Nichelle Nichols has died.

My only encounter with Nichelle Nichols involved standing in line to get a few autographs from Star Trek actors at a comic book convention. I put the Star Trek Compendium in front of her to sign. She then proceeded to go on a five-minute rant about the cover (it featured Shatner and Nimoy and no one else). It was entertaining as she aired a lot of dirty laundry for anyone to hear. She then passed the book along the table sans autograph and flashed me a tremendous smile.

Shellshocked, I just moved on. I never got her autograph, but I got a hell of a story.

Quadball is the new name of the sport formerly known as Quidditch.

If you are a muggle, Quidditch is the magical game played by witches and wizards in the Harry Potter books and movies. The non-magical version of the game is played as a club sport in colleges across the country. Today, Major League Quadball (MLQ) and U.S. Quidditch (USQ) announced a rebranding to Quadball.

Part of the reason is to avoid being associated with JK Rowling’s terrible anti-trans statements and the Warner Bros. legal team. For obvious reasons, MLQ and USQ could not trademark the term “quidditch,” so this is a good move.

“Quadball isn’t just a new name. It’s a symbol for a future for the sport without limitations,” the MLQ founders wrote in a statement. “With it, we hope to turn the sport into exactly what it aspires to be: something for all.”

My daughter played Chaser at Illinois State University, and it was by far the most violent, dangerous club sport I’d ever seen. At least hockey players and football players are wearing pads. Quadball is soccer, lacrosse, and rugby combined with some old-school dodgeball thrown in.

The only thing seriously hokey about the whole thing is the holding of the brooms.

Teenager Brad Miele spent the summer of 1984 exploring Europe by rail. One night in London, Miele says he unexpectedly crossed paths with cult musician David Bowie and ended up appearing in a Bowie music video.

What a sweet story.

James Caan has passed away.

From The Godfather to Elf. What an amazing career.

The Big Ten announced today that the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles will become conference members effective August 2, 2024, with competition to begin in all sports the 2024-25 academic year.

Kind of a big deal. I expect four more schools to join in the next couple of years.

Buried in an ESPN story on Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is something I’ve been screaming about for years—robot umpires.

Generally, Manfred wants to speed the game up and hears the complaints about three hour games and that game needs fixing.

He tells me, in terms far more certain than he has laid out publicly before, that he fully supports revamping the game with pitch clocks, the elimination of the shift and, in 2024, some form of robo-umpires.

Yes. A million times yes. It will call balls and strikes significantly better than humans AND speed up the game. Robot umpires have been tested minor league baseball games for the last couple of years and, guess what, it works.

It’s a good day for bad people to go to jail..

R. Kelly has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.

Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse case.

I can think of a few more that need to be indicted, convicted, and sentenced…

CJ Chilvers believes you are more interesting than you think. He longs for the “generalist” era of blogging and yearns to bring it back.

The trust was always about the person behind the index.html file, not the information itself. We gave that up in the years since. We put our trust in algorithms. Look how they’ve paid us back.

It’s time to bring trust in individuals back.

Our role? Keep building up that trust by being real and providing value consistently. Post about whatever your generalist heart desires.

Will that go viral? Hell no.

That’s not where the value is. The value is in the daily practice that makes you a better creator and a trusted resource.

Smart post.

Amanda Seitz, writing for the Associated Press, has the scoop on Meta’s haphazard enforcement of it’s policies regarding abortion pills, guns, and illegal drugs.

The AP obtained a screenshot on Friday of one Instagram post from a woman who offered to purchase or forward abortion pills through the mail, minutes after the court ruled to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

“DM me if you want to order abortion pills, but want them sent to my address instead of yours,” the post on Instagram read.

Instagram took it down within moments. Vice Media first reported on Monday that Meta, the parent of both Facebook and Instagram, was taking down posts about abortion pills.

On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute. The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.

Just another reason Meta is a shit company and everyone should leave Facebook and Instagram (me included).

Tom Ward, writing for Esquire, does a deep dive into the movie as it celebrates 40 years.

Visually and sonically assured, intelligent and moody, there is much to be admired in Blade Runner. But why has its legacy endured to such a degree? Perhaps in its gloomy portrayal of environmental catastrophe, social divide and oppressive authority we recognise our own world. Or perhaps it’s because, despite all of its foreboding, Blade Runner offers a chance of hope. Hope of a love between two people not meant to love. Hope of freedom, however impossible. A hope as fragile as an origami unicorn, maybe. A hope as beautiful as C-beams glittering in the dark, and as fleeting as tears in rain. Blade Runner is not a film with easy answers. And maybe that is why, forty years later, we’re still remaking it, exploring it, pulling it apart and holding it up to the light.

