Dave's Fiction Warehouse

It's porn-bot Pac-Man! B luesky update: Still better than X/Twitter, just for the reduction in MAGA bile. But, really, it’s not going to save us. It was naive to hope, during the last few months, that it might.When you think about it, how can the disaster wrought by social media be cured by more social media?  Anyway I’m up to 320 or so followers now. Normally I’d be dancing in the street with those numbers. But the pie chart above tends to dampen my enthusiasm:  Porn bots. I get half a dozen a day, profile photos of sexy women who try to establish bona fides by reposting or liking three random things. Never-Trumpers like myself, who mostly just repost anti-MAGA memes. I don’t mind that, but at this point anything that makes me madder or sadder isn’t helpful. Finally, the tiny cohort of smart people who post interesting facts and photos, or who add some original perspective to the political cataclysm that is about to overtake us.  I suppose that last group is the reason ...

  J anuary 2025, the last days of democracy in America. So of course I’ve been bingeing ancient episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It is a way to pass the bleak winter evenings when one has decided to unfollow the bleak winter news. About the show: I’m not kidding when I say ancient. It started in 1955 and ran for seven years, meaning most of these stories are about as old as I am. Like me, some of them have not aged all that well.  But some old things can seem better just by virtue of their age, can’t they? And ’50s TV shows have the rare distinction of looking better now than when they were new. That’s because of high resolution, big-screen TVs. When I saw my first episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (a rerun even then, of course) it was probably on a blurry 19-inch RCA. These days you can spot flaws in the sets and makeup that would have been invisible to viewers in the ’50s. Right now I’m on Season 3. Almost 200 episodes still to go! That’s another thing: Back the...