This will be a short, short, short post.
I’m sure enough of you out there have heard about the strike in Hollywood. If not, go here. My question is:
Where do I need to go to sign up to take their jobs? Yes, that’s a serious question. I’d be willing to take their jobs.
(Don’t click the read more, there is not more after this)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
Dr. Shaun Duke © 2010 - 2025. All Rights Reserved.
6 Responses
Oh it’s not a strike like that, silly. I mean, as if a mere strike could stop a real writer from writing …
It’d be a handy time to get block out of the way, though. 😀
I’ll still take their jobs…
I’m sure it would be ample time to send in a good script though. A network would look good having a new show come out when there is a strike going on…
But if u did that, you’d turn your back on your fellow writers.
What makes your blog so special by the way? I get no traffic at all. Patience is a virtue though.
Well, in all honesty, they are not my fellow writers for a very specific reason: none of the people except Joss Whedon has, as far as I can tell, written anything for TV that I’ve been interested in. Maybe there are some movie writers in there that have written some things I enjoy, but for the most part, I could care less. I don’t watch The Office or Heroes, or Bionic Woman, or pretty much anything on TV now except Family Guy and American Dad simply because nothing on TV is gripping enough to keep me from turning off the TV when commercials come on. It used to be that TV could keep me entertained–back when Nickelodeon was still good, when Cartoon Network rules, and when Disney still played their classics and had great programming… Now, I don’t watch TV. I haven’t sat down and really watched anything that wasn’t on On Demand or pre-recorded in over a year and a half now. So, for that reason I could really care less if they are mad that they aren’t getting enough money or whatever it is that they are complaining about because they have done very little for me as a viewer anyway. The only people I care about are the ones I know for certain have written great programming.
I don’t have any scripts, nor do I have anything that I think the American public would be willing to watch that I could turn into a script. Science fiction does very poorly on TV (I mean real science fiction, like space ships and the like…look at Firefly…it was cancelled even though it is possibly one of the greatest shows to ever grace the television). Alternately, fantasy does poorly too. I don’t write the type of comedy people would enjoy either because I don’t write the comedy that is on TV. None of it entertains me. I just don’t really fit into the whole media market as far as TV goes…I should make my own channel *grumbles* Though if a Hollywood company would like to give me a shot to write something I would in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d even direct it, that would be fun! There are thousands of writers out there that would gladly take their jobs if they aren’t willing to do it anymore. Nobody is forcing them to be writers. It’s a choice. You deal with it or get another profession. Novel writers aren’t treating all that great in a lot of cases either. Most writers can’t make a living doing what they love because the market doesn’t pay them to do so.
On a side note, to your other thing. What makes you think my blog is special? I can’t answer the question until I understand your reasoning :P.
Hey! The Office is hilarious! But I still think if one type of writer isn’t being treated fairly, another writer should care..
(And there is a petition for 90’s nickeledeon tv shows to come on DVD
And I meant that your blog is so popular.
It’s not that popular. There are a lot of places that get more traffic than I do :S. It just takes a while. I’ve had this blog for over a year now. I have around 40 subscribers and an average of around 50 visitors a day. Of those visitors, most don’t stick around very long. My blog is rather specialized. I only discuss genre fiction and things related to it, and I discuss my writing. Both are geared towards certain groups. I’m just glad to have as many subscribers as I do :P.