I can tell already that Elon Musk owning Twitter and trying to use it to make money is going to be a real thing that people will talk about online for weeks and weeks. Who is leaving? Who might get unbanned? Which companies will keep ads on the platform, and which ones are done? What new iteration of the platform can be monetized? When will Musk sell Twitter and take a loss?

I’d say that most users on the platform will continue to use it the same way they have been forever. I have curated my follow list, stopped retweets from appearing in my timeline, and continued using Tweetdeck instead of going to the official Twitter page to interact with it for more than a couple of years. I probably spend too much time on it, and there’s that feeling of not even needing to be here anymore, but I doubt I change my habit.

As for the alternatives… they are all crap. I mean all of them except Micro.blog (I rather enjoyed Maton Reece’s appeal for Micro.blog usage) and, you know, personal blogging. Mastodon and the rest I can’t be bothered to look up will not make a dent during this. They are a waste of time.

I fully expect within six months to a year, Twitter will be ruined. It will be a hellscape of impersonations and the worst aspects of the far-right with a dash of fascism, bigotry, and political fetishism. It will be an afterthought like Tumblr, which used to be mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Unless Musk sells it to a company that knows how to handle it, like Automattic, for instance.

I pretty much have TweetDeck running in a tab every day. Not having it up is going to be really, really difficult for me. It’s kind of funny, as I recognize that I’m constantly online through Twitter and also that it probably isn’t very good for me.

It will be interesting to see how long I stay on if all the people I follow quit.

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, who previously criticized Twitter for restricting free speech, outlined his motivations for buying the company in a message addressed to advertisers and posted to the social platform. Stupidly, Musk dropped in on Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, carrying a white basin and later tweeting, “Entering Twitter HQ—let that sink in!” He fired a bunch of executives and then changed his Twitter profile description to “Chief Twit.”

Sigh.

Just to be clear, I doubt I’ll be leaving Twitter anytime soon. However, if Musk starts making terrible decisions about free speech and whatnot, I might simply delete all my posts, keep my account, and never log on again—kind of like what I do with Facebook and other social media sites I no longer pay much attention to.

I should seriously consider taking Twitter off my phone. Everyone says it will immediately improve my outlook on life, the universe, and everything. Maybe.

I do know for a fact if he sunsets Tweetdeck, I’m totally gone.

Borys Kit and Aaron Couch, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, has the scoop on the new DC Studios.

Gunn will focus on the creative side of things, while Safran will focus on the business and production side. Both are expected to continue to direct and produce projects, respectively. They will report directly to Zaslav and work closely with Warners film bosses De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Sources say the deal runs four years and Gunn will be exclusive to DC. The goal is for them not just to be producers, but to truly function as executives even as Gunn will occasionally hone a movie.

This seems smart. I like Gunn way better than Geoff Johns (who should stick to writing comics).

I apologize to Rod Stewart, but it’s late October, and I should be back in school. And when I say “back in school,” I totally mean back writing on this site and finishing up my long-awaited (HA!) collection of short stories and essays, Captured Ghosts.

To be fair, I think I’m as close as I have ever come to finishing this book. I’d really like to have something to show for the effort at Thanksgiving and then to sell to people by Christmas. I’m about 60/40 that it won’t happen. I’d like to flip that and get it over the hump, but I’m just not quite there yet. Ugh.

I can’t seem to lose any more weight, which makes me depressed. I guess I need to eat a lot less carbs and sugar. It is depressing. Of course, these next few weeks and the last two months are nothing but carbs and sugar. I’m getting more and more depressed.

I don’t have much willpower. I just finished eating a grab-and-go can of Pringles, and I have another one at the ready for a bit later. However, I am drinking a Hint Crisp apple, and it has no carbs or sugars. It tastes kind of like someone ate an apple and then burped it into a plastic bottle of water. It’s not very good, but it’s healthy! Oh, boy. Sigh.

I should finish watching both House of Dragon and Rings of Power. Still, I also want to watch the rest of Community (I’m only on season 2) and a bunch of other things like Ted Lasso, Star Trek Discovery, His Dark Materials, Stranger Things, and Doctor Who. I’m still watching and enjoying Star Trek Lower Decks and have caught up with Andor and now waiting for the last three-episode story arc to drop so I can binge it back-to-back-to-back.

