Tag: genre

2021ii8, Monday: The intellectual dishonesty of pushing buttons.

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New rule: if you use a dog-whistle, I’ll stop reading. Fair enough? And a lovely rabbit-hole for word-loving geeks.

Short thought: By way of a tangential follow-on to the stuff on tools for thinking the other week, there’s been something else on my mind. And I recognise that I may be about to sound doctrinaire, narrow-minded, closed.

Which is ironic. Because that’s more or less the charge I’d level at the people to whom, I’ve decided, I’m not going to bother reading any more. 

That’s not entirely correct. I’m not shutting people out altogether because of something they write. I’m shutting the particular thing they’ve just written. 

Because I’m tired – so tired – of push-button words. You know: Woke. PC. Gammon. Karen. Cancel culture. TERF. And so many others.

(A point of clarification. This is about the use of the label. Not whether I agree or disagree with the underlying position it (mis)represents. As I hope I’ll make clear in a second.)

I think it started with “Remoaner”. Yes, I voted Remain. And I still think Brexit was a bad idea, done worse. (As with all things in UK politics, there’s a Yes Minister quote to fit the moment: “If you’re going to do this damn’ silly thing, don’t do it in this damn’ silly way.”) But among my friends are those who think otherwise, and we’ve come to understand and respect (and even care for) each other better because we started from assuming we were all acting in good faith. Still, every time I read a piece of writing with the word “Remoaner” in it, I just stopped reading. I thought: you’re pushing your readers’ buttons. You want them immediately to leap over the pros and cons, and move right on to an assumption of idiocy and bad faith on the other side. And that’s just wrong. 

And when I started thinking like that, I realised that so much of modern political discourse, on all parts of the political spectrum, was doing the same thing. In sports analogy terms, playing the person not the ball. Pushing the button, delivering a nice big dose of we’re-right-they’re-wrong dopamine, rather than actually trying to make the case. It’s not dog-whistling, because it’s not even bothering to hide in plain sight. No; it’s waving other views aside. Apply label, turn off brain, stop listening, assume the worst. 

In a way, it’s akin to what I’ve long regarded as the ultimate intellectual dishonesty: the straw-man fallacy. Even those not familiar with the term will recognise it straight away: the (deliberate) misrepresentation of someone else’s view so it’s easier to (ostensibly) refute. A classic example: we’re debating the notion of a just war. I say: I have an ethical problem with violence . You say: “So you’d be happy to watch your family get killed and do nothing about it.” You’ve taken my position to an absurd extreme, so as to make a case against something I’ve never said and don’t think. (It’s only a couple of years ago that I learned of the opposite, steel-manning. Which I love. As a barrister, it’s the key to winning a case: construct the best possible version of the other side’s argument first, and only then find a way of beating it. When I lose a case, it’s often because – on reflection afterwards – I realise I didn’t do that as well as I should have.)

Labelling someone as “woke”, for example (or, a few years ago, an SJW; before that, PC), is similar. You freight their position with a bunch of assumptions that you know “your” side will recognise and abhor. Then you go straight on to argue against that caricature rather than against reality. It’s a fundamentally dishonest way of doing things, whether you mean it that way or not. It short-circuits genuine thought and engagement, in favour of scoring points and pointing fingers. And whether it’s from the right, the left or somewhere in between, it’s abhorrent.

So that’s my rule. When I encounter a push-button word, I stop reading. 

I know it’ll mean I don’t read some things that perhaps I should. But attention is a very limited resource, for us all. And if you’re going to waste mine (and others’) by pushing buttons instead of engaging brains, I can’t be bothered with you. I’m going to turn the page. Close the tab. Move on. And read someone I disagree with who’s got more integrity.

Someone is right on the internet: Geeks like words. It’s part of who we are, on the whole. We have whole languages sometimes (conlangs – love ‘em). But even when we don’t, any fandom has words, phrases, which carry in their etymology histories of how our genres have evolved that we’re probably not aware of in the slightest. 

Which is where the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction comes in. Find a word or phrase. Jump drive. Nanobot. Sentient. And trace it through writings and media over the past 70 years or more. It’s a lovely rabbit-hole. Enjoy.

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2021i25, Monday: sticking the landing.

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Approaching the last episode of a long-running TV show is terrifying. Will it be a TNG – or a BSG? A fitting end or a final insult?

Rest in peace: Sorry. Couldn’t let this go by without marking it. Mira Furlan, who was a star (and, with Andreas Katsulas, very much the soul) of Babylon 5, died last week. Nothing much to say that she – or J Michael Straczynski – hasn’t already said. Except thanks. From the depths of my heart, thanks. And may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Short thought: Anyone who watches TV knows that feeling. A series you love, one that’s taken you places full of emotion, apprehension and excitement, one whose characters have grown and changed and learned and sometimes died, is drawing to an end.

And you’re scared. Because you don’t know if they’re going to stick the landing or not.

Put simply: is it going to be a Next Generation, or a Battlestar Galactica? Will it leave you feeling fulfilled or angry?

Some do both to different people. The Sopranos is probably the greatest case in point: the sudden cut at the end of the final show, with no-one knowing what actually happened, divided fans squarely down the middle. (I never really got into the Sopranos, so this is academic. But I empathise.)

