WordPress: Gutenberg vs Calypso
WordPress is a somewhat popular text blogging platform. It is, in fact, the blogging platform where this blog is presently hosted. This post is intended to offer up some background history of WordPress and where WordPress is currently heading (hint: not in a good direction). Let’s explore.
Original Editor — Circa 2003
When WordPress.com launched in 2003, a very basic text editor was included with the interface. This text editor was the defacto editor for the WordPress platform until around 2015, when Calypso launched. This very basic text editor was not HTML aware nor did it in any way support any advanced HTML features. As a WordPress user, you had to use trial and error methods to determine if the editor itself and the underlying submission syntax checker would allow any specific inline HTML or CSS features to be published.
This basic editor also did not support or even render such basic styling features like the application of styles like underline, italics or bold or even changing fonts and sizes. If you wanted to use these features within your article, you were forced to use hypertext markup to “wrap” lines of text with such formatting styles. This made editing and re-editing articles a chore because the editor itself did not render this markup at all, which meant you had to stumble over all of the markup when reading your article back. If you wanted to see the article fully rendered including these styles and markups, you were forced to preview the article in your WordPress theme.
In other words, a few markup features worked, but many, many did not. If you included hypertext markup in your article, you also had to know how to craft hypertext markup properly. You were then forced to test if the markup that you included would be accepted by the platform. This made crafting hypertext markup complicated, slow and required a huge learning curve. The editor itself showed you the entire article, markup and all, which made reading an article using this editor a complete pain in the ass. Note that this editor still exists in the platform as of this writing, through the wp-admin interface. It’s also still just as clumsy, antiquated and problematic as it always was.
This 2003 editor fares even worse today after you’ve edited an article in 2018’s Gutenberg, where Gutenberg crafts its blocks using a massive number of really ugly HTML comment and statements. It’s impossible to read an article’s text in among Gutenberg’s prolific and ugly markup when viewing it in such a basic editor. 2015’s Calypso, on the other hand, has tried to keep its markup limited, which served an author much better if you had to dive into HTML for any specific reason. Sometimes simpler is better!
Enter Calypso — Circa 2015
Around 2015, WordPress introduced a new editor called Calypso. This new editor at least supported basic live text style rendering; rendering that now allows you to see underline, italic and bold formatted live in the editor itself while writing. In essence, Calypso offered writers a similar experience as when using a software word processing product like Microsoft Word. Calypso even supported keyboard hotkeys to set these styles, making writing much easier.
No longer are you required to trip over ugly HTML markup statements. Limited hypertext markup is further included and is often rendered by the Calypso editor. Such rendered markup includes embedding images, YouTube videos and other basic multimedia inclusions like image slideshows. No longer did you need to go documentation hunting for the right WordPress tags to get this information included. This means that if you drop a link to a YouTube video in, the editor is aware that it’s a YouTube video and might render the video itself inline in the editor. The Calypso editor also crafted whatever HTML markup was needed to get this multimedia rendered properly. Early in the life of Calypso, YouTube UI rendering didn’t occur. It wasn’t until a few later releases that it began to render the videos in the editor. Advanced CSS styling and features, however, were mostly beyond the Calypso editor, but it can be included in an article by selecting “Edit as HTML” and manually adding it, as long as the syntax parser allows the syntax through. This situation pretty much exists today even with Gutenberg.
For about a 3-4 year period, WordPress was on the right track with the Calypso editor, making enhancements and bringing it up to date each year. Calypso was then a somewhat simplistic HTML editor, yes, but it was leaps and bounds better than the original WP Admin editor that was introduced in 2003. As a blog author, you were still forced to preview every article to make sure that it formatted properly in your site’s theme. Calypso’s performance as an editor is still unmatched, even today. Calypso launched and was ready to use in under 3 seconds when beginning a new article. Impressive! Very, very impressive!
The entire Calypso editor, while writing, remained speedy and responsive. In other words, if you typed 200 words per minute, the editor could fully keep up with that typing pace. Calypso didn’t then (and still doesn’t now) offer spell or grammar checking or perhaps some of the advanced features that would come to future editors, but not much in the blogging world at that time did. Though, these features could have been added to Calypso. Instead, WordPress.org had other not-so-brilliant ideas and then Gutenberg happened.
Enter Gutenberg — Circa 2018
In 2018, Gutenberg launches and replaces Calypso within WordPress.com. However, because Calypso had been so entrenched in the platform due to its adoption and use over those ~3 years, the Gutenberg team was more or less forced to continue supporting Calypso inside of the Gutenberg editor. The way the Gutenberg team managed this was by encapsulating the Calypso editor into what would become known as Gutenberg’s “Classic Block”. The inclusion of this block type is solely designed for backward compatibility with Calypso crafted articles.
Let’s postulate an insane request if WordPress had requested this action of bloggers after Gutenberg’s introduction. What if WordPress had required perhaps thousands of bloggers to check every article ever written for compatibility after auto-upgrading every article to Gutenberg blocks? Gutenberg’s article upgrade system has never worked very well at all. WordPress clearly wasn’t this level of insane to require this of its bloggers.
Once you also understand the ineptitude of the Gutenberg development team and how Gutenberg actually works (or doesn’t), you’ll understand why this didn’t happen and why it was simpler to integrate Calypso into Gutenberg’s Classic Block instead of asking every blogger to ensure their converted articles are still properly formatted. Yeah, if WordPress had required this step, the WordPress.com platform would have died. Thus, Calypso compatibility was built.
Gutenberg’s Misguided Design and Philosophy
Gutenberg was touted as a mixed media extravaganza for blogging, except for one thing. WordPress is STILL intended to be a text blogging platform. It’s not YouTube, it’s not Snapchat, it’s not Twitter and it’s not TikTok. You don’t need this type or level of multimedia extravaganza in a text blogging editor for the vast majority of blog posts. It’s useless and it’s overkill. Yet, the Gutenberg team blazed onward with its incredibly misguided development idea.
The need to embed graphics, YouTube, TikTok and other mixed media within a blog post is self-limiting, simply by the sheer fact that WordPress is still designed to be a written blog article platform. Embedding such mixed media might encompass 1-5% of the total volume of an article, mainly used to support written talking points, not as a primary blogging mechanism. I’m not advocating not adding these multimedia features, but I’m also not advocating that these features become the primary reason to make a new blog editor either.
The Gutenberg development team ultimately spent an inordinate amount of time over-designing and over-coding what is now essentially a technical replacement for cut and paste; the entire block design that Gutenberg touts. Cut and paste already exists. We don’t need a new way of doing it. Honestly, a replacement for cut and paste really IS the entire claim to fame for Gutenberg’s block system. Effectively, the Gutenberg block system was designed for ease of moving the blocks around… or at least, so we’ve been led to believe. In reality, moving blocks around is an absolute chore when attempting to use the up and down arrow controls. As a technical replacement for cut and paste, Gutenberg is an abject failure.
Further, even though Gutenberg touts its ability to work with WordPress themes, that feature has never properly worked and Gutenberg is not and has never been WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). You would think that even though Calypso was never intended to offer WYSIWYG rendering, implementing a brand new editor in WordPress would offer this very important feature to bloggers. If you thought that, you’d have thought wrong. With Gutenberg, you are still forced to preview articles using your site’s theme to see the exact placement of everything. Gutenberg’s supposed use of themes is so basic and rudimentary that placement of almost anything, like even an image, almost never works in the same way as the theme’s placement.
However, Gutenberg’s main and biggest problem today is STILL its performance. Honestly, it’s one of the worst performing text editors I have ever used. The 2003 editor still outperforms than Gutenberg by an order of magnitude. If you’re writing a one paragraph one block article, Gutenberg might be fine. When you’re writing a 5,000 word blog article broken into maybe 50 or more blocks, by the final Paragraph Block, the input performance is so bad that the small flashing letter cursor lags behind keyboard input as much as 5 words (maybe even more based on your speed of typing). If you’re a 200 WPM typist with an even 1% error rate, good luck writing an article in Gutenberg. This lagging issue MUST have been apparent to the developers… unless they’ve tested nothing, which appears to be the case.
Gutenberg has failed at almost every design case it has tried to achieve! Calypso still outperforms Gutenberg in almost every single way, even when embedded in the “Classic Block”. It’s the entire reason I exclusively write using the “Classic Block” in WordPress.
Gutenberg doesn’t enhance the blogging experience at all. Just opposite, in fact. Gutenberg gets in your way. It’s slow. It gets worse. The Paragraph Block is so bare bones basic that it can’t even perform a simple spell check, let alone provide grammar checking. Yet, its input performance is so ironically slow for being as basic as it is. Honestly, both WordPress.com and WordPress.org (authors of Gutenberg) are deluded if they think Gutenberg is the answer to blogging. Calypso as an editor was way more useful and powerful than Gutenberg has ever been. Yet, here we are… stuck with this dog slow dinosaur that was foisted onto us unsuspecting WordPress bloggers.
Within 3 months of its release, Calypso’s dev team reduced its launch time from 10 seconds down to less than 3 seconds. In the nearly 6 years since Gutenberg’s launch, almost nothing has improved with Gutenberg, least of all its solid 15 seconds launch timing. You’d think that in nearly 6 years, the Gutenberg team could have made Gutenberg perform better along side adding important blogging features, like spell and grammar checking. Again, you’d have thought wrong. Of course, by all means let’s add embedding of YouTube videos in a block. But no, let’s not add spell or grammar checking to the Paragraph Block to enhance the entire reason why WordPress exists… writing. Oh no, let’s not fix the editor crashing which forces bloggers to reload the entire editor page and lose work that, you know, helps bloggers do the thing they’re here to do… write! By all means, let’s not fix the lag that builds up after 10, 50 or 100 blocks that lags input down to unbearable levels that prevents bloggers from doing the one thing they’re here to do… write!
No, instead let’s build useless block system, that technical replacement for cut and paste, that only serves to get in the way of blogging, slow everything down and serves to make the entire editor unstable. How many loss crashes can a blogger endure before realizing the need to write in an offline editor? Once this happens, what use is Gutenberg to WordPress?
I don’t know what the Gutenberg team is spending their time doing, but they’re clearly not solving these actual real usability problems within Gutenberg, nor by extension, attempting to enhance and extend WordPress as a text based blogging platform for us writers.
Calypso Lives On
Because the Gutenberg team was forced to retain Calypso within the Classic Block type in Gutenberg, it is the one and only one saving grace and shining light in among the darkness that is now Gutenberg. Without the Calypso editor’s continued availability within Gutenberg, this platform would be dead. Calypso is the sole and single reason why I can still use WordPress to write this article right now. Were I to use the Paragraph Block as the Gutenberg team has intended, instead of being maybe 90% of the way through this writing article at this point, I’d be 10% finished… spending all of that extra time fighting with the major input cursor lag, the hassle of block management and the continual lockups of the editor. Yes, Gutenberg randomly locks up hard when using the Paragraph Blocks, forcing the writer to reload the entire browser tab (and possibly lose some writing effort in the process). Calypso in Gutenberg’s Classic Block retains all of its snap, performance and stability that it formerly had when it was WordPress’s default editor back in 2015. I don’t have to worry about that silly Gutenberg block performance issue.
To this day, I still don’t know why WordPress thinks Gutenberg is better than Calypso… other than for the fact that a bunch of misguided developers spent way too much time coding something that simply doesn’t work.
In the name of brevity, I’m leaving out a WHOLE LOT of Gutenberg problems here; problems that if I were describe each and every one, this article would easily reach 10k to 20k words. I’m avoiding writing all of that because it’s a diversion which doesn’t help make this article’s point. Suffice it to say that everything Calypso had built as an editor was rebuilt into Gutenberg almost rote. Almost nothing new was added to Gutenberg to take Gutenberg beyond Calypso’s features.
Surly Gutenberg Developers and WordPress staff
I should mention that I’ve attempted interacting with the Gutenberg development team, spending my own time submitting valid Gutenberg bug reports to their official bug reporting site… only to be summarily harangued by their developers. When someone treats me with such disrespect, I don’t bother… a fact that I told one of those disrespectful developers. Time is way too short to spend it screwing around with ungrateful, surly people. Unfortunately, this ungrateful surliness has also made its way into the ranks at WordPress.com, in their leadership team and even on down into the support team.
For example, I asked for a feature to be submitted allowing the WordPress user to be able to choose their preferred block upon Gutenberg launch. Instead of actually agreeing and submitting the feature request, I got an unnecessary explanation of why the Paragraph Block exists in the way that it does.
Here is this Support Team member’s quote:
The Paragraph block is the default block in the WordPress Gutenberg block editor because it caters to the most fundamental and common use case when creating content: writing and structuring text.
And yet, the Paragraph Block performs the worst of any block in Gutenberg. If the Paragraph Block is that important of a block to Gutenberg, so important that it needs to be set as the default launching block, then why do we need all of these other more or less useless mixed media blocks? More importantly than this, if the Paragraph Block holds that level of importance to Gutenberg, why doesn’t it just work? If Gutenberg is supposed to revolutionize the blogging industry with its “new” mixed media approach, why can’t we set our default launching block to be something other than the Paragraph Block? No, WordPress, you can’t have it both ways.
It’s actually quite difficult for me not to hold that developer’s (and, by extension, WordPress staff’s) bad attitude against Gutenberg’s lack of quality. I still don’t understand why a developer would continue to write (bad) code for a project when they’re that disenchanted with writing it? It’s also not that this user’s bad attitude stemmed from my single interaction. Bad attitudes almost always originate internally and extend onto customer interactions. People who are that disenchanted with the products they are supporting probably need to find better jobs where the management team actually cares about the products they sell.
Design Failure
WordPress is a text-based blogging platform. There is no disputing this fact. However, the Gutenberg editor along with the Gutenberg team seem to want to rework this fact by adding Gutenberg’s strange mixed media features. In addition to the technical replacement for cut and paste along side these mixed media inclusions, one feature noticeably missing from Gutenberg is enhancements to the Paragraph Block itself, features that if added would majorly help in making writing simpler, easier and faster; with writing being the whole point to why WordPress exists.
For example, Google’s Gmail email editor has, for many years now, included grammar and spell checking via inline popup helpers. These helpers aid writers in crafting more professionally written articles. While the Gutenberg team was spending its lion’s share of its time crafting a technical replacement for cut and paste (its entire block system), Google spent its time helping writers to, you know, actually write. Even other platforms like Medium have drastically improved its own editors by helping writers to write better.
To this day (nearly 6 years after Gutenberg’s launch), the Paragraph Block still doesn’t offer grammar or spell checking built-in. Instead, the Gutenberg editor throws all of that back to the browser to handle. While Firefox does have a rudimentary spell checker built-in, it does not offer grammar checking at all. After all, Firefox is a generic web browser, not a writer’s tool, unlike WordPress and Gutenberg which are intended to be writer’s tools.
Unfortunately, the dictionary included in Firefox is also exceedingly basic and is missing many valid words. This means that it is, once again, left to the writer to determine if the red underline showing under a word is valid. Firefox does offer replacement suggestions, but only if you choose to right-click on the word, requiring active writer interaction. Once again, Firefox is not intended to be a writer’s tool, but WordPress and Gutenberg are! Yet, both WordPress and Gutenberg refuse to build the necessary tools to help writers write better. Instead, they offers us the questionable mix-media extravaganza editor with a poor technical replacement for cut and paste; an editor that isn’t even properly supported or managed and is broken more often that it works.
If Gutenberg is what we writers and bloggers get to look forward to for the next 6 years at WordPress, perhaps it’s time move to a different blogging platform. WordPress, word up!
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Retro Movie Review: The Blue Bird (1940)
This Shirley Temple film vehicle, The Blue Bird, attempts to be a then modern fairy tale. It also wants to be technically trendy (for 1940) all while attempting to reboot Shirley Temple’s career. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully succeed at any of these. At the same time, it has some oddly creepy moments. The artwork created within the pages of the book used in the title sequence is quite impressive. Makes you wonder if the book survived the production. Let’s explore.
The 1940s
This film was released in 1940, but portions may have been filmed in 1939, the same year that the MGM’s Wizard of Oz released, starring Judy Garland. Apparently, Shirley Temple was considered for the role of Dorothy Gale, but we know the part was ultimately given to Judy Garland… and the rest was history. However, this film may have been designed to be a similar vehicle to compete with The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird
It’s easy to draw many parallels between 1940’s The Blue Bird and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz’s in technical execution, in that both films begin with a black and white opening sequence. Each film then segues into a full Technicolor fantasy romp. One might even argue that The Blue Bird’s producers lifted this Technicolor idea directly from The Wizard of Oz film. Still, with The Blue Bird, switching to color portions makes sense strictly because of the story. Since the story revolves around a blue bird, filming this one black and white throughout would make it difficult to understand this color aspect of the film. Some black and white films have tried this with marginal success. With that said, the producer’s lack of vision around the use of Technicolor leaves the film somewhat poorly executed.
However, as a viewer in 2023, seeing Shirley Temple perform in color is actually treat, but strictly for nostalgic reasons, not for reasons of story. For story purposes, the Technicolor sequences are more or less dictated by the color of the bird, even though the Technicolor sequences are mostly wasted because the audience literally won’t see the blue bird until the final 2 minutes of the film. Talk about slow burn.
Story Analysis
Even though there are obvious technical execution similarities between The Wizard of Oz and The Blue Bird, the stories themselves are wholly dissimilar. Here’s where a lot of reviewers drop the review ball. The Wizard of Oz is more or less a modern story (at the time) about a girl and her dog seeking to get back home after being thrust into the fantasy world of Oz.
The Blue Bird hearkens back to ye olde traditional Germanic fairy tales (complete with Lederhosen, Dirndl dresses and even includes a character devoted to toy wood carving). This film’s story, like many fairy tales, features children in peril all throughout the tale. Where The Wizard of Oz uses modern names like Dorothy for the main character, The Blue Bird chooses the odd fairy tale names of Mytyl and Tyltyl for the two main children.
Honestly, what sane parent would ever name their child Mytyl or Tyltyl? Ignoring these oddly strange fairy tale Mxyzptlk-style names and the Technicolor sequence, the story itself remains mostly dissimilar to The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird‘s story starts off with two children, Mytyl and Tyltyl in a forest.. the primary character of the two being played by Shirley Temple as Mytyl, pronounced as me till. The boy child is played by Johnny Russel as Tyltyl, pronounced as till till. Unfortunately, the character of Tyltyl remains more or less background fodder throughout this film and is intentionally underused to focus the spotlight on Shirley Temple. Clearly, the person intended to carry this fantasy fairy tale romp is Shirley Temple. This is also one of Shirley Temple’s later films in her career, where she had lost much of her younger child cuteness and exuberance. However, a small amount of that allure does remain, but in only a few scenes.
By the filming of The Blue Bird, Temple was clearly on the edge of losing her child actor badge when filming began. Still, some of her child charisma does remain, but in many scenes it’s entirely gone. Mostly this is due to the story seeing the Mytyl character waver between being an ungrateful, unhappy, selfish spoiled brat and, much more rarely, being a loving, thoughtful, sweet child; the latter being what you’d expect from a Shirley Temple film.
The story opens in a “Royal Forest” with Mytyl and Tyltyl capturing a bird in a small trap. If you’re clueful enough, you might even see where this is leading. From here, the children head home with the bird (ignoring the separate “sick kid” scene that’s solely used to establish how selfish Mytyl is). After a contentious dinner exchange where Mytyl more or less tongue lashes her parents, further establishing Mytyl’s grumpy selfishness, Mytyl and Tyltyl head to bed.
Upon waking to the sound of confused knocking, gone is the black and white sequence and now the film reveals its now grander Technicolor portion. Clearly, this falling asleep in black and white and waking up in color is almost identical to The Wizard of Oz. Even though this Technicolor use is nearly identical between both films, this story completely diverges at this point. No tornadoes. No Toto. No witches on broomsticks.
Instead, lifting its heaviest story cues almost directly from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, The Blue Bird plods Dickens’s story onward through the veil of a fairy tale.
In fact, within moments of becoming Technicolor, Fairy Berylune (played by Jessie Ralph) appears as an old woman wrapped in what seems to be a psychedelic tattered and patched garb, like 60’s second-hand clothing. In fact, Fairy Berylune actually appears to be more of a psychedelic witch (kind of like Witchiepoo in Lidsville, played by Billie Hayes… that 1971 trippy Sid and Marty Kroft kid’s show on Saturday mornings). I’ll let this bit of misplaced psychedelia slide, however.
Fairy Berylune’s costume is probably the only costume in this entire film that seems to understand the purposes and uses of Technicolor. Just look at it! Unfortunately, that costume and the character of Fairy Berylune only appear briefly in the opening of the Technicolor sequence, never to be seen again. It’s too bad, too. The Fairy Berylune character could have been brilliantly used all throughout.
Fairy Berylune, nevertheless, works hard (a little too hard) to sell this opening setup of the film’s story along with turning a dog, a lamp and a cat into humans (Cinderella much?). Why humans? Of course, to help Mytyl and Tyltyl find “The blue bird of happiness!”, according to Berylune … duh!
After Fairy Berylune transforms such into humans, she summarily disappears and leaves the children to their own devices and fully in the care of these now very strange, newly minted companions. The kids’ dog in human form, Tylo (pictured left), becomes a cowardly man dressed in brown and white garb. Their cat, Tylette (pictured right), becomes a mischievous woman, dressed in black with white trim and a big red bow, reminiscent of Cruella De Vil. Their lamp becomes the character Light (pictured center); a blonde, blue, female dressed very much like Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Though while Light, in fact, comes and goes like Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Light ultimately becomes the children’s new guardian for the remainder of this film’s tale. Though unlike Glinda, Light performs no magic other than producing light.
