Monday Morning Media Recommendations

Have a book you want to recommend? A TV show? A movie? A podcast? A website? Post your suggestions here.

Comments

[santamonica811]

Book: Devil in the White City.
TV: (Old) Taxi. (Newer) The Good Place; The Wire
Movies: Tootsie, Annie Hall [I can't believe I feel like I need to mention movies that are or should be in everyone's Top Ten or Top Twenty lists of comedies. But I got into a spirited discussion this weekend with several young'uns who had never heard of either of these.] ("Young" = people in their 20s and early 30s, who live in freaking Los Angeles.)

[Randal]

Lawyers like treatises right? If you want to sample one from a different field, it's hard to do better than Claude Shannon's 1949 The Mathematical Theory of Communication, which laid the theoretical foundations for all of modern communication technology. It's concise and surprisingly approachable... for a math paper.

https://a.co/d/5352ISO

[darkknight9]

Just because I found myself in a discussion about it this weekend:

By Dawns Early Light
True Romance
And all 3 of the movies that have won all big 5 academy awards (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay). Can you guess which ones they are?

[mse326]

It Happened One Night
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Silence of the Lambs

[darkknight9]

Yep! 🙂

[Dr. Ed 2]

The ending of By Dawn's Early Light struck me as implausible -- an aircraft carrier wouldn't sink that quickly, nor would fighters abandon their mission just because their carrier had been sunk.

I am not familiar with B-52s but how long could it fly after part of the crew had ejected, puncturing the outer envelope of the plane in the process? Sure they pilots would have to be on oxygen but how long could the electronics (and personnel) function as the interior of the plane cooled to the subzero temperature outside? And what would the missing windshield (or whatever) do to the plane's aerodynamics in terms of drag and such? If landing gear will foul the plane, I can't help but think this would too.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Books/movies:

Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

Return of the King

The new Rifftrax series – elevating talking over movies into an art form. No harm done, the movies suck and deserve mockery.

Vicky Osterweil, In Defense of Looting (Bold Type Books, 2020)

“A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy.”

…and doing some shopping while you’re at it!

/sarc about that last book

[Kazinski]

I can’t see any body that read the books liking the Lord of the Rings movies. By the end of the ‘Return of the King’ I was actively rooting for Sauron, why NOT enslave all those absolute simps, especially Sam (although Sean Astin was much better in stranger things, I knew why he had to die). Although I have to admit it was a decade after ROTK it was released before I finally saw it because after the first two came out my appetite was forever sated.

I read the books last year again because they were on Kindle Unlimited and I was traveling overseas over the winter. It finally washed the bad taste out of my mouth.

Florida Man on Netflix is pretty good. But I haven’t seen the end yet.

I’m currently reading the Kingfall fantasy series on Kindle Unlimited and so far quite good. It might be the best thing I’ve ever read on Kindle Unlimited.

If you want to read some nonfiction Grants memoirs are easy to find on PDF because it’s out of copyright and it’s fantastic. He wrote it when he’s sick and dying, but you can’t tell, and Mark Twain was his editor.

There’s actually a lot of stuff out of copyright that’s definitely worth reading, I read a lot of Nevil Shute when I was traveling too because it was easy to find and download. I’d recommend An Old Captivity, A Town Like Alice, and of course On The Beach (I hear the movie remake is coming out next year with DeCaprio, but it’s AGW not Nuclear war, kidding).

[Brett Bellmore]

You think the Lord of the Rings movies are bad, (Mostly just overly long, though.) I'll match and double with The Hobbit movies.

At least the Lord of the Rings was three long books. The Hobbit was a moderate length single book, and they STILL insisted on turning it into three long movies. In order to do so they had to add an enormous amount of original, and pretty stupid, content.

Say what you will about the movies, though, at least there was no sign of Tom Bombadil, Tolkein's most cringeworthy literary invention.

[Randal]

Tom Bombadil's weird, but cool. I would think you'd like him, as he represents both the appeal and the futility of pacifism. According to Tolkien:

Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative.... I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But if you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty,’ renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war.

But the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends. Ultimately only the victory of the West will allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of Sauron.

"The means of power [becoming] quite valueless" recalls the scene where Tom can still see Frodo while he's wearing the ring, and then he puts it on himself and nothing happens. The ring is just a ring to him.

"The view of Rivendell" refers to the part where it's suggested that they vest the ring with Tom for safekeeping, but Gandalf advises against, pointing out that he wouldn't understand the nature or importance of the task and probably just lose it.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's the dancing animals that turned me off; It's like in the middle of a war movie Bambi comes through carrying some flowers for Thumper to eat. Kind a jarring.

