My mother once picked up a book called From a Certain Point of View, as a Christmas gift for me. It’s a collection of short stories set in the Star Wars universe. The book’s short stories tell the plot of Star Wars from the point of view of minor characters. For example, in the first story in the book, the captain of the escape brigade gets the point of view, which is neither the droids C-3P0’s or R2-D2’s, nor Princess Leia’s. It is the same plot as the first scene of the film.
The book is celebrating Star Wars‘ fortieth anniversary, so I am taking the understanding that the book is a 2017 volume. 2017 was the year of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.
The Last Jedi took a different point of view that was a departure from styles of the previous Star Wars films. It recreated Luke Skywalker as a figure afflicted with existential angst. The book only contains scenes from the 1977 Star Wars film with a yowl from Rogue One to begin the book.
I don’t know why I haven’t read it sooner. I think the interest in Star Wars for me returned with the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett. Thinking about the desert planet of Tatooine through the eyes of Boba Fett got me feeling good again about Star Wars. Boba Fett’s the character whom Lord Vader used to freeze and transport Han Solo back to Tatooine, to the palace of Jabba the Hutt in the second and third movies of the original trilogy.
Star Wars is an unusual fantasy. With the film, picturing each second from these brief tales ought to be a breeze.
The very courteous Little Mermaid returns, for another tea party. Her theme, this month, is making confessions. The tell I want to bring, to the party, is how roadblocked, I’ve been, by Zork.
I know I am in a sense very old. Have you played Zork? It’s a game where you explore a dungeon and combat monsters.
Your commands for playing Zork typically consist of two words apiece, often a verb and a noun, short and sweet. It commands hours of your time if you are among the dedicated.
Did you run Java? It once boasted a solid three billion devices did. I’d sit, sometimes, on the main page of a Java site, to read chat remarks.
In college, a savvy young woman from Scarborough got to know me a little. Her name was Julie, and she was a singer. I’m sure she knew nothing about Zork.
All the same, Julie was outright a rock star on Livejournal. Her email was routed by beer.com, appropriately fashionable for that subculture.
When she wrote, ”it’s called myspace, and there are millions of brilliant people,” I was taken aback. I’d played Zork, in a retro edition. Facing the myspace site, I had a silent question.
“How do I move to the next room?” It was weird. Years later, Christmas, 2016, my very smart nephew referred to that, nonsense in the distant past.
I remember, because of Rogue One, a Star Wars Story. About IRC, “Justacrap,” my brother’s boy pronounced with scorn. Discounting me?
For wasting time with websites? Can you believe that? Sure, I made friends one way or another, but those people are now gone.
It wasn’t the sum of my activities, I guess. Truth be told, I was rotten at Zork, too.
I think of The Beatles being a radical success in music history, given the enormity of their popularity, even decades later.However, how does that view of The Beatles relate to contemporary ideas about success, and how it is won?
I have ten reasons I’m suggesting that success like what The Beatles enjoyed is actually a weak link in terms of what it means for the individual to pursue preconceived notions of success and how it is misleading. The first four were presented in a previous blog post. The remaining six are presented here.
Streaming services
Netflix is the leader of the pack, I believe, for video streaming. They devote an enormous budget to original content and their selection of existing content is good. That said, Disney is in the streaming video service market. Netflix in my region is compatible with my Tivo, as are other video streaming services. The selection of videos on Netflix is good. I want to step out of the chain of logic to ask if that implies that Tubi, a free video streaming service also compatible with my Tivo is a weak link. Netflix is a completely enjoyable experience and Tubi is likewise an extra addition to the Tivo I use. It isn’t too hard to say which could be better assessed to be a radical success, in the future. That said, while Netflix has been successful remaining ahead of the curve, Tubi is probably under far less pressure. Does Tubi’s relative weak link status mean that it isn’t a success? It is free to use.
Photographer: Rawpixel.com
Going forward with the theory that radical success means enormous difficulty, consider the contender that could grab much of Netflix’ market share, Disney. Disney is unlikely to be going anywhere, given its weight as an entertainment brand, being known for its films, television, toys and theme parks.