Before departing, Fairy Berylune asserts that the children MUST look for a blue bird to find their happiness, simply because she says so. It’s actually the whole pretext of this film. Exactly where should the children look? According to Fairy Berylune, in the past, present and future (just like A Christmas Carol). Mytyl has proven herself to be a grouchy, stingy, difficult person, too much like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Mytyl doesn’t ever outright say “Bah Humbug”, but you can see this behavior driving her very language and body mannerisms. Further, Fairy Berylune reminds us heavily of the Fairy Godmother who appears in Cinderella to transform Cinderella, a pumpkin and some mice… even though the primary story of this film most matches the story ideas presented in A Christmas Carol. You should be able to figure out how this all ends for Mytyl. The writers, however, clearly borrowed from wherever they could to tell this story.
Because Mytyl and Tyltyl are told by Fairy Berylune to search everywhere including in the past, present and future, this is where the story ultimately begins.
Story wise, the past is taken quite literally when Mytyl and Tyltyl must traverse through a graveyard in the dark, complete with skeletons, bones and open graves. After making their way through this scary graveyard, they remember their dead grandparents and end up revisiting their grandparents’ home complete with their grandparents now very much alive; the grandfather being a wood toy carver of somewhat creepy dolls with heads that move.
Before entering the graveyard, Light warned the children to be back within the hour or remain forever stuck in the past. As a result, the children are in a hurry to leave, watching a wooden cuckoo clock. Unfortunately, the grandparents don’t want the children to leave because they themselves will once again fade back into death’s slumber. The children spend only a tiny bit of time dawdling at the grandparents house, long enough for Mytyl to sing a song. However, the children do understand their need to leave quickly. This is the first of many segments where Tylette actively attempts to sabotage the children by moving the clock’s hands backwards. Mytyl realizes that there’s a problem afoot with the clock and quickly decides to make haste away from her grandparents home all without finding the blue bird. Note that this “hurry up” clock-ticking trope used in this segment is entirely dropped when searching all further locations.
At this point, the children again meet up with Light who urges them to check the present, but Tylette has other ideas. Tylette interrupts and instead encourages the children to visit Luxury. Even though Light tells the children they won’t find anything there, the children head to Luxury anyway.
This part of the story is solely intended to lure the children in and, once again, strand them at Luxury by Tylette. While the children are able to get all of the material things they desire while at Luxury, including a pony, the one thing they cannot get is love and compassion from Mr. and Mrs. Luxury. This makes the children grumpy and selfish. Eventually, the children realize this, come to their senses and wish to leave. The children narrowly escape Luxury after Tylette again tries to sabotage the children’s exit.
After narrowly escaping Luxury, the children meet up again with Light who urges them to try looking in a forest, located in the present. After entering the forest, Tylette once again conspires with all of the forest creatures to lure and keep the children there. This results in a forest fire that ultimately kills Tylette (more about this later), but not Tylo or the children. The children and Tylo narrowly escape a very long winded forest fire running sequence, but they leave empty handed.
Again, the children meet up with Light who then leads the children up a staircase and into the future. The future brings us to an area with a bunch of children who are not yet born. These are to be the future children of earth. To become born, the unborn load up onto a boat with silver sails destined for Earth as their destination. After various discussions with various unborn (discussions which don’t help the story), Mytyl and Tyltyl finally leave with Tylo, again without finding the blue bird. Before leaving, however, they meet their unborn sister who explains she won’t be with them for very long. Mytyl is oddly excited by this both happy and grim news. And yet, here’s another dying reference.
As they return back home, the children awake from their slumber. Unlike The Wizard of Oz which returns back to black and white at the end when Dorothy returns home, The Blue Bird remains in color… for one very obvious reason. We haven’t yet seen the actual blue bird.
As the children get some good news about their father, the mother explains the father had time to craft a cage for their bird (???); the bird that Mytyl caught the day before in the Royal Forest. I’m a little perplexed at how the father could have crafted this bird cage overnight?! That is, unless the kids were in a coma-like state for days? This bird, which we couldn’t see in the small box cage earlier and which was shrouded by black and white footage anyway, we now see has been transferred into a large, fully completed bird cage. Voila, it’s now indeed a very blue bird… and with just minutes to spare! The story has come full circle.
At this point, Mytyl is so happy at these turn of events that she appears to now be “redeemed”, in the same way as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In fact, she’s so elated that she decides to gives her sick friend her blue bird as a token of her generosity and friendship… when in the opening of this story, she refused and wanted nothing more than to keep the bird for herself.
Death and Dying Motifs
Unlike The Wizard of Oz, which that film only touches on the topic once in the beginning of the film and once again later with the Wicked Witch, The Blue Bird touches on this topic again and again by putting the children in mortal danger throughout, by traversing through a graveyard at night, by the death and redeath of the grandparents, the death of Tylette and the birth (and death) of Mytyl’s as yet unborn sister. Yes, a lot of death and dying references make their way into this film. A little bit overly morbid and macabre for a fairy tale.
Overall
The film is interesting for its age. It touches on many topics which are sometimes typical of actual fairy tales, but which border on the macabre. However, this film also does it in an oddly weird and creepy way. Tylette in particular is one of the creepiest characters I’ve seen in a film of this type. This character easily exceeds the creep factor of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Tylette also meets her demise in fire almost in similar, but opposite fashion to The Wicked Witch with water. These story similarities are obvious.
The Blue Bird film itself doesn’t mimic The Wizard of Oz with the exception of a handful of mostly technical similarities. The Blue Bird also bombed at the box office, unlike The Wizard of Oz, even though this film was later nominated for awards.
The Blue Bird wasn’t the first film to bomb for Shirley Temple. That distinction occurred one year before 1940’s The Blue Bird with 1939’s Susannah of the Mounties. This 1939 film bomb is what began the downward slide of Shirley Temple as a box office draw. The Blue Bird simply continued that trend for Temple. I can definitely see how this film might not appeal to children.
As a fantasy fairy tale style film, it’s okay. Not great. Not fantastic. It’s definitely no Disney film. Its fantasy is, at times, dark, creepy, macabre and meanders a lot for no good reason. While there’s no gore, the horror of some of the situations is all too real. With Tylette pretending to be a protector, but instead putting the children in harm’s way, that’s an odd play. The dialog in the film is also, at times, stilted and also unchildlike. It’s hard to believe that some of the dialog from Shirley Temple’s mouth would have ever been said by a child of that age. As for Tyltyl, he’s more or less used as a doormat.
As a color film curiosity from 1940, though not Temple’s first color film, The Blue Bird is worth seeing. The Technicolor isn’t as vibrant or as rich as I have seen in other Technicolor films, particularly The Wizard of Oz. It’s possible that costume colors may have been intentionally toned down to enhance the darker tone of the film.
There’s also a marked amount of chromatic aberration in this film’s imagery. I don’t know if this is due to the film transfer to video or if this was simply as a result of the cameras used to film this production.
The costumer also seems to have chosen more earthy tones for many of the costumes versus vibrant rich reds, pinks or yellows; colors which Technicolor makes super vibrant. Instead, at Luxury where you expect such color and opulence, Temple is seen wearing a pastel rose colored satin robe before bed. When riding the carousel at Luxury, she’s seen in a somewhat muted blue dress.
Part of the reason to use Technicolor is to take advantage of the vibrant rich tonal quality of certain colors, to which the filmmakers of The Blue Bird didn’t do. However, the forest fire scenes do offer rich vibrant fire colors, which served to somewhat enhance the children’s peril in a forest fire.
Unfortunately, the special effects employed during the fire scenes utilize low quality bluescreen-style effects to overlay the actors, which the questionable quality couldn’t have been lost on the producers.
The Wizard of Oz chose to employ practical effects on set; effects that at once look more realistic and make the film seem more like a stage play. The overlay special effects used in The Blue Bird, while impressive to see in a film from 1940, didn’t always sell the children’s peril, as shown in this still shot, due to the low quality result. I guess the filmmakers thought that by making the scenes shift very quickly, the viewers might not notice.
Commanding Presence
One thing that’s entirely missing from this film is a commanding adult presence. None of the adult leads in this story have enough of a role to truly lead the kids properly. Like Julie Andrews’s Maria character in The Sound of Music, Maria was front and center to always properly lead the children. This is what was needed in this film, even if the character turned out to be bad at the end. The story tried to make Tylette into that character, but the role just didn’t work. In fact, the story always attempted to shift the spotlight back onto Shirley Temple. This ultimately doesn’t work. If there had been a strong, commanding, likeable adult lead character to constantly stay with and guide Mytyl and Tyltyl, this film might have had a better chance to succeed.
Additionally, since the film also tried to introduce at least some musical elements, this film would likely have been even stronger if it had fully leaned into becoming a musical during each of the past, present, future and luxury segments, to lighten the continual dark tone of the film. Having a strong adult singer to complement Shirley’s child singing would have allowed this film to possibly have a radio hit and help carry the film. Adding a strong musical score to this film might have even made The Blue Bird a stronger film than The Wizard of Oz.
What this film all boils down to is this. The Blue Bird is a simple retelling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, a story of redemption… sans the wintry Christmas guise, all while using a somewhat macabre fairy tale story format combined with the waning star power of Shirley Temple. Though, the screenwriter also took liberties to include concepts from the likes of Cinderella and Pinocchio along with The Wizard of Oz, but only in small amounts.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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No Man’s Sky: How to get a Sentinel Ship
Unlike the very long tail quest line to obtain a Living Ship, the Sentinel Ship is easy to obtain by comparison. There is no long multi-day process to obtain this one, thankfully. Obtaining the Sentinel ship is fairly straightforward and easy to obtain in one game session, about an hour worth of effort, after getting the quest. Let’s explore how to get this newest ship.
Pre-Requisites
The items you’ll need to make this quest successful are:
- A well outfitted starship, for battling Sentinels successfully
- Living Glass (supplied)
- Pugneum (supplied)
- A well outfitted Multitool, for battling ground corrupted Sentinels successfully
- A hyperdrive and enough fuel to jump
- A pulse drive with enough fuel
- An Advanced Mining Laser on the Multitool (for Radiant Shards)
- One free ship slot or, alternatively, a ship that you’re willing to trade
[Update 4/14/2023] After trying for several hours across multiple saves (other than the first save, which worked), I’ve been unable to reproduce Step 1 on any save other than my very first save. The very first save actually had the pulse drive interaction occur the very first time I pulsed. I believe I have an answer.
I suspect that Hello Games may have introduced a bug in this process. It seems that Hello Games may have made this pulse interaction available one-time-only on ONLY ONE SAVE. This means that if you wish to obtain a Sentinel Ship on a second, third or any later saves, you’ll need to use the 5 Star wanted approach to get an Echo Locator OR a Dreadnought AI Fragment (via blowing up a Sentinel Freighter). I don’t know why Hello Games would have done this, but I do know that there are global variables which can be set and which are visible to across all saves (e.g., Preference Settings). It seems Hello Games may have set a global variable to indicate that the Sentinel pulse drive interaction has already occurred, thus preventing this interaction from occurring again on any other save… since every save has visibility to this variable.
What does this mean for you? If you have several saves that you regularly play, this bug means that you’ll need to choose which save where you wish to have your first Sentinel ship. Otherwise, once you’ve had this interaction on one save, on the rest of your saves, you’ll need to perform the 5 Star wanted steps for an Echo Locator device OR destroy a Sentinel Freighter for a Dreadnought AI Fragment which will lead you to a crashed Sentinel ship. [Update Complete]
Step 1 — Pulse Drive
This first step in obtaining your Sentinel ship is to grab whatever starship you have that fits the above requirements and head into space. Then, trigger the pulse drive. Remain in pulse until a distressed Sentinel ship appears in front of you. This should hopefully happen relatively quickly, but it may not. You may have to do this for a while to get it to happen. Once you get the right interaction, drop out of pulse, then a new Sentinel ship will appear and seem to be in distress. You will not be able to do anything for or to this ship, but the game will pretend to give you options. Whichever option you choose, the ship will disappear. If this pulse interaction occurs for you quickly, skip down to Step 2. If it doesn’t, please continue reading Step 1 for alternative means to get a Sentinel ship.
Alternative Ways to Begin The Salvage Quest
I had the pulse drive interaction appear almost instantly in my first attempted save. In a second save after having already had this pulse interaction previously, I tried for several hours to get it to occur and it didn’t (see more details in Update area above). Meaning, using the pulse drive to launch into this Sentinel salvage quest seems to only work one time and with one save only. Choose your save carefully.
If you wish to obtain more Sentinel ships after the first, you cannot use the pulse drive process. To begin at this point, you’ll need to fight Corrupted Sentinels (on a Corrupted Sentinel World) to a wanted level of 5 and then complete all ground kills or destroy a Sentinel Capital ship in space, which also requires a 5 star wanted level before it appears.
At the end of all ground based kills, your character will be awarded with a Sentinel crash site detector called an Echo Locator.
There is also the possibility of getting an Echo Locator from destroying Dissonance Resonators (the same drill structure that gives you Inverted Mirrors). You’ll need to step out of your starship or exocraft and check which type the Dissonance Resonator gives you. Also note that some Dissonant worlds are way more generous with the chances for finding Echo Locators than others. You may have to scout several dissonant worlds before you find one with Dissonance Resonators offering Echo Locators. If you find such a world, you should create a base there. Note that the easiest method of destroying a Dissonance Resonator is to use your starship’s weapons. Then, heading to space to eventually evade the sentinel wanted status.
Alternatively, you can destroy a Sentinel Freighter in a space battle and receive a Dreadnought AI Fragment. Each of these items will lead you to a new Sentinel ship crash site. Reaching that crash site, the below steps should remain the same.
To be fair, it may be easier to destroy a Sentinel capital ship in space than it is to perform ground combat with most of the crappy Multitool weapons they’ve hobbled us with… in combination with the fact that all corrupted Sentinels can heal each other at will. It simply takes a bit of time to destroy a Sentinel Capital ship, first by targeting the weapons and then by targeting the freighter itself.
For your second, third or further ships, it is strongly recommended that you leave the system where you found your first ship. If you use an Echo Locator or Dreadnought AI Fragment in that system, the game may locate a crash site to a ship model you already own. The game’s code is not intelligent enough to realize you already own a ship from your local system and will likely choose to send you there again. Don’t waste your Echo Locators or Dreadnought AI Fragments by using them in a system you’ve already visited. Hyperdrive somewhere else far away and then let the game use that new location to locate another ship.
If you’re really, really lazy and don’t want to fight Sentinels AND you have a full 30 fleet of Class-S 5 Star frigates, you can send your frigates on missions with the possibility of an expedition returning with a Dreadnought AI Fragment. I didn’t realize that these devices had been added as possible loot from frigate expeditions, but they have been included.
Note that Echo Locators may lead you to a Sentinel ground encampment which will give you a new Sentinel Multitool. You will have to dig around that encampment to find a way to reveal the crashed Sentinel Interceptor.
Note: You may have to complete the quest line “Under a Rebel Star” before the game allows this interaction to occur in pulse. The reason isn’t because the “Under a Rebel Star” quest is part of or even related to this Distressed Sentinel Pilot interaction, but because this quest line appears to take precedence over all Pulse Drive interactions until the quest is completed. Meaning, if you haven’t started or completed this quest line, your pulse drive interactions will be geared towards getting you to complete “Under a Rebel Star.” I recommend getting this quest out of the way.
Step 2 — Obtain the Salvage Quest
After the Sentinel ship disappears, the game will give you a Sentinel Salvage quest line. This quest will lead you to a Sentinel Salvage Site located on a Corrupted Sentinel planet (a new planet type). The game will either put a marker to a local planet in your current system or it will put a map marker onto the galaxy map for a different system. Most likely it will be the latter of the two options, requiring you to hyperjump into a new system. This is why you’ll need to have a Hyperdrive and the required amount of fuel.
Step 3 — HUD Marker
Once you have jumped into that new system, a HUD marker will appear on a planet. Head to the planet’s location, which will be an approximate location on the surface. When you get close to the marker, I suggest flying around the general vicinity of the marker to look for a crashed starship site. If you can’t find it, you’ll need to land and use the scanner to locate the general direction and head there on foot. For me, the crash site was quite visible and easy to spot from the starship.
Step 4 — Crash Site
Once you arrive at the crashed ship, there are many steps you’ll need to take to fully repair the ship. Though, as I said above, the steps are relatively simple with no long waiting periods in between. However, unlike other crashed starships, repairing this Sentinel ship is a bit different.
When you click-hold to open the ship the first time, you’ll see some components that, at first, you might think you need to repair. Don’t be fooled. You don’t repair these. Instead, Hello Games has added the questionable mechanic of requiring you to take those items out of the ship by grabbing them and dropping them into your inventory. It’s an odd play. I was a little confused at first because it’s the first time this mechanic has been used on a crashed ship. The items supplied by the ship are Living Glass, Pugneum and Hyaline Brain.
Once you have taken the items from the ship (including the Hyaline Brain), a new slot will appear that you need to repair called Pilot Interface. To repair the “Pilot Interface” slot, you’ll actually need 3 items that you likely won’t have:
- 3 x Radiant Shard
- 1 x Inverted Mirror
- 1 x Harmonic Brain
Since you might not already have Living Glass or Pugneum needed for this process, remember to take the items from the ship as supplied. If you don’t take ALL of the supplied items, the process may fail to work. Take everything the game gives you. I actually had everything I needed from past Sentinel battles (in addition to the items supplied) including having already scavenged the new crystals. The only exception was that I didn’t have the Harmonic Brain.
One of the three items you’ll receive from the ship is a Hyaline Brain. This object, like a Emergency Broadcast Receiver or a Sentinel Boundary Map, allows you to activate it (“Probe”) and find a location to visit. This location will help you in repairing the Pilot Interface in Step 8.
Step 5 — Gathering Resources
Because this quest line leads you to a new “Corrupted Sentinel” world, you’re going to need to spend some quality time with your Multitool gathering both Atlantadeum from Living Fragments via the smaller purple crystals and the Radiant Shards via the bigger purple crystals (using the Advanced Mining Laser) and, of course, obtaining the Inverted Mirror (see Step 7).
Step 6 — Getting a Radiant Shard
This is the easiest and quickest of the 3 steps required to repair the Pilot Interface. Simply head out and find a pile of large purple crystals. Once you aim your reticle at the crystal, it should say ‘Radiant Shard‘. You’ll need to have an Advanced Mining Laser to obtain 3 of these, but it’s easy and quick with the mining tool. I’d suggest mining for more than you need, just in case.
Step 7 — Getting the Inverted Mirror
To get an Inverted Mirror, you’ll need to destroy a Dissonance Resonator. This is another new Sentinel creature type which looks like a moving crystal shard, but also kind of like a drill. Once you begin shooting this creature, Corrupted Sentinels will appear making you wanted. I’d suggest simply keeping up your barrage (ignoring the Sentinels) until you get the Inverted Mirror, then dive into the ground using the Terrain Manipulator and hide to get rid of the wanted stars.
If you hop into your starship and take off, your wanted status will be carried into a space battle with the Sentinels. It’s easiest to dive into the ground and wait it out.
Step 8 — Getting the Harmonic Brain
To obtain the Harmonic Brain, you’ll need to have a Hyaline Brain. The Hyaline Brain is given to you from the crashed Sentinel starship as one of three components given to you which includes Salvaged Glass, Pugneum and the Hyaline Brain. If, for some reason, you didn’t get a Hyaline Brain from the ship, you’ll need to go back and get it or, if you destroyed it, restore from a save before destroying it (the easiest way). Once you “Probe” the Hyaline Brain, it will give you coordinates and place a map marker on your HUD to an Ancient Monolith. Head there.
Once you arrive at the Monolith, you will hand over the Hyaline Brain in exchange for a Harmonic Brain.
Note, as stated above, you will need to take ALL of the components from the ship for the Hyaline Brain to activate. If you do not have any Pugneum and/or Living Glass and you fail to take these items from the crashed Sentinel Ship, the Hyaline Brain probably won’t activate. This includes having put these components into your Starship inventory and then having your Starship out of range. There is no warning why it fails to activate, it just won’t. Make sure to have ALL of the necessary components in your inventory before attempting activate the Hyaline Brain.
Step 9 — Head Back and Claim Your Starship
As the title says, it’s pretty straight forward. From the monolith and after receiving the Harmonic Brain, head back to the crash site, fix the Pilot Interface and claim your starship. Much, much simpler than the Living Starship.
Once again note, you’ll need to have at least one open starship slot or be willing to trade one of your starships for the Sentinel ship. I’d suggest salvaging a starship at the space station so you get all of the materials out of the ship and to free up the slot. Getting the materials from the ship is the far better option than giving over a starship in trade.
Step 10 — Build A Base
While this step is not required in getting your first Sentinel Ship, it is a step you should do to help you get more of these ships. Since this is a new world type and since you’re likely wanting to look for more of these ships, you’re going to need the resources available on this planet, since future crashed ships may not hand you all of the things you need like this first quest does. Since the game sent my character to a Paradise planet with otherwise no sentinels at all, it was the perfect place to establish a base to obtain these new resources.
Obviously, if your world is a charred, volcanic, radioactive or otherwise a rather inhospitable world, you might want to find a better world to establish a Corrupted Sentinel base. If the game sends you to a Paradise world, then it’s well worth establishing a base as there’s no way to know how these resources might be required in future updates.
Is the Sentinel Ship Worth It?
I’ll leave this up to you to decide. I find the ships to be rather blocky and odd shaped. There are a few sleeker design types, but many look like big tanks. When you’re going through this process, you don’t really get to pick and choose your ship’s design. The only way to sort-of pick is to go through this process multiple times, trading in the ships as you find better looking ones. You never really know what you’ll find, though. I was hoping for sleeker designs, like the Exotics. The Sentinel interceptors that fight us in combat actually look better. I was hoping to be able to get these.
Additionally, the Sentinel ship itself has some odd qualities. When you enter the ship, the entire ceiling of the ship becomes transparent to show the outside. The transparent effect is cool, but it also pulses an odd red circuitry pattern way too frequently while flying, which is highly distracting. I cannot guarantee all Sentinel ships have this cockpit behavior, but they probably do.
