John Scalzi has a new book coming out entitled Starter Villain. His publisher, Tor, has kindly put the first chapter up on their blog.

I’m looking forward to this book.

Nicholas Bate –

1. Walk tall.

2. Walk free: no phone, no plan, no concern.

3. Walk in all weathers.

4. Walk barefoot whenever the surface allows it.

5. Walk by default and leave the car at home.

6. Walk every day.

7. Walk.

On Thursday night, twice-impeached, criminally indicted, and liable-for-sexual-abuse former President Donald Trump was indicted once again, for taking classified documents away from the White House and refusing to give them back. He is still under investigation for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Rebecca Beitsch and Brett Samuels, writing at The Hill, outline the recently unsealed indictment against Donald Trump. He’s been charged with 37 counts in relation to the mishandling of records.

The filing indicates Trump weighed a number of methods to avoid returning them, asking his attorney to “hide or destroy” the documents in his possession following a June subpoena last year.

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” the filing states. 

“The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Why haven’t we arrested him yet?

Also, CNBC reports his lawyers quit yesterday.

Two lawyers who represented Donald Trump in the months before the former president was indicted on federal charges over his handling of classified documents quit working for him. The attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, did not explain in detail why they had resigned, other than to say that “this is a logical moment” to do so given his indictment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami. Trump said he would now be represented by Todd Blanche, a New York lawyer who is representing him in another criminal case in Manhattan related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Methinks, they see the writing on the wall.

David Sims, writing for The Atlantic, has a great story on how The Flash was saved from cinematic limbo.

I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m anxious to get a good look at what’s been created. I keep reading good things.

Dan McQuade, writing at Defector, has the story on some new college basketball rules with one of them being players can wear digits above five.

The NCAA’s Playing Rules Oversight Panel recently approved multiple rule changes for college basketball next season. The one making the most news is part of an an ongoing push to punish flopping. To that end, the block/charge rule has been changed and defenders must now be in position to draw a charge when the offensive player “plants a foot to go airborne to attempt a field goal.”

There are other good rule changes, too. The shot clock will reset to just 20 seconds, and not the standard 30, after an offensive rebound. Ahh, reading the new rules is just getting me excited for next season’s changes. Goaltending calls are reviewable now! Players can wear religious headwear without a waiver! The backboard can now have red and amber lights! Players can call timeouts in midair! And then there is this one that I must simply quote: “Bench personnel who are not students will be allowed to serve as peacekeepers when an altercation occurs.”

All good, or at least all fine in the abstract, but one rule change is better than all the rest. Players can now wear any number from 0-99. This is a big deal!

Excellent. I’m looking forward to seeing new numbers for players.

Aaron Blake, writing for The Washington Post, has some reporting on what might be actually happening regarding this latest indictment.

Of course, there is going to be endless speculation about all of this, but honestly, the best takeaway for me is from author John Scalzi:

1. He’s guilty as fuck

2. Everybody knows it

3. The GOP and Trump supporters don’t care

4. The fact that people still support this dim-witted sociopathic grifter, who would set them all on fire if there was but the slimmest nickel in it, sure is something

Ben Finley, writing for the AP and picked up by USAToday, tells us Pat Robertson is dead.

Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died. He was 93.

I’m not happy someone died, but I’m not sad either.

UPDATE: Wil Wheaton has written some fan fiction.

J.D. Capelouto, Diego Mendoza, and David Weigel, writing for Semafor, have one of the thousands of stories about Donald Trump getting indicted. Again.

Federal prosecutors charged former U.S. President Donald Trump for allegedly holding on to classified documents after he left office, the former president announced on Truth Social.

It’s the second time Trump — who is in the midst of a campaign to return to the White House — has been criminally charged, following an indictment in New York over his alleged role in giving “hush money” to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

[…]

The exact charges have not yet been revealed, but multiple news outlets say there are 7 counts related to Trump’s alleged mishandling classified documents he kept after leaving the White House. The New York Times reports that two of the counts include conspiracy to obstruct and willful retention of documents.

[…]

Trump’s charges in New York marked the first time in U.S. history that a former president was criminally indicted. He could still face additional charges in other probes. Smith is also investigating his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia are looking into Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the state.

Additionally, Robert Reich weighs in on Republicans trying to defend Trump with the whataboutisms.

