It’s been a week of tension here at the Bunker, and many of you have voiced your concerns about the selective editing of our founding charter online, as if that were somehow invalidating its existence. All of you have multiple copies of the printed charter and you can refer to them at your convenience. The bunker library is still (mostly) stocked with all of the pertinent documents relating to the governance of all apocalypse bunkers.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here, but pardon me while I reach for a roll of tinfoil. For the past 30-odd years (or more) education has been gradually chipped away, tinkered with, and denigrated by Christian Nationalists and others in that particular demographic, leading to a rise in homeschooling and falling literacy. Test scores are lower than ever. Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals have also managed to pack the Texas State Board of Education with ringers, leading to no more sex education, science textbooks that are required to teach the book of Genesis alongside the theory of evolution, and a complete and total erosion of trust in public schools in general. Texas is in crisis at the moment, and because the state buys so many textbooks, the TSBoE sets the pace and tone for what books get published and approved, leading textbook publishers to try and appease a bunch of people who think sex education is the Devil’s Business. They also complain about the high rate of teen pregnancy, and always have; it was my first and still best example of cognitive dissonance.
Also, in other news, for the past 30 years other people who have no connection to Texas or the Southern Baptist Church have been pushing the march to get us all online, where everything we could ever want is at our fingertips, for the asking. All books, all music, all of everything will be online for us to interact with. Heh. Right. While we know that’s patently not true and never has been, there has been enough of a push to ensure that people are downloading audio books, skimming articles—or letting AI summarize them—and a barrage of social media platforms that encourage people to condense their thoughts into a blurt, or a bumper sticker, or better yet, pictograms that can communicate a thought, but just not a deep one.
So much the better. That way, when they start cutting pieces out of the United States Constitution on the government website (the parts that make it easier for ICE to kick doors open and drag people into the gulag without due process), no one under the age of 30 will know, or care, or pay much attention, because they can’t, or won’t, read anything that isn’t an emoji or uses punctuation or doesn’t. And why be curious? When they typed “Constitution” into the Microsoft algorithm, the first thing that came up was the “official” Constitution, courtesy of the US government. Yeah. Those guys.
What that all means is, when people say, “Do your own research!” they mean, “look up stuff online.” Online. Where it’s easier than ever to edit, or cut, or remove altogether anything on your website that you don’t want people to see or read. I know, there’s ways around that, but you’re a goddamn nuclear genius, aren’t you? Not so much your racist uncle, who still quotes from a QAnon video he watched back in 2019.
I’m sure the two things are not related nor coordinated in any way. But I am not so sure that one group didn’t see what the other group was doing and take full advantage of the developing situation to make sure that certain things weren’t available, or were just missing from the “official record,” which mean, whatever shit the Google algorithm returns to you in a eyeblink.
This is the year of the analog revolution. They can’t edit a book that’s already been published. They can’t edit the millions of copies of the Constitution that are out in the world as we speak. The more things we can pull offline, like ourselves and our need for a bonobo monkey dopamine hit, the better we’re all going to feel. Then maybe we can start educating our kids again.
Robert E. Howard: 120 Years Old
He doesn’t look a day over 30. Too soon? Doesn’t matter. Here’s the deal: the REH fan community is pretty fierce and very passionate about Our Favorite Author.
John over at the REH Foundation YouTube channel thought it might be nice to record some of the tried and true, the stalwarts of the community, saying something nice to REH’s shade and reading something in honor of the day. Which is what we did. I’m in there, as are many of my good friends. If you want to hear me read the first part of one of my all-time favorite Conan stories, go give this a perusal:
Also: the Official Conan YouTube channel kicks off its second season with this guy:
We’re doing some mythbusting, spiking some of those pesky salacious and crazy-sounding stories that have been puffed up and inflated by supposed fans and professionals who should have known better, frankly. Shawn did a great job of making me look and sound great.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: this was going to be a scathing rebuke of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, but I’m waiting for three episodes so no one can say, “But you didn’t give it a chance!” In the meantime, watch something that’s good for your soul.
Dispatches from Elsewhere (Netflix)
Four disparate, desperate strangers are drawn into a live-action game, but what is it? And why? And how? Oh, look, Sally Field is in it!
Forgive me this flippant and unhelpful log line, but I don’t want to talk about what it is or isn’t, because the show itself is an unfolding and ongoing rumination on that very question.
Jason Segal wrote this series, based on a documentary about the actual game that was played in the early aughts, and if that sounds awfully meta, let Jason hold your beer. Just a cursory websearch will show that the game/documentary/TV show was a kind of smart mob/art installation...I think you should trust me and watch the show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more meta-fictional/existential thing, especially on television, ever in my life.
Segal plays one of his typical characters he writes for himself; that guy who’s pretty helpless and at the end of his rope. That’s not a dig, either. He does one little thing different in his daily routine and that random act unspools into this communal game experience, and that’s when he meets his fellow-game players and teammates: an older woman with a very sick husband, a tortured genius who is a little bit on the spectrum, and a trans woman who is struggling with fully embracing herself. It sounds like a downer, but here’s the thing about it; all four of these people want to do something different. They want to change, to grow, to move on, to open up, and that’s what this fascinating, visually interesting series does, boy I tell you what.
Dispatches From Elsewhere came out in 2020, but everyone was too busy baking bread to pay attention, I guess. That or not as many people are watching AMC as I thought. I sure missed it the first time around. That’s a real shame, because I could have used it in 2020. We all could have.
It’s an arctic winter weekend for half of the country. Those of you who are sheltering in place and are fresh out of sour dough starter might want to give this ten-episode show a shot. Dispatches From Elsewhere is surreal little gem that hits all the right notes and has something to say and it’s something we all really need to hear.
Interesting you should bring up the subject of offline research. I mentioned earlier this week to someone who was deploring the fact nobody knows how to do an real-world research that back in the late Neolithic when I was in 9th grade our school librarian gave us an assignment that taught use not only how to do research but how to analyze what we turned up.
The individual declared it a great idea, and then immediately started coming up with excuses as to how it can’t possibly be implemented now. 🙄
There is a reason evidence is referred to as a "paper trail"...
I watched Dispatches when it came out - I endorse your endorsement!