I mean, I understand Tolkien had some kind of thematic point in inserting Bombadil into the story, but it didn't strike me as good storytelling, and I think they were right to leave him out of the movie(s).

[SRG]

I thought that the LotR movies did a very good job of depicting the book - and as with the book itself, the cinematic releases were not long enough, so I prefer the extended edition. I rationalised a conceit that both Tolkien and Jackson were describing a real history of Middle Earth and accordingly, the divergence of accounts was simply due to an incomplete historical record, what events historians deemed worthy of mention, etc. etc.

[Brett Bellmore]

Adding the fight between the dwarves and the dragon in the Hobbit movie, though, cast things in a very different light from the events as described in the book. It made the dwarves look, not great, but far less awful.

[SimonP]

Ah, yes, the old fascist, edgelord take on LoTR. You and Giorgia Meloni. How am I not surprised.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, on Twain and Grant’s Memoirs—skeptics of Grant cast shade on that book, because, hey, Twain. Those skeptics overlook a source Twain could not have counterfeited. It includes the best insights into Grant the book offers: the many extended quotes from Grant’s orders during the Civil War. Grant’s spare military prose, alertness to the demands of contingency, and systematic clarity of thought, go far to explain why Lee was overmatched by the best general in American history. Twain was a literary genius, but none of that could have come from Twain.

I have yet to see any historian mention this, but as Grant’s account of the war converges toward Appomattox, it mirrors the campaign itself—a staggering, gigantic pincer, set in motion and managed systematically over scores of battlefields, and encompassing half a continent, to conclude as if by inevitability, with Lee trapped between Grant advancing from his North, and Sherman from his South.

Before reading the Memoirs, to the slight extent I even noticed that happened, I took it to be akin to happenstance. As Grant’s writing makes plain, happenstance played little part.

[Kazinski]

Grant's memoirs do show Grant in a good light as a person and a military administrator.

But as for Generalship he was hardly brilliant tactically, but he had the nub of it strategically, first cut the South in thirds, first slice was the down the Mississippi, cutting off Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri. Second slice was cutting off Mississippi, Alabama, and sending Sherman on to finish the cut all the way through Georgia.

Then his plan against Lee was similar to a 250lb steel worker fighting a golden gloves welterweight, corner him, contain him, don't let him land a lighting knockout blow, then get him completely wrapped up and strangle the life out of him.

The Battle of the Wilderness was emblematic, Grant had 17500 casualties in 2 days, Lee half that, but Grant had too many troops to lose the battle and Lee didn't have the troops to win. So both of them disengaged and maneuvered until they could fought again.

It went on like that for 11 more months, Grant not having the generalship to beat Lee but too many troops and resources to lose, and Lee never having the opportunity for a lightning knockout blow, or the resources to stand up to Grant longer than it would take to organize a withdrawal so he could fight again in a few.days.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, stirring echoes of the lost cause. Haven't heard those in at least a week or two.

Always interested in what Lee apologists think, while they celebrate the general who made the worst decision in American military history—to go all in on an attack at Gettysburg. Did it with no notion what lay in front of him, too.

Then, after thinking it over, Lee repeated that blunder twice more, on successive days. Each time he attacked a foe better positioned and better defended than on the day before.

I get that Pickett's Charge had to be celebrated as some kind of glorious anti-triumph, for the sake of southern morale. No need for that now. But in the view of history, what was it?

You remember Faulkner, right? His heart attuned to the South, and his unflinching, pitiless eye?:

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world’s roaring rim.”

To push your nation "over the world's roaring rim." That's an accomplishment to which merely mediocre commanders do not aspire. It takes a catastrophic commander to do that.

Five months later, when Lincoln arrived to memorialize it all, they were still having trouble keeping the corpses below ground.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Of all possible movie adaptations of LoTR, I believe Jackson’s was by far the best we could even have hoped for, and we should be grateful…so grateful that we could do him a favor and forget he ever did The Hobbit.

[Zarniwoop]

There are various fan edits that delete most of the chaff and make The Hobbit shorter and at least tolerable.

Spinning it out to 3 movies was a big, big mistake. It’s just not that long of a book! Two movies, split right when they are rescued from the goblins by the eagles, would have been a much better plan.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I can’t see any body that read the books liking the Lord of the Rings movies."

Personal preference is personal preference but I enjoyed them and I'm a long time fan of the books as well as the rest of the Tolkien Book Universe.

Sam was well cast. Most of the cast decisions were good, cannot think of an obvious clunker.