It’s not so much that the red pattern appears at all. It’s that this red pattern appears in a repeating pattern about 6 times in a row in various dimmer and brighter shades, then stops. Then the pattern repeats about every 10-20 seconds. The pattern repeats far too frequently. It would be fine if it pulsed perhaps in relation to the acceleration and/or deceleration OR with certain combat elements, like being fired upon or at most every 3-5 minutes, but it doesn’t work like this. It’s just a pattern that rotates in and out on a timer far too frequently as you fly the ship. It’s really distracting when in combat.
All-in-all, it’s an okay ship to add to your fleet, though it’s not more maneuverable than a fighter or better armored than any other class ship. Even though the slots are named oddly and the technology itself has its own special naming, it supports all of the standard technology modules, unlike the Living Ship. With that said, the Sentinel class ships don’t really have a reason to exist over other ships in the game. This is ultimately the real disappointing thing about the Sentinel ships specifically and No Man’s Sky in general… a point that Hello Games keeps missing.
Ships of various classes need to hold specific unique qualities to that class. For example, these Sentinel class ships should be better armored and better suited when used against Sentinel fleet attacks, but perhaps weaker against Korvax attacks. Focusing on these kinds of ship specialities, as a player you must plan your ship battles more thoughtfully. Instead, Hello Games keeps giving us ships that are more or less the same any other ship in the game. Even the Living Ship, which has weird technology naming and features, is really the same as every other ship. The only real differences between each of the ship classes and types are the shape of it, the size of it, the paint job and the ship’s max maneuverability. All of the ships can be modified using modules to basically become identical for use in No Man’s Sky as a Starship.
It would be great if Hello Games would get past this “sameness” and expand starships by giving us ships that both specialize in and are designed to specifically excel in certain activities, but are weak in other activities. For examples, fighters are intended to be for fighting, but they shouldn’t be at all good at anything other than fighting. Haulers are good for hauling, but not necessarily great at fighting. Shuttles should be for smuggling. Sentinel ships should be great at fighting sentinel fleets. Part of the reason for this unfortunate starship genericism is that the game makes it impossible to switch ships when in space. Only when you’re on the ground or in your freighter can you switch ships. Even then, if you’re in the middle of combat, Hello Games has made it so certain activities are impossible until the battle is over, making switching ships even more of a problem.
Know then that while the Sentinel ship may look somewhat cool, it doesn’t buy you anything more than what you already have in other ships you already own, at least not at this point in time. Here are some snaps of my ship.
Sentinel Ship Models and Availability
After having read more about this update, I thought it would be a good idea to explain how many different model Sentinel ships there are. Because there are a myriad of different parts (wings, fins, colors, etc) that can be attached to any specific Sentinel ship, the variation in ships is probably on the order of millions. With that said, there are some basic model shapes that get created from all of that variety; basic shapes which range from large tank sized ships to flat triangular style ships. Thus, there are effectively about 6-10 basic model shapes. After seeing about 6 different ships, the remaining variations are mostly minor and won’t change the overall shape of the ship. Effectively, there are only a handful of parts that affect the overall ship’s shape with the remainder of the parts changing only minor cosmetic aspects of the ship.
As for where to find any specific model ship in NMS, it’s still way too early in the release to yet have that answer. However, Reddit is a good place to start. There are subreddits dedicated to cataloging locations of specific ships in the NMS universe. If you’re looking for a specific style Sentinel ship, heading over to Reddit is probably your best answer. Such subreddits are adding new content every day. Finding a specific model Sentinel Interceptor ship is best found in one of those subreddits. With that said, I always find it much more satisfying when I can find my own ships on my own. Locating another solar system with the help of Reddit isn’t quite as satisfying knowing that you didn’t discover that system or that ship. It’s much more satisfying to be the one to discover something new.
As for how Sentinel Interceptors spawn in the game, it goes like this. Only one model Sentinel ship is available in each solar system. Meaning, if you land in a specific system, find a ship and add it to your collection, don’t bother looking for any more ships in that system if you’re looking for a different model. You’re wasting time doing this because when you do find another, it will be identical to the one you’ve already have, with the exception of its class. The only reason to go looking in the same system for another crashed Sentinel ship is when you’re looking for that same ship you already have, but in higher class (and you don’t want to pay Nanites to upgrade it).
It’s worth noting that abandoned systems as well as dead worlds and exotic / anomaly worlds do not spawn crashed Sentinel ships, even if the world is “Corrupted”. What this means is that if you’re using an Echo Locator or a Dreadnought AI Fragment to locate a ship, be prepared to reload your game quickly if the probe doesn’t find anything.
Sentinel Bug Analysis
Hello Games’s No Man’s Sky is not a bug free experience by any stretch. A question arises then, can this bug described in the update above be fixed? Not easily. Hello Games seems to have inadvertently (or possibly intentionally) used a global variable. To fix this, attempting to turn that global variable into a local variable for each save would mean every existing save would then be converted to and marked as having had the interaction if you’ve already had this interaction on one save.
That further means that only newly created saves after the bug is fixed would be able to have this interaction, but that also means starting over from scratch on a brand new save. It also means your other saves would still be required to go through the 5 Star Wanted process to get a Sentinel ship.
The better approach to fixing this bug is to have Hello Games unset the variable entirely, convert to using a save-local-variable and allow all of our saves to again get this interaction. However, that means that one of the saves could end up with two Sentinel ships using the pulse interaction. I personally don’t see this as a problem, but Hello Games probably will. If Hello Games decides to fix this bug, they’ll likely take the first approach, meaning all existing saves won’t benefit from that fix.
And Yet More Bugs
After having dived deep into Reddit around the Interceptor update, I’ve come to realize that there are many, many MORE bugs around obtaining Sentinel ships. Some of the bugs may depend on the platform you play on. For example, PC players seem to have the most problems with this update, but that doesn’t preclude problems for console players.
Here’s a short list of problems that you may encounter when playing the No Man’s Sky Interceptor update while attempting to get a Sentinel ship:
- Bug 1: The Hyaline Brain may not work correctly. Instead of leading you to a Monolith to exchange the Hyaline Brain for a Harmonic Brain, activating the Hyaline Brain instead acts like an Echo Locator, which will lead you to another crashed Sentinel ship instead of to a Monolith.
Workaround: None. - Bug 2: Arriving at the crashed Sentinel ship goes fine, but then after returning from the Monolith, the ship has disappeared.
Workaround: Disable Multiplayer while completing the quest. Because these ships are very popular, leaving multiplayer enabled allows another player to come take the ship and leave the crash site empty. - Bug 3: Arriving at the crashed Sentinel site after the Monolith, the ship flies away on its own.
Workaround: Immediately enter the ship and fix it. Don’t dawdle when you get back from the monolith. If you idle outside of the ship for longer than a few minutes, the ship may fly up and away on its own. If this happens, reload your game from the last save point and try again. - Bug 4: The Hyaline Brain doesn’t work at all.
Workaround: Ensure that you have the necessary amounts of Pugneum and Salvaged Glass in your inventory. Without this, the Hyaline Brain may not activate. If it still doesn’t activate, there may be another bug present. - Bug 5: Locator to the crashed ship doesn’t appear. This bug is actually a bigger problem within the Interceptor update than just with Sentinel crash sites. HUD markers sometimes don’t show up on planet surfaces (and in other locations) for quests. This prevents you from finding the site where you need to be.
Workaround: None known. We’ll have to wait until Hello Games finds and fixes this problem. - Bug 6: The game locks up hard even though the sound still works.
Workaround: None. You’ll need to restart the game and hope it doesn’t lock up again. We’ll have to wait until Hello Games finds and fixes this problem.
Good luck and happy hunting!
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Fact Checking the Donald Trump Rhetoric
Donald Trump makes many claims and assertions which have no basis in fact. He does this almost every time he speaks at a podium anywhere. Additionally, misguided Republicans (aka his sycophants) blindly accept Donald’s rhetoric and believe Donald to be, and I quote these misguided people, “The Best President Ever.” Let’s explore how much of Donald Trump’s rhetoric is false.
Donald Trump’s Claims after Indictment
Let’s start with claims stated by Donald Trump’s own mouth following his indictment. Many of these claims may seem to hold weight until you realize that Donald Trump is a pathological lying narcissist. What that means in layman’s terms is that he habitually lies about almost every single thing he says. While there may be grains of truth in a few of his statements, they usually end with a massive lie.
I honestly don’t see the appeal or attraction in listening to someone whose lies outnumber truths and who continues to lie constantly, even when there’s absolutely no need to do so. Why so many Republicans are so willing to accept and embrace Donald Trump’s habitual lying needs to become the subject of an educational research paper that has yet to be written.
Let’s jump right into Donald’s claims…
Claim 1: Presidential Records Act requires Negotiation between National Archives and ex-President to return classified documents.
Claim Status: False. At the time a new President is sworn into office, all previous documents by the previous President must be returned, handed over to and automatically become property of the National Archives. Nothing in the NARA statute requires or even suggests “negotiating” with any former President for document turnover.
Claim 2: Joe Biden has over 1800 boxes of classified documents.
Claim Status: False. A small number of documents in boxes were found and returned from Joe Biden’s home in Delaware and Boston to the National Archives. It is entirely unclear whether those documents had been there from when he left office as vice president or if they were acquired and carried there after he became President. Additionally, the documents may not even be classified or sensitive. How would a Vice President gain access to such highly classified documents anyway?
Claim 3: All past Presidents have taken home classified documents after their administration ended. Trump actually admits to having done this himself (see below).
Claim Status: False and True, respectively. While Trump’s admission of taking boxes of classified documents to Mar-A-Lago is True, the remainder is False. No past presidents have intentionally and willfully taken boxes of classified documents from the White House or any other facility operated by the government upon departing their role as President. Donald Trump is the first and only President to have both done this upon departing the role and he is also the first ex-President to have admitted to having done this.
Claim 4: Trump’s call to Georgia soliciting votes was a “Perfect Call”
Claim Status: False. Trump’s call to Georgia’s elections official to solicit those officials to “find” 11,780 votes for Trump is not only NOT a “Perfect Call”, it very likely constitutes malicious intent to willfully solicit conspiracy and interfere with the 2020 election in Georgia. Willful election interference is a crime in Georgia.
Claim 5: Trump claims that America is experiencing the highest inflation in 60 years.
Claim Status: False. In 1979, 42 years ago, the annual inflation rate was 13.3%, 7.3% higher than our current 6% annual inflation rate as of February 2023. Let’s further put his statement into broader perspective. Donald Trump ushered in our current inflation rate as part of his own failure in handling the first year of the COVID pandemic. The United States is presently in the midst of inflation, not because of Biden, but because of Trump’s economic mismanagement of the pandemic his final year in office.
Claim 6: Trump’s claims about ballot box stuffing in the 2020 election were “all caught on government cameras.”
Claim Status: Mostly False, but also slightly True. It is categorically False and was never proven in Donald Trump’s over 63 election lawsuits that ballot box stuffing ever took place at any actual 2020 election polling places. Such activity was also never caught “on government cameras.” If it had been, he wouldn’t have lost over 63 lawsuits with this exact argument. However, Donald Trump himself did attempt to use the court system and the Insurrection itself to stuff his own ballots into ballot boxes to sway the election in his favor. Thus, his statement is somewhat True that ballot box stuffing was attempted, but only by Donald Trump himself and, by extension, those in the Republican party. In fact, many Republicans are still attempting to sway elections by heavy gerrymandering, which should be considered a form of ballot box stuffing and election interference.
Claim 7: $85 billion worth of equipment was left in Afghanistan after US withdrawal.
Claim Status: False. Around ~$83 billion total was spent on managing portions of the US occupation of Afghanistan. On withdrawal, around $7 billion in total equipment was left behind, much of it left in an inoperable state. Let’s understand the further subtext over Trump’s statement. Donald Trump was instrumental in negotiating with the Taliban in his final year in office over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was planned for early 2020. Thus, the Afghanistan withdrawal and any associated costs of equipment left behind was a direct result of Donald Trump’s meddling in Afghanistan’s affairs. Donald Trump left behind an exceedingly short timetable for Joe Biden to execute a proper withdrawal, forcing this action just a few months after his inauguration. Thus, Donald Trump is actually at least partially responsible, along with Joe Biden, for the cost of any equipment left behind and any casualties after withdrawal from Afghanistan due to Trump’s exceedingly short timetable that Biden likely felt forced to uphold.
Claim 8: Illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-A-Lago
Claim Status: False. After months of the failure in negotiations back and forth between Trump and the National Archives to return documents, the FBI was sent with a legally issued, judge authorized, properly signed and carefully executed search warrant to search and seize the documents that Donald Trump brought with him from the White House to Mar-A-Lago. The search was not a “raid”. The search was conducted in an orderly fashion as written in the warrant. Documents were seized by the FBI in relation to those required by the warrant. Further context follows. Donald Trump was given every opportunity over many months to surrender all documents involving the National Archives, but chose to ignore those requests. The search and seizure was only required by the FBI because Donald Trump himself failed to comply with repeated requests by the National Archives to return requested documents; documents that Donald Trump claimed he did not have, but which were subsequently found during the legal search.
Claim 9: DOJ / FBI lying to FISA Court to gain access to spy on Trump Aide
Claim Status: Somewhat True and somewhat False. At the time, the FBI was investigating a Trump aide for possibly spying in relation to the 2020 election. When the FBI submitted its request to FISA, it believed that it then had probable cause for the investigation (False). It was later determined that the FBI’s probable cause might not have been valid (True). Further context is warranted. Because this situation happened under Trump’s Presidency, he should have done something as President. Clearly, he didn’t. As the then sitting President, Trump complaining after-the-fact about a situation that he could have handled then is his own fault and of his own making and no one else’s.
Claim 10: Alleged democrat unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators
Claim Status: Ambiguous. Trump is guilty of this himself. By Trump attempting to seat false electors in the 2020 election, who would then vote in Trump’s favor instead of the duly authorized electors during the electoral college vote, this is actually an unconstitutional change to election laws unapproved by states. Second, by requesting Mike Pence to throw the electoral college confirmation in Trump’s favor (remember, the “‘Hang Mike Pence’ chant?”) during the insurrection, this is also another example of unconstitutional changes to election laws not state approved. While Trump may be calling out a different event in his own mind, these are the two events that most people will remember that Trump perpetrated on the United States… events which fully fit Trump’s claim.
Claim 11: The DOJ was working in collusion with Facebook and Twitter to hide and suppress data involving the Hunter Biden Laptop.
Claim Status: False. Twitter and Facebook have never colluded with anyone in the government. Information about the Hunter Biden laptop was never hidden from anyone on Twitter or Facebook. Any posts removed or hidden were done so by each respective company’s staff. Further context is required. The alleged Hunter Biden laptop has never been proven to have ever been owned by Hunter Biden himself. A person purporting to be Hunter Biden, but never properly identified, dropped off a laptop at a repair shop. The repair shop owner turned the laptop over to the FBI. The laptop has never been proven to have ever been owned by anyone in the Biden family. The contents of the alleged laptop hard drive were supposedly copied prior to being handed over. The alleged hard drive content supposedly has incriminating data, but again nothing on that hard drive has been shown to implicate Hunter Biden or indeed even hold incriminating evidence. The data, the laptop and the situation were likely fabricated to disparage the Biden family. This one is solely a false talking point by the Republicans intended solely to disparage the Democrats and, more specifically, the Biden family.
Claim 11: Massive election interference (via Alvin Bragg)
Claim Status: False, but true in other ways. Context required. In point of fact, there is massive election interference occurring today, but not by the Democrats. It is actually a point of fact that Republicans are perpetrating massive election interference through heavy gerrymandering in their respective states. By redrawing district lines in convoluted and complex patterns solely designed to dilute Democrat voters into fewer numbers and concentrate Republican voters in greater numbers, this ensures Republicans win state (and federal) elections when they otherwise would not. Gerrymandering is a form of election interference on a massive scale. Gerrymandering is designed to allow politicians and legislators to pick their voters, subverting the will of the voters to pick their candidates. Additionally, Republican led states have tampered with voting laws by attempting to outlaw vote-by-mail and other similar proxy voting mechanisms in favor of in-person day of voting. These law changes are intended to exclude many legal voters (such as disabled individuals and veterans) as yet another means to allow Republicans to pick their voters, not the other way around as elections should require. Further, Donald Trump allegedly sought to interfere with both the 2016 and 2020 elections. See above to cite DJT’s interference with the 2020 election.
Claim 12: Alvin Bragg case “never should have been brought”
Claim Status: Wishful thinking. Donald Trump lived and worked in New York prior to his Presidency. Bragg’s indictment states 34 counts of falsifying business records with intent to commit “another crime” prior to the election. With this article, it’s pretty much proven that Donald J. Trump is a pathological liar. Lying this pathologically goes to prove that Donald Trump is not a trustworthy person and is not credible. Alvin Bragg has not proven himself to be a pathological liar or untrustworthy. As such, the Alvin Bragg indictment is a whole lot more credible than Donald Trump’s wishful thinking and statements of being “Not Guilty.” However, “guilty until proven innocent” is how the United States rolls. In that goal, let’s allow Alvin Bragg’s indictment to be brought to trial so Donald Trump can prove that Bragg’s indictment is indeed not valid, which will allow a jury to decide the matter of Donald Trump.
Claim 13: Crime statistics in Democrat run cities are the likes of which we have never seen before.
Claim Status: False. Republican led states far outpace crime over Democrat run states. Democrat run cities within Republican run states do have higher crime rates, but that’s only because the states are Republican run, operating under much more lax Republican state crime and gun laws. In fact, gun violence in Republican run (Red) states far outpaces gun violence perpetrated in Democrat run (Blue) states. It is actually Republican led states that have far higher crime problems than Democrat states. Most Democrat run cities in Democrat run states do not have the same crime rate problems as Democrat run cities in Republican run states.
Claim 14: In the 2020 election, DJT claims he won 75 million votes, “which is more than any sitting President in the history of our country.”
Claim Status: False. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump did not get 75 million votes. He received 74,222,958 votes. Rounding that, you’d round it down to 74 million votes. It gets worse, though. Joe Biden, in fact, won 81,283,098 votes (or 81 million votes). If anyone has the distinction of winning the most votes in United States Presidential history (based solely on Trump’s statement), it is in fact, Joe Biden who gets that honor. And yet, here we have Donald Trump taking credit for an honor which he didn’t earn and doesn’t deserve. Note that in 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but still managed to win the electoral college.
Claim 15: “[Documents] that I openly and in very plain sight brought with me to Mar-A-Lago from our beautiful White House…”
Claim Status: True. Donald Trump has confessed to having brought classified documents from the White House to Mar-A-Lago after having left office as President for a few hours, but then as ex-President after Biden’s inauguration. As ex-President, these (still classified) records were no longer Trump’s records and he had no more right to remain in possession of these classified documents after becoming ex-President. Admitting to having taken classified documents without authorization is probably exactly the admission and evidence that DOJ’s Jack Smith needs to majorly help indict and convict Trump’s case. Donald Trump needs to learn to shut his mouth.
Claim 16: “As President, I have the right to declassify documents, and the process is automatic.”
Claim Status: True and False, respectively. It is True that as sitting President, the President holds the rights to declassify some documents. It is absolutely False that the process is automatic. To declassify documents as President, forms must be filled out and submitted so that the National Archives can ascertain validity of the request and so that the documents can become properly reclassified in the archive. It does not and cannot happen automatically. However, the President cannot declassify certain types of statutorily protected documents at all, not even by thinking about it or by using paperwork. As an ex-President, however, the power to declassify documents is forfeit and lost. Simply walking out of the White House with boxes of documents in hand as soon-to-be-ex-President is not sufficient to ‘automatically’ declassify documents. The appropriate paperwork must be filled and filed to both verify if the document can be declassified and also to request the archive to update its classification, if so. If the President didn’t request these actions prior to becoming ex-President, then the documents should not be considered declassified. As stated, statutorily protected documents simply cannot be declassified at all by a sitting President. Possessing any of these statutorily protected documents as ex-President should be considered a felony. If Trump’s team had submitted declassifying document forms within 30 days of having exited the White House, the now Biden controlled government would probably have been lenient enough to accept the declassifying requests on Trump’s behalf, with the exception of statutorily protected documents, of course. I mean, how hard is it to do the right thing?
Republican Claims
While many of the Republican talking points have been covered by Donald Trump’s claims above, with those talking points lifted almost verbatim from Trump’s speeches, let’s discuss the delusions that many Republican voters are under about Donald Trump. Further, let’s validate these continually regurgitated Republican talking points.
Delusion 1: Donald Trump ushered in and presided over the best economic prosperity ever seen in the United States as the 45th President.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump didn’t usher in United States economic prosperity during his tenure. This economic prosperity is falsely attributed to Donald Trump. The prosperity that carried through Trump’s first 3 years during his Presidency was as a direct result of Barrack Obama. Obama ushered in this prosperity after the 2008 mortgage meltdown almost tanked the entire economy. It was Barrack Obama who spent the time and effort to rebound the economy to the prosperous level seen in 2015, just prior to Trump taking office. Once Trump took office, Trump rode Obama’s economic wave for his first 3 years, until the economy slowed in early 2019 and then COVID happened and fully tanked the economy. If Trump were the economic savior he is so readily touted and claims to be, Trump’s fourth year in office should have remained as prosperous as the 3 years prior, regardless of COVID. Note that economic prosperity includes job gains, inflation, wages and all manner of other metrics that Donald Trump rode and took personal credit for, but which happened because of Obama. One thing that Trump can take full credit for is tanking the economy once COVID arrived. Yet another dubious honor.
Delusion 2: Unemployment was at its lowest rate ever under Trump.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump presided over 2.9 million lost jobs over his 4 years in office. The unemployment rate went up by 1.6% to 6.3%. Compare that to the end of 2022 when the unemployment rate was 2.2% under Biden.
Delusion 3: The deficit was at its lowest rate ever in the history of the United States.