I’m also watching Clerks 3, about twenty minutes or so in. So far, I like it, but the dialogue is too cutesy by a factor of five. I wish he’d dial back some of his tropes and just write people like normal people.

I keep thinking I will see Black Adam in the theater, and then I’m like, nahh. I’ll just wait until sometime in December when it will appear on HBO Max.

The World Series is about to start, and I don’t care about it. I guess I’ll have to root for the Phillies, but it feels weird. Most of the time, I enjoy watching MLB when I don’t have a rooting interest. Maybe I’ll just wish everyone had fun playing the games.

I can’t wait for the political ads to stop playing during every commercial break. At least I’m in Illinois, not some state where crazy people are running, like Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Sometimes, I wish I could be a-political and not worry about which party is in charge, but I’m afraid if I do that, then something terrible is going to happen to my family and my country. Maybe not. Maybe I’m insulated enough by my economic status, the color of my skin, and lack of religious beliefs. I don’t know, and I guess that’s the fear. Tuning it out can only go so far.

Illinois football is on a tear, and that’s something of a surprise. It makes things more interesting in this neck of the woods. Also, Illinois basketball is looking to be extremely competitive, and having both sports playing at a high level blows my face off a tiny bit.

I need to get back to reading more. I have several novels ready, both in paper and glue form and as audiobooks. Of course, my huge list of podcasts to listen to has not diminished, and it’s really hard to get into an audiobook.

My ankles and knees hurt, but part of that happens when you hit your fifties. How did this happen? I guess I just kept getting older. It certainly beats the alternative. I have to increase my exercise and try to strengthen those painful areas. Speaking of exercise, I think I want to start a rowing machine regiment. Of course, I need a rowing machine, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting one of those this Christmas. I think it will help. I think…

It’s about to get super busy here with Illinois athletics, Thanksgiving/Christmas, colder weather, and everything else. First-world problems galore. I guess now is as good a time as any to simply enjoy the crisp air, watch the leaves fall, and breathe in the stillness before the storm.

A paragraph in David Roth’s Defector piece encapsulates this moment in time and describes what is happening right now in crystal clear imagery.

In its current state, Trumpism is entirely about feeling and fantasy. Instead of any plan to deal with crime, for instance, there is only the lascivious going-over of the problem; there is no program, or really any policies to advocate for, that is more expedient for the party than just continuing to fixate on it. There is a constituency—they are confused and vengeful and fucking livid, they are daily taking in and making up strange new stories to keep themselves that way, they are less mis- or disinformed than they are living inside the bilious and vengeful lore that sustains and explains their movement—and there is what that constituency feels, but there is nothing else. It is again worth noting that this constituency chooses to feel this way, every day; the most comfortable Americans have opted to wander this wilderness of prurience and threat and weird ugly lies instead of living in a reality they would have to share with anyone else. Where there might otherwise be ideology—where there might, actually, have been anything else—there is only politics. Of course it is ugly, small, even more fantastically dark than the truth of the moment. Being ugly, in precisely that way, is the reason that it exists. What began as a cynical set of best practices for keeping distracted people attached to their televisions has become the sacrament itself; they have built a church and then just fucking filled it with cable news.

When does this change? Will it ever?

According to Robert Moseley, who was in attendance, on October 22, 2022, KISS played a secret show for Philip Morris International, the largest tobacco company in the world. This private concert was not open to the public and took place at Vulcan Gas Company, a small club at 418 E 6th St in downtown Austin. No more than 100 people attended the concert.

Seeing KISS at a club is pretty cool. I just wish the guy filming would stop talking and singing.

Puddles Pity Party sings “WAR PIGS.”

What an incredible rendition.

Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman gives the media a tour of the almost-complete renovation of the Ubben Basketball Complex.

Writing for The Athletic, Katie Woo explains how the Cardinals were eliminated.