Blade Runner is my favorite science fiction movie. It surpasses Star Wars for me.

Ronald Brownstein, writing in The Atlantic, believes it might be time to start considering, in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, America as two separate countries entirely — maybe for good.

All of this is fueling what I’ve called “the great divergence” now under way between red and blue states. This divergence itself creates enormous strain on the country’s cohesion, but more and more even that looks like only a way station. What’s becoming clearer over time is that the Trump-era GOP is hoping to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation — with or without majority public support. As measured on fronts including the January 6 insurrection, the procession of Republican 2020 election deniers running for offices that would provide them with control over the 2024 electoral machinery, and the systematic advance of a Republican agenda by the Supreme Court, the underlying political question of the 2020s remains whether majority rule — and democracy as we’ve known it — can survive this offensive.

This divide is only going to get wider.

First, the justices who lied under oath regarding “settled law” should be impeached. If potential Supreme Court justices can lie under oath to members of Congress, the rule of law is finished.

I’m not hopeful regarding the midterm elections, and I’m not hopeful anyone involved in the attempted coup will be charged with anything.

I’m glad Ozzy is still making music. Also, yes that’s Jeff Beck.

Here’s a good quote I found that I wanted to keep:

The best way to write an essay is to sit with a blank piece of paper and a pencil. Then set a timer for 30 minutes and start writing. Don’t stop until the timer goes off.

CJ Chilvers writes about a lesser minimalism. Mainly focused on the “why” behind our clutter and dealing with it before it’s too late.

Our attachment to information can be profitable, distracting, emotional, or fleeting. The cognitive weight of words is not equal page-to-page.

The process is the equalizer.

It’s been my experience that every minimalist dreams of passing down a thumb drive or password, giving their families access to 90%+ of their multi-generational trash and treasure. Then, they want their remains cremated and scattered to the wind, as to leave no trace.

It’s a laudable goal to enable as much as possible to be carried away on a cloud. Both kinds. But that requires a daily process — a practice. And it’s anything but minimal.

Eddie caught a Nolan Arenado ball, which he threw into the stands between innings.

Justin Carter, writing at Gizmodo, has a story I can’t quite believe.

You can say a lot of things about Amazon’sThe Boys, but you can’t exactly call it subtle. The show, based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s acclaimed comics from Dynamite Entertainment, focuses on a group of corporate owned superheroes called The Seven, and a semi-covert group of average people named The Boys who’ve taken it upon themselves to kill the heroes. Across the show’s three seasons, it’s always been pretty upfront with the kind of satire it’s going for and who it tears down.

In the case of the show’s vengeful Superman-alike, Homelander (Anthony Starr), the show has said so many times in so many words that he was conceived as an analogue of former president Donald Trump. Season two even ended on him literally getting off to the idea of how much power he has over everyone else; and if that didn’t say it all, a cosplayer showing up as the character during a MAGA rally in 2020 would do the job. And should you have missed the text of the show, you’re in luck: showrunner Eric Kripke, Robertson, and even Starr himself have tried their damnedest to tell folks who Homelander really is.

Still, in case you need yet another reminder, Kripke discussed this in a recent interview with the Rolling Stone. He was upfront in saying that this season in particular was more direct in calling out the ex-president, and that the writing team really worked hard to drive that point across in comparison to the first two seasons. “He [Homelander] has this really combustible mix of complete weakness and insecurity,” said Kripke, “and just horrible power and ambition…Of course he would feel victimized that people are angry that he dated a Nazi.”

I find it utterly hilarious that people had to be told this…

Mark Leibovich, writing in The Atlantic, outlines why President Biden shouldn’t run in 2024.

Let me put this bluntly: Joe Biden should not run for reelection in 2024. He is too old.

Biden will turn 80 on November 20. He will be 82 if and when he begins a second term. The numbers just keep getting more ridiculous from there. “It’s not the 82 that’s the problem. It’s the 86,” one swing voter said in a recent focus group, referring to the hypothetical age Biden would be at the end of that (very) hypothetical second term.

I’m afraid that’s correct. The real question is who should run? Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, or someone else?