Delusion Status: False. Under Donald Trump, the United States deficit actually increased almost exponentially, skyrocketing from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion, the most ever for a one term president. A dubious honor to be sure.
Delusion 4: There were no wars under Donald Trump.
Delusion Status: False. While the United States entered no “new wars”, existing and inherited wars grew both in size and in monetary expenditures under Donald Trump. Trump even exacerbated these inherited wars causing even more death and destruction by his own actions, including the use of expensive drones. Trumps claims are just that, claims… and false ones at that.
Delusion 5: Gas prices were the cheapest ever under Trump.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump presided over somewhat cheaper gasoline prices between 2016 and 2019 than between 2010-2015 (which averaged over $3). The average price of a gallon of gas during Donald Trump’s presidency ranged between $2.00 and $2.75 per gallon. In fact, when Biden took office, gas prices began to decline a little over Trump’s term for at least Biden’s first year in office. After that, the gas price gouging situation began, echoing similar prices seen during some of Obama’s term in office. In the year 2000, though, the United States had seen gas prices drop to around 99¢ per gallon at the time, far cheaper than was ever seen during Trump’s time in office. More false rhetoric.
Delusion 6: Democrats are ushering in higher crime rates.
Delusion Status: False. In fact, this situation is truthfully the opposite. Republican led states are ushering in some of the highest crime rates in the nation. This is mostly because Republicans are NRA friendly, if not NRA backed. Thus, Republicans refuse to write legislation to control guns. Many Republican led states are now crafting and signing new legislation to both legalize guns even more and allow such activities as concealed carrying without a permit. For example, Republican Ron DeSantis recently signed a permitless concealed carry into law in Florida. Republicans are clearly very, very gun friendly legislatively, to the point that it is now facilitating skyrocketing crime rates and homicide statistics in Republican led states.
Delusion 7: Democrat cities are ushering in higher crime rates.
Delusion Status: Ambiguous and False. The subtext of this false narrative is to disparage Democrats without explaining that Republicans are actually responsible for this situation. Democrat run cities that are now experiencing higher than normal crime rates in those cities which exist within Republican led states. It is then no surprise that because Republicans are writing state legislation to relax gun laws, allowing open carry and even permitless concealed carry and easier access to buying guns, that the crime rate in all cities in those Republican states is skyrocketing. Thus, this false rhetoric is designed to ignore the fact that it is the Republicans who are actually responsible for the skyrocketing crime rates in those Democrat run cities.
Delusion 8: Democrats are responsible for the open border crisis.
Delusion Status: Mostly false. While Joe Biden has made a few questionable maneuvers regarding securing the border, Republicans are the ones making this situation worse. With Greg Abbott human trafficking immigrants across the country to other states along with Ron DeSantis, which is a federal crime, this action is backfiring on the Republicans. Abbott’s trafficking is actually having the opposite effect by encouraging even more immigrants to arrive at the border so they can be bussed into the United States. While Biden hasn’t sufficiently secured the border, it is the Republicans who are causing the borders to become clogged due to their cushy busses, free transportation and free food and lodging that Greg Abbott is giving to the immigrants the moment they get here. It is Abbott who is welcoming the immigrants with open arms, not Biden. The border security is actually the responsibility of Greg Abbott, in coordination with the border patrol. It is not Joe Biden’s responsibility. If Greg Abbott is not actively trying to secure the border, that failure falls almost squarely on Texas and Abbott, not on Biden. Once again, the false delusional rhetoric is the responsibility of the Republicans, not the Democrats.
Delusion 9: Donald Trump is the best president EVAR!
Delusion Claim: False. Donald Trump has actually proven himself to be the worst President in United States History. What other sitting president fomented a violent insurrection against the government? Donald Trump has had a lot of firsts, but none of these firsts are something to be proud of, nor do any of these firsts prove Trump to be a great or even good President. These firsts are of dubious distinction:
- President Donald Trump fomented and incited a violent Insurrection on the United States Capitol building for the sole purposes of causing election interference, entirely for the purposes of keeping himself in power as the President of the United States beyond his Constitutionally mandated 4 year term.
- President Donald Trump took many boxes of allegedly classified documents from the White House back to his home in Mar-A-Lago in Florida; boxes that hadn’t been proven to be declassified at the time. Trump argues that he declassified them simply by thinking about it. That’s not one of the legally adopted US Government processes required to declassify documents. The legal process involves filling out paperwork, submitting it to the archives and having that request accepted and acknowledged. If the archive staff wasn’t aware the documents were declassified, then they are not declassified. Attempting to declassify them as an ex-President also isn’t possible.
- President Donald Trump was the only President to have been impeached by the House of Representatives twice. He was also the first President to have been denied conviction by the Senate twice.
- Donald Trump is the first former President of the United States to have been criminally indicted by any prosecutor.
There are likely many more firsts yet to come, but these above are the highlights (err… lowlights) of Donald Trump’s dubious Presidency. In addition to the false rhetoric already refuted above, Donald Trump’s term wasn’t spectacular by any Presidential standard. While Trump certainly wasn’t the first president to serve only one term, Trump most definitely shares in a very small group of Presidents who have only served one term including:
- James Buchanan
- Andrew Johnson
- Franklin Pierce
- William Henry Harrison
- John Tyler
- Millard Fillmore
- Warren G. Harding
- Herbert Hoover
- Zachary Taylor
- Martin Van Buren
- Rutherford B. Hayes
- Benjamin Harrison
- Chester A. Arthur
- Gerald Ford
- James Garfield
- Jimmy Carter
- William Howard Taft
- George H. W. Bush
- James K. Polk
- John Quincy Adams
- John Adams
- John F. Kennedy (for obvious reasons)
- Donald J. Trump
Donald Trump served as President, yes, but didn’t really help the United States very much. Most countries laughed at Trump like a clown and easily saw through Trump’s crass veneer. He raised the deficit by tremendous amounts, spending vast amounts of money, but not really providing much benefit to United States citizens. Because Obama had already set the economy on an upward trajectory, Donald Trump didn’t have to do much to keep that trajectory on track. He simply needed to not interfere with it and that’s what he did (or rather, didn’t do). Donald Trump’s legacy, however, wasn’t that he was mostly a do-nothing President. It would be how he handled his final year in office and specifically what happened on January 6th that effectively eclipsed his previous 4 years of service and rewrote his historical legacy as the 45th President.
Because Donald Trump was ill-prepared to handle the pandemic, he first tried to ignore it. When that didn’t work, he then tried to do as little as possible. This left the United States open to the rapid spread of it. While the CDC and other health agencies tried to steer Donald Trump in the right direction, he was having none of it. This meant that many hundreds of thousands of people died of COVID-19 in the early days because Donald Trump failed and refused to do anything.
It wasn’t until his approval ratings dropped to all time lows that he began to work on such projects as Operation Warp Speed, to develop and push through vaccines quickly. While he did preside over such health projects, it was too little, too late… at least for his legacy. If he had acted much sooner to the pandemic, many more people could have lived.
If Donald Trump had left well enough alone regarding the election and accepted his defeat gracefully during the 2020 election, you know by actually conceding to Biden, his legacy would have remained fully intact. Instead, Donald Trump took a different, highly questionable and very unethical approach to leaving office (or rather, to prevent his leaving office). Trump attempted to perpetrate many dubious (and probably very illegal) schemes in this process which ultimately fomented into a violent Insurrection on Capitol Hill by his supporters, all in the goal of attempting to halt the counting of the Electoral College votes with the sole intent to interfere with the Election and halt the peaceful transition of power.
Though, Donald Trump (and his cabal) claimed those violent rioters weren’t his supporters at all, instead suggesting they were actually Democrats and/or ANTIFA, even though this idea makes zero sense at all. Why would Democrats show up to a Trump rally at the Ellipse and support Trump? Then see those same Democrats march to the Capitol Hill buildings only to rip apart the buildings and violently attack police officers? It wasn’t a Democrat rally. It was a Republican led rally. Why would Democrats attend a Republican rally in those numbers? No, those people were definitely Donald Trump supporters.
Worse, for 4 hours and a handful of minutes, Donald Trump allowed the rioting to continue unabated instead of calling an end to it as President and sending in troops to stop it. The President should ALWAYS call for law and order, but instead this President stayed entirely silent, aiding and abetting the rioters silently.
Donald Trump’s historic legacy will be forever overshadowed and tainted by Trump’s incredibly dubious and stupid choice to foment a violent insurrection, followed by his over 4 hours of (in)action on January 6th, 2020… fully and completely eclipsing any good that may have been accomplished during his previous years as President. No one will care ultimately what he did in his early years, but everyone will remember that a President of the United States attempted to tear up the Constitution solely for personal gain.
Sychopant Supporters
Donald Trump’s sycophants, however, act like parrots. These delusional people simply repeat everything Donald Trump says almost verbatim, as if he’s somehow the voice of reason and/or the voice of truth. If anything, this article should illustrate exactly how misguided Donald Trump’s sycophants are and how much Donald Trump lacks the ability to tell the truth. Truth is just not something Donald Trump does.
The Washington Post estimates that of Donald Trump’s 4 years in office, he perpetuated well over 30,000 false or misleading claims. That’s not insignificant. Unfortunately, too many of his sycophants are blind to his lack of morals and ethics. Anyone willing to stand around for 4 hours while cops are beaten within inches of their lives is not someone you should endorse as “The Best President EVER” as you’re obviously delusional. Only someone delusional can look beyond the criminal, the unethical and then condone downright evil behavior only to claim they see someone who they believe to be “Good”. Good? That’s a laugh. Wolf in sheep’s clothing is more like it.
Donald Trump is not a good person. He’s not even an ethical person. There are things that Donald Trump most definitely is, though. He’s a manipulative person. He’s a sociopath. He’s a classic narcissist. He’s a philanderer. He’s bigoted. He’s misogynistic. He’s may even be somewhat delusional himself. However, there are almost no redeeming qualities about Donald J. Trump. How can you look in the mirror and state with a straight face that this man, a man who is willing to allow people to be injured and killed during a 4 hour period when he could have stopped it, a man who sat around allowing hundreds of thousands to die of COVID when he could have helped, is someone to look up to? No. There is simply no excuse here.
I don’t personally hate Donald Trump. I pity him. He’s a man who is caught up in his own delusional world and simply cannot break free. He is out for himself and what others can give him. This is why he relies on delusional people to continue to hand over their money to him. Donald Trump likely needs some major psychiatric counseling and therapy along with possibly some medication. He doesn’t need to be running the United States, however. This man should have, in fact, been barred from ever holding office ever again as he is simply not fit to hold it.
Those sycophants who parrot Donald’s every word AND who also hold governmental office must likewise be shown the door. Anyone who is that much of a blind follower of someone else cannot be working towards the benefit of their own constituents. If Donald Trump is more important then a congress person’s own constituents, voting them out and replacing them with someone who can think for themselves is the only answer. The current Republican party is blinded by a man who is ultimately a huge problem, not just for the Republicans, but for the entire world.
Let’s hope that Jack Smith, special counsel brought in by the DOJ, can bring this man to justice for the pain, suffering and, yes, death he has inflicted on far too many. If Donald J. Trump is elected again as President, his delusions won’t stop with an Insurrection. America as we know it will end… and along with it your freedoms, your home, your families, your beliefs and possibly even your very lives. Donald Trump is not the answer to America’s problems. America’s last gasp will be at the hands of Donald Trump. Donald J. Trump will end America. There will be nothing at all great about that, but then there won’t be many left to worry about it either.
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Donald Trump indicted?
Yes and this is likely to be the first of many indictments to come. Should Donald Trump be indicted for anything? Clearly, the MAGA Republicans say, “No.” Let’s explore.
Note, I’ve typically avoided political and controversial topics like this one on Randocity. Not because they’re not worth writing about, but because these topics are mostly useless. However, this topic is so urgent that it must be said.
MAGA Republicans
Let’s lead with the elephant in the room. Clearly, these MAGA Republicans are bad for the United States. They’re bad for United States Citizens. They’re bad for the world. Yet, here we are once again. With these MAGA cultists jumping to Donald Trump’s defense, not even knowing if the indictment has merit.
Donald Trump is a sleazy, off-kilter, man-child wannabe politician. There’s no doubting this. The man certainly appears to be successful by all measures, but that’s only because he uses his alleged victimhood to raise money every single time someone acts against him.
Worse, the MAGA Republican base always seems to rally around this man as if he’s some kind of cult leader messiah. Yes, MAGA is literally a cult; the cult of Donald Trump.
Liberal Democrat?
I can hear all of the MAGA Republicans groaning over this article at this point claiming this author is liberal Democrat. You don’t know me. You don’t know my views. As an author, it is a journalist’s prerogative and, indeed, obligation to call out that a duck is a duck. You and Donald Trump can’t waddle your way out of this. Be upset. Fine. But, that doesn’t change the facts above. Donald Trump’s cult IS a cult. There is no way around that.
You don’t see liberal democrats rallying around Joe Biden carrying flags with Biden’s face on it as if he were some kind of messianic figure. Just the opposite, in fact. A lot of liberal democrats don’t like what Joe Biden is doing as President of the United States either and are more than willing to call out each and every fact or action they don’t like. Yet, these liberal democrats also don’t stand on street corners waving flags with Biden’s face when he’s being persecuted. On the other hand, the MAGA Republicans rarely ever speak ill of their messiah, Donald Trump, even when Donald Trump called for people to inject bleach into themselves to rid themselves of COVID-19. A truly medically dangerous suggestion. Yet, they’re so willing to drag out the messianic flags and stand on street corners calling Donald Trump the best President ever. That’s a delusional cultist.
Intelligence vs Not
One of the things that much of Donald Trump’s base has proven time and time again is that they’re far less educated than the average liberal democrat. This lack of education may be what’s feeding the gullible nature of MAGA people, leading them to becoming cultists for Trump. When you can’t exactly think for yourself, letting other people think for you seems like bliss. Sure, as a MAGA Republican, you may think you’re good at trying to make arguments, but most of those arguments end up stupid and don’t work out for you. This is the reason Fox News is so bad at it. They hire moronic TV hosts (and lame piece writers) and then expect intelligence out of each and every one of them. You (don’t) get what you (don’t) pay for. You can’t pay dumb people to instantly become intelligent.
It’s quite clear that Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson check their education at the Fox News’ door every day on the way in, even though all three claim to be college educated. If I worked at the colleges where these three allegedly attended, I’d summarily revoke their degrees. Of course, these three aren’t required to have an education to work at Fox News. A comb, a suit and a dusting of makeup in the makeup artist’s chair and they’re good to go. The teleprompter and remedial reading skills do all of the rest. You don’t need a college education to read from a teleprompter.
It’s sad that Fox News has had to stoop to such (uneducated) lows to try to gain (and retain) its ratings… ratings, I might add, that come from the bottom 10-30% of the uneducated percentile of the United States.
Once again, I can hear the MAGA Republicans groaning. Stop groaning and go get an education. That or stop reading and go listen to your (sym)pathetic “friends” over at Fox News or News Max so you get today’s fix of unreality.
Donald Trump Indicted in New York
Donald Trump formerly lived in New York and has operated businesses in and out of New York while living there and since departing the state. It’s actually relatively recently that Donald Trump moved out of New York state, first to be President when he lived in the White House and then later to Florida to live full time at Mar-a-Lago. Simply because Donald Trump WAS President at one time and just because he now lives in Florida does not mean Donald Trump didn’t perform illegal activities while residing and operating businesses in New York prior to his Presidency.
Clearly, since the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has brought an indictment, Bragg (and a grand jury) believes that there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump claims it’s all a political witchhunt and all politically motivated, but Trump knows what he has done both prior to and after leaving New York. Because nearly every single person who is indicted of a criminal offense initially pleads “Not Guilty”, that doesn’t mean that they truly are innocent. Only a trial will uncover if this is true.
Considering that there are 30+ charges pending under Donald Trump’s New York indictment, that sheer volume doesn’t say “petty misdemeanor.” If there had been one or two charges, a petty misdemeanor might sound more reasonable, but 30 or more? No. 30+ charges definitely says something larger is at work… something that can only be decided via a judge, courtroom and jury.
Yes, it’s entirely possible that Donald Trump could be acquitted of all charges, but we won’t know that until or unless the charges and the evidence have been presented and a trial jury has decided.
Trial by Jury
One thing that Donald Trump and his cult following (including cult members Kevin McCarthy and Lindsay Graham) have continually put forth is his innocence. More than this, they have put forth that the DA has “weaponized” the judicial system against politicians, or more specifically, against Donald Trump as a politician. Again, I say, “No.” Instead, I’ll strongly counter that Trump has weaponized his cult following against the United States’ sovereignty.
A District Attorney’s job is to find wrongdoing and prosecute it. Clearly, Trump has at least left a trail of wrongdoing that has now been uncovered… in part with the help of Donald Trump’s former attorney and now convicted felon, Michael Cohen. Regardless of Cohen’s conviction and release, and regardless of Cohen’s disbarment as lawyer, that doesn’t discredit or discount his statements as to what Cohen did for and while in the employ of Donald Trump… especially when those statements can be fully corroborated using physical evidence.
Trump conferred many, many of his own personal and legal matters onto Cohen as his attorney. Trump then threw Cohen under the bus to serve prison time over those very same matters. What did Donald Trump think would happen after? Did Trump think that Cohen would step out of prison and jump right back into Trump’s good graces? No. Cohen is doing what anyone who gets thrown under the bus does. Whistleblow. Cohen just so happened to whistleblow right into the Manhattan DA’s ear… and clearly Bragg has listened intently. Cohen has likely managed and presided over many, many shady dealings with Donald Trump’s affairs, not just the Stormy Daniels “affair.”
You don’t see 30+ charges (and request to see Michael Cohen 20+ times for testimony) over of a single night’s affair requiring one single hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. There’s a whole lot more that’s been uncovered about Donald Trump’s New York affairs than a single hush money payment. Clearly, Michael Cohen has been spilling the beans about everything with Trump’s dealings while Cohen was Trump’s attorney.
This extensive situation must be resolved by using a trial with a jury. There is no other way to resolve this. However, time always seems to be on Trump’s side. Meaning, Trump can delay, delay, delay until a later day. Trump also hopes that that later day is much more inconvenient for Bragg, or better, a day when a Republican appointee has taken office and these charges can be dropped against Trump. At least, that’s what Donald Trump is hoping. This situation sucks for the United States, but it is our legal system (not) at work.
Were this any person other than Donald Trump, these legal shenanigans would not work against a DA. However, Trump seems to be able to slip out of these situations with all due ease (wielding time, loopholes and his MAGA cultists as weapons).
Further Indictments and Trump’s Future
Let’s hope that Donald Trump’s potential federal trials are not so easily skirted. I’m not fully writing off Bragg’s trial yet, but I’m also not holding out much hope that this trial will land in a court before 2024, the Presidential election year. If this trial lands at any point during 2024, Bragg will likely be forced to postpone the trial until the election is over, pending the election outcome. This means even longer waiting and possibly no trial at all.
Unless Alvin Bragg can bring this to trial before the end of 2023, his hopes of actually seeing the charges in the indictment stick to Trump are fading rapidly. Along side Trump’s false, but very noisy “witchhunt” rhetoric, which is also being parroted by his MAGA cult followers, we could also end up waiting 2 years or longer for a trial to convene. This lengthy wait may even cause the charges to completely evaporate. I’m all for holding people legally accountable, but in Trump’s case, it must be performed as rapidly as possible; from indictment to trial in no more than 3 months. If that’s not feasible, then bringing an indictment might be fruitless because of Trump’s inevitable delaying tactics.
It’s nearly guaranteed that if Trump can delay this New York trial for long enough, the charges are likely to disappear. This is why any attorney seeking to bring charges against Trump must plan to execute not only the indictment and the charges carefully, but they must also weigh the delay games Trump is likely to play. If Trump can successfully delay 6 months, 12 months, 24 months or even longer, it might exceed the statute of limitations and it could allow Trump to retake Presidential office (or see another Republican become elected) to get out of the charges entirely. The longer a trial takes to convene, the less likely Trump is to even see a trial at all. Bragg needs to weigh all of this carefully.
Could Bragg continue to levy these charges if Trump is re-elected as President? Probably not. If Trump is re-elected President, these New York charges along with any federal charges are also likely to evaporate under Trump’s change in cabinet. However, Bragg’s charges could remain, but New York State could be pressured out of existence should Trump’s feds place extraordinary (retaliatory) federal pressure on the state of New York. Thus, forcing the charges to be dropped. Worse, how would it look for Alvin Bragg to bring state criminal charges against a newly elected President?
This is why it’s nearly impossible to run these indictments at this late date. In fact, any Federal indictments should have already been levied by the DOJ in 2021 or 2022 so that Trump could potentially be on trial by the end of 2023. It’s actually too late to levy any federal DOJ charges via indictment against Trump due to the upcoming 2024 election. If a federal indictment were to be levied at this point in 2023, there is likely no possible way a federal trial could occur before November 2024 (the Presidential election). At this point, the feds are going to be forced to wait until after the 2024 election to have any hope of indicting Trump, assuming he’s not re-elected. The prospect of the DOJ indicting Trump actually fades every day that goes by without an indictment at this point. Once 2024 arrives without a DOJ indictment, there very likely won’t be an indictment until after November of that year.
If ANY other Republican candidate takes Presidential office and replaces Joe Biden, all federal indictments (or investigations) against Trump are likely to be wiped away with a single pardon. State charges don’t get wiped with a pardon, but potential federal charges (and federal crimes) do. The Department of Justice likely fully understands this ticking-clock-dilemma, particularly at this late date. At this point, it is likely far too late for the DOJ’s special counsel, Jack Smith, to hand down a Department of Justice indictment over the charges of Insurrection or the classified documents case. The only way these cases would still be possible is if Jack Smith uses his ties to the ICC to levy charges under the ICC, which is entirely separate from and outside of the Department of Justice. This “dual counsel” aspect of Jack Smith may actually be the subtext for why Merrick Garland “hired” Jack Smith as special counsel to handle Trump’s case. Merrick Garland wouldn’t stand in the way of Jack Smith were he to levy an ICC indictment against Donald Trump and then hold an international trial against Trump’s espionage charges at the Hague.