Trump and his defenders — and there will be many (such as nearly every lawmaker in the Republican Party) — will argue that Joe Biden and Mike Pence did the same as Trump did, and yet only Trump is being subject to a Justice Department indictment.

Rubbish. Biden and Pence sought to cooperate with authorities; Trump tried to thwart them.

Biden and Pence came forward to volunteer that they had found classified documents among their private possessions. Trump appears to have done everything possible to hold on to the classified documents — denying he had them, hiding them from public officials charged with retrieving them, and then, after a subpoena was served on him to produce them, secretly moving them from a Mar-a-Lago storage area.

That’s two indictments so far this year. Georgia is yet to weigh in. At some point, people are going to have to understand he’s a criminal right?

David Nield, writing for Wired, has an interesting story about using ChatGPT to help you with your job hunting.

I think the preparing for the interview section is a decent idea, and I guess the prompts for career paths are interesting if you hate what you are doing currently. Not sure about the “alternative wording” because some people will use software to see if everything was written by ChatGPT or a human and that could automatically disqualify you.

I don’t know. I think it’s a decent enough tool, but it has far too many inaccuracies and made up shit that its not worth really using.

Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, a.k.a. The Iron Sheik, one of the most hated villains in professional wrestling history, has died at the age of 81 according to his official Twitter account, where he had enjoyed a second career of rants and insults.

As my friend Grant put it, “HE’LL BE WAITING IN HEAVEN FOR THAT JABRONI HULK HOGAN!”

Vox has an incredible video about the writer’s strike.

The way scripted television gets made today has transformed the careers of writers. Warren Leight, Julia Yorks, Erica Saleh and Joe Riccobene explain how going from producing 80 to 500 shows a year, because of streaming sites, has been possible by exploiting the writers.

Daniel Arkin, writing for NBC News, has one of the hundreds of stories about the firing of CNN CEO Chris Licht.

When Licht took over CNN, he sought to differentiate himself from Zucker, who had publicly clashed with former President Donald Trump. Licht, reportedly following a mandate from Zaslav, attempted to move the news brand to the political center and make it more palatable to both conservative viewers and GOP newsmakers.

He also rolled out a new morning program co-anchored by Don Lemon, who was fired in April after Variety published an article detailing allegations that he had mistreated female colleagues. Lemon, who also faced backlash for on-air comments suggesting GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley was not “in her prime” because she is in her 50s, denied the allegations. …

He was harshly criticized by pundits for hosting a live town hall event with Trump on May 10. In response, commentators faulted Licht for having given the Republican front-runner a platform to make baseless claims about 2020 voter fraud and other issues in front of a crowd of staunch Republicans. The New York Times headline: “Trump’s Falsehoods and Bluster Overtake CNN Town Hall.”

The negative assessments reached a fever pitch on Friday after The Atlantic published a 15,000-word article titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN.” Tim Alberta, a reporter who had shadowed Licht for months (including during a personal training session), detailed the executive’s fixation on his own press coverage and quoted him mocking CNN journalists’ coverage of the pandemic. …

The Atlantic article circulated widely on social media in the days that followed, and high-profile media observers — including Brian Stelter, a former CNN journalist who was fired last year — publicly speculated that Licht might not be long for the job.

Good riddance. Who else is next?

Owen Williams, writing for Empire Magazine, has a story about how Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker recently enlisted the help of AI chatbot ChatGPT to create an episode.

“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker reveals in the new issue of Empire. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit. Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’ It’s [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there’s a topical reference.”

The lack of originality with ChatGPT is interesting here. It’s not good enough to generate something super creative like an episode of Black Mirror. I think ChatGPT is ok at “copywriting” and not good at all with “creative writing.”

Katie Woo, writing for The Athletic, has a Q and A with St. Louis Cardinals’ president of baseball operations John Mozeliak on just how terrible the team has played all season.

I think any answer I give is just going to seem like an excuse, and I’ve been in this business long enough to know that throwing up excuses is not something our fan base wants to hear. Reality is we got off to a very, very poor start in April. We dug a very, very deep hole. May, we had a bounce back, and now we’re trending in the wrong direction again. When you look at the team as a whole, it’s not any one thing that sticks out. When things are going bad, I do think internally the pressures mount.

Mo is never going to take any responsibility here. Blame simply goes downhill.