[Brett Bellmore]

I agree. Aside from being too long, and some of the stuff added to The Hobbit, the movies were pretty good.

[Randal]

My least favorite casting decision was Elivabeth Tyler. Elves need some gravitas, she was all dew.

Compare Cate Blanchett omfc.

[Bob from Ohio]

Well, Arwen was only 2000 years old, a mere child compared with Galadriel.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I disagree with a few things that ended up on the cutting room floor, but I understand why it was done. Other than that, the LotR films were quite good, and The Hobbit was fucking awful.

I say this as someone who read the four books at least a dozen times as a child, and several more times as an adult. I mention this not to prove my opinion correct, but rather to demonstrate that I am hardly unfamiliar with the source material.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

[comment moved]

[cubett]

Here's a decent 1948 film noir called Pitfall. It's free and there's no registration.

Married insurance adjuster John Forbes falls for femme fatale Mona Stevens while her boyfriend is in jail and all suffer serious consequences as a result.

https://watch.plex.tv/movie/pitfall

[Brett Bellmore]

If we're talking fiction, I highly recommend "Silverlock", by Meyers. It will make you hungry to follow up all the cultural references. A lot of which I only got second hand, by way of loony tunes!

I don't think it's going to age well, though; They're not teaching the literature it draws on anymore. And it would be challenging to pull off the same feat today with everything perpetually remaining under copyright.

[SRG]

Thanks for the recommendation! I went to Amazon and lo! It was a free download thanks to credits.

[Brett Bellmore]

You won't regret it, it is, as my son said, "a real banger".

[Ruqt]

Books Scotland : the global history, 1603 to the present – Murray Pittock. Brilliant research and writing. Dublin-The Making of a Capital City -David-Dickson / Read the first few chapters to change your views on what Ireland (and the world) was like 1000 years ago.

The works of Robert Louis Stevenson [Available online] His intelligence and writing skills not examined due to classification of his novels. Charmingly descriptive stories. Serious disdain for the “media” as accurate today. The essays on how to write are priceless if challenging.

TV Sorelle Italian language miniseries, (Sisters in English not to be confused with movie with same name) -labelled a mystery (?) featuring an attorney (but not about the law), a serene engaging family drama filmed in Matera Italy.

Tjockare än vatten, Thicker than Water – not for all viewers- like watching a well-acted, slow moving, dark Scandanavian play filmed in remote Norway.

[Doug Huffman]

On Daily Wire+ Jordan Peterson’s 13 two hour long episodes of EXODUS round table discussion with occasionally such as Larry Arn, Dennis Prager, Jonathan Pageau, an others.

[Sarcastr0]

I just finished the Greenbone Saga. A pretty good trilogy of both speculative sociology and family character dynamics.

[Illocust]

Some fun grim dark future fiction recommendation:
Ciaphas Cain, For The Emperor

Great humor, and a fun little trek into the 40k universe.

[Frank Drackman]

"Little Women"
not the print version, the Netflix Korean series

[Stephen Lathrop]

Colin Woodard: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Not really a legitimate recommendation, because I expect the book to arrive today. I ordered it after reading a Politico piece by Woodard, which apparently relied on insights from that book to reach surprising, possibly accurate, insights into American gun culture. Example:

If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest. Someone living in the most rural counties of South Carolina is more than three times as likely to be killed by gunshot than someone living in the equally rural counties of New York’s Adirondacks or the impoverished rural counties facing Mexico across the lower reaches of the Rio Grande.

The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself. The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional, cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed.

Note: On the basis of my reading of the Politico piece, gun pedants are strongly cautioned.

I expect to have more to say after reading what looks likely to be a provocative intermixture of history and sociology.

I grew up in a culturally mixed zone right at the border between two of Woodard's notional cultural regions—the Tidewater region and the Greater Appalachia region. From the Politico piece, I got insights that felt explanatory of cultural confusions which have baffled me for more than 60 years.

[Frank Drackman]

Hmm, Rural Counties of South Carolina vs New York Adirondacks??,
almost like there's a Demographic difference that might explain thangs.
How about South Side of Chicago vs Boise Idaho?? South Central Los Angeles vs Burlington Vermont?

Frank "Man, there's a bunch of Cultural Confusions here, lets leave"

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

West Virginia is always nice to have around to prove poverty isn’t necessarily the result of racism. And you even see it in the Covid death rates as the the biggest factor in a population’s Covid death rate is % below poverty level. So we shouldn’t focus on reducing anything but poverty because that would cure the most ills in our nation.