Which of the two, Netflix or Disney, will be more of the radical success–that a good streaming service can be? Or will they both amount to great success? Disney has built in family appeal, given its products are for both adults and kids alike. Netflix has been building that kind of appeal from scratch, but persistently. Will either Netflix or Disney be a weak link? It seems important to me that entertainment be good, when it is accessed, or experienced.
Netflix has a reputation for spending extravagant amounts of money on shows and films. Disney already has an enormous built-in capacity for success in the future, in addition to plans for its video streaming service.
3. I started this post by saying there is a fiftieth-anniversary release of The White Album coming 11/9. From what I understand about music streaming services, Spotify has a great conversion rate bringing customers from free use of Spotify onto the premium version. I would ask, if taken to task, whether Spotify will be a “weak link.”
From everything I can say, music with Spotify is magnificent. It seems to be an awesome service.
It is understood that The Beatles essentially recorded The White Album live to 8-track tape, and for everything they’d done in the name of their music, they were in fact recording music that would be a bit of a farewell to their fans. If less scrutiny was being given to the music emerging on The White Album, would The Beatles have lasted longer? And recorded songs for longer than they did? I think it is possible, for when something is intended to be “perfect,” it is often a departure the way a pinnacle climbed must then be descended.
US Politics
4. If you are following my argument, you might guess that the weak link I’m referring to is the former President of the United States, Donald Trump. An example of someone about who there is much to decry that could be a weak link is the President.
As he is someone who was a TV star, I think it is worth mentioning here the radical success that he is known for enjoying and how at the same time the President has mounting problems that he is both a radical success, being wealthy and commanding power, but also a “weak link” in that he could bring down the whole show if he is not effective. President Trump has a knack for appearing with ferocious emphasis again and again in the news, and yet he faces so much criticism and real-life repercussions and consequences that I think he makes a great example of a “weak link” who is at the same time a radical success.
The President brings to mind so many components and elements of radical success gone wrong that it is becoming clearer all the time that the President of the United States is an extremely divisive man. Donald Trump Says China Remix
Photographer: Diego Jimenez
Motivated to Entrepreneurship
5. The ninth reason I want to assert that a weak link can be very much undermining is the idea that if you begin to succeed as an entrepreneur you can find yourself under more pressure than you ever anticipated facing. Making money is many people’s idea of success, but you usually have to put in years of work to make your dreams come true. And in this scenario, ironically, you yourself could be the weakest link if you don’t meet obstacles well.
Unless you keep improving, day in and day out, you could end up being the weak link in your organization simply owing to the fact that your luck could change. If you have found a strategy that makes you King Midas, turning everything you touch to gold, if all of a sudden your luck changes, you may now be suddenly be faced by weakness. The Secret to Self-Motivation | Gary Vaynerchuk’s GREATEST Motivational Speech Ever!
Aerial view of computer laptop on wooden table
You need to keep improving and being good. Everything that took you somewhere is behind you; you have to continue to make great decisions. I suspect you’ll see for yourself if you falter.
6. The final reason I want to take back to Geeks + Gamers. If you have someone, like Jeremy, who is comfortable discussing games, films, and sports, an articulate individual, who sees success coming from YouTube, from a Facebook group, from Twitch I suppose, who challenges who is at the top, as with The Last Jedi, I think it is a philosophical note to say that if you are at that pinnacle, there is any number of reasons your descent will be hastened by those who come after you. You have to reach that pinnacle in excellent form; and you have to leave it in such a way that it endures, that there could be a fiftieth-anniversary, that there could be another billion-dollar blockbuster, that there could be a second term. This is all vital, from a philosophical standpoint, what must be done if radical success, like the kind that spreads all around the globe, is to be achieved and then preserved. CLICKBAIT : A YOUTUBE STORY
If you have read this, please feel free to “like,” “follow,” and/or comment.