Further, if the United States changes to a Republican led President and even if that newly elected President (assuming it is not Trump) chooses to pardon Trump, any ICC indictments still remain. The ICC acts outside of the United States jurisdiction. The United States is not a current signatory on the ICC, but that situation acts entirely in Merrick Garland’s favor, even if Garland ends up ousted from office as the DOJ’s head. For all of the jurisdictions that are signatories to the international court, they may have enough pressure over the United States to force the US to hand over Trump for an ICC indictment and international trial regardless of Trump’s present political office held (or not).
In other words, with Jack Smith as counsel, all may not be copacetic for Donald Trump even after the 2024 election ends. By Garland allowing Jack Smith to deep dive into Donald Trump’s DOJ investigation, this may see the ICC weigh in on Trump’s legal situation after the DOJ is unable. Garland knew the stakes of Trump’s situation and it appears that Garland may have used Jack Smith as an ICC insurance policy if the DOJ is unable to bring a proper indictment timely.
Republican Readers
If you are a Republican and you’re still reading up to this point, I applaud you. It means that you want to better understand Donald Trump’s predicament. Donald Trump is most definitely skirting laws that the rest of us would never be able to skirt. What it ultimately says is that Donald Trump is above the laws of the nation… and that situation is not right. No man is above the law. Yet, Donald Trump firmly believes that he is… and so do his sycophant cult members.
Why MAGA Republicans continue to endorse a man who wishes avoid legal consequences by becoming a dictator over the United States solely to make sure no laws ever apply to HIM, but then happily apply laws to everyone else, why would you as a Republican want that, not just for you and your family, but for the rest of the United States?
Democracy keeps the United States whole. The rule of law glues our democracy together. Dictatorship ensures neither remain and that the United States falls. Your very livelihood, family and indeed everything you hold dear is at stake. You may think that this man’s MAGA ideals are worthy, but Trump’s ideals are only worthy of collapsing the United States and turning the United States back into a third world nation.
If Donald Trump or any of his sycophant ilk including Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Green, Ron DeSantis, Gregg Abbott, Josh Hawley or any other doofuses manage to become President, democracy is likely to end.
The End of Democracy?
What does it mean if democracy ends? It means you won’t have a job. It means millions won’t have a job. It means the loss of income. It means the loss of whatever money or savings you have. It means the loss of your home. It means no more public schools for your children. It means no more food. It means restaurants close. It means that the United States as you know it is over. It means those with guns survive a bit longer than those without. It means the medical system serves those who are favored by the dictator, but affords those to die who aren’t.
What comes in Democracy’s place is no more elections. No more law enforcement, except against you if you speak out against the current regime. No more free press. No more constitution at all. It effectively means the situation that now exists in China and Russia, except it’ll be under Donald Trump in the United States. Puerto Rico will likely withdraw its involvement with the United States as many other US territories are likely to do (e.g., Guam, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, etc). Even Hawaii might try to become a territory of another nation since it’s a set of islands in the Pacific and not physically connected to the 48 state continent.
Further, it means the loss of allies and the loss of NATO status. The military will become, well who really knows? There’s no way to know what a dictator might do with a military the size of the United States Military nor the nukes under his control. It also means that those who live on or near a border, such as Mexico, will see the very real possibility of Mexican military takeovers of that border land and property. 50 states? Not anymore, with Russia firmly moving to take back Alaska and Mexico likely taking over border states.
Let’s just say that the life that you have come to know and understand is over. You won’t live under the rule of law, you will live under the rule of a supreme leader… one who will just as quickly kill you as look at you. Death will likely become the means to solve all legal problems. If you break the law, you die… even for a simple matter of theft of food simply to feed yourself or your family… even if that food was grown by you in your backyard. Once democracy is lost, your land is no longer yours and no longer is anything that sits on it.
Once democracy ends and a dictator comes into power, what you knew of the United States is gone. You can’t vote someone out of office if you’re not allowed to vote. What is the first thing that Donald Trump does if he’s re-elected president? He halts all future elections indefinitely, state or federal. An elected person cannot be voted out of office when elections don’t take place. Don’t think that Trump won’t do this. Further, Democrat led states will be either disbanded or new state leaders will be appointed by Trump, pushing out any remaining Democrat control.
This is who and what you’re endorsing and wanting to vote back into office as a MAGA Republican. You’re not voting in freedom. You’re voting out the ownership of everything you own. You’re voting out your very family’s well being. You’re voting out America’s future.
Vendetta
Why didn’t this happen in 2016? It didn’t happen in 2016 because Donald Trump didn’t have a vendetta against the United States. Today, Donald Trump has a very strong vendetta; a vendetta so strong that he’ll do anything once he regains power to ensure that vendetta is fulfilled and that he remains in power indefinitely. That includes shutting down democracy.
Once that happens, the rest of the world will retaliate by cutting off the United States from, well, just about anything and everything (imports and exports alike). No more imported food, clothing, oil, energy, products and various other stuff that keeps America economically rolling. No more exports will be accepted. That will collapse both Main Street and Wall Street alike. America’s dollar will become so devalued and worthless as to become worth less than the value of one Mexican Peso. Mexico’s money will likely become worth more than what will be left of the USD. Trump will have to seek new allies and trading partners. Better buy up some gold and horde it in your house. It’ll be the only thing you can buy stuff with… assuming Trump doesn’t force the military to go on raids and take everything you own away from you.
At this point, the United States will have to be renamed to something else… probably something like Trump Nation… or whatever naming whim Trump dreams up. What this also means is a major exodus of people flooding out of what’s left of the United States and into Canada or Mexico or other locations. Some will leave and head to Europe, but Europe (and the rest of the world) will suffer dearly from the collapse of the United States.
Staple products like cars and other big ticket items will disappear. Manufacturing will cease because there will be no money to buy these products by anyone in the United States. Grocery stores and most forms of commerce will cease. Barter will take hold, assuming Trump doesn’t annex the entirety of the United States land (and everything on it) into one big land mass ownership for himself, leaving no borders, no ownership and no more need for state legislators or state capitols. Meaning, you won’t be left with anything other than perhaps the clothes on your back with which to barter. A post Trump dictatorship economy will make the Great Depression decade between 1929-1939 seem like a pin prick by comparison.
The only people who will serve Trump directly are those who continue to lick his boots. The rest will be thrown to the curb and/or arrested and possibly disappeared (read killed). As for jails and current inmates, who really knows? Trump will deal with these institutions at his own fancy. Perhaps moving some military to manage and keep certain penitentiaries open and closing down others by releasing inmates back into what’s left of society or possibly executing them all. There’s no way to know exactly what Trump as a full out dictator might do here. Trump will have a huge bodyguard detail, but the rest of “America” will be left to fend for itself. Those in Trump’s employ who backstab Trump will summarily disappear.
There will also be no more press or TV channels or radio, except for radio and TV channels devoted solely to the Trump propaganda, which will run 24/7 on big screens around big cities. Trump’s still gotta stroke his fragile ego. No more free press or freedom of speech. Try to protest? The military will see to that.
Make America Great Again? Yeah, this is not so great is it? If you think this is all just alarmist rhetoric, then you really don’t know what Trump is capable of doing. Of course, if you want to live under the thumb of a dictator in squalor and poverty worse than what we have today, then by all means vote for Donald Trump again.
Donald Trump isn’t a Republican. Donald Trump isn’t even a Christian. Donald Trump is a nihilist; probably the exact type of nihilist that the author Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky warned us about.
A nihilist, by believing that laws and morals are useless, is also a person who would place the ultimate importance of life on material things. To this person, family, religion, and laws would have no purpose. This would make them a materialist, someone who believes the only things which have any value are those which are physical.
Does this quote sound just a little too familiar?
Trump actually doesn’t care about you or your family or anyone, let alone laws, religion, family or any other thing he professes to claim. He doesn’t care about the United States, religion or anything else… other than money and power (which gets him the things he wants… materialism). Trump pretends to care about such social topics, but only to the point that Trump hopes to convince you just enough so you as a Republican will vote for him. Once Trump lands back in power, his vendetta sees to it that the United States ends and so too with it do the Republicans, the Democrats, religion and the economy. After Donald Trump gets done with the United States, there will be nothing left united about it.
Let’s hope that before this happens that an indictment and a court finds Donald Trump criminally guilty and puts him away in prison for a very, very long time. The world is not ready for a petty nihilist dictator like Donald Trump practicing his petty dictatorship on American soil. Donald Trump cannot be allowed to be re-elected to any position. There are also plenty of non-MAGA Republican candidates who are actually willing to do the right thing for Democracy, who can kick these MAGA extremists to the curb, who can put this morally bankrupt Republican period behind us and bring respect and sanity back to the Republican party. Republicans need to finally wake up and stop defending a man who is so clearly morally bankrupt and in no way worth defending. Let Donald Trump be indicted; it’s his problem, not yours. It’s long past time to shut up and leave Donald Trump to his own fate.
Donald Trump Indictment Text
For your reading pleasure and enjoyment, here is the full text of Donald Trump’s New York indictment.
If you’re on a phone or tablet, you may need to click the link for the document to open. Donald Trump’s team is also still calling this a politically motivated prosecution from Alvin Bragg. There’s nothing in this indictment that seems politically motivated in nature. Though, the charges are also not surprising or unexpected considering Donald Trump’s activities stated by Michael Cohen. All of the counts are based on falsifying business records. Whether these counts are valid and have merit are for the courts to decide, not for Donald Trump or his sycophants or CNN’s analysts to decide. Donald Trump can file motions to dismiss in a legal format, but again it’s up to the courts to decide whether to consider if those motions are valid.
Analysis
I hadn’t really wanted to include an analysis section of this indictment, so I’ll include a short one. CNN legal pundits are heavily leaning in Donald Trump’s favor. It’s clear, CNN has become much more right leaning in its views. Thus, CNN’s legal analysts have basically treated Bragg’s indictment as nothing more than a mere, but very weak nuisance. Donald Trump’s lawyers echoed this same sentiment immediately upon leaving the arraignment court building. These Donald Trump sycophants and CNN alike have decided that Trump will likely to be able to dismiss the entire set of charges.
MSNBC, however, has taken a more balanced approach in its view; an approach to which I agree. There are 34 counts present in the indictment (this sheer number is important to realize). If the case had zero merit, it would have never been accepted by a judge to arraign Trump over. Thus, the counts are most definitely strong enough to arrest and arraign Trump. What MSNBC’s analysts postulate is that while many of the counts may be dismissed as weak, not all of them are likely to be dismissed. That reduction in counts reduces Trump’s criminal exposure, to be sure, but it is not eliminated. If even 10 counts remain after Trump’s move to dismiss, that’s still 10 counts to which Donald Trump must be held to criminal account.
I do agree that Trump may be able to get some or even a larger number of the counts dismissed. I also agree that Trump may not be able to dismiss every single count. Trump understands this. Even just 1 count is enough to take it to trial. Though, I believe there will be well more than just 1 left over after whatever is dismissed is dismissed.
False Rhetoric
One thing I do not agree with is that Bragg’s indictment is in any way politically motivated. Bragg has every right as the Manhattan District Attorney to bring anyone and everyone to justice for perpetrating illegal activities. If Bragg has uncovered evidence that Donald Trump has, in fact, perpetrated illegal activities… and according to this indictment he has… then Bragg has a legal obligation under New York Law to seek prosecution against the accused. It does NOT say witchhunt. It does NOT say politically motivated. It DOES say that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is doing his job for the state of New York. Donald Trump and the Republicans will spin this as political, only because they think it will help Donald Trump skirt responsibility for the laws that he has allegedly broken. To that I counter, if you break the law and you are exposed, you take the consequences; ex-president or not. No man is above the law.
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Should TikTok be banned in the US?
Clearly, TikTok’s executives would have you believe that there is no risk when using TikTok. Is there a national security risk, though? Yes. Let’s explore.
Bytedance
TikTok is presently owned by Bytedance. Bytedance’s company headquarters are located at Room 10A Building 2 No. 48 Zhichun Road, Haidian District, Beijing China. We also need to understand that businesses operating in Beijing China operate under Chinese law (such that it is). What that means for TikTok is that in order for this company to operate within China, it must always abide by China’s rules and regulations including spurious Chinese government requirements and mandates both existing and instantaneously required by the government.
For example, if Xi Jinping decides that Bytedance must turn over all information it has acquired to the Chinese government, Bytedance must comply or face the possibility of China pulling its licenses to operate its business in mainland China.
On the one hand, you have the TikTok CEO Shou Chew claiming that TikTok’s user data is safe. On the other hand, you have China’s government which can instantly require (i.e., force) Bytedance (or any Chinese based company) to hand over its data or face the loss of operating a business in China. Because China is a communist government, whatever China wants, China gets. Meaning, TikTok can absolutely make no assurances that user data is truly safe while Bytedance remains under China’s overreaching communist government authority. The rule of law only applies in China when the Chinese government WANTS it to apply, a key takeaway here. Internationally, China’s government does whatever it wants under the guise of appearing to support the rule of law.
Oracle Cloud
TikTok’s CEO has assured congress that it could move its data to within the Oracle cloud environment. While moving TikTok’s data storage to a United States owned business might sound great on paper, in reality it means nothing. Data stored in the US can STILL be easily exported, backed up, copied and recovered to computer equipment which resides in China. In fact, it would be entirely surprising if TikTok didn’t keep live backup copies of all user data somewhere on Chinese servers.
In other words, the CEO’s statements about using data storage on US shores as a “protection scheme” rings hollow. It’s far too easy to create copies of data and put it anywhere you want. It’s also guaranteed that if the Chinese government were to mandate that Bytedance turn over all relevant data to the Chinese government, TikTok would be forced to comply with those orders or face China’s government retaliation. In this case, not only can Bytedance not protect user data, they would have to appear completely willing to hand it over to the government instantly. Why? Because of Bytedance’s allegiance to China and not the United States… and because if TikTok doesn’t, China will close them down.
Allegiance
This word denotes a whole lot of things all at once. However, the most important thing this word signifies is what happens if China requests something from Bytedance and they refuse? A US based company protects all data of its users under the laws of the United States. If there were a subpoena by law enforcement issued for that data, a US based company would either have to comply with the subpoena or file an objection to quash the subpoena under specific grounds. In China, such avenues of refusal don’t necessarily work.
Because the United States is, at least thus far, based on the rule of law, the government would be required to allow an objection to funnel through the court processes before requiring the company to turn over whatever data is required by that subpoena. Even then, it would only be required if the court upheld the subpoena instead of siding with the appeal.
On the flip side, because China is a communist operated government, businesses operate under the whims of the Chinese government, which is not always based on the rule of law. While China does put up appearances suggesting that rule of law exists, the realities within China don’t always match that “rule of law” narrative. Meaning, China’s rule of law facade is just that, a facade.
For this reason, Bytedance’s allegiance must remain with China and never with the United States. The only reason Bytedance can operate within the US borders is because the United States, at present, allows it. But, that may be changing…
Is My Data Safe with TikTok?
The short answer is, no. Why? Because Bytedance’s allegiance remains solely with China because that’s where its business is incorporated. Regardless of what the executives of Bytedance may claim, that Chinese allegiance means that if Xi Jingping requires Bytedance to turn over all user data to China’s government about TikTok users, Bytedance must comply… and with no questions asked.
It doesn’t work like this if Bytedance were a company owned and operated within the United States. Rule of law actually matters in the United States where in China it only appears to matter, but doesn’t actually matter when the Chinese government wants what it wants.
What’s Wrong with China Knowing About Me?
If you don’t live in China or plan to visit, it might not matter that much. However, if you were ever to visit China, what you post on TikTok might be considered a legal offense in China and could see you legally apprehended, detained and/or jailed.
In other words, if you intend to post on TikTok and you have said or done anything that China takes offense to, you could become wanted in China. That’s a fairly extreme outcome, but China takes offense easily to many things and it takes those offenses seriously… so why poke that bull if you don’t have to?
Worse, because China is all about the money, having critical data from your phone device could allow would-be Chinese hackers to infiltrate your device, steal your identity and steal your money.
Should I use TikTok? — Should I allow my kids to use TikTok?
If you value your family’s privacy, no. YouTube and Facebook both offer similar enough video sharing features to more than make up for TikTok’s functionality. Both YouTube and Facebook are US based companies not under the Chinese government’s thumb. Why risk potentially losing your (or your child’s) personal data to China needlessly when you don’t have to?
This author definitely recommends avoiding the use of TikTok entirely. There’s really no reason to risk losing your family’s personal data to China over the use of a silly video sharing platform… a platform that already exists on YouTube and via other US operated companies.
Creators
The argument on not banning TikTok seems to stem mainly from both the TikTok executives (naturally) and from TikTok’s creators. Ignoring TikTok’s weak executive arguments for the moment, let’s focus on TikTok creators. While I agree that many creators may not have understood the ramifications of investing their creative efforts and skills into a platform of questionable origin, unfortunately they have. What that means is that a ban on TikTok in the US means that these creators must lose the audiences they have worked to gain. I get it, but that’s not reason enough.
For creators, this is a problem. However, it’s relatively simple for creators to ask their audience to move with them to a new platform. If a creator’s audience is truly committed to that creator’s content, most (if not all) of that audience should will be willing to move to any other platform that that creator may choose to use. A simple video which requests fans to sign up for and move to a new platform shouldn’t be a big deal.
If you’re a TikTok creator considering that you may lose your ability to create on the TikTok platform, you should definitely consider a movement plan to another platform. Whether that be YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat or any other short video sharing platform, moving away from TikTok is the key. You shouldn’t remain complacent and simply assume a ban won’t happen. You should take action now and, yes, complain if you like, but you should also prepare to move your fans and content to another platform. Don’t wait, take action now!
Creator arguments about engagement or loss of revenue or any other such arguments are simply not strong enough arguments to sway regulators away from the above China data sharing problem. There are too many other platforms owned and operated by US companies for such creator arguments to hold any weight at all. Simply, they don’t. This is why creators need to be proactive and take steps to plan to move both your fanbase and content to another platform now. Don’t sit on your hands and think it won’t happen. Plan ahead.
TikTok Audience versus TikTok CEO
While creators make up a relatively small portion of TikTok users, they are the ones responsible for bringing in the viewers. Still, having an audience is not an argument to keep TikTok from being banned. It’s not whether TikTok offers a valuable video sharing service, it’s that a Chinese based company manages TikTok’s data and always remains at the whims of China.
The CEO has stated that TikTok is beholden to no country, but that’s simply not a true statement. That statement cannot possibly be true. Every company must go into business under some country. Every country has laws and requirements for businesses to remain in business within that country. Bytedance incorporated its business within China. That means that Bytedance is beholden to China’s laws and regulations, no matter how, when or why they might appear. Because China’s government only appears to abide by its written laws and regulations, it only does so when it is convenient to the Chinese government. When it’s not convenient, new laws instantly come into being to cover whatever “thing” China is trying to make happen.
Instant laws don’t occur in the United States. It takes time, effort and lots of congressional or state legislator bickering and months of wrangling before a new law can come to exist. Most new laws require ballot measures to be voted on by the population, something that China doesn’t offer to its citizens.
What this all means is that TikTok’s CEO can say whatever he wants, but the realities of the way China operates remains. If Mr. Chew is so willing to lie about Bytedance’s allegiance to China, what else is Mr. Chew lying about? Lying to congressional members really doesn’t say great things about Bytedance or TikTok.
Should TikTok be banned in the United States?
We’ve come full circle from the beginning of this article. After all the above arguments are considered, I’d say that it is most definitely worth banning TikTok (and any other Chinese based apps) from the app stores. This situation shouldn’t be limited to TikTok. TikTok is simply so visible because it’s now used by more people than, in some cases, YouTube. The shear audience sizes alone for some TikTok creators means ever more and more people are signing up to use the service. Many of these new users are children (aged 17 and younger).
Children are unable to comprehend what sharing of personal data to China really means. They just see silly videos, but have no idea what information TikTok may be collecting while these children use TikTok.
Additionally, because Bytedance is a Chinese operated company, it doesn’t have to abide by federal regulations like COPPA. TikTok might choose to voluntarily comply (or simply put up a facade of doing so) as a measure of apparent goodwill. However internally, it may not at all comply with COPPA because it doesn’t have to. Because the TikTok company exists and operates outside of the US’s borders, United States federal laws don’t apply and cannot be enforced upon TikTok. This aspect right here is the single biggest elephant in the room and the single biggest reason why TikTok should be banned.
Without the federal regulations to help protect US citizens from nefarious or malicious use of data collected, Bytedance can literally do almost anything to non-Chinese citizens without any legal ramifications by the United States. Even if the United States were to try and bring suit, China wouldn’t allow it. This situation alone is why TikTok (and other Chinese operated services) should not be allowed to operate within the United States. TikTok is literally one Chinese company among many taking advantage of its Chinese locale to avoid being held accountable to United States laws.
The United States has every right to protect its citizens from unlawful interference by other countries. TikTok is one among many companies where this reality now exists, not just companies located in China. The United States legislators need to take a step back and really think long and hard about (the lack of) legislation around companies operating in countries which are mostly unfriendly to the United States.
China only tolerates the United States at this point because of the buying power the United States offers. Other than buying power, that’s where China’s civility with the US ends. China (and a Chinese operated company) doesn’t care how many people in the United States die, get maimed or get injured as a result of products made in China. The same can be said of services like TikTok. Anyone who legitimately believes that the TikTok CEO legitimately cares about United States citizens, other than for their wallets and the almighty dollar, is clearly deluded.
Yes, TikTok should be banned, along with every other app-based service operated out of unfriendly territories around the globe.
First Amendment?