Something has to be done.

Nothing is going to be done.

Devin Gordon, writing for The Atlantic, has a story on something I’ve been noticing as well. What is it with watching TV with the subtitles on?

The first time it happened, I assumed it was a Millennial thing. Our younger neighbors had come over with their kids and a projector for backyard movie night—Clueless, I think, or maybe The Goonies.

“Oh,” I said as the opening scene began, “you left the subtitles on.”

“Oh,” the husband said, “we always leave the subtitles on.”

Now, I don’t like to think of myself as a snob—snobs never do—but in that moment, I felt something gurgling up my windpipe that can only be described as snobbery, a need to express my aesthetic horror at the needless gashing of all those scenes. All that came out, though, was: Why? They don’t like missing any of the dialogue, he said, and sometimes it’s hard to hear, or someone is trying to sleep, or they’re only half paying attention, and the subtitles are right there waiting to be flipped on, so … why not?

Because now I’m reading TV, not watching it. Because now, instead of focusing my attention on the performances, the costumes, the cinematography, the painstakingly mixed sound, and how it all works together to tell a story and transport me into an alternate world, my eyes keep getting yanked downward to read words I can already hear. My soul can’t bear the notion of someone watching The Sopranos for the first time and, as Tony wades into the pool, looking down to the bottom of the screen to read [ducks quack]. Subtitles serve an important purpose for people with hearing or cognitive impairments, or for translation from a foreign language. They’re not for fluent English speakers watching something in fluent English.

I hate that it tears away my focus. Maybe I’m the old guy screaming at clouds now, but I don’t like watching English-language television and movies with subtitles on. “Because now I’m reading TV, not watching it.”

Yup.

Jason Fried, writing in his newsletter, sees an interesting moment on the horizon.

We’re staring at two distinctly different visions of the future. They may co-exist, but they are radically different takes on what’s modern, what’s current, and where things are headed.

One vision gets the UI out of the way. The other vision is UI everywhere you look.

One vision gets the computer out of the way. The other vision mounts a computer on your face.

One vision is get it and go. One vision is get it and stay.

One vision fades into the background. The other vision is front and center.

One vision is about information. The other vision is about immersion.

One vision is natural and understands you. The other vision requires new methods of interaction that you have to learn and master.

One vision feels like an assist. One vision feels like obstruction.

One vision fits with whatever you already have. One vision requires you buy something that fits.

One vision is simply text. One vision is anything but.

One vision feels like before. One vision feels like after. But I’m not sure which is which.

Both are extraordinary.

Scott Dochterman, writing for The Athletic, has an in-depth feature on the University of Illinois football team. I was really impressed with the level of detail. It’s a great read.

Julia Evans, writing on her site, has compiled a list of blogging myths, including “writing boring posts is bad” and “more material is always better.”

It’s great.

Mike Cagley, writing at IlliniGuys, has a good look at how NIL and the transfer portal has changed and challenged head coaches at Power Five schools.

Collegiate coaches must adapt to the new realities and the new balance of power that exists thanks to both the transfer portal and the NIL money that has been introduced into the system. The coaches who adapt the quickest and the most will be in a position to either maximize their team’s success or improve their team’s overall standing in the coach’s particular sport.

I’d like to think Brad Underwood and Brett Bielema have been at the forefront of adaptation.

Nicholas Bate –

1. Every 45 minutes, take 5 minutes. Stretch, walk, sip water, look out of a window at the horizon and ask what’s really important at this moment?

2. Control what you can, which is a lot: your mood, choosing what’s really important not just urgent (see 1, above) and your dealings with people. Ignore that which you cannot change: give them zero time and energy. The weather, the crazy whims of Head Office Mother Ship and junk TV.

3. Regularly hide so you cannot be distracted by The Five Addictive Cs: caffeine, connections of the digital kind, confectionery & cookies, cubicle cynicism and cooler chit-chat.

4. Have a flight-deck: one place, one view, one perspective of what you need to focus on. This is not your in-box.

5. Slow down enough that you can recognise the tantalising seductive but perspective destroying, energy depleting and soul withering nature of the blisteringly urgent, but actually not at all important.

6. Say ‘no’ more. Say it constructively. Say it nicely. Say it helpfully. But say ‘no’ more.

7. Do a few things totally brilliantly every day. And feel very productive.