Mixed Signals

Weird first workday of the second half of the year. Days like this, similar to Black Friday and the oddball singleton days before or after Christmas or New Years most years, are what I refer to as "Schrödinger’s holidays." They're there but they're not there. The bankers and civil servants that get every minor civic holiday off, from July 4th to Sugarplum Bumpkin Day, are suddenly the ones who have to work when the rest of us can comfortably take the day off. There's mail being delivered and picked up, and I just got process served on the Floating Crap Game of a Business that I filed a small claim against and spent a failfilled hour last month trying to serve myself. More on that story after the court date next week, but for now,.... a variety of transmissions to be reviewed and interpreted:

*Login error

Not that very long ago, Twitter brought the news to a short-attention-span nation, with media outlets both monitoring and using the service for real-timey reporting of things as they happened. Since the MuskRat took it over, though? Twitter is more likely to be making the news, and rarely in a good way. Witness, among others: the debacle of the "blue checkmark" verification system going from trustworthy to expensive and bullshitty; the site's welcoming-back of dozens of lunatic voices and banhammering of anyone not firmly on Elon's crazy train, the failed launches of both rocket ships and presidential campaigns in Muskworld; and, sometime last month, deciding that the term "cisgender" and its progeny are a form of "hate speech" in his eyes that can get you kicked off the Twitterplanet if you refer to yourself as one.

Still, we're now into the second half of Year One of the Reign of Emperor Elon the First and Only, so of course something new had to piss everybody off. Right on schedule, it did exactly that. July 1st also brings the start of free agency in NHL hockey, and while the Sabres weren't expected to be big players in it, they did make a few signings for their own club and several other comings and goings affecting their Amerks affiliate. Late Saturday, before turning in, I checked the Amerks' Twitter feed on my phone to see what was what, and got this:

I'd get this at times on some social sites- Facebook, IG, and even Old Twitter would do it- to try to force you into signing up or logging in (with all the data about you that gets them) if you wanted to look at multiple items on a site. It was not a Thing for just wanting to look at a single link pointing to one of those sites. On my laptop, I'd occasionally try to follow a series of Tweets during a Bills game, and after a few I'd get that same screen. So I succumbed and checked the "sign in with Google" option, thinking that would just let me in using my G-redentials. No, it was a mere gateway to setting up an actual Twitter account, with an email address provided, a user name (pretty much anything and it doesn't have to be unique), a "handle" (those things next to an at-sign, yeah, @, which this site would hyperlink if I did it here so I won't, which does have to be unique), and a required "follow" of at least one existing user. I picked Joe Biden for that, my gmail address for the email, for a handle I att-ed "IDONTUSETWITTER" (one of those capital I's is a lower-case ell, I forget which), and for my user name, joining the blue-checkmark protest, I went with the very popular at the time choice of "Elon Musk." I was hoping to get banned or limited from tweeting or following before I ever actually said anything on the site, which seemed consistent with Musk's view of free speech.

That signup on my laptop did not carry over to my phone, though, and I'm not about to login from there and give the Boy Genius access to my whole Apple universe. So I did what apparently millions of other non-member users have been doing the past three days, and got my information someplace else. The Amerks signed two goalies and wished their 2022-23 conference finalist netminder luck in his new gig in St. Louis. ESPN and other platforms will now adjust to the increased demand for real-time news bursts, and Twitterlike sites such as Mastodon just got a big boost in people wanting to abandon the MuskRat's sinking ship.

Three days into this new limited access, Boy Genius has backed off. A press release went out saying it's a "temporary emergency measure" because of a sudden massive amount of data scraping on the site. Ah, but it's data scraping that is now occurring only because of Boy Genius's decision to monetize access to API for the site, costing $42,000 a month now and not even working for those stupid enough to pay him. Already I'm hearing that newspeople are learning to rely on other sources for things they used to get through Tweet subscriptions.

Foot, bullet. Bullet, foot.