[Commenter_XY]

Well, for those Tribe Members who are more scholarly, I would note that the Rambam Mishneh Torah cycle concluded over the weekend, and the 43rd cycle started yesterday. If you're looking for a scholastic challenge, and want a deeper dive into Torah study, see this link.

https://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/5151471/jewish/Rambam-Cycle-Promo-Page.htm#Section4

It is sponsored by Chabad. The professor asked what kind of media do we consume. This is one I consume. I want to try this before trying Dof Yomi in a few years.

[Frank Drackman]

I'm Jewish, but "Little Women" is better

[SRG]

Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed is very readable.

[SRG]

James Ellroy's Underword USA trilogy - American Tabloid, Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover - about the intersection of organised crime, the police and the FBI, Hollywood, etc.

I don't think anyone can match the power of Ellroy's writing, nor that weirdly brilliant style.

[Frank Drackman]

I'll double dip,
Hemingway "Men without Women" one of the stories made into
a 1964 Movie starring Ronaldus Maximus and Lee Marvin a Pre-Larry Zeiger defiled Angie Dickinson,
Stephen Kings "Night Shift" not a clunker in the bunch, and made into a great song by the Commodores,

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

For those who don’t know, Stephen King attended the University of Maine at Orono and taught High School English at Hampden Academy back in the early 1970s, before Hampden became a commuter suburb of Bangor. (Derry is Bangor, btw.)

Most of his books are placed in this general area, and most of the historic things described in IT are true — the Dalton gang did die on a Bangor street, and while I don’t know about a fire at The Black Spot, Dow AFB, which became a SAC base, was a large patch of land without much on it, and the Klan was active in Maine in the 1920s.

I think his best (and most scary) book is Salem’s Lot, in part because I know the roads. Other than I-95, the two roads between Orono and Bangor are US Route 2 and Stillwater Avenue — the latter in the 70’s & 80’s being nothing more than an abandoned railroad which had been paved over, with railroad ties coming up through the pavement every spring.

I was reading the book in a tent, on a foggy and hence dark night, when a bird fell out of a tree above me…

As to movies, my suggestion would be Backdraft.

King once stated that "If Hampden isn't the asshole of America, it is at least within farting distance" -- I'm guessing he didn't enjoy teaching and some of that appears in a few of his works.

[SimonP]

My recommendation for each of the Conspirators is that they (re-)read Hart's The Concept of Law, and from there branch out into other works on the philosophy of law. The lack of theoretical moorings allows some of the Conspirators to drift to rather silly opinions on various legal subjects.

[Anon]

Pema Chödrön's "Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion" is soothing to me

[Jerry B.]

Just got a copy of "Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know" from CATO. Pretty good inoculation for the Doom and Gloom pronouncers.

[Anon]

Also, rereading Ward Farnsworth's "The Practicing Stoic", to which I thank the VC for the recommendation

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I'd unrecommend abridged scholarly translations of the key source material - Seneca, Epictetus, and the Irish Emperor Marcus O'Reilly-us.

Or if you already know the original languages, read them in the original.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

unabridged, sorry

[Anon]

For someone like me who cannot read infinitely fast, what would be the downside of starting with this book?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Epictetus' Handbook ("enchridion") is short, and great for people on the go.

James Stockdale read it and it helped him out in a North Vietnamese prison.

[BrotherMovesOn]

And helped Conrad Hensley out in an American prison!
Netflix series starring Jeff Daniels airs later this year.

[Randal]

And it helped Finn defeat the Lich!

[David Bremer]

And I'm working through the online version of his book "Predator at the Chessboard," which I didn't connect as being written by the guest conspirator until some time later.

As someone who didn't play growing up, then having a kid who has taken to the game, it's the most helpful chess book I've read. It works through the main tactics in a logical and sequential way. Easy to pull up on the website and work through a problem at a time.

[Frank Drackman]

You didn't play Chess growing up!?!?!? Of Course in 1971 seemed like lots of kids were playing, it was cool (for awhile) like Tennis and Racketball,
Still one of the best books is Bobby Fishers "My 60 Memorable Games" (remember when Amuricans won Chess Championships?) and he didn't just pick only his wins (well 48/60 were wins, but BF won most of the time)

Frank "What happened to my Horsey??

[David Bremer]

I knew how to play growing up, but growing up in a small town, there were a lot of people around who played on any regular basis. And I don't think any members of my family played at all. So, with a lack of other players, and no ability to play online, nope, I didn't play.

These days, my son has three or four apps, each with quality instruction and puzzles available, plus quality streamers, instructional videos, and clubs to join where he can play others.