From a genre perspective, I’ve been lucky. DS9 stuck the landing – indeed, the back half of its final season was almost uniformly wonderful. Babylon 5’s final season was patchy, but its last episode was transcendent. Fringe took its aggressive weirdness to the edge, and won. Person of Interest, Orphan Black, Elementary, the Good Place: they all went out on top. 

(Let’s not talk about the shows cut off in their prime. Firefly, Dark Angel: I’m thinking of you, with tears in my eyes.)

So the final season of Star Wars: the Clone Wars was a worry. With the weight of Star Wars mythology to navigate, and Revenge of the Sith ready to ruin everything if it got the chance, would they manage it?

Short answer. Yes. Gloriously. Tragically. With heart and soul.

As always, no spoilers – except to say that anyone with a soft spot for Ahsoka Tano (in other words, all right-thinking people everywhere) is going to love it. The final four episodes in particular comprise in effect one awe-inspiring 90-minute animated feature, that gets almost everything – direction, music, script, character and pace – just right.

If Star Wars means anything to you, anything at all: watch it. 

And be prepared for a tear or two. No shame in that.

Someone is right on the internet: Well, technically someone is good on the internet. 

I mentioned a week or two ago the glory that is RSS – and mentioned too my use of Feedbin as a back-end service to look after my RSS needs. I also mentioned Reeder as my feed-reading app of choice.

That wasn’t always the way. The grandparent of all Mac (and later iOS) RSS apps was NetNewsWire, developed by Brent Simmons. It was a lovely app, and like many other old-line Mac users it was my staple. Brent moved on to other things in around 2011 and sold NNW. And somewhere along the line I discovered Reeder and switched. But NNW was still my RSS gateway app, and Brent is one of the old guard of generous, wonderful developers, whose work I continue to follow with interest and gratitude. 

Brent’s “work” domain was always ranchero.com. He’d never bought NetNewsWire.com back in the day; and so, as humans will, someone else bought it – probably in the hope of making a quick buck flogging it to him. Brent never did so.

But in an instance of truly joy-inspiring humanity Ben Ubois – the creator of Feedbin – has acquired it, and given it to Brent for free. Don’t know what his motive was; but the sight of one RSS pioneer doing something beautiful for another is good for the soul.

I’ve always believed we all have better angels, if we choose to let them fly. Believing that is what keeps me sane, particularly over the past half-decade or so when it’s been a bit tougher to hold onto that article of faith. Things like this restore that faith. Blessings.

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2021i22, Friday: floating cats.

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It’s Friday. It’s been a long week. So seriousness can go hang.

Short thought/good read: Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a huge book. A quarter of the way through, it’s proving to be a fine one, too. 

In line with my normal principles, no spoilers; and there are reviews aplenty that a quick web search will produce. (There’s also the first several chapters online to read, and to listen to. So no need to dive in and purchase without tasting first.)

But there’s one lovely bit that came at a perfect time. Our kitten, Iroh, is proving to be an acrobat par excellence. Her ability to jump is remarkable; it involved earlier this week an almost parkour-like bounce off a wall to get to the top of a bookcase. And as for her tendency to jump up and grab door handles with both front paws: well, no-one’s yet told her that she doesn’t have opposable thumbs, clearly.

Which is why daughter and I idly speculated a couple of days ago about whether cats would make good space pets. Their grace, balance and agility would be unbeatable in micro-gravity, we mused.

Blow me down if Paolini doesn’t then, the very next day, produce a cat in a starship, grabbing a ladder with its paws and launching itself like an arrow down a corridor. Fantastic stuff. 

If only it wasn’t called Mr Fuzzypants, puir wee beastie. But you can’t have everything. 

Someone is right on the internet: This is just beautiful. For Japanophiles like me, Spoon & Tamago (which means “egg”, incidentally) is a lovely site, bringing all kinds of Japanese artistic and cultural wonder to our lives. 

And not just artistry. Natural wonder comes, too. As with these fabulous pix from Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido. I had no idea this freezing phenomenon was possible. And my life is the better for knowing it is.

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2021i15, Friday: Thank God it wasn’t me.

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In (virtual) court for a 10 day hearing at the moment. So again I’ll be brief. A wrenching judgment, and a lovely bit of writing about a friendly neighbourhood hero.

Short thought: Whenever I’m talking to law students, I always say: read the judgments. Not just the brief snippets with the authoritative bit you want to quote. No; read the whole thing when you can. Partly for the context, of course. (And because every advocate has, albeit hopefully only once, done that thing where you find a fabulous quote, but overlook the perfect way of distinguishing and thus destroying your point two paragraphs further down. Which, of course, your opponent finds and seizes upon to devastating effect.) But mostly because the best judgments are some of the most phenomenal legal writing you’ll ever be exposed to; an education in themselves.

Put differently – when I read a really good one, I find myself thinking: I want to write like that when I grow up.

But every so often comes a judgment… and you’re so, so glad you weren’t the one who had to write it. Guy’s & Thomas’s v Pippa Knight [2021] EWHC 25 (Fam) is one such.

