I thought it would be interesting to do a weekly blog post of all the remarkable things I saw or read on the internet in the past seven days, with my thoughts and/or reactions. If nothing else, it should be entertaining. Let’s try it out for a few weeks.
1) Proof that the internet has all the maturity of a horny teenager
Or at least Twitter:
2) Extra Sci Fi concludes the Martian Chronicles
Extra Sci Fi is turning out to be a really great YouTube series. They started with Frankenstein, then spent some time on William Gibson, and recently went through the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. They really do a good job of getting to the heart of classic science fiction.
It reminds me of a Trope Tuesday post I did a while ago about settling the (final) frontier. The whole idea of restarting humanity by leaving Earth behind is one of those things that draws me to science fiction the most. The stories in Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles are more artistic and thematic, but still, that idea is very much a part of them.
3) Roadster, Starman, Planet Earth
If there was any remaining doubt that Elon Musk is secretly trying to help an extraterrestrial get home, APOD posted this awesome photo last Saturday:
I have got to find a way to fit Elon’s roadster into Gunslinger to the Galaxy.
4) Barnes & Noble Layoffs
In publishing news, Barnes & Noble is laying off a bunch of full-time employees in an effort to save on benefits and health insurance. Passive Guy covered it twice, once for the Publishers Weekly article, and again with comments by the employees on The Layoff. There’s also a lively discussion on Mad Genius Club on the subject.
Felix J. Torres, who often has great nuggets of wisdom, shared his insights in a comment on The Passive Voice:
– Those experienced “leads” is where a company’s corporate memory really resides. The people who’ve been through the wars and seen it all, who know where the scripts and handbooks end and common sense crisis management and experience takes over. They are lobotomizing operations.
– If the difference between “lead” pay and entry level is the only thing between them and bankruptcy… Well, they might as well file right now. $40M in “savings”? That’s less than $80,000 per store. For that they disrupt people’s lives and cripple their operations? Smacks of desperation. Chapter 11 must be closer than even the harshest critics expects.
Looks like choppy waters and a major shakeup for the book industry in the coming months and years.
That does it for this week, but I’m sure I’ll have more in the weeks to come!