Just the other day, I saw a WordPress blogger asking for debate if secularisation is good or bad. She defined it, and I take it she means the decline of the influence of religion, like, for example, the power of the Catholic Church, on society around the world.
This year I made time to read Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, a novel about a man and his son trying to survive some time from now in the future when society no longer exists as it did previous to the events in the novel. I think of church attendance preventing circumstances in our world like that in this Cormac McCarthy book.
If strong leaders utilize the unitary values of religious institutions in a way that helps people lead lives of better prosperity, it would be likely, I think, that people will make better progress in the world, decreasingly supernatural as it is.
Reading The Road, I didn’t think much supernatural dread happened to the characters, probably in part because to create their own resources they were too hard pressed to deal with the spiritual implications of society being at an end.
If I think about secularisation as it could relate to the plot of the novel, I think that the leaders of the world which existed before the events of the book have failed in their ability to keep the structure of its society intact. Maybe this owes to an overall weakness in the story’s idea of religious institutions, but I can’t that except by thinking it is a possibility, judging that religious symbols seem to exist in the book. The man on the road is a little like Jesus, set apart from others by his singularity.
Imitation of The Last Supper
There isn’t an explanation for readers of The Road why society ended–it is a question only that it is gone, and how a much harder reality supplants it, the “road” of the title.
Isolation is the new struggle to overcome adversity, instead of questions like how did the world’s institutions fail and what can be done now, in their absence.
The novel’s interesting because society as a whole is over and done and there is no solution available. It is a story of apocalypse.
The man traveling in isolation with his son seems unconcerned if there were religious institutions before society fell to pieces. I don’t see why there wouldn’t have been institutions–in every other detail I can think of in The Road it matches the world as it’s known today, which leads me to think that parts of the world in the book weren’t secularised, as our world in real life remains only in part secularised today.
Photographer: Iryna Tysiak
I tend to think that order would fragment in the event of too much secularisation because people need to feel that there is something supernatural about their lives, that they owe something to God.
I am optimistic about trusting religious authorities because I see a sphere of religious influence making a more positive outcome for our world.
I am glad to have had an opportunity to write a few thoughts on how thinking back to reading The Road helped me articulate an opinion on secularisation.
I was likewise glad that I took time this year to read the book by Cormac McCarthy, as well as having read Bethany’s post asking about secularisation. The Road is the only title of McCarthy I am familiar with, but the cover of the paperback copy I read advertised that it had sold well.
If you enjoyed this post, you’re welcome to “like,” “follow,” and/or “subscribe.”
When my maternal grandmother was in her golden years, she tried to assure me, “Don’t worry!”
It hasn’t been that bad.
Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is the word, “fret,” and it’s a timely choice by the folk at WordPress.
What’s being outlined by writers on tech around the world in the news and elsewhere is big trouble… the Cambridge Analytics scandal dealt with Mark Zuckerberg decimated trust in Facebook and cost Zuckerberg a fortune. For someone like me, maintaining a tiny little Facebook business page to assist with the operations and goals of our likewise tiny little nonprofit, I am sure I am characteristically flabbergasted the same as so many other people struggling to market their brand on Facebook in the same boat.
It is potentially back to the drawing board for many.
Meanwhile Twitter, beginning the twenty-third of March, put into effect a change in policy that restricts marketers from tweeting the identical thing across multiple Twitter accounts, which is less a problem for me personally as I only have one Twitter account, but which is intended to scale back the impact that spammers and the like can have if they’re active on several Twitter accounts. For example, there is far less risk that trending topics on Twitter will be launched by the dubious and artificial method of conflated Twitter accounts bringing to prominence a devious trend.
It is nonsense, though, because honest Twitter users who make Twitter part of their business model have far less freedom to market their brand. It also comes on top of several months of other changes to Twitter that consistently kept people who love Twitter up in arms, like notably extending the famed hundred and forty character limit for a tweet to twice that, two hundred and eighty characters.