The story’s heart-wrenching. Pippa is five years old. She is on a ventilator. She suffered brain damage in 2017. Her father took his own life shortly afterwards, having already lost a child to meningitis. She can’t breathe on her own, is unconscious and has lost most function. The hospital went to court to ask whether it should withdraw life-sustaining care. 

I can’t do anything approaching justice to the care, consideration and professionalism of Poole J in reaching and writing this judgment. Katie Gollop QC has done a fine job of describing the key points. Read her twitter stream. Read the judgment. It will break your heart. But maybe some things should.

There’ll be those who say Poole J was wrong. That care should not, or should never, be withdrawn. There’ll even, perhaps, be those who see him as a monster, or as having committed a grievous sin. (On which subject: I’m a person of faith – and I have zero sympathy with, and some anger for, those who use tragic cases for politico-religious ends. I don’t think anyone has here, thank God. But still.)

But I see none of that. I see a fine jurist, facing a heart-rending choice with no good or easy answers, doing his level best to do what the law – and, I think, morality – requires: to put the child first. While still respecting and highlighting the awe-inspiring love and dedication that her mother has shown her throughout her life.

I want to write like him when I grow up. Just not about that. Please God, not about that.

Someone is right on the internet: I’m a sucker for Spider-Man. I sometimes find superheros somewhat annoying (although that doesn’t stop me watching Marvel movies, or the Arrowverse DC TV shows). But Spidey has always been special.

Like so many others, I watched Into the Spider-Verse with gratitude, wonder and delight. Not just because in Miles Morales there’s a whole new generation reflected in the best and most demotic hero ever. But simply because of the joy, craft, art and genius – and love! – that went into making it. It’s a genuine masterpiece. 

And I have to admit, Tom Holland does an excellent job in the new MCU ones.

But every so often I go back to the 2002 film that got Spidey onto the silver screen and kept him there. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man creaks a bit at the edges, and the effects – well, you have to work a bit not to see the seams. But the film, and Tobey Maguire in it, get Peter Parker right. Like no other film truly has. (The sequel did too. More so, perhaps. Let’s agree not to talk about the third one, OK?)

The AV Club, home of some of the best culture and genre writing around (its TV reviews are to die for), in one of its long-running series (this one looks at the highest-grossing movie in the US for each year, starting in 1960), has made it to 2002. And their write-up on Spider-Man gets it just right.

Won’t say more. If the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” means a thing to you, go and read it. You won’t regret it. And then, if you’re like me, you’ll want to push off and watch it. All over again.

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2020xii30, Wednesday: Soul food.

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Without the sustenance of something we do for our souls – even if we’re bad at it – we lose something vital to being human.

Short thought: Everyone needs a hinterland. Something (or indeed somewhere) they can retreat into: as an escape, or for solace, or simply for the sake of sanity. It feeds a soul which can otherwise wither and die.

My soul food? Music. Always has been. I’m a (poor) piano player, helped somewhat over the past year by my 2019 birthday present to myself: a subscription to a wonderful jazz and improvisation teacher called Willie Myette (his site, Jazzedge, has been a haven).

(And I’m getting better. Very slowly. And re-learning the essential lesson: to get good at anything, you have to accept being pretty bad for a while.)

But honestly, I’ve realised it doesn’t matter what you do. Play something. Write. Build. Make. Walk, or run, or ride, whether with music/podcast/audiobook or in blissful silence. Just something that’s not passive consumption or work. Something that can become a habit of self-nurture.

(I’m not including reading in the above. Because – call me an elitist; please, go ahead – I regard reading long-form things, by which I mean anything long enough to have some structure and thought behind it, as something as fundamental as breathing. Not so much soul food as a basic necessity.)

If the past year of strange days that seem to stretch for weeks, and months that have fled by like days, has taught me anything, it’s that without regular intakes of soul food we lose something critical to being human.

So find your sustenance. Treasure it. Be bad at it for as long as it takes. Your soul will thank you.

Nothing wrong with a re-read: I’ve never understood those who say books aren’t worth reading twice. I love a good series, and there’s something special about re-reading the last one (or, for TV, re-watching it) before getting into something new. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin is on my Kindle maybe-next-up list, and I’ve nearly finished a re-run through its predecessor, Children of Time. It’s awe-inspiring; a consideration of genuinely alien thought and culture in the grand tradition of CJ Cherryh’s Chanur and Foreigner books. (Again with the series…) It doesn’t hurt that its non-human species reminds me of my favourite gaming alien race of all time, Traveller’s Hivers. They were always such fun to play…

Someone is right on the internet: With thanks to Anne Helen Peterson, Anne Applebaum writes about collaborators in The Atlantic. A long read, talking about the US GOP and dealing with the use of strategic and voluminous lies. But worthwhile.

Things I wrote: some time ago I looked at bundling apps for barristers. A good one would be the holy grail. So no surprise there isn’t one. Not yet. I’d favoured one; but now I’m reconsidering. And I’ve committed hard cash too.

(Don’t forget – if visiting a site doesn’t float your boat, you can get this stuff in your inbox. Subscribe at https://remoteaccessbar.substack.com.)