Some have claimed that the First Amendment will be violated by banning TikTok. Let’s definitively state here and now that there is no First Amendment problem at play. Because TikTok is a Chinese company wholly operating out of China, Constitutional laws don’t apply to TikTok. The executives who operate TikTok aren’t United States citizens.
Even though there are United States users using the service as creators and viewers, the service itself is not bound by the United States Constitution. In effect, by you as a user choosing to invest your time and effort into putting your videos onto a wholly owned Chinese entity, you’ve effectively forfeited your right to First Amendment protections.
While some First Amendment advocates might disagree with the above stance, one thing is certain, the United States Constitution does not apply to non-US citizens… which would include any and all executives and staff who were hired and operate out of Bejing China. While it is possible that Bytedance has hired some United States citizens to help operate its service globally, that doesn’t wholly, suddenly or automatically then make Bytedance as a company bound by the United States Constitution.
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Movie Review: Smile Movie
Paying to see a film in the theater, particularly a film that I already know is bad, is out of the question. And so it goes with the movie Smile. Let’s explore this film’s problems.
Spoiler Warning: Don’t continue reading if you want to watch this film.
Derivative
Another movie reviewer suggests that this film takes some of its cues from The Ring (2002). I didn’t get much of a “The Ring” vibe while watching Smile. However, I did get a heavy Final Destination (2000) vibe. While the movie doesn’t feel like a Final Destination film in its story, the predestined outcome, once revealed by Rose, feels very much like Final Destination.
What that means is that Smile is very much derivative of other films which have come before, like Final Destination. Thus, the film feels already way too familiar while watching it.
Hitchcockian?
While I’m sure that the director and producer(s) had wanted to produce something that felt like a psychological thriller, in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock, unfortunately Smile never achieves that level of professional treatment. That’s mostly because the story fails the film. Instead of watching a solid thriller unfold, what we get is something that feels at once all too familiar, but with an overly problematic story. Unfortunately, as I said, that leaves the film never reaching the level of foreboding suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock production.
Story Problems
This story feels a lot like a very long episode of the Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, the writers more or less fail this film almost completely. The first act of this film begins by unfolding Smile’s narrative of a crazed young woman named Laura Weaver who complains of being stalked by an unseen entity. Rose (an overworked therapist at a hospital) initially diagnoses Laura’s condition as a psychotic break. It isn’t until she witnesses the brutal suicide death of Laura where Smile truly begins. Laura’s suicide is odd because she does it all with a smile on her face; a smile that remains even after she’s dead by her own hand.
This is where Rose’s life takes a huge turn and where the Smile movie’s first act can begin in earnest. During the first act, Rose doesn’t fully understand that something’s amiss for quite a long time. Too long, actually. She goes about her daily life believing that her being overworked is the source of her anxieties and “seeing things”. It isn’t until her cat ultimately disappears and then turns up in a rather awkward place that she really begins to understand something more than merely being overworked is at play.
This is when Rose herself begins to see her former psychiatrist. More than this, Rose begins to understand that what Laura had said in her first encounter is actually unfolding in the same way for her.
Let’s stop right here…
Story and Plot So Far
To this point in the film, Smile is relatively slow burn, but the plot is unfolding in a way that’s not overly far fetched or out of line for its premise. However, most viewers by this point probably have a strong inkling of where this film is heading and where it is likely to head. That’s always a problem. The director and writer didn’t actually do anything counter this audience second-guessing problem, instead they double down on it… which ultimately doesn’t work.
What do the writers do? They begin Act II by waking Rose up and having her take her experience and knowledge and trying to determine if there’s truly something amiss… and more importantly, exactly how to resolve it. Of course, none of the characters around her believe any of her ramblings, partly because the entity is making her see people who aren’t actually there.
Act II
As we enter Act II of this film, Rose has decided that there’s a real problem that she needs to investigate. Rose dons her investigator cap and begins web surfing along with using an on-again-off-again boyfriend cop to get information related to her investigation of “the cycle.”
Suffice it to say that this investigatory process lasts way too long considering how it’s ultimately used in the film. Once again, let me stop right here.
Investigation and Horror
The only reason to launch a long drawn out investigation within a horror film is to try and break “the cycle.” Rose eventually determines that there is a cycle afoot; a cycle that could lead to her death if she can’t get out in front of it. This investigation leads her to one person who seemingly was able to break the cycle and lived to tell the tale.
Unfortunately, who and where this person is ultimately tells us exactly how the cycle was broken. Yet, the writers insist on taking us to where he is to actually talk to this person IN person to confirm it. Once we get there and Rose confirms the reason why this person was able to cheat the cycle, she instantly blurts out that she is unable to perform the act that got him out of the cycle. She blurts it out so fast, in fact, that it was somewhat difficult to understand what she said.
At first, I thought this admission was just the Rose character jumping to far-too-quick of a conclusion without truly thinking it through. If Rose’s life is on the line, her need for self-preservation should have eventually kicked in. After all, Smile is a suspense and horror film. For Rose to completely blow off the idea so readily and instantly tells me that the writers were hopelessly lost at this point. It’s a horror film, guys! Get with the program!
Second half of Act II
The second half of Act II was the time for a twist from the writers. Unfortunately, that twist just never materializes. Everything set up in the first act leads us in a very straightforward manner directly into the second act. Everything predicted by the cycle exactly comes to pass with no deviation… even though, Rose has had well enough time to investigate the cycle and even break it if she had so chosen.
Instead, the second half of the second act is merely devoted to just how the Smile entity can take over the mind of its victim making that person believe whatever it wants. In that goal, Rose decides to head out to an isolated house in the middle of the woods with no one there who can try to bring Rose back to reality… not that that would have been possible. Her rationale, though, was that with no one else there, the entity is trapped. Rose way underestimated the entity’s prowess.
Possession
One topic that was never really outright said in the film, demonic possession, was clearly the hallmark of this situation. This entity turns out to be some kind of demon who delights in seeing its victims commit suicide in front of others in a very brutal way. If the writers had embraced the idea of demonic possession, either Laura or Rose could have attempted to stop the demon from possessing them. Unfortunately, by the time the possession takes full effect (a slow buildup taking several days), once possessed, that leaves minutes before the person commits suicide in front of another, beginning the cycle anew. I have to assume the writers were thinking that the entity’s possession takes days because it takes that long to wear down the psyche of the person being tormented.
Overall
The film is derivative and unimpressive. The demonic smile isn’t demonic. It’s just a smile. The smile needed some major CG enhancement to make the smile wider, wierder and more sinister than it appears on the faces of each of the victims… perhaps, even tearing the face apart to achieve it.
Worse, the whole overly long investigatory aspect for Rose left the viewers wondering what the hell happened. Since Rose spent a large swath of screen time trying to make sense of the situation and, more importantly, trying to find a way out of it, you would think that Rose could have seriously contemplated what was needed to get herself out of it and survive. She didn’t. More than this, because it’s a horror film likely wanting to begin a franchise, killing off your lead character doesn’t allow for that.
If the writers are thinking that they can make Smile 2 using the ex-boyfriend cop as the lead, they need to think again. Of course, they can simply use him as the setup, like Laura, to initiate another lead character to try their hand again at trying to unravel the mystery of this demon. The question is, can a second Smile film actually pull that off? I’m not so sure.
For this film, the story doesn’t really work. If Rose had actually contemplated and achieved breaking the cycle, that would have been the twist that Smile required to make it satisfying. Yes, the cycle would have been broken for Rose, but someone else would have still inherited the demon to deal with later. Unfortunately, this all too predictable story was all too predictable in its ending.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Recommendation: Watch only on “free” streaming services
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Fallout 76: Are Re-Rollers Gambling?
As of Season 12, entitled Rip Daring and the Cryptid Hunt, Bethesda might has well have entitled Fallout 76’s newest season, Welcome to Gambling. Let’s explore.
Challenge System
When Fallout 76 released in 2018, Bethesda included a “Challenge” system in the game. This challenge system allowed (and still allows in limited ways) players to obtain Atomic Shop currency called “Atom” in exchange for performing relatively basic challenges in the game world.
This Atom currency allows players to “buy” in-game items, such as CAMP add-ons, character clothing, hairstyles and face paint. The selection of the items in the Atomic Shop, at the time, was relatively limited in the early days, but has since expanded into consumables, Fallout 1st items, weapon and armor paints and even weapons.
Almost every video game released today offers a store with add-on items for players to purchase to enhance their gaming experience. The “Atom” currency has always been and remains the only currency in the game that can be purchased with real cash money in the form of USD (or other currencies around the world). For the purposes of this article, all dollar amounts shown are in USD.
For example, if you own a PlayStation, you can visit Sony’s PlayStation store and purchase Atom bundles, such as 500 Atom for $4.99 (or basically $5). The exchange rate is 100 Atoms to every $1 spent. An item in the Atomic Shop could then be said to cost $7 if it costs 700 Atoms. A small discount is applied the more Atom you buy.
If you pay $20, you’ll receive 2,400 Atoms. Bethesda’s marketing states there’s a bonus of 400 Atoms. In reality, this is simply considered a slight markdown on costs. Instead of costing $1 per 100 Atom, this changes the ratio to $1 per 120 Atom or discounted to 83¢ per 100 Atom. If you’re willing to spend $40, you’ll receive 5,000 Atoms. That further reduces the cost to $1 for every 125 Atom or 80¢ for every 100 Atom (a 20¢ discount or 20% discount for each 100 Atoms bought over the $5 purchase in the store).
That means that if you buy $5 worth of Atoms, a 1500 Atom item in the Atomic Shop store costs you $15.00. If you pay for $40 in Atoms, that same 1500 Atom item now costs you $12. That’s not a tremendous discount overall, but you will have saved $3 by buying $40 in Atom over buying three separate $5 Atom items (making $15 or 1500 Atom) from the PlayStation store. This conversion rate is only important if you’re wanting to equate how much something actually costs you in the Atomic Shop.
Fallout 1st
With the introduction of Fallout 1st, this monthly subscription service muddies the Atom waters just a little. By subscribing to this service, you’ll receive not only access to all of Fallout 1st’s features, including access to private worlds, access to custom worlds, access to the ammo and scrap boxes and a bunch of 1st exclusive Atomic Shop inclusions, you’ll also receive 1,650 Atoms each month. The cost for Fallout 1st is $12.99/mo straight up or $8.25/mo if you pay for the $99 to buy 1 year / 12 months up front.
Depending on how you choose to buy Fallout 1st, the value of the monthly allotment of Atoms changes. Buying Fallout 1st at the 1 year price is obviously the cheapest option offering up a nearly 50% discount off of those 1,650 Atoms (ignoring all of the rest of Fallout 1st’s features). 1,650 Atoms would normally cost close to $16.50 to purchase. Of course, the closest Atom bundle on the PS store is the 1,100 Atom bundle which costs $10. You’d have to jump to the 2,400 Atom bundle at $20 to get enough to cover 1,650 Atoms. The best Atom cost bundle is the 1 year subscription to Fallout 1st which discounts the cost of Atoms to 50¢ per 100 or effectively half price. That means that that same 1500 Atom item in the Atomic shop would cost you $7.50… assuming all of your Atoms came solely from being a Fallout 1st member.
Buying Fallout 1st monthly at $13 is still a discount on Atom, but at a rate of (rounded up) 127 Atom per $1 spent, just slightly better than buying the 5,000 Atom bundle shown above.
Challenges and Score
When the first Scoreboard season arrived in 2020, Bethesda changed what the daily and weekly challenges gave as rewards. Prior to the introduction of the Scoreboard seasons, all challenges awarded Atom. A player can spend these Atoms in any way chosen. Atom was originally awarded from both daily and weekly challenges as well as all of the other environmental challenges in the game.
With the introduction of the first Season and the Scoreboard, daily and weekly challenges changed to providing S.C.O.R.E. (another insipid Bethesda acronym). For the purposes of this article, this author will use the word ‘score’ for simplicity. Score is simply yet another, but separate form of Experience Points (XP). The score moves a blue progress bar across the Scoreboard. Once the progress bar reaches the end, the Scoreboard advances by one space. Each Scoreboard has 100 board spaces. Each space requires a progressive amount more score to complete. The first space might require 1000 score to complete. The last space might require 3500 score to complete. Every space in between requires more than 1000 score and less than 3500 score to advance to the next space. Once the game board has completed, additional board spaces appear so that awards can still be accrued by performing daily and weekly challenges.
For the first few seasons, once you reached the Scoreboard’s end, the board was over. Challenges did nothing and were worthless. It wasn’t until a few seasons later that Bethesda realized the problem and added more board spaces after the 100th board space, the final space which awards the “big prize” (such that it is).
What exactly is a Challenge?
While there are many challenges available in the game, the ones that matter most to today’s players are those that produce score. These are the only ones that advance board spaces on the Scoreboard. All other remaining challenges still provide Atom, but in small and diminishing quantities. The only renewing challenges are the daily and weekly challenges. The environmental challenges are one-off challenges that, for the most part, do not renew. These environmental challenges are one-and-done… with the exception of pick-lock and hack-terminal challenges that have a progression system that eventually ends, but which provide a small amount of Atom so long as they remain uncompleted.
The daily and weekly score challenges help “move the needle” through the Scoreboard. Each game board space unlocks some kind of Atomic Shop item including the possibility of a space awarding Atom itself. The board spaces are not random chance. They are hard set by Bethesda and the “prize” can be easily seen by hovering over the board space.
When Fallout 76 was introduced in 2018 (and until 2020), daily and weekly challenges awarded exclusively Atom alone. The daily challenge board might, in total, award anywhere from 100 to 300 Atoms (maybe more) depending on that day’s included challenges. That meant you could gain at least between 100-300 Atoms per day simply by doing the daily challenges. In a week, that could accrue to 1,000 or more Atoms just by doing daily challenges. The weekly challenges might accrue up to 1,000 to 2,000 Atoms (or more) depending on the included challenges. That meant that between the daily and weekly challenges you could see anywhere between 1,200 and 2000 Atom accrued per week. The problem for Bethesda was that all this freely available Atom from the daily and weekly challenges meant that players didn’t need to buy Atom frequently or sometimes at all. Bethesda wanted more income.
When the Scoreboard was introduced, the amount of Atom awarded by challenges was dramatically reduced to only those Scoreboard spaces which, all except one, offer a measly 150 Atom per space and only a handful of these spaces now exist on the board. In total, a single season Scoreboard typically awards 2,000 Atoms instead of up to 2,000 Atoms we were formerly getting per week from completing both the daily and weekly challenges. With the Scoreboard, it now takes many, many weeks of challenges to unlock the total Atom on the Scoreboard. Less Atom given out means more Atom sold with real cash money.
In other words, the amount of Atom awarded by the Scoreboard has been drastically reduced… forcing players to actually pay real money for Atom to buy larger Atomic Shop items. Bethesda enforces this purchase behavior by putting shop bundles into the Atomic shop for 16 days or 3 days or similar limited time offers which see the item disappear from the store after the timer ticks down. It’s a ruse that tries to force gamers into buying Atom to avoid “losing out”.
The challenges themselves include all manner of fetch quests. Some are long tailed and some can be completed in just a few minutes. Many are convoluted and may require things that a low level player might not have or might not yet have access to. Not all challenges can be completed by every player, depending on where that player is in completing the game’s main quest lines.
Challenge Examples
Challenges come in all shapes and forms. Some require completion of the challenge once, but many require completion of the challenge multiple times. For example, “Scrap Junk to produce Black Titanium (0/10)”. The 0/10 means that the player must scrap junk 10 times to produce Black Titanium to complete the challenge.
Bethesda plays games with these counters, too. The “Collect Pieces of Wood (0/200)” is a challenge that Bethesda has modified from its original to make it more difficult. When you collect wood, you might actually collect 4, 8 or even up to 20 pieces of wood as random chance. Yet, Bethesda only counts the collection itself toward the counter, not the number of the pieces of wood collected… as a way to cheat the player out of getting the task done sooner. Yet, “Craft ammo on a Crafting Bench (0/50)” still counts each individual piece of ammo crafted towards the challenge, even if you’ve only pressed the crafting button once. It’s this inconsistency and disparity between the challenges that not only make this system confusing, it makes the challenges a pain in the ass not knowing which rules apply. These counters are also what put long tails on challenges and require them to take a whole lot longer to complete than they should.
Some challenges are based solely on the completion of other challenges, like the Gold Star Daily Challenge. The Gold Star challenge isn’t actually a challenge, it’s a counter. It counts a specific set of challenges that have been completed. Once all of the Daily Challenges have been fully completed, the Gold Star Daily Challenge also completes. The Gold Star Daily challenge is an incidental challenge that completes only because other challenges have completed.
Challenges might include the following:
- Kill a Yao Guai with a Syringer
- Collect 100 Pieces of Wood
- Scrap junk to produce Black Titanium
- Kill a Deathclaw
- Eat a Meat based Meal
- Eat Pre-War Food
- Scrap Pre-War Money
- Complete a Daily Ops
Each of these challenges is usually sub-qualified with the number of times the player must perform that task. For daily challenges, if not once only, then it’s typically set to 3-5 times; relatively easy. For weekly challenges, it might be 20-100 times. With the introduction of the Re-Roller, the daily challenges have increased repeating the task from 3-5 to sometimes 20 or 30 or more, making these tasks take much, much longer. Yet, you still only have 24 hours to complete the challenge. There’s reason for this change, keep reading.
Atomic Shop Items
Atomic shop items are actually worthless. Why? Because you can’t craft them for others, sell them or even drop them. Any items purchase from the Atomic shop or, by extension, received from the Scoreboard are exclusively locked to that player. If you purchase (for Atom) an outfit from the Atomic Shop, it is exclusively for your use alone. If another player wants that same item, they must also spend Atom to buy it from the Atomic Shop. These player locked items make the item, in fact, worthless in the game world. They’re cosmetic, yes, but that’s the extent of the value of that item.
Some items can be used by other players, like Shelters, making these kinds of Atomic Shop items a bit more worthwhile than those like cosmetic armor or weapon skins. Shelters, for example, are probably one of the most useful items in the game. These in-game rooms offer the player a way to decorate and build in creative form, which can be shared by other players who visit that shelter. Shelters also afford a way to display items to other players that you have found and which you value. You can even display Atomic Shop items, but why bother? Only the rarest items found in the game world are those worth displaying.
What is a Re-Roller?
Here we arrive at the heart of this article and why you’re here reading. It’s important to understand the above system in place to understand this next most recent introduction by Bethesda, the Re-Roller (aka Re-Roll). Some challenges have been a problem to complete by some players, but only because the player might not be far enough along in the game to actually complete that challenge. For example, they might not have access to a specific location that a challenge requires. The player also might not be high enough level to use the required weapon to complete the challenge. There are many challenges like these that Bethesda includes in the challenge board.
Because of complaints over uncompletable challenges, Bethesda has now introduced in Season 12 (the current season as of this article), the concept of a Re-Roller. What is a Re-Roller? It simply allows you to “spin” for and hopefully 🤞 get a new and completely different challenge. And here’s where the gambling arises and where Re-Rollers intentionally fail.
Before diving into all of that, let’s step back in time.
EA and Loot Boxes
Several years back around 2019, EA introduced for-pay loot boxes into several of its games, but most notably FIFA. These for pay random chance loot boxes, once opened, provided the player with a common, rare or legendary item, which could be used in the game. In the case of FIFA, the game’s loot boxes provided trading cards in various rarities.
Many authorities jumped in claiming these loot boxes had become a form of gambling. These authorities are not wrong. They are a form of gambling. You spend real money and then the game spins and awards you with a “win” or “lose” situation. Because of typical house odds of offering up the worst rewards most frequently, it encourages players to do it again and again in hopes of getting “something better” or at least not a duplicate. Yes, duplicates are possible and extremely common.
As a result of the backlash over loot box gambling and other games of chance, EA and several other game developers have since stripped loot boxes from their games.
Enter Bethesda and Re-Rollers…
Re-Roller Gambling
While Fallout 76 has included a relatively real appearing slot machine in the game for many months now, it doesn’t rely on real cash money to operate. The in-game slot machine uses “caps”, an easily obtained in-game currency. This currency has been in the game from the beginning. Today, caps are considered mostly worthless, other than for the purposes of finding player vendors who are selling relatively rare in-game items.
With this slot machine, there is effectively no way to lose. The cost to play is 10 caps. Spending 10 caps, you’ll always get something for your caps spent. For example, spinning this slot machine always awards +2 to Luck for a limited time, a very useful player perk for as long as it lasts. You can always renew this perk by spinning again. You get this perk no matter whether you get caps back or not. Most times, you’ll get back exactly the caps you spent to play, 10 caps. Sometimes you’ll get back 4 caps. Occasionally, you’ll get 20 caps or more. If you don’t win anything, the game still awards you a piece junk to scrap or sell… junk likely worth 5-10 caps at a vendor. In essence, you almost never lose any caps in this slot machine… and even then, the additional perk means you never lose. It is also impossible to spend real cash money to play this machine as caps cannot be purchased directly with USD.
Enter Re-Rollers
The name itself actually has connotations of spinning something, like a slot machine. Even the sound effects used when re-rolling are reminiscent of spinning a slot machine. How do Re-Rollers work?
Because some challenges may be uncompletable (for whatever reason), a Re-Roller allows the player to take a chance on a new replacement challenge in the hopes it will be better than what was there. In effect, the Re-Roller is tantamount to pulling the arm on a slot machine and waiting for the spinning to stop to see if you have “won”. If not, that encourages you to spin again. This encouragement is tantamount to and turns a Re-Roller into a form of gambling… triggering the same effects as any other game of gambling. While the game issues one free Re-Roller per day, additional Re-Rollers aren’t free, making this situation far, far worse.
Re-Rollers cost Atom to buy from the Atomic Shop. As has been established earlier, Atoms cost real USD. Thus, to buy Atom means paying real cash money to Bethesda for these Atoms. Thus, Re-Rollers cost the player real cash money to buy. This further means it’s possible to lose a large amount of real USD to gambling with these Re-Rollers. This is also the first time Bethesda has tied real cash money to an in-game random chance based gambling device in Fallout 76.