We'll have to see how "temporary" the temporariness is. Probably up there with the awesome power of the CEO he appointed after users voted him out last year; she wasn't even allowed to attend important meetings because of a noncompete from her last gig. Likely some will succumb and allow the logins; I haven't done it on my phone yet but I've got the account updated and ready to be banned if I do-



- while others are slowly adjusting to their new life AFK-



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* Hailing frequencies open, Captain.

I actually haven't heard the latest new Uhura SAY that yet- OR the just as tropey Captain, I'm frightened. I'm personally frightened of the new Christine Chapel, who seems more Ninja than Nurse in the Season 2 opener. What got me into the new season of Strange New Worlds, though, was another woman in the cast, not them or Number One or Snarky Navigator or KHANNNNNN's great great grandniece's second cousin's college roommate, but, but,....



The immortal Carol Kane. No, really, by all accounts she is immortal in this one, letting her be retconned into any saga before or since if writers so choose. She can pick on Pike AND Picard all they want. Now I just need Billy Crystal to come on in a cameo with her- Bye, boys, have fun storming the planet! And take off those red shirts if you don't want to get beamed back Mostly Dead!

Two episodes in, after missing most of the first series. Fun so far. Cast is a little too Wokefleet Academy, but points need to be made and they're making them all over. For the Fourth, I will get caught up with their Back In Time episode, which this franchise has generally done a good job with. Just no Q, please; I'm kinda done with him.

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*Morse code

Lastly, we're all now done with the franchise of police procedurals that began in 1987 with Inspector Morse and ended last night (but in 1972) with its lead character's sendoff in Endeavour. Significant spoilers begin two or three paragraphs down, so mind how you go from here.

A goofy meaningless minor spoiler, though, for those of us who are fans of a certain Jamestown band: Our Hero is investigating the first of several stiffs showing up in this final episode, and he utters this word to Max the erstwhile pathologist:



That was not a PBS promo for Natalie Merchant's local show next weekend; it's the answer to a crossword clue the dead man never got to finish: "Mother takes murderer back. Idiot. Six letters."

Max's comeback: "Whichever way you look at it, sooner or later we all end up six down and two across."

But serious spoilery, folks,....

Rocks fell. Nobody died- at least nobody on the Good Guy side. There were several characters created for this series whose absence had to be explained when the original Morse would arrive on Oxford quads 15 years later, but the one named Bright was simply aged out into a happy, if solitary, retirement with a wonderful soliloquy given to Anton Lesser at the end. As for those named Thursday, they sort-of collectively became Morse's "girlfriend who lives in Canada." One of the season/series-long arcs made it plausible that we would never hear of any of the Thursdays in the future past of 1987, and it did so without us actually witnessing Sam or Win or Fred or Joan actually demising before our eyes. Roger Allam did come close in a few moments, homaging several moments in the Morse finale where we actually did see the Chief Inspector fall and die, complete with Shaun Evans sending him off with the same two word farewell Goodbye, Sir that Lewis would use on him at the end of The Remorseful Day.

Ah, Lewis. We never see him here or anywhere in this series, but he does get a callforward. Robbie is indeed brother and son to the two Lewi found in various stages of dead in the first and second episodes of this final season. He is indeed already a copper, is taking responsibility for the arrangements for both of them. Future Lewis Kevin Whately would have turned 21 in 1972, so the timeline fits.

But the wrapup of this week's body count (four, I think) and the corrupt cop/lost and found brother/ biker gang (?!?) plots here were not the events of the day. Those were our moments of farewell to and among the cast, described in at least one review as "Several Funerals and a Wedding." Not only numerous homages to the nine years looking back and the 30-odd Morse episodes looking "forward," but scenes evoking current events (Nigel Farage makes a virtual appearance as the confessing captured villain of the piece), an empty-desk scene almost reminding me of the final moments of Barney Miller, and, maybe, a brief echo of the final moment of Tony Soprano.

( Right, here's where it gets REALLY Spoilery! )

The only thing I'm sure of in my own mind, though?

He shot a shot into the air, it fell to earth we know not where,
A bang did end Endeavour's course, but dot and dash still lead to....

Watch on YouTube

....Morse.