In case you were wondering whatever happened to that one guy who used to occupy the Oval Office, he tried to start a blog. It failed. Now, he’s back at it trying to launch a “social media” site called Truth Social. Looks like it’s gone belly-up before it even got off the ground.

Trolls flocked to the site the second it was announced and within hours Truth Social went down. To combat the trolling, the site suspended new accounts and disabled all the accounts that had been created.

Andy Baio said, it’s also just a modified Mastodon instance and they’re violating the license terms.

That was a complete and utter failure. Not unlike his presidency.

Evander Kane, a forward with the San Jose Sharks, is out for 21 games after turning in a fake Covid vaccination card to his team and the National Hockey League. Officials were not fooled; Kane is apparently apologetic.

“I would like to apologize to my teammates, the San Jose Sharks organization, and all Sharks fans for violating the NHL COVID protocols,” said Kane in a statement released by the NHLPA. “I made a mistake, one I sincerely regret and take responsibility for. During my suspension, I will continue to participate in counseling to help me make better decisions in the future. When my suspension is over, I plan to return to the ice with great effort, determination, and love for the game of hockey.”

None of this is something Kane said. He is only sorry he got caught.

He should be suspended for the season without pay, but that’s just me and I don’t care about hockey or the NHL.

Key art, if you don’t know, are the images that identify shows in streaming menus. I am old enough to remember TV listings in the newspaper and TV Guides. I still surf channels on the guide with my digital cable, but I also scroll through the onscreen menus of streaming services. That’s where the key art is at.

Like the best movie posters and book covers, these images are bold and simple promotional graphics, but as Rex Sorgatz explains in Why is this interesting?, key art is more than just a simple image or, at least, it should be.

Good key art is so evocative, so iconic, that it becomes the image that springs to mind whenever you think about a show:

One neglected characteristic ties all these images together: They are all horizontal.

It sounds trivial, but going wide helped differentiate TV key art as its own medium, distinct from book covers and movie posters. And because these images appear on streaming platforms, they are unencumbered by other marketing copy, like taglines, cast and credits, and multifarious blurbs.

There is a simple purity to key art.

I have never thought about key art as much as Rex Sorgatz. He keeps his favorite key art here.

In the New Yorker, Paul McCartney wrote down the story behind all the lonely people.

The song itself was consciously written to evoke the subject of loneliness, with the hope that we could get listeners to empathize. Those opening lines—“Eleanor Rigby / Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been / Lives in a dream.” It’s a little strange to be picking up rice after a wedding. Does that mean she was a cleaner, someone not invited to the wedding, and only viewing the celebrations from afar? Why would she be doing that? I wanted to make it more poignant than her just cleaning up afterward, so it became more about someone who was lonely. Someone not likely to have her own wedding, but only the dream of one.

Allen Ginsberg told me it was a great poem, so I’m going to go with Allen.

Alex Heath, writing for The Verge, has the scoop.

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.

As soon as this happens, I’m sure there will be story after story equating Facebook changing its name to whatever with Philip Morris Companies, Inc. changing its name to Altria Group Inc.

The fact that both offer highly addicting and dangerous products is not missed.

Nicholas Bate with some advice to add a bit more productivity to your life… by subtraction

Just when you are being seduced into adding more to your life, subtract something. Just when you feel driven to do more stuff,  choose what is actually important and do less.  Just when reptile brain says work harder, work mindfully.  When everybody is speeding up, stop, think and  slow down. You’ll be more productive.

The Cardinals have agreed to part ways with Manager Mike Shildt.

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) October 14, 2021

Shildt has been in the organization for the better part of a decade I think. What could those “philosophical differences” be at this juncture? We’ll probably never know.

I sure hope they turn to Jose Oquendo.

Josh Ginter pitches the wonderfulness of Cleartones.

Cleartones are awesome. They’re simple notification tones and ringtones made with simple instruments. To me, these are the ringtones Apple would make if they, you know, made better ringtones.

I remember seeing Cleartones years ago, but never jumped on board. For whatever reason, Josh’s post convinced me to give them a shot and I’m quite enjoying them.

So, a whole article about fans and their interaction and loyalty to a program. What the hell is this? Illinois is going to be ranked in the top ten and probably top five of CBB this season. They are going to be good. And all we get is a commentary about Hunter Dickenson hating on Illinois and their fans? Come on. Illinois handed Dickenson his lunch last year. Illinois beat the sh!t out of Michigan last year twice.

How about writing something about this team?