The little tweet was suddenly full on birdsong, and now, counterintuitively, restrictions are in place so that the social noise on Twitter is slowed down considerably.
Photographer: Mahkeo
My little blog defaults to options to share a post on both Facebook and Twitter, and now both social media giants are mired in an unpredictable morass that quiets down an outcry that until this year seemed like just a normal part of using the social media leaders.
Could be time to shop around.
Twitter finally made a quarterly profit, it is worth noting, so the changes effected under the leadership of Jack Dorsey may continue to prove effective. For Facebook, on the other hand, the steep increase in distrust of the formerly reputable social media giant will play out a drama that will see many Facebookers transmuting their internet profiles elsewhere, or at least becoming far more aware of what can happen to data once it is committed to the Internet.
Photographer: Flo Karr
What’s happened with Facebook is only one page in the news-intensive deconstruction of all the trouble the United States is seeing given their leadership is so unsteady at a time when a strong technology industry is necessary for friendly waters in the face of the potential for major change in the near future when many players want as much control as possible over the cyber landscape.
There is every reason to fret. Above and beyond prayer, it would be advisable to equip yourself with as much information as possible to ride the tide back to shore. It is exciting to observe, and if you have a tidy niche from which to beam the perspective you want people to take, I’d recommend you do it with dedication and surety.
If you’ve read today’s post, I thank you. Any like, follow or comment is welcome.
For the month of April 2020, WordPress has reopened its Discover challenges to help bloggers find ideas to write about. I didn’t see their prompt this morning. I set an alarm to wake me, got myself up and at my computer, with a cup of coffee to start me going, and I simply overlooked the prompt.
I thought to look back at the Discover feed to see if a Discover prompt had finally launched. I was dismayed but had an idea.
I saw the prompt for today is the word “below.” I looked back at my blog, and I saw that five years ago I wrote a post, when I was just setting out on WordPress, that fit the theme. While not changing the title of the post, I decided to update it with the word “below” in mind.
A Douglas Adams joke
My mother’s parents bought me the action game Wings for the family Amiga 500 computer when I was a young teenager. The game grew on me, lending itself to a sense of being more deeply involved in playing games.
Much of Wings consisted of dogfights. The box for the game contained factual information about WWI, and a narrative within the game took you through to victory in the year 1918.
I liked playing the game. I just didn’t like being nailed by enemy fire.
Playing the game required extreme player ability. The dogfights were mad. You flew with a view from over the shoulder of the pilot, in the cockpit of your craft.
Soon the pilot would turn his head. Enemy aircraft was nearing, and the time was then to go in that direction. If bullets hit your plane, you knew you were in trouble.
Then it was time for diving away and getting as far from the dogfight as you could. If you could get an enemy in front of you, firing a volley ahead of him often meant he would fly right into it, and your trouble would be solved.
The gameplay meant that you were likely to get shot up no matter what happened. The game fascinated me, but as soon as your pilot met his end, the game required you to begin the war over. No one would wish for that, particularly with my Amiga computer’s loading time.
There was a workaround that would mean evading death, and hence becoming one of the best pilots of the war, to rival even the famed historical pilot the Red Baron–but it meant cheating, or what you call a “creative workaround.”
I found out by intuition that if enemy aircraft defeated me, I could hit the hard reset command for the computer, and then rebooting the computer would sweep away the game. What was the upshot? The diskette wouldn’t save the destruction of the mission, and I could try again.
With successive missions, your pilot became better at combat. With this method, playing even the hardest missions could be handled with an extraordinary pilot in your control.
Photographer: Snapwire
No one should treat war lightly, and if the game reflected the time in the life of a teenage pilot at the outset of World War I, I would have gone to the grave. I am sorry, of course, not that I would have been shot down, but that I was so insensitive. However, I appreciate that my grandparents’ gave me the gift, and I reason that they had different views on war (and not computers) than someone from my generation.
How NPC is that?
I suppose I’ve done worse. Anytime I’m challenged in a game, I want to play with a competitive spirit–maybe I get that from my father.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 