One could argue that Lunchboxes could be considered a form of gambling, but there’s really no gambling involved. You buy a lunchbox, you open it and you get a reward in game. There is no random chance involved. The only randomness is in the name of perk you get, not whether you’ll get one as each one is nearly equal to the others. More than this, you can buy Lunchboxes in the game world by earning in-game currency… something that can’t be done with Re-Rollers.
Re-Rollers can only be obtained by spending Atom in the atomic shop or by obtaining a very small number of them off of the Scoreboard (and even less off of the ever diminishing environmental challenges). Even then, the Scoreboard only offers 3 Re-Rollers from a single space with just a few spaces across the game board. Those 3 Re-Rollers are easily consumed in just a few minutes on ONE (1) Challenge. There is no other way to get Re-Rollers in Fallout 76 as of this writing.
Gambling Triggers and Addictions
The problem with random chance spin and win mechanisms is that they trigger the same exact gambling centers of the brain as any other form of gambling. Because real money is involved in obtaining Re-Rollers, this could cause real actual gambling problems for children targeted by this new Re-Roller mechanism. Unlike the slot machine above, which always wins you something, the Re-Roller has no guarantee you will get anything different from what you already have, which is perceived by the player as a loss. Yes, it IS entirely possible to get the same exact (or an even worse) challenge as a result of a Re-Roller. Sometimes it happens multiple times in a row.
Let’s consider that it costs 50 Atom to buy one Re-Roller. That means that an average player could spend as much as $1 for every 2 Re-Rollers purchased. Because a player might need use multiple Re-Rollers multiple times, it would be easy to spend $5 or $10 attempting to get new daily challenges… every single day. That money adds up in a week or a month or even a year.
As stated above, this unusual move is the first time Bethesda has tied real world fiat money into the purchase of a random chance game mechanic driven entirely by the need to gamble. While there’s no way to win cash money back out of this, using it always means loss of money AND its effect as a gambling device stands. Because the win is considered a “better” (subjective interpretation) challenge, the loss is real money spent on wasted / lost Re-Rollers. This loss of Re-Rollers has the real affect of triggering a gambling addiction.
As a result, the questionable inclusion of this game mechanic is easy to see children become addicted to this system so that they continue to Re-Roll without bounds, just to see what they get… all in an effort to make Bethesda more money! It’s not a simple matter that child wants to complete the challenges. It’s that the addiction causes the child to want to see “better” or “rarer” challenges. Addictive mechanics lead to addictive behaviors… and this Re-Roller feature has a real chance of being abused by someone caught up in gambling addictions. Worse, these games are targeted towards children and young adults who might not understand gambling addiction or the money problems which can result from them.
More than this, it’s surprising that Bethesda didn’t realize that these real world money tied Re-Rollers are actually a form of gambling and put the brakes on this feature before introduction.
Because Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, that puts Microsoft on the hook for this gambling device. An enterprising lawyer may now see very deep pockets in Microsoft and choose to pursue a lawsuit over perpetrating gambling on minors. In fact, under the eyes of state laws, gambling targeted towards minors is illegal. Bethesda is playing with legal fire here.
Convoluted and Epic Challenges
One thing that has made this entire Re-Roller system far worse and even more addictive is the inclusion of even more complex and convoluted challenges. Most daily challenges included in past Seasons have required relatively simple quest objectives. Go kill a single creature. Fetch 5 purified water. Easy and relatively simple, but also useful items to player.
With this Season, Bethesda has abandoned these simplistic challenges for longer tailed, more complex and even more difficult challenges. Where it might have taken an hour to get through the daily challenge board, it might now take 3 hours because of these newer more complex and convoluted daily challenges.
Weekly challenges have always been long tailed. That means that they might take several days to complete. That’s the point in weekly challenges. Daily challenges have always given only 24 hours to complete these challenges before they reset for the next day. Moving the challenges from maybe 5-10 minutes per challenge to 15-20 minutes per challenge is an odd play, but not when you consider Re-Rollers.
A reasonably experienced player can instantly size up the amount of time a specific challenge might take. This re-enforces the need to Re-Roll long-tailed challenges in the hopes of “getting something better” …. thus, ensuring that players get addicted to this random chance Re-Roller system. Thus, the reason for inclusion of longer, obscure and more complex challenges ensure that players will buy into this gambling mechanism for a “chance” to get something better or faster or easier.
In reality, the challenges ahead of the one being Re-Rolled are equally as complex and equally convoluted, with the exception of a perhaps a tiny few which might be as easy or as useful as those given in prior seasons. A player ultimately has no idea what might pop up when a challenge is Re-Rolled. Thus, the illusion of “getting something better.”
However, it didn’t stop with complexity. Bethesda felt the need to include one more incentive to reinforce gambling behaviors: Epic Challenges. “Epic Challenges” offer higher Score and are, thus, rarer to see from a Re-Roller. Rarity is a concept that will cause players to want to gamble. Because Epic Challenges are considered a low chance “win”, players will be incentivized to consume Re-Rollers multiple times until they get an Epic challenge.
Therefore, this Epic Challenge system “rarity” encourages players to Re-Roll every challenge on the daily (and weekly) boards simply to get Epic Challenges. Doing so could cost the player $20, $50 or even $100 real cash money to achieve… being required to Re-Roll 6 challenges per day and up to 12-20 Weekly challenges. Expensive AND addictive.
Way Cheaper to Pay for Board Spaces
On the Scoreboard, Bethesda has included the ability to pay 150 Atom to advance one space. For example, if you’re at space 99 and you want to complete the board, you could simply pay 150 Atom and avoid the hassles of performing challenges to gain the required amount of score.
Let’s equate this with Re-Roller costs. The purchase of three (3) Re-Rollers costs 150 Atom, the same amount it costs to buy one board space. Consider that three Re-Rollers on daily challenges cannot provide you with any amount of score close to completing a board space by itself. The board space might complete if, for example, the score amount given for a challenge is 150 and that also happens to be the amount needed to advance to the next board space. That also meant you had completed many previous challenges to get the progress bar to the point of being almost completed.
To put this in perspective, for only 150 Atom, the gameboard will advance an entire board space (adding somewhere between 1000 and 3500 score) OR you can pay 150 Atom for three Re-Rollers in the hopes that you can replace one single daily challenge and receive maybe 100-200 score. In other words, paying for just three Re-Rollers at 50 * 3 = 150 Atom is between 10x-35x more expensive than simply paying that same 150 Atom to advance a full board space. Thus, there is zero value in paying for Re-Rollers when you can pay for board spaces. Bethesda understands this.
Gambling Targeted Towards Minors
There’s a reason why gambling establishments require people to be age 21 to play. First and foremost, it’s the law. More than this, children shouldn’t be gambling. Unfortunately, video games can’t age check before each use. There is no way to exclude a system like Re-Rollers from players under the age of 21. The only way to avoid such a situation is if such a gambling system is not included at all.
This is why so many game developers have since removed real cash money based random chance loot box systems from their games. It’s also questionable why Bethesda has now chosen to include one in Fallout 76. Bethesda has most definitely crossed a line here; a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
Ultimately, this Re-Roller system is likely to be seen for what it is, a gambling system strongly encouraging children to gamble by the use of Bethesda’s “Epic” challenge strategy, strongly appealing to “rarity” and “miss out” child behaviors. Gambling systems should never be included in products used by or, more importantly, targeted towards minors… particularly gambling systems when tied to the use of real cash money.
Bethesda, if you’re reading, you might want to quickly retain legal counsel as this Re-Roller system is likely to blow up in your face once again. That, or you quickly need to consider its removal from Fallout 76.
Gambling Addictions / Get Help
If you’re a player who is susceptible to gambling addiction, you should not play nor fall prey to Bethesda’s gambling encouragement. Instead, please get help. It is strongly recommended to steer clear of all such gambling mechanisms included in video games; mechanisms which trigger gambling addictions and encourage you to spend real money on them.
If you’re a parent reading, you should limit your child’s play of Fallout 76. Better, stop their play altogether until Bethesda removes this gambling device and stops encouraging players to pay real cash money on random chance gambling devices.
No video game should ever make money off of the backs of children encouraged to ostensibly gamble with real money. Gambling should always remain in places like Las Vegas or Atlantic City, where people who physically travel there have made the conscious decision to gamble and are of legal age to do so.
Can this be corrected / Solutions?
[Updated Mar 18th, 2023] When this article began, this author wrestled with the idea of adding a solutions section and decided against it. The simplest solution seemed for Bethesda to remove the feature from the game entirely and be done with it. However, I’ve since decided to include this section, only because it may help out other developers considering adding “games of chance” to their game… particularly when those games of chance are tied to fiat currency and in games where children (aged 17 and below) already make up a very large portion of the player demographic.
When you’re building an adventure game like Fallout 76, where the primary objectives are to explore and experience combat situations, adding games of chance (like the Re-Roller) as ways of raising additional money is problematic and possibly illegal in some parts of the United States. Basically, a game developer should never raise money by targeting children with games of chance when tied to fiat currencies.
The big mistake Bethesda made here was to tie the purchase of a Re-Roller to fiat USD money. To rectify this situation, Bethesda would need to untie this entirely. Get rid of Re-Rollers purchased through the Atomic Shop and replace the purchase of Re-Rollers to vendors located in the game world using one of the many already established in-game currencies, such as Scrip, Gold Bullion, Stamps or Caps. These in-game currencies are earned, not purchased. For a gamer to obtain these currencies, it only requires time, not real cash money. In fact, there is no way to pay for these currencies with real cash money using any in-game mechanism by Bethesda. However, that doesn’t resolve the problem over the fact that Re-Rollers are a game of chance included in a game title targeted towards children.
Instead, Bethesda needs to reconsider the idea of swapping out one challenge for another entirely. For example, get rid of this “game of chance” mechanic entirely and replace it with a buyout option. Instead of being required to “roll and pray for something better”, the player can simply buy out the challenge by using in-game currency. Pay some amount of caps or scrip or stamps or bullion and the challenge is instantly completed. An in-replacement buyout option gets around the problem of gambling and games of chance entirely.
The other option is to simply include more challenges… more than are actually needed to complete the game board. If the player misses a few challenges, no big deal. Though, the buyout option is the best solution as it gives the player the option to complete all challenges if they so choose simply by playing longer and earning more in-game currency.
Should a buyout option be tied to actual fiat currency? Perhaps. One thing is certain with the buy-out option, it cannot in any way be considered a potentially illegal form of gambling targeted at children. Though, bilking children out of money for the purposes of such “buy-out” mechanics is still considered dubious at best. Including games of chance in similar fashion to a slot machine, on the other hand, is problematic all around when an excessively large demographic of players consists of ages 17 and below. The only way such games of chance mechanics should be included is if the developer has a way to absolutely 100% exclude 17 and younger from participating in these mechanics.
To date, I don’t know of any game developer that has found a way to do this reliably… or at all! The best way to handle the inclusion of “adult” gambling situations is simply not to include them. If you want to operate games of chance via fiat money gambling situations, then spend the money to construct and open a real casino in Las Vegas.
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Retro Review: Earth Final Conflict
In the mid-late 1990s and after Gene Roddenberry’s untimely passing, Majel Barrett Roddenberry pitched a new Sci-Fi series which was conceived by the late Gene Roddenberry based entirely on Gene’s notes. That series? Earth: Final Conflict. Let’s take a retro dive and explore and review this series.
Premise of Earth Final Conflict
Aliens arrive on Earth bearing the promise of peace and gifts to humanity. It seems ideal. Yet, that’s where the series begins its subtext and subversion. After all, the series is called “Final Conflict”. Thus, there must be some level of “conflict” involved or the series isn’t correctly named.
Season 1
As the first season unfolds, it is clear that the concept and execution is both rough in some areas and polished in others. Much of the first season, then, seems to have been lifted almost directly from some of Gene’s notes; notes which crafted many of the episodes. Most of the episodes were, for the most part, well written. The pacing and situations unfolded in a logical and progressive manner. Every story tended to build upon the last, laying groundwork and foundation for what could make a very profound series. In this first season, there was hope for something positive. There was nothing given away in Season 1 to indicate the endgame, but the series itself was, as I said above, mostly well written.
With William Boon (Kevin Kilner), Lili Marquette (Lisa Howard), Ronald Sandoval (Von Flores), Augur (Richard Chevolleau) and to a lesser degree Jonathan Doors (David Hemblen) rounding out the “Human” cast of characters in this series, the stories worked reasonably well. The Taelon cast primarily consisted of Da’an (Leni Parker) and, later in the season, Zo’or (Anita La Selva). Majel Barrett Roddenberry also lent her acting hand as basically a “Doctor Chapel” to help implement the Taelon medical agenda on Earth. However, her character was effectively dropped before the end of season 1.
For the stories throughout season 1, the Taelons were mostly in agreement on how to move their agenda forward, with only differences in how the agenda would be implemented by specific companions.
That’s not to say the series was perfect at this point. There was definitely some inane writing involved at times. The most prominent writing problem was focusing on Da’an as the “primary” Taelon. To understand this further, it became understood that Da’an was the “North American Companion”. What about the South American Companion, the Asian Companion, the UK or even the Russian Companions? Where were those companions? Why did we never get to see those or, indeed, hear their sides of this agenda? Why weren’t their inputs as important as Da’an’s? There’s a big plot hole here which could have been rectified by season 2, but it wasn’t. Instead, the series attempted to capitalize on this disparity, instead of trying to explain it.
Season 1 wasn’t perfect, but it was a very first and important step in explaining why the Taelons had come to Earth, why a growing faction of “Resistance” had formed and how both parties would interact with one another as the series progressed.
Cast Changes
Unfortunately, by Season 2, the producers had introduced their own agenda. They wanted a younger (and hopefully larger) audience and in so doing began one in a series of rather odd personnel changes. Let’s stop right here and discuss this aspect.
Personnel changes in series can be the kiss of death for a series. While some series have been able to endure personnel changes to some degree, the series is never the same after. The most prominent personnel change in a series was in Charlie’s Angels. This series lost Farrah Fawcett after one season to her demand for more pay. Because the producers were unwilling to agree to her demands, but also because she was locked into a contract to complete a certain number of episodes, a compromise was met. Farrah would appear in fewer episodes over a longer amount of time, making it so she received the same pay as she did when working in every episode. Effectively, she got her raise, but worked less and made less money overall.
This change was the beginning of the Charlie’s Angels series tanking. Farrah’s departure opened the door to a revolving cast of wannabe actresses moving in and out of the series. From the progressively worse Cheryl Ladd to Shelley Hack to Tanya Roberts… with Cheryl Ladd being the one who was able to hold her own most of the time, but could be just as awkward at times. Even still, the amazing and iconic chemistry between Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett was undeniable and was entirely lost as a result of Farrah’s departure. The producers should have kept Farrah with the series at all costs, yes even agreeing to her higher salary. Yet, failed to do so.
Getting back to Earth Final Conflict, this same situation unfolded on this series. At the end of Season 1, the William Boone character was killed off. It is unknown why Kevin Kilner (who played Boone) left the series, but it has been theorized that the producers were looking for a younger face as a leading man. Apparently, at the time, Kevin Kilner was around the age of 40. He certainly didn’t look it on small lo-res TV screens, but apparently the producers may have thought so. To that end, William Boone was killed off, leading to a completely preposterous scenario to literally born a new character in Liam Kincaid for season 2.
In Season 4, probably due to cost cutting measures, Richard Chevolleau’s role as Augur was replaced by a new female lead in Juliette Street (played by Melinda Deines). Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Deines was apparently so overjoyed that she landed this role that she incessantly smiled for the vast majority of her performances, as though she were some kind of EFC cheerleader. Her “better than Augur” technical persona was so overwhelmed by her scenery chewing deliveries, her character just didn’t work well for the vast majority of the episodes where she appeared.
I won’t even get into the inane naming of this “Street” character in replacement for Augur. While Richard Chevolleau’s performances steadily improved throughout the first 3 seasons to the point where his deliveries actually became more or less acceptable, the series producers forced us viewers to start all over with yet another very green actress to play yet another Augur character. So what was the point in all of this anyway?
These are by no means the only examples. Oh, no no no. Season 5 ushered in a nearly brand new cast of characters, replacing the Taelons and everything we had come to know about the series. Keep reading below for more details on that immense mistake.
Acting
Before I get into season 2, let’s discuss a hot topic that has been widely debated about this series. Yes, acting was a problem with this series. That’s to be sure. Not so much in Leni Parker or Anita La Selva (Taelons), but in the human actors. From Doors, to Augur to Marquette to Boone, the acting was fair. It was utilitarian enough to carry the stories forward, but there was nothing award winning about the acting. This is partly due to the directors. Some directors are able to draw out excellent performances from mediocre actors, but not in this series.
Kilner’s William Boone, for example, had a delivery that sounded like he was in dress rehearsal reading the lines for the first time. His delivery is so dry and unaffected, it’s occasionally difficult to watch. Augur, on the other hand, delivered lines like he was in a Saturday morning children’s show. With his clownish outfits and his near chewing the scenery, Richard Chevolleau’s Augur made for a difficult watch at times.
Howard’s Marquette delivery ranged from decent to excellent for most of her episodes. Her delivery worked well, mostly, and she was able to hold her own with the material. In fact, I’d say that Lisa Howard’s Marquette, being one of the strongest of the actors involved in the series, was the glue who more or less held the “human” cast together.
Leni Parker and Anita La Selva worked well within their “Alien” constraints as Da’an and Zo’or, respectively. From the the hand gestures to the head bobs to the constraining costumes to the prosthetic makeup, this left the acting constrained to specific “Alien” mannerisms. These constraints, when combined with the “Alien” attitudes, delivered a more stilted performance… which is more or less what we got. Whether this delivery was intentional or a product of the costumes and prosthetics remains unknown. For the sake of this article, I will assume that the alien mannerisms and stilted performances were all intentional, as the role demanded to sell the Taelons. I’ve not seen these two actresses work in other acting parts, so I can’t speak to their full range or abilities. However, as Taelons, their subtle and constrained delivery worked well… particularly Leni Parker, whose occasional smile said volumes about Da’an.
Speaking of smiles, well smirks actually, Robert Leeshock’s incessant smirk after delivering a line of dialog is not only annoying, you can’t even tell the seriousness of the delivery. In his own way, Leeshock replaced Kilner’s dry, flat affect with his own level of oddly smirky, but also dry, flat delivery.
Season 2
Here’s where things start to get rough. This sophomore season didn’t help the series much at all. The first thing to notice about Season 2 is the cast change from William Boone to Liam Kincaid. As I discussed earlier, Kincaid’s setup was entirely preposterous. At the end of Season 1, Ha’gel (a Kimera who looks like a Taelon) impregnates the Irish protector, Siobahn Beckett (played by Kari Matchett). The fetus and then the baby to child to adult grows at an astonishing rate. From birth to adult is no more than a couple of hours.
Because Ha’gel is Kimera, the baby (who becomes Liam Kincaid) is half human, half Kimera. Why this plot device was included is entirely unknown. However, the writers failed to explore Liam’s Kimera abilities the vast majority of the time in season 2 or even 3, eventually explaining it off as his “Kimera” side as slowly vanishing. Yeah, right, whatever… as if DNA genetics magically vanish over time? Whenever Liam is placed into a combat scenario, he reaches for a gun 90% of the time rather than using his innate Shaqarava… with the Shaqarava being primarily used as a palm embedded energy projectile weapon. Though, I believe the Shaqarava could be used for other purposes, like healing or as a telepathic instrument.
It gets worse. In the episode Hijacked, a reporter captures Liam’s use of his Shaqarava (palm energy organs) on camera. When confronted, she acts all surprised as if, while standing around on the mothership surrounded by literally tons of Taelons, Taelon implanted humans and Taelon technology, that it’s the most surprising thing she’s ever seen in a human. It’s such stupid and preposterous writing, I don’t even know how the showrunners thought we could swallow this trash.
Yet, this surprise is presented in all sincerity. The only thing Liam needed to explain to the reporter is that it is Taelon technology. It is actually Taelon in origin and he wouldn’t be lying by saying that. It’s just not Taelon technology from these specific Taelons. It was inherited Taelon technology back when the Taelons and Jaridians were one race… which is what and who Ha’gel is (an “old style Taelon”). Worse, why does it matter anyway? Liam acted like his being exposed for having Shaqarava is the worst thing ever. With literally thousands of Taelon implanted and enhanced humans running around, many using Skrill as weapons, Liam’s Shaqarava is something to be concerned over?
However, that’s not the worst of season 2. There were so many bad lines of dialog written, I can’t even document them all here. There were lines delivered by Zo’or that literally made no sense. Zo’or would ask questions of the humans that all Taelons should already know the answer. So then, why is Zo’or asking these questions? It would be one thing if Zo’or were asking the questions sarcastically, but the writers had Zo’or ask them in all seriousness, like Zo’or genuinely didn’t know the answer. It doesn’t make any sense. The Taelons are superior to the humans in practically every way and have vastly superior knowledge and intelligence. Why is Zo’or asking such basic and degrading questions of humans?
There were so many stupid lines of dialog in too many of the season 2 episodes, the writing felt cloddish. It’s clear, the writers had no finesse for the scripts or the source material. They didn’t understand where to take the Taelons and, indeed, attempted to rely on silly and foolish action scenes to carry the weight of the episodes rather on using the story to drive the overall narrative. While the first season was rough, it wasn’t cloddish. However, going into season 2, we began with the absurd and it gets even more inane as the season progresses.
In fact, some actions scenes are so out of place and come from nowhere, I’m at a loss to figure out what the writers were thinking. Is the only way out of a story dilemma to throw a chase and gunfire scene in? I don’t get it. There were so many unnecessary (and unproductive) shootouts, I eventually lost track. Worse, in all of those shootouts, Liam almost never uses his Shaqarava. There are so many times where he has no weapon on him, and yet he takes punches or gunfire like he’s unarmed. It’s like, come on writers, he has the Shaqarava. Let him use it to end the conflict. Yet, Liam almost always ends up on the floor face down unconscious without ever having used his Shaqarava.