Among those very good players are Cockburn, one of the more dominant big men in the league…

Are you kidding me? “One” of the more dominant big men? He’s going to be a candidate for National Player of the Year. He’s going to be a back-to-back All-American. Quit downplaying this team and its players.

I keep waiting for The Athletic to have a dedicated CBB section for Illinois, but of course… nothing.

A+ typo, can’t be beat pic.twitter.com/N5pPIO9wHj

— andy™ (@andylevy) October 11, 2021

Seth Godin, writing on his blog, has some smart insight about changing one’s mind.

What evidence would you need to see to change your mind?

The honest answer to this question is usually: “I need a new story that’s more immediate, more vivid and most of all, more culturally aligned than the one I have now.

Stories are way more powerful than raw data, so pick good stories.

M. G. Siegler, writing on his 500ish site, explains the problems with Facebook. He’s been doing it for years, but I really like these paragraphs:

Facebook is over because they won. Because they have two billion-plus users. Because they created a service which mirrors humanity. And humanity, as it turns out, is not great. I mean, yeah, sure, there are pockets of great. But there are also pockets of awful. And the awful will always overwhelm the great. And Facebook has created the perfect tool to enable this. At scale.

This both should be obvious and isn’t. The problem with Facebook isn’t actually Facebook. It’s us. It’s human beings. The problem is that Facebook created the greatest tool ever to connect those human beings. And it has led to a world in which the local lunatic is now the global lunatic.

Facebook and Zuckerberg didn’t realize this was the end state because it wasn’t what they envisioned with the original mission. It has blinded them. Connecting people is good! Right? But, as it turns out, it’s not. It sounds good. We all want it to be good. But it’s a fucking disaster. Because humanity is a disaster.

Humanity is a disaster. Sigh.

Lucy McBride, writing in The Atlantic, has a few thoughts on moving forward in this world with COVID.

Acceptance is not about agreeing with or surrendering to suffering. It is not about reckless abandonment of caution or carelessness toward others. It means letting go of the false promise of “COVID zero,” taking an honest assessment of our personal risk tolerance, and ceding control where control isn’t possible. It’s about getting vaccinated against COVID and the flu before attending a wedding in person—instead of watching the nuptials on Zoom.

A balanced and reasonable take. I hope enough people will heed it.

I hate people sometimes. Apparently, there are petitions for and against a principal in Canada over Iron Maiden.

The website LoadedRadio.com has more:

Students at Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ontario have started a petition to keep their principal, a Mrs. Sharon Burns, in the institution’s administrative office, saying “She spreads nothing but love and kindness, and is probably one of the best and most enthusiastic principals the school has ever had.”

The student’s petition is in response to a petition laid out by a number parents (who are obviously not IRON MAIDEN fans) of some of the students who claim the following: “As concerned parents with impressionable children at Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ontario, we are deeply disturbed that the principal assigned to the school blatantly showed Satanic symbols and her allegiance to Satanic practices on her public social media platforms where all the students can see them under @edenprincipal (not her personal account). Our school is based on inclusion, and openly displaying Satanic symbols (on a public social media platform) that directly goes against the principles of the vast majority of families who represent the school, is not inclusive. As parents we are demanding her transfer to another school. Please replace her with another principal who aligns with the values of the families at Eden and will not sabotage the teaching or upholding of those values and will not try to introduce impressionable students to Satanic practices or symbolism.

Good on these students. Stupid parents… Iron Maiden can’t be fought. Iron Maiden can’t be sought.

Tim Grierson examines the impact of Vesper Lynd on James Bond through all of Daniel Craig’s time as 007.

It’s fair to say that James never got over the death of her character, Vesper Lynd — and neither could the filmmakers who worked on Bond pictures after Casino Royale. As No Time to Die makes clear again, the Craig films were always about Vesper and the number she did on Bond.

I love the fact that Casino Royale through No Time to Die, is an interconnected pentology and Lynd’s death haunts the next four films. It makes me want to watch all five Craig films back-to-back.

Music filmmaker Michael Bártek captured the wonderful sight of musician Antonino Buschiazzo performing his own haunting rendition of the Hans Zimmer soundtrack for Interstellar on a gorgeous pipe organ at Saint-Paul’s Church in Strasbourg, France.

It’s incredible.

Bilge Ebiri, writing for Vulture, takes some low hanging fruit and writes a listicle that will get all the fanboys up in arms: ranking the Bond movies.

I’m not going to argue with his number one, but the rest… I’m not so sure that would be my ranking.