Their best two position players and two top National League MVP candidates in Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt combined to go 1-for-15 with six strikeouts, and the rest of the offense was just as lifeless. Their All-Star closer Ryan Helsley was asked to notch a five-out save in the same week he jammed a finger on his pitching hand and was subsequently tagged for four runs, despite giving up nine total runs all season. Their usually impermeable infield defense crumpled when three separate Gold Glovers, Arenado, Edman and Goldschmidt — were unable to make a play on three consecutive groundballs. Minus a booming two-run, pinch hit home run from Juan Yepez in the seventh inning of Game 1, the Cardinals struggled to string together any kind of offense, even when Marmol opted to sacrifice outfield defense in search of more offense in Game 2, sitting Dylan Carlson and placing Yepez and Dickerson in left and right field.

The Cardinals had their chances — plenty of them — but they rarely cashed in. Now they’ll spend the rest of October as spectators.

When your bats go silent, it isn’t hard to figure out. You simply can’t win when the two top National League MVP candidates, Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, combined go 1-for-15 with six strikeouts.

On to the offseason, where the team should look at expanding its payroll, nail down a free agent pitcher, trade some dead weight, and sign Wilson Contreas to be the new catcher.

pic.twitter.com/mkgtgHa3yM

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) October 2, 2022

We will likely never see something like this again.

To the best fans in baseball,

You make Wrigley Field the Friendly Confines. pic.twitter.com/Gtdr3boTXH

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) September 30, 2022

This took a lot of work and some very skilled drone pilots.

Every Batman actor should have to audition with this scene. pic.twitter.com/jzqKqVo9QO

— Bob Cesca (@bobcesca_go) September 26, 2022

I don’t remember why there’s a seal in the chair…

The look of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was like nothing before it. It certainly broke away from the Pixar style.

Vox breaks down the evolution from Toy Story to today and how Pixar’s photorealistic style is shifting into an experimental and almost avant-garde style, which frankly, is awesome.

Will Leitch, writing in his newsletter, had a profound paragraph about sports.

One of the best things about sports is that it gives us simplicity and clarity that real life cannot — and should not — provide us with. If we win, I’m happy. If we lose, I’m sad. But that’s not just true in the moment. When you cheer for a sports team, you make a lifelong commitment — you give a little piece of yourself to something outside of yourself that you have no control over, with no assurance whatsoever it will be treated with care, or that your investment will ever pay off. But when it happens, when it does pay off, when you get that thing you wanted so badly, it’s yours — you got it. You’re at the mountaintop. And you get to stay there.

My sports fandom consists of University of Illinois athletics and the St. Louis Cardinals. I do not have an NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, or other leagues or teams that I consistently root for. However, I do enjoy watching sports in general when I don’t have a team to root for. NFL games are more fun for me to watch when I do not have a rooting interest. The same goes for MLB and NBA (although I guess I started being a “fan” of the Chicago Bulls since Ayo Dosunmu started playing for them. I will admit I liked the St. Louis Rams for a couple of years, but that was when they were good, won a Super Bowl, and all that. I was the very model of a modern major fair-weather fan.

I’ve seen the Cardinals win the World Series. I’ve never seen Illinois football or basketball make it to the top of the mountain. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

Still, it would be nice to get to the mountaintop. Just once.

Seth Godin:

If you do anything at the last minute that takes more than a minute, you’re not organizing your project properly.

The last minute is not a buffer zone, nor is it the moment to double-check your work.

The last minute is simply sixty seconds to enjoy and to remind yourself that you successfully planned ahead.

This needs to be a giant poster in my office.

Depending on when you grew up, Barney was either a caveman, a dinosaur, an alcoholic, or a womanizer.

Colby Itkowitz writing in The Washington Post, outlines how Republicans in swing districts are freaking out.

At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or amended references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive subjects that some GOP strategists say are two of the biggest liabilities for the party ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint to Election Day.

The Dobbs decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, referencing the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked whether it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres replied, “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is making the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.”

The Dobbs ruling has motivated many people. Republicans have no idea what to do.

It is also possible the constant stream of “Donald Trump sold our national secrets” in the news is hurting the GOP as well, but who knows?

Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts to reform the Soviet Union only hastened its political collapse, is dead at 91.

At least he tried.