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I enjoyed Amazon’s Rings of Power series to such an extent that it actually delayed the watching of my most anticipated Star Wars series to come to episodic television. Some fans, though, had problems with the way the series handled canon. Adrienne Westenfeld writes about how the series was actually very clever in its intersections with canonical material.

To be clear, the Star Trek and Lord of the Rings fandoms are not without their own share of bad behavior—and for some fans, even simply enlarging the canon is still a bridge too far. “But Gandalf wasn’t in Middle-earth during the Second Age,” these persnickety purists argue, taking aim at the all-too likely theory that Rings of Power’s mysterious Stranger is, in fact, the notorious wizard Gandalf. Sure, Gandalf the Grey had yet to arrive in Middle-earth during the Second Age setting encompassed by Rings of Power, but during this timeline, he was knocking around the continent by other names in other forms. Where canon-obsessed fans might see a limitation, any good storyteller would see a tantalizing mystery. Tolkien himself often amended and expanded his own work, so why shouldn’t Rings of Power take some creative liberties, especially with the author’s gray areas? Isn’t it more fun to think about what could be true, rather than what must be true?

Westenfeld’s point that it can be interesting to color in the gray areas is well taken. I think that the creators have to be judicious enough not to feel chained to the idea of filling in every piece of history, though. Some things are better left to the imagination.¹

→ The Problem With Canon | Esquire
1. See the Star Wars prequels. ↩︎
// 7:17 PM, Nov 22

This Time, I'm Out

After 14 years and over 10,000 tweets, I’ve deactivated my Twitter account. I’ve been critical of Twitter for a long time now without actually leaving the platform. Obviously, things have changed rapidly for the worse. When, on Saturday, Elon Musk let DT back on the platform, while including a little blasphemy with his announcement, that was the last straw. Almost all of my tweets were syndicated from Micro.blog, anyway. I thought about pinning a tweet that pointed to where you can find me now, but if you have been following my account for any length of time, you already have that information.

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// 9:41 PM, Nov 21

I think one of the things I find most impressive about Micro.blog is how it effectively productizes technology that can be painful on its own (Hugo, Webmentions, etc.).

// 7:50 PM, Nov 21

Another in a series of outrageous claims made by fruit vendors. These raspberries are “limited edition.”

// 6:30 PM, Nov 19

For whatever reason, a couple of days ago, Jonah decided that he was scared of me for a bit. He snapped out of it by the end of the day, but it was strange.

Happy Caturday.

// 12:12 PM, Nov 19

Star Wars: An Epic Poem

Jack Mitchell brings to us The Odyssey of Star Wars, an epic poem in blank verse.

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// 6:30 PM, Nov 17

We Rock Harder Than You Ever Knew

This year has been rich with new music. I’ve been compiling a playlist of Now Sounds all year long, and wanted to share some with you all. The problem with doing that is that everyone is using a different music service for streaming. Well, okay, most people are using Spotify, but don’t even get me started on that company. Bandcamp is a universal service through which anyone can access streaming music and then has the option to buy that music, either through physical merchandise or digital tracks.

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// 5:50 PM, Nov 15

Does Technology Make Tradition Impossible?

Kristen Sanders analyzes the claim made by Jon Askonas that conservatism has failed and cannot survive the ascendancy of technology.

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// 5:00 PM, Nov 15

Skateboard Eyes

Austin Kleon writes about drawing at a skatepark and learning from the culture of skateboarding.

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// 7:43 PM, Nov 13

So, the Christmas decorations are up. If you think it’s too early, you’ll have to take that up with my lady friend.

// 5:15 PM, Nov 12

It feels weird to listen to Metallica while doing something as domestic as ironing.

“Master of puppets, I’m ironing my pants! Working out wrinkles and straightening things!”

// 9:24 AM, Nov 6

The Twitter Snap

It wasn’t a well-kept secret that Elon Musk had layoffs in mind from Twitter the moment he started thinking about acquiring the social network. The size and haste of the layoffs was a bit shocking, though. Approximately 50% of the company gone within a week of the acquisition is something to marvel at. It’s like Musk is Thanos performing “the snap” (also officially referred to as “The Decimation”) on his very own universe.

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// 3:38 PM, Nov 5

When Love Is Gone

Disney+ is releasing the uncut version of The Muppet Christmas Carol. The song “When Love Is Gone” (AKA, the breakup song) was originally on the VHS version of the movie that I remember from when I was younger. I always miss hearing it in the later versions from which it was cut. The song was written by Paul Williams, who also wrote “Rainbow Connection,” which may explain why I like it so much.

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// 7:26 PM, Nov 3

Too small to fail.

// 5:59 PM, Nov 2

Everything Is Awesome

I saw a cool picture of shoes on Micro.blog the other day, and it brought up a memory of a few years ago.

Girls are awesome

Omar https://www.omrrc.com/2022/10/29/girls-are-awesome.html

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// 6:00 PM, Nov 1

Pac-Man about to have lunch. AWS booth: All Things Open

// 5:23 PM, Nov 1

Thirty-fifth anniversary.

// 8:04 PM, Oct 31

I Quickly Eat My Words

Welp, it looks like things are already going south on Twitter. For the first time (maybe ever), someone I follow liked a racist tweet. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come, I thought as I unfollowed the individual who boosted the tweet. Then I saw that Elon Musk was promoting a conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi on Twitter.¹ So, this is starting off well.

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// 3:25 PM, Oct 30

My iPad is too old to run Stage Manager (it’s last year’s model — groan). I’m loving it on the Mac, though. It keeps the pile of windows that ordinarily clutter up my desktop nice and tidy. My lady friend appreciates it, as well.

// 9:41 PM, Oct 29

Your Musk, My Tusks

So, the deal has finally going through, and Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter. The first thing I wanted to do when I heard this was check on those who swore to get rid of Twitter if Musk ran it. Would they have fidelity to their promises? My lady friend pulled down all of her data and said she was cancelling her account. This would be a big move for her, as she is a fairly voracious Twitter consumer. No more cute cat videos or political snark. Predictably, when I asked her about it again, she just hadn’t gotten around to it and then the next time I saw her, she was doomscrolling on the site.

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// 9:13 PM, Oct 29

I know we’re all somewhat prone to hyperbole these days, but I feel like labeling a bag of apples as having “infinite possibilities” is taking things a bit too far.

// 11:35 AM, Oct 29

It’s nice to see HEY World getting bio text and pinned posts in today’s HEY update.

// 8:16 PM, Oct 27

I wasn’t using Obsidian very much anymore, and then they released 1.0. Wow, this app has come a long way. It feels a lot more solid and closer to native now. There are some pretty easily detectable bugs lingering, but you can maintain a beautiful digital garden.

// 6:15 PM, Oct 27

The End Of A Musical Era

I fantasize about going back to the click wheel iPod, loading it up and going to classes at NCSU. Its screen was a delight, its interface and minimal and pragmatic. I loved it. There were edges where now there are none. Amit Gawande writes about having lost something when Apple killed the iPod. When you can have everything, everything has less value.

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// 6:00 PM, Oct 27

Text Manipulation

Stephan Ango, who created the excellent new default Obsidian theme for the 1.0 launch (as well as the Minimal theme) writes about how text manipulation tools are in their infancy. Ango envisions that there will be much more we can do with text, in the same way that we can do so much with photos now.

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// 4:45 PM, Oct 26