We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

How I got the impression this happened today, I couldn't explain under {fast-penta,Veritaserum}.

August 17
[Aberrant] On PBS' "Speak Out", media and culture critic Paul Nielman of Columbia University criticizes the isolation caused by popular VR systems like Vir-Gogs.

His point is underlined by the ad on the opposite page for Vir-Gogs Junior, with Cyber