[Frank Drackman]

Mom used to take me to Sin-O-Gogue and play some of these old umm, Jews (duh), weekends at various parks in Socal. Won my only tournament at Canoga Park Jewish Community Center 1973, 10 and under, been downhill ever since.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Back in the '70s it was possible to beat a computer at chess -- all you did was make totally random moves and the computer thought that you actually had a strategy and was trying to anticipate things you'd never even thought of. With much more processing power today, I don't know if that would still work.

[Kazinski]

I played chess intermittently when I was growing up as a young adult and when I was teaching my kids. So I'm maybe advanced beginner.

My brother plays a lot online, has a rating and is much better.

But I've found I can play him fairly evenly by trading pieces at almost every opportunity, even if its sometimes at a disadvantage. It disrupts his strategy and unclutters the board giving me more of a chance getting to the endgame without already being at a profound disadvantage.

[Brett Bellmore]

LOL! In college I had the Chess club president for a roommate one year, and we'd alternate at playing chess and backgammon. That was precisely my strategy, and it often got me at least a stalemate, though I'm at best an indifferent chess player.

I'd routinely beat him at backgammon, of course; He had no grasp of probability distributions to speak of.

[vampire flames]

Actually, Jordan Peterson's series on the Bible is also excellent. Part of practicing law relies on mythology and biblical knowledge, particularly for trial attorneys.
All criminal defense attorneys should also watch The Wire strangely enough.

[SRG]

What does Peterson have to say about the Bible that is so worthy of note?

[Absaroka]

"The Strange Career of Jim Crow" by C. Vann Woodward. A quote from the wiki page:

"His book The Strange Career of Jim Crow, which demonstrated that racial segregation was an invention of the late 19th century rather than an inevitable post-Civil-War development, was endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr. as "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement"."

It is a much more tangled tale than I ever imagined. For one example, in the late 1800's a black abolitionist activist from New England decided to tour the south to see how things were coming along. To paraphrase "I put a chip on my shoulder in D.C. (that's a quote) and went south looking for trouble - and didn't find any - I was treated better than in the north" (which is not the same, mind you, as 'treated well'). This was a trip of a couple of months, so not a narrow sample. Of course, things varied by time and region, and within a couple of decades Jim Crow had spread and ossified across the south. But I had no idea there were that few decades of hope between the war and 1900. It is such a tangled tale you can't help but wonder if some slight plot twist could have made things turn out so much better than they did.

Be sure to get the newest (1974) edition.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Never forget that Woodrow Wilson segregated the Federal Government -- it hadn't been before that. Or that it was a BLACK DC Cop (and Civil War veteran) who stopped President US Grant for speeding in his horse-drawn chariot.

[M L]

Cinderella (2015) is the best Disney film of the last 30 years at least.

[Frank Drackman]

Ah C'mon (Man) Freaky Friday (2003) was way better

[Sarcastr0]

Reading Eisenhower Volume I 1890-1952 by Stephen Ambrose. He's back in DC just after winning the war in Europe right now.

A decent overview, but it didn't mention his brother losing an eye when they were children, which I understand to be somewhat foundational. Also, it's really bending over backwards to find no evidence of his affairs, which I think is also a bit of a whitewash.

Anyone have any other Ike pre-presidency but not too WW2-heavy recommendations?

[Mr. Hook]

I love the observation about Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" adulation: he'd have given his right arm to have lost his left arm on D-Day.

[Frank Drackman]

Jumping the gun, but this "White House Plumbers" series on HBO looks pretty good, how can you beat Woody Harrelson as E. Howard Hunt??
OK, maybe Javier Bardem as one of the Cubans...
trying to remember when "No Country for Old Men" came out, was there a rash of peoples killing with Captive Bolt guns??

Frank

[Zarniwoop]

I recently sped through the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. TL,DR: a security cyborg frees himself from a hardwired governor, and tries to figure out how to be more “human” by watching space soap operas. Recommend.

[Nelson]

Seconded. Short books, quick reads, and often funny.

[JFree]

Short story - The Bet by Anton Chekhov

Song - Cowboys and Chorus Girls by Animal Liberation Orchestra

[William Cheswick]

Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner. From long ago, really the first cyberpunk book. Holds up pretty well.

[SRG]

He was more respected as an author than he was successful.

A group of us SF types were sitting in a Birmingham curry house, Brunner to my right, and there was some background music playing. I turned to him and said, "John, do you recognise this?" "No." "It's a pop arrangement of the Mozart clarinet concerto". "You're right. You've now ruined it for me". I was at the 1995 Glasgow worldcon where Brunner died from a stroke.

