for that familiar Star Wars logo that has brought joy to me since I was a kid. I’ve been waiting for a while for Andor to come out and I have greater expectations for this show than any of the previous Star Wars episodic TV shows (although I ended up enjoying them all).

The main reason that I’ve got such high hopes for Andor is that I loved the movie Rogue One, on which it is based. I enjoyed Rogue One so much that I read the prequel, Catalyst (which was the best Star Wars novel I’ve read). While Catalyst as a prequel focuses on the earlier history of the character Galen Erso and his friend who became his enemy, Orson Krennic, Andor focuses on the titular character of Cassian Andor. In Rogue One, it was hinted at several times that Andor had an eventful and adventurous backstory. Now audiences get to find out exactly how adventurous that backstory was and what events shaped Andor’s character.

For me, modern Star Wars movies peaked with Rogue One. Not longer after it debuted, we’ve now come to expect more television-style shows from the franchise than actual films. Moviegoing and television watching are completely different experiences. I remember vividly going to view the newer movies at Cinebistro, one of those theaters where you are served dinner before reclining in a luxurious oversized chair to watch the film you came to see. We would go as a development team from work and take up a few rows of the theater. I would always get the richest chocolate lava cake you can ever conceive of and deal with the stomach ache to go with it later. I loved seeing the movies as a group and then gathering around in the lobby later to discuss the merits of the films. We introduced more than one Star Wars newbie to the franchise that way, giving them homework of seeing the original trilogy.

Rogue One, a story of how the resistance against the Galactic Empire won its first victory, hit at a time when resistance seemed like a real thing that was brewing. Donald Trump had just been elected president, and already there were concerns about his ties with Russia and potential criminality. As I drove home from the theater, I heard then president Obama speaking about the allegations. “Resist” became a slogan, and the sci-fi story of the resistance that became a rebellion seemed timely and frankly, somewhat inspirational. Opposing a tyrannical government no longer seemed so abstract to those in America.

In a post for The Verge, Charles Pulliam-Moore summarizes Andor by way of describing how its preceding film set the stage.

Rogue One, director Gareth Edwards’ harrowing, shell-shocked, but ultimately optimistic story about the small group of freedom fighters who won the Rebel Alliance’s first victory against the Galactic Empire, was unlike any other Star Wars story when it debuted in 2016. As part of a franchise that — at the time — felt increasingly incapable of escaping the gravitational pull of its nostalgia-logged core mythology and its players, Rogue One was a sophisticated and hard-edged reminder that there’s always been so much more to Star Wars than the Skywalker saga. Andor, from Rogue One writer-turned-showrunner Tony Gilroy, doesn’t at all stray too far from the tone, scale, or frankness about the human costs of warring with fascists that defined the film it’s building up to.

Since becoming an adult, I've felt like war and violence are often depicted in a very glossy way on screen. Either that or they are gratuitously showcased. So war is glamorized or gritty, with reality settling somewhere outside the bounds of the cinematic universe from which the films come. Rogue One changed the way a Star Wars property treated war, with its painful casualties and disappointing losses. It felt like the first Star Wars film for adults. In a time when many "fans" accuse the changes in the Star Wars universe of retroactively ruining their childhoods, a subsequent series that's unashamedly aimed at adults seems almost necessary.

Frank Yang commemorates the 20th anniversary of Ladytron's Light & Magic LP in a post on Space Echo. Completely unaware of the significance of the date, I was listening to the album the other day. My favorite song remains the track in the pole position, "True Mathematics." I'm excited to see a newly produced video for the song. I'm even happier that the video version of the song is different from the album version and has a bit more punch. The vocals are still in Bulgarian, which gives them a certain edge.

We pushed the sound of the language to be as percussive and metallic as possible, beyond the way it naturally is. Live, the song took on a life of its own – it became even harder, almost heavy metal. Also, not many bands open their sets with a song in a foreign language, so it felt like a statement of intent.

There is almost a metal feel to the song, and it's got a force and urgency to it that is perfect for kicking off an album or a live show.

A fellow microblogger has been posting videos of himself freestyle skateboarding and it has reminded me of how artistic the form can be. One of my favorite freestylers is the Rodney Mullen-influenced Japanese skater Isamu Yamamoto. Yamamoto is sponsored by Powell Peralta (yep, that Powell Peralta). Looking for his videos on the Powell site led me to another amazing freestyler, Kilian Martin.