The only time he ends up using his Shaqarava is when there’s a stupid plot device involved, like in Season 2, Episode 18’s Hijacked.
Let’s talk about Hijacked again in another way. This episode is so preposterous and absurd, I can’t even fathom why it was written. If the Taelon mothership is so vulnerable to takeover, why did it take this long for the human resistance to abscond with it? The dialog that “justifies” the episode is that, paraphrased, Taelons didn’t design with vulnerabilities in mind. If that were the case, then every Taelon technology is sufficiently vulnerable to takeover.
There is zero chance a dying race as advanced as the Taelons would be that naïve towards technology vulnerabilities. Claiming that and then writing an episode around the mothership being taken for a joy ride is jump-the-shark preposterous. It’s as preposterous as the first episode when Liam Kincaid comes into existence.
It’s like the showrunners for season 1 were fired and replaced. Then, new showrunners were allowed to retool the series to their own whims and desires. Season 2 felt like it was simply a playground for the “new” producers, not to tell a story, but for them to put up all action stories that the writers can devise, stupid or not.
Atavus
Before I get into season 3, let’s talk about this specific season 2 episode. The stupidity of this episode should be understood immediately. We need to understand this episode to further understand how it shaped seasons 4 and 5. The primary mistake the writers made with the Atavus episode is that the series had already established that Taelons don’t revert to an atavistic state upon severance from the Commonality (psychic bond to other Taelons). That fact was established by Ma’el thousands of years earlier. Ma’el didn’t have access to humans to “suck” their minds to keep from reverting. Either Ma’el figured out a way that has never been known to Taelons or Taelons simply don’t automatically revert. I’m betting on the latter.
When Ma’el came to Earth to learn about humans, he severed his ties to the Commonality. Yet, he didn’t have the luxury of near death humans to sustain him in Taelon form. He also didn’t revert to an Atavus. Or, if he did, he quickly figured out a way to revert back to Taelon form. However, it was never established that Ma’el ever became an Atavus or remained in that state after severing his ties to the Commonality. That means that Season 2, Episode 2 made no sense for when Bel’lie comes to Earth from a different Taelon colony strictly to become an Atavus.
That either means that Ma’el was immune to becoming an Atavus or this whole “become an atavus” thing was made up by the writers for sheer convenience strictly for this silly Season 2 episode.
Season 2 also employed one entirely questionable and throw-away episide in S2E8’s Redemption. This episode consisted almost entirely of flashbacks combined with maybe 5-8 minutes of “new” content to carry the segments. It wasn’t even handled by a primary character. It was handled by the tertiary character, Siobhan Beckett (Kari Matchett)… as if we actually cared about the fate of this character? This also wouldn’t be the first or last throw-away character that the writers would devote an entire episode to.
One other extremely bad episode to call out is the final episode of Season 2. The entire story is so dumb, I don’t even know why the idea was greenlit. The whole series up to this point had been grooming Jonathan Doors (played by David Hemblen) to become President of the United States. In fact, Zo’or was nearly ready to profess his loyalty to Doors. Yet, this episode sees Zo’or with his right hand man, Sandoval, lead the charge to assassinate Daniel Thompson, the then President of the United States in the series. The assassination was to be carried out during the presidential debate. In fact, what we come to find later was the plot intended to injure Thompson and pin it on Doors with the intention of discrediting him. Why is it bad? Because while the Taelons are malevolent in a very hands-off way, this plot shows the Taelons to be not only overt in their dangerousness, they’re fully willing to play with people’s lives to further their agenda, they hadn’t ever done this so overtly prior.
Honestly, the show would have been better had Doors won the election. This convoluted plot kept Thompson in office, an actor (Barry Flatman) whose bit parts were okay, but nothing to write home about. Now, we have to have more involved plots with this actor more and more. David Hemblen’s acting was far superior to Barry Flatman. Why the producers chose to sideline David Hemblen’s character in lieu of Barry Flatman’s character is beyond me. Yet more stupid showrunner decisions.
Season 3
More personnel changes. At the opening of Season 3, we come to find that the Season 2 prophetic vision of Augur’s holographic computer interface being pregnant and having a baby actually served a real life purpose. Lisa Howard was apparently pregnant and showing towards the tail end of season 2. Showing Augur’s computer character as pregnant and then having a child would have allowed Lisa Howard to continue her dual role, playing both Lili Marquette and Augur’s holographic computer assistant in the shape of Lili Marquette.
Going into Season 3, we come to find Lili has been killed… or at least, so we’re told. Behind the scenes, Lisa Howard had apparently requested maternity leave from the producers for the first half of Season 3. The producers were apparently somewhat obliging to her request and reduced her role significantly. Not only did Augur delete his holographic interface, so too did Lili Marquette mostly disappear from the series… appearing only in a few episodes in Season 3. This allowed Lisa Howard the time she wanted to be with her new family member.
Unfortunately, this personnel change put a hole in the series for a leading lady character. In that effort, they hired actress Jayne Heitmeyer to play Jonathan Door’s new right hand, Renee Palmer. Lisa Howard apparently claimed that Heitmeyer wasn’t intended to be a replacement for Lili Marquette. While that statement may have seemed true in some small way, that’s not really how the series turned out. In fact, by Seasons 4 and 5, Heitmeyer’s character, Renee Palmer, had become the primary lead character who carried the entire series (along side Sandoval). So, yes, Renee Palmer did eventually come to replace Lili Marquette and most of the rest of the “human” cast.
Season 3 is just as ludicrous, unfortunately, as season 2. This is mostly because of the newly introduced Renee Palmer character. When this character appears, there’s no questions, no background checks, nothing. She’s so readily accepted into the fold, it’s as if she’s been there all along. This is part of the reason I despise personnel changes in TV series. The writers could have at least had the Taelons perform some kind of fiduciary responsibility around Renee’s appearance. Yet, crickets.
As for Jayne Heitmeyer, her mostly flat affect left the series, once again, mostly without a strong actor to carry the series. The character was mostly utilitarian, just enough to carry the role. It’s the same problem with William Boone and again with Liam Kincaid. The producers kept trying to inject fresh blood into the series, yet kept failing at it so amazingly. While the series started out with a strong enough cast, particularly the Taelons, the “human” cast keeps changing as often as people change their socks.
The character changes don’t necessarily make a series bad all by itself, but when coupled with amazingly bad scripts and no way to properly use these characters, it most certainly does. As I said above, character changes are ultimately the kiss of death for a series… and Earth Final Conflict proves this out in spades. It’s really not solely the cast changes that made EFC bad, but also the bad, bad writing.
As a prime example of this extremely bad writing, in Season 3 Episode 14, Da’an opens the episode by saying, “The Jaridians carry within them the demon of violence which we removed from our species.” This stupid line of dialog is uttered to Liam Kincaid by Da’an one episode after Zo’or kills Ram, the “Latin American Companion” along with a human using an interdimensional portal and nearly kills T’Than, the war minister and another human the same way.
Liam Kincaid is well aware of what happened to Ram and nearly T’Than at Zo’or’s hand having almost been killed himself. Yet, Kincaid’s response? “What you call the demon of violence is the willingness to fight your own battles”. Kincaid was nearly killed because of Zo’or perpetuating violence against his own species, yet Kincaid makes no mention of this fact to Da’an? The Taelons have no more removed violence from the Taelon species than humans have. Yet, the writers aren’t willing to admit this.
In another episode, Season 3 Episode 9 “In Memory”, Lili wakes up and thinks she’s on Earth again. Yet, so many clues tell her strongly that she’s not where she thinks she is. Additionally, her hospital captors seem to forever press her to repair the interdimensional drive in her damaged shuttle, a very big clue in itself as to what’s going on. It’s not like the series hadn’t told both the audience and the characters repeatedly over many episodes that if the Jaridians manage to get their hands on a working interdimensional drive that that would allow the Jaridians to reach Earth much, much sooner.
You would have thought the Lili character was far smarter than this and had a brain in her head. Lili should have recognized these clues, especially those that continually press her to repair the drive system. It’s not like the Taelons haven’t repeatedly warned not only her, but every human around the Jaridian’s plan. Yet, there Lili sits, being asked to do the very thing that could help the Jaridians out majorly, all without a single suspicion? I figured out the ruse in under 5 minutes. Yet, Lili doesn’t figure it out until the very end? I don’t think so. Again, grossly bad tropes and horribly bad writing. Writers must treat characters as if they actually have brains in their heads, particularly when stories have previously demonstrated that they do. Barring that, the writers should have kept Lili drugged up and constantly in a brain fog so that she couldn’t put these pieces together. Yet, nothing in the episode unfolded in this way.
Seasons 4 and 5
I have chosen to lump both of these crap seasons together as one. With the beginning of Season 4, this effectively where Jayne Heitmeyer takes over as a lone character driving this series. By Season 5, the Tealons are fully gone (but even by Season 4, the Taelons are more-or-less already on the way out with that “core energy” stupidity). In Season 5, we see the Taelons replaced by the two Atavus: Juda (Guylaine St-Onge) and Howlyn (Alan Van Sprang). Even by Season 4, gone are most of the characters we had come to know and (ahem) love. By Season 5, we now have a nearly brand new cast of characters we don’t know and ultimately don’t care about. What TV show producer replaces nearly the entire cast and expects viewers to hang around? No offense, Juda and Howlyn.
Season 4 marks where the writers had truly lost their way and had no idea where to take this series. With Season 5, though, this is where the whole thing takes a completely sour turn. When Earth Final Conflict could have ended with an uplifting story, it instead attempted to turn itself into a competitor TV show to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series which was effectively in the #1 spot at the time). The producers and writers made a grave mistake with this series, one that ultimately turned the series into trash.
Instead of embracing the roots and uniqueness of what was setup in season 1, they choose to embrace a concept foreign to the series. Effectively, the series turned the Taelons into energy sucking creatures, similar to that campy and crappy 1985 movie “Lifeforce” in an attempt to compete with Buffy the Vampire Slayer on another network. In essence, the series became Renee the Vampire Slayer with Renee Palmer becoming the primary character who runs around slaying the Atavus, much like Buffy slays Vampires.
After the questionable choice of having Taelons merge into fewer characters, who then revert to becoming Atavus, the whole series takes a 180 degree turn. No longer is EFC about Taelons being a friend to Earth. Now it’s about the Atavus let loose on Earth to suck energy from humans to survive.
I can’t even fathom what the producers were thinking. Here you have a show about Tealons who come to Earth and who understand their fate is inexplicably linked to Humans. Then, the producers derail that premise entirely and effectively kill off the Taelons only to replace them with the Atavus; primitive creatures who look like vampires, act like vampires and kill like vampires. It’s then surprising to realize that the Atavus storyline managed to last a full season (and several “hint” episodes before that) before the series was cancelled.
Assignment Earth’s ties to Earth Final Conflict
It’s worth noting that Gene Roddenberry attempted to create a spinoff series at the time Star Trek: The Original Series was in production in 1968. This new series was to be called Assignment Earth. It featured an Alien, Gary Seven, who comes to Earth to study humans and human culture and intervene as necessary to keep humanity safe. However, one episode was made in the form of a Star Trek episode featuring Robert Lansing and Teri Garr as what is intended to be the series pilot. Unfortunately, this spinoff series failed to materialize and was not picked up.
How exactly is Earth Final Conflict related to Assignment Earth? Clearly, Gene Roddenberry wanted Assignment Earth to succeed. However, due to the feedback he received after Assignment Earth failed to get picked up, it appears Gene may have retooled the idea into what ultimately became Earth Final Conflict. In the 1960s, limited special effects were available. As Gene moved into the late 80s, computer effects were becoming available along with much better film effects by companies like Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). This allowed Gene to retool some of these previous ideas into concepts which could now be filmed properly with current effect technologies. Thus, the idea of using energy beings like the Taelons could now be realized on video or film.
Even the premise between Assignment Earth and Earth Final Conflict are similar enough to draw correlations between both. For example, Gary Seven is assigned to Earth for as yet unknown reasons, but he is an alien. He is accompanied by his metamorph companion, Isis, who could transform between a house cat and a human form. Clearly, the human forms of Gary Seven and Isis were not native to these Aliens. They are simply using these forms to allow for better interaction with humanity. This same can be said of the Taelons. Their human form was only created to better interact with humans. When Taelons are in their energy form, they only somewhat resemble a human form.
Additionally, the Taelons were effectively “assigned” to Earth to help humanity, the same goal as Gary Seven in Assignment Earth. The parallels between these two story ideas are more similar than they are dissimilar. I won’t dive into all of the parallels between these two series ideas. You simply need to watch both to understand them. These parallels have led this author to believe that Gene Roddenberry had ultimately retooled the original Assignment Earth ideas into what became Earth Final Conflict.
Additionally, the original series title for Earth Final Conflict was to be titled Battleground: Earth, similar to Assignment: Earth. At the time that Earth Final Conflict hit the airwaves, L. Ron Hubbard’s movie Battlefield Earth was showing in theaters. Because of the confusing naming similarities between Battlefield Earth and Battleground: Earth, it was decided to rename the TV series to Earth Final Conflict to avoid that confusion. Thus, it is this author’s opinion that Gene Roddenberry’s original Assignment Earth idea morphed into Battleground Earth, which ultimately became Earth Final Conflict. Thus, even though Assignment Earth was never realized into a series during the 60s, it did finally become a series, as Earth Final Conflict, in the mid to late 1990s.
I’ve seen many comments from fans who have wished that Assignment Earth had come to pass as a TV series. In effect, it did… in Earth Final Conflict.
Overall
It’s too bad that Majel Barrett Roddenberry didn’t retain enough control over the series to keep it from taking this direction. I would really liked to have seen the Taleons return. Then, have the humans help save the Taelons, at least in some small way. Earth Final Conflict should have been an uplifting series, not a dark depressing survival series.
If you ignore seasons 4 and 5 as if they don’t exist and focus on seasons 1-3 as if these are the only seasons that matter, it’s not a bad series. The inclusion of seasons 4 and 5 simply turns Earth Final Conflict into a throw away and worthless series in the annals of science fiction. I’m quite sure that if Gene Roddenberry had been alive to see his creation come to exist, it would have turned out much differently. I’m also surprised that both Majel Roddenberry and Rod Roddenberry allowed for this series to take this unusual and completely distasteful turn at the end.
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Did Elizabeth Holmes get the correct sentence?
As we should already know, now-disgraced and convicted CEO Elizabeth Holmes operated Theranos. Theranos was to offer the world a fantastical new way of testing people’s health concerns for all manner of blood diagnostics all with the tiniest drop of blood. It’s fantastical because Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos was never able to make this testing technology actually work (the entire basis for the fraud). Ms. Holmes has now been convicted of wire fraud and defrauding investors, a federal crime. More than this, Ms. Holmes has now been sentenced to serve 11 years in a federal prison.
NBC News Opinion
One NBC opinion piece, written by a former federal prosecutor and current attorney, Andrey Spektor, contends that Elizabeth Holmes’s 11 year sentence is too harsh. This author does not agree. Why? Because of the nature of and, more importantly, the real dangers posed by the device she failed to create.
Andrey’s contention is:
But that calculation was the least important component of determining Holmes’ sentence because the judge ultimately disagreed with the probation estimate and, anyway, no rational judge would have sentenced her to anything approaching life in prison. Among other things, she is a first-time, nonviolent offender whose crime did not lead to anyone’s death.
I contend that this highlighted statement is, at best, inaccurate and is, at its worst, false. There may actually have been illness and death as a result of Theranos’s deception, when the Theranos “Edison miniLab” machine (pictured)
, did not work as purported and likely impacted medical treatments needed (or weren’t needed, as the case may be) for medical patients. For Andrey to contend that no one died (or by extension, weren’t injured or hurt), that’s incredibly wrong thinking.
Ms. Holmes’s deception impacted many people’s health; health which relied on accurate testing results from Theranos’s Edison miniLab machine. Without accurate testing results, the wrong medications could have been prescribed, the wrong treatment plans could be implemented, up to and including not prescribing medications which could save people’s lives… or indeed the opposite may have occurred; the wrong prescription may have been prescribed causing injury or potentially death. Claiming her fraudulent testing equipment couldn’t cause harm is fallacious and disingenuous. Worse, according to the whistleblowers, Ms. Holmes knew that her miniLab testing equipment didn’t work!
Dangers to Society
The fact that the Edison’s machine’s deception was “caught early” is of no consolation to those who received inaccurate test results from Theranos’s intentional equipment deception. In other words, you can’t just play “god” with people’s lives and health and expect to get away with it.
To claim that her defrauding and misleading and intentional deception about her alleged testing methodology, which clearly did not work properly (or at all), didn’t impact people’s health and lives is insulting to those who could have lost their lives to Theranos’s medical fraud. Even still, some still could lose their lives early because of Theranos.
That the fraud was caught early because of two conscientious whistleblowers within Theranos employee ranks is more a testament to those two individual’s forthright and upstanding conscience than of Elizabeth Holmes coming clean about the dangers the Theranos Edison ultimately posed to society. Elizabeth Holmes would likely have continued to play this dangerous game if those two whistleblowers hadn’t come forward. It wasn’t Elizabeth Holmes who “came clean” on the wrongness of her equipment. It was those two Theranos whistleblowers who put their careers in jeopardy to save the lives of others.
11 Year Sentence
For all of these reasons above, I vehemently disagree with Andrey Spektor’s opinion. Elizabeth Holmes’s 11 year sentence is not at all inappropriate or too long. In fact, I’d say her sentence was downright lenient considering the danger she, Theranos and her fraudulent testing equipment posed to society as a whole. If her equipment’s fraud had not been found early, we could have gone perhaps a year or two or longer without knowing how many people might have been misdiagnosed, given the wrong medical treatments or, indeed, given no treatments at all for preventable, but fatal illnesses if left untreated. In short, Elizabeth Holmes (and her fake testing equipment) was (and is) a danger to society.
I contend that 11 years is way too lenient for that level of danger and risk that she and Theranos posed to the world. She doesn’t deserve leniency for having committed this level of medical malfeasance against the public at large. While one can try and argue that the trial wasn’t about her medical malfeasance specifically, the fraud fully stemmed from that malfeasance. Thus, any malfeasance must be considered as part of the sentencing. It can’t be “distanced” or “separated” as though it didn’t exist. That malfeasance was the entire reason Elizabeth Holmes’s machine was found to have caused the defrauding of investors. Eye on the ball, people.
While a trial for the affected patients was not allowed to move forward, that doesn’t preclude the absolute sheer negligence and willful malfeasance Holmes performed against an unsuspecting public. Elizabeth Holmes knew her machine didn’t work. Yet she STILL went ahead with placing it into Walgreens knowing its problems. That’s not innocent happenstance; that’s willful malfeasance and, at worst, malevolence. Conscientious people don’t put other people in harm’s way intentionally. Elizabeth Holmes put people in harm’s way. One might want to call that blind ambition. Call it what you will. Blind ambition can still result in someone doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, even knowing that the outcome might cause harm to others. That can’t be dismissed with an 18 month sentence (as Ms. Holmes has requested), a mere slap on the wrist.
No, the 11 year sentence by federal sentencing Judge Edward Davilla was definitely of a sufficient length as to give her pause AND send her a solid message for what Theranos and she had done to the public… even if not specifically stated by judge Davilla; this judge knew the stakes.
Babies as Shields?
One thing Elizabeth Holmes appears to also be shrewd at is trying to get out of her 11 year sentence. She’s now attempting this by getting pregnant. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting a family… but on the heels of beginning an 11 year federal criminal sentence? I get that her biological clock is ticking, but it primarily says she’s using an infant as a shield. That’s not a good look and it fully supports the above malfeasance. She’s putting her baby in harm’s way to protect herself from going to prison, or at least so she hopes. It’s a crude and crass way to begin prison… and it leaves her kids in the lurch without a parent for 11 years.
She knew she had been convicted, yet she chose to get pregnant anyway? A judge should have held her in contempt of court over that. When Holmes’s first child was born, her trial had not yet begun. Thus, there was no way to know which way her trial might go. Her second child, however, is simply being used as a pawn against incarceration. That’s both a nasty and very vile reason to have a child. It doesn’t show compassion for the child, it shows self-preservation by Holmes. It’s an incredibly uncaring and self-centered tactic, especially for a baby that’s now caught in her manipulative crossfire. As I said, distasteful.
She’s now delivered her second child, but it’s almost certain she’s working hard to conceive a third as yet another shield. Enough’s enough here. If she pops up pregnant again, cite her for contempt of court, let her carry that child to term in prison and give birth to that child behind bars. The sentence was issued and it must be carried out. Having a baby shouldn’t become a “get out of jail free” card… not for her, not for anyone. Worse, babies should never be used as incarceration blockers.
Judges should make it perfectly clear to any convicted felon who decides to conceive a baby after conviction means possible contempt of court and that neither the pregnancy nor the birth will stop the incarceration from occurring. Playing these games with the court should always mean contempt of court and possible longer incarceration time.
Did Elizabeth Holmes get the correct sentence?
No, but not for the reasons Andrey Spektor proposed. In fact, Ms. Holmes got a far more lenient sentence than she should have been given considering the real medical dangers both she and her testing machine imposed on society. Ms. Holmes should count herself lucky at receiving only 11 years. Let’s hope that when she gets out of prison, she doesn’t try to start yet another dangerous “medical testing” company.
As for those 11 years Ms. Holmes faces? This amount of incarceration also sends a clear message to other would-be CEOs not to play with people’s lives using untested medical technologies in the goal of gaining personal fame, wealth or for any other reason.
Editor’s Update: Elizabeth Holmes began her 11 year sentence as of May 30th, 2023 at the minimum security facility for females Federal Prison Camp (FPC) located in Bryan, Texas. Her final bid to remain out on appeal was denied. Elizabeth Holmes’s federal inmate register number is 24965-111.
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