[David Nieporent]

My media recommendation is Not Tucker Carlson.

[Frank Drackman]

Mine is Don Lemon, but only for the comedy

[Brett Bellmore]

Interesting that they were both disposed of at the same time, with as little warning, at two competing networks.

You can imagine some conversations going on between management, coordinated dumping of popular but troublesome talent.

[Frank Drackman]

You know Morning-Blow Scarborough's sweating (Did he tell you he was a Congressman??) these things always come in 3's

[Sarcastr0]

You could imagine it, but it's not too likely.

Show biz is show biz and the talent is only the talent; no more, no less.

[Bored Lawyer]

That's the news today. Show biz.

Maybe we can get Walter Cronkite to do some tap dancing.

[Sarcastr0]

Sucks, but that's the product people want and that's capitalism, baby.

I'd be all for a state-funded editorially independent media group, a la BBC or the NPR/PBS before the right started going after it.

In the meantime, all you can do is check everything for countervailing facts and opinions and do what you can.

[Brett Bellmore]

Reminds me a bit of what happened with Mark Scott back in Detroit. The guy was an AM talk radio host, very popular. He gave a public talk, it ended up being standing room only. So he gave another, same result. It reached the point where he was over-filling convention venues. And that's not easy to do in Detroit!

Well, his contract renewal was coming up, and a competing station offered him a small fortune to move over to them. His home station couldn't match it, so he took it.

Then they told him to take a hike, they had exclusive rights to him in that market, and had no plans to give him one second on the air. They'd spent all that money just to silence him!

He had to move out of state for several years to keep working.

Sometimes stations have higher priorities than ratings or money.

[Sarcastr0]

Or, it was a ratings maintenance move.

Wikipedia has this: "He became a radio host on AM-1270 WXYZ (later WXYT after the station changed hands), starting in 1980 through the late 1990s...
After WXYT changed format to an all Sports Talk station, Scott pioneered the use of the internet as a broadcast media by continuing his show on-line. "

You sure you have your facts straight?

I know you think corporations put ideology over profits regularly, but I have no idea what the sky looks like in your universe.

[Brett Bellmore]

I lived near Detroit at the time, regularly listened to his show, and attended at least one of those gatherings, so, yeah, I do have the story right.

Here's his return broadcast, when that exclusive contract expired, and he was able to return.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, lots of superior radio guys get sidetracked because they won't or can't deliver the flavor less-superior supervisors prefer. Happens all the time. At any given moment, you could round up a cast of out-of-work radio geniuses and beat all the competition hollow. But that wouldn't mean they would draw the audience their ex-supervisors wanted prioritized.

Broadcasting is publishing, and publishing is audience curation.

[Absaroka]

"and had no plans to give him one second on the air."

There are alternative versions. One is the obit posted on 'The Mark Scott Project', which bills itself as 'Dedicated to Preserving the Broadcasts of Radio Talk Show Host Mark Scott'. Their version is:

"Scott’s first stay at WXYT ended in October 1987 when he and the new owners couldn’t agree on a contract. He was lured to WWJ-AM (950) but lasted only eight days there."

[Absaroka]

Another is a thread on freerepublic.com whist says:

"His work on WXYT was ground-breaking. He was lured to another Detroit powerhouse, only to get himself fired about a week later, if memory serves."

Alas, no mention of what caused the firing, but "had no plans to give him one second on the air" seems to be in dispute.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I was going by what he said, maybe his view of things was somewhat biased.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I'm old enough to remember when TV news was more than show biz. In the mid-20th century, plenty of TV news people were former news gatherers and press writers, and good ones. For a few decades journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, and quite a few others held the capitalist inclinations of the TV industry at bay, extorting from network producers enough hands-off independence to keep delivering news-first programming.

The advantages the news guys had was that their shows were profitable, and prestigious. The disadvantage was that they were less profitable than news-lite, entertainment-oriented broadcasting promised to be.

As that especially-talented generation aged out, after ceaseless rear-guard confrontations with management that most folks never saw or heard about, they got replaced with entertainment-first pap, even before the internet came along to turn the news business into the public liability the nation struggles against today.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Lemon wasn't popular, lol

[Frank Drackman]

He was "Popular" in the way Ed Woods movies were "Popular"

[Glaucomatose]

I don’t know of any CNN watcher who gave a fig about Don Lemon. Outside of Anderson Cooper, there’s no personality at CNN who people care about all that much.

[Frank Drackman]

Poppy Harlow's not bad to look at, as Lemon would say though, she's past her "Prime"

[David Nieporent]

You can imagine some conversations going on between management, coordinated dumping of popular but troublesome talent.