I've long maintained that skateboarding is an art more than it's a sport and that is perhaps even more true of freestyle. You’re not going to see this kind of skateboarding in the Olympics anytime soon. It is marked by creatively flowing lines on flat ground. Its practitioners spin and whirl in a kind of urethane-fueled ballet.

Kilian Martin embodies an imaginative combination of freestyle and more traditional street skating. The two styles blend like peanut butter and chocolate. Martin sees the world as a giant skatepark, using trees and even rock formations in addition to common concrete elements to work his magic. It’s a joy to watch Martin practice his craft on the streets of various countries around the world (including Myanmar — not known to be a skateboarding Mecca). It’s also edifying to hear about the volunteer work he does and his ethos around gratitude and contentment.

The videography in the Skateboard Stories film of Martin is captivating. It effortlessly flows between interview footage, city skate and commercial video. Whether you are into skateboarding or not, the story and visuals are worth a watch.

In Your Favorite Pop Culture Has Just Gone “Woke.” Now What? by Jason Morehead, the author examines some perceived changes brought to Middle Earth mythology by the new Amazon Prime series Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. If you've come across any of the common objections to the show, this is a really helpful piece to read. I mention this in large part because Morehead has a good grasp of the material being examined and brings an informed view to the debate. In discussions over nerdery and pop culture, familiarity with the source material and thus, understanding of authorial intent, generally wins the day.

Morehead knows a lot more than I do about the universe in which the new series is set, so I appreciate getting that perspective, just as one might value learning from a tenured professor on a given subject. Here's an example where that knowledge matters in the debate over changing norms and their effect on artifacts in popular culture: Blogger and Pastor Tim Challies, himself a big fan of Tolkien's work, analyzes the new series from that perspective. Challies has a built-in suspicion about the creators of the show and how they might graft contemporary values onto their vision of the world that Tolkien created (and thus diminish the effectiveness of the new material).

Part of the beauty and attraction of The Lord of the Rings is that it is set in a universe in which the mythology, lands, and races are fantasy, but in which the morality rings with familiarity. It is a universe that delights us with its imaginative differences and yet challenges us with its moral similarities. Any Christian, and indeed, anyone familiar with the modern Western world, will recognize that Tolkien’s understanding of morality was shaped by Scripture.

Challies concern is that those continuing the stories constructed in that universe, who won't have the same grounding in Scripture that Challies values, will not possess the same intentions as Tolkien. Ultimately, though, some of his concerns ring hollow, and this is where Morehead's piece comes in. Challies expresses his suspicions about how the character of Galadriel is portrayed. Is she made out to be a strong warrior because that is what the broader contemporary culture dictates?

I think the reimagining of Galadriel achieves the opposite effect the writers presumably desired—it makes her a weaker character rather than a stronger one. Why? Because instead of succeeding as a woman (as she does so well in the books and films) she now seems to need to succeed on the terms of a man. In order to be “strong,” she has to be physically strong—stronger and bolder and fiercer even than the men around her. It is my understanding that Tolkien’s vision for female elves may have included them being warriors, but I expect he would still have wanted them to ultimately succeed on female terms rather than male ones. So far it seems like in this show the women will act like men and the men will act like children.

Morehead reframes the debate by focusing back on the source material from which the show is derived.

Oh, and if you don’t like young warrior Galadriel, then keep in mind that before she was called Galadriel, one of her names was Nerwen, or “man-maiden,” due to her height and strength. Furthermore, Tolkien’s writings include several examples of her engaged in some form of combat.

After reading the explanation, it becomes obvious that superior knowledge of Tolkien's universe helps to understand the new series and put the decisions about the show's characters in the proper context. Morehead also tackles the criticisms about bringing a more racially diverse set of actors to the series.

It’s a blessing when somebody who has experienced any level of marginalization in their life finds something that makes them feel like they belong — something that most, if not all, nerds can identify with. We were drawn to these worlds, be it Middle-earth, the Federation, or whatever, because we felt at peace there in a way we didn’t elsewhere. As a result, these properties allow us to find common ground. Their themes and storylines can draw us together in wonder, imagination, and excitement that transcend the divisions that too often plague real life.

His analysis of the greater impact that the casting choices may have on those who might not have felt the same sense of belonging in what is, ultimately, a fantasy world, feels spot on. I'm excited by the cast (who do a wonderful job bringing the series to life). I'm also impressed by the attempt to make this world accessible to everyone who might need a diversion from what is going on around us in real life. It is my hope that people won't be swayed by some of the critiques about the show and will check it out for themselves.