You can. No reasonable person could.

[Dr. Ed 2]

My guess is that Tucker isn't gone.

You'd have to be blind not to have seen this coming -- Fox News became Faux News after the 2020 election, if he doesn't run for Senator (which I hope he does), you'll see Tucker show up somewhere else. Methinks he built that studio in Bryant Pond for a reason...

[Nelson]

That would be great for the Ds. If he runs in Florida, he would make it a tight race. If he moved his residence to Maine, he would get blown out. He would fail in politics and he has a fervent base in entertainment. As long as he doesn't have to be accurate or factual, he'll stay in "news", probably at NewsMax or OANN.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I was thinking Maine -- he'd be running against an 80-year old Angus King whom everyone's pretty much forgotten, and he'd be running from the 2nd district, Real Maine.

[Orbital Mechanic]

So Tucker Carlson finally crossed some line somewhere and got his ass fired. He thought he was a god there at Fox News. Management had other ideas. And, of course, anything Trump touches dies.

I wish I could call this a win but the Fox News fan base will be just as stupid tomorrow as they were yesterday.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

People who speak out against the State and Permanent War should be fired!

Sincerely,

Democrats Everywhere

[Bored Lawyer]

Don Lemon was also fired on the same day. That has a kind of yin and yang, or matter-antimatter character to it.

[Estragon]

For some reason this news has filled me with existential dread today. Whatever Mr. Carlson gets into next, it will almost certainly be worse than hosting a stupid cable TV show only watched by old people. We haven’t heard the last of Lord Haw-Haw, I suspect.

As for Don Lemon— who is that again?

[Frank Drackman]

The guy who wondered if the Malaysian Airliner had fallen into a "Black Hole" when it's obvious it landed on Guam and caused the Island to capsize.

[Kazinski]

Yeah, here is Larry Corriea the SF authors take:

"I am seeing a lot of people not really understanding today’s events in cable news. Ha ha. Tucker Carlson is such a loser. Big dummy got fired!

That shows a very boomer era understanding of media consumption and overestimation of the power of a traditional news channel.

He didn’t need Fox. The last I saw his contract there was something like cheap, which is chump change to a guy with a reliable audience in the millions every night.

Tucker Carlson is now going to go sign a Joe Rogan size contract on a streaming service. He will make the most money of any news broadcaster in history and probdbly do so by an insane margin.

Meanwhile Don Lemon is a relative non entity. He won’t bring much of an audience with him wherever he goes.

One of these two will get a pay cut. The other is going to make orders of magnitude more money, and has the investment potential to boost any media corporation he signs with into a very competitive sphere.

And I don’t even watch Fox News at all, nor do I care about Tucker Carlson. But if you are too blinded by goofy partisan point scoring to grasp the business implications of this, it’s a bad look, but it ain’t my problem."

I don't watch Carlson or Lemon either, but when Carlson makes news its the kind that tends to drive eyeballs, when Lemon makes news it causes cringe.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Anybody who describes Tucker Carlson as a news broadcaster is a disingenuous clown. Anyone who finds such a person credible is a bigger dope.

Other than that, great comment!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Tucker Carlson didn't need Fox? Carlson will benefit -- in stature and reach, especially -- from being dumped by Fox?

Did Bill O'Reilly?

Megyn Kelly?

Glenn Beck?

Why would anyone expect Carlson to differ?

Is he digging out the bow-ties?

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, Fox stock is down 5% today -- and that's before any announcement of how many subscribers Fox News lost with this.

A good chunk of the Fox News fan base has been cut loose and is available for someone else (eg One America News) to pick up.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Carlson had a considerable hand in making the Fox base stupid. I'm sure Bellmore never watched Fox, but somehow his arguments here constantly echoed themes pioneered by Carlson to instupidate the Fox base. Same style too, outlandish what-about conspiracy theories to change the subject at every turn. I'm sure it was all coincidence. Like everyone else I was raised on the old nostrum, "Deficient minds think alike." Or was it something else?

[Kazinski]

You’d be surprised at the people that follow Carlson and thing he’s on to something, including the poll leading declared Democratic candidate:

“ Fox fires @TuckerCarlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers. Carlson’s breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV’s two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless. For many years, Tucker has had the nation’s biggest audience averaging 3.5 million — 10 times the size of CNN. Fox just demonstrated the terrifying power of Big Pharma.“

– Robert F Kennedy Jr.
https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1650550341027475479

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, you haven't been instupidated yourself, have you?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The people who follow Carlson and think he is "on to something" are a shambling collection of delusional misfits, poorly educated racists, downscale immigrant-haters, disaffected clingers, superstitious gay-bashers, QAnon fans, culture war debris, and people who hate modern America to the point of insurrection.

Carlson "respected his audience" by feeding those losers a stream of content he knew to be white grievance-saturated bullshit.

Maybe he'll turn up at the Volokh Conspiracy next!

[Kazinski]

Word is one of the Murdoch's ordered that he stop showing Jan.6th footage.

I don't know but it could be.

I do know Elon has invited him to do a show on Twitter.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Intellectuals and Race, by Thomas Sowell.

[PeteRR]

History professor John Maddox Roberts wrote a series of novels. Historic fiction set in the late Roman Republic. Our protagonist is a young plebeian noble. The books are part murder mystery, part introduction of the events that brought down the republic, and more than anything a real immersion into life in that time period. 14 books total. SPQR is the series. Book one is The King's Gambit.

Highly recommended.

[Frank Drackman]

That actually sounds good, hated that the HBO "Rome" series ended just when things were getting interesting.
"I Claudius" wasn't bad if you overlook the cheap 1970's sets.

[SRG]

Better than "not bad", and some superb acting - and Patrick Stewart with hair (as Sejanus).

I was disappointed that they didn't try to adapt Count Belisarius as well.

[Paladin_44]

"The Passenger" by Cormac McCarthy.
Actually, anything by Cormac McCarthy...

[hobie]

Thanks for reminding me. I keep forgetting to buy that book.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Last book ordered. Haven't started reading it yet.

The Killing of Uncle Sam: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1645720047/reasonmagazinea-20/

Book im currently reading:

The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great https://a.co/d/0rO6vdI

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'd like to add that my kids can't get enough of Hank the Cowdog.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Babylon 5

Best Science Fiction ever put on television.

(Look online for watching order)

“Opening narration, season 4:

Lennier : It was the year of fire,
Zack Allan : The year of destruction,
Citizen G'Kar : The year we took back what was ours.
Lyta Alexander : It was the year of rebirth,
Ambassador Vir Cotto : The year of great sadness,
Marcus Cole : The year of pain,
Delenn : And a year of joy.
Ambassador Londo Mollari : It was a new age.
Dr. Stephen Franklin : It was the end of history.
Susan Ivanova : It was the year everything changed.
Michael Garibaldi : The year is 2261.
Captain John Sheridan : The place, Babylon 5.”

[dwb68]

Mine, ones its edited lol. But I guarantee none of you will like it: A strong conservative female gunslinger who's a lesbian and wants a nuclear family and kids. Its set in the future, post nonsensalyptic.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Rarely did one percent of Americans watch Tucker Carlson. (The network news programs routinely outperformed Carlson* two, three, or four to one, but not one of them regularly reached five percent of the American public.) The entirety of cable news seems far less important to me than most people seem to perceive.

* and the rest of Fox, making Fox's "We're Number One" boast hollow and disingenuous

[BravoCharlieDelta]

No one cares. Your cultural betters are engaging in culture.

[Frank Drackman]

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This blog's fans seem to be heavy into science fiction, Jordan Peterson, and Chabad.

That's "culture" every bit as much as NASCAR, rattlesnake-juggling exhibitions, 'rasslin matches, televangelists, Confederacy reenactments, Fox News, faith healers, and gun bashes are culture.

[Fort Worth Lawyer]

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. Fantastic book. One of the best I've ever read.

[Frank Drackman]

Definitely not "SFW" but "Caligula" holds up (I want me one of those "Head Chopping Off Machines" (No, not a guillotine, some kind of huge wall with a rotating blade at the bottom)

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Interesting story on that — while before my time, memory is that it beat an obscenity rap by arguing that it was a historic portrayal and got college professors to so testify.

Then as no theater would show it, they started leasing them and running it there.

Here's your head cutting machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TJNXtQ-4SU

[Pettifogger]

Movies that may be obscure but that are exceptional are Dancer, Texas and Lone Star (Chris Cooper, Matthew McConaghy, and Kris Kristofferson).

[Stephen Lathrop]

Good movie: The Oufit. Mark Rylance is superb. Crime movie, with twists and perplexities. Made on a low budget, with emphasis on acting, psychological subtlety, and some good lighting. You may find yourself wanting to watch it twice, to be sure you understand everything that happened.

[SRG]

I saw it last week. I had become increasingly tired of all Mark Rylance’s affectations in his recent films, but he was superb in this. It’s basically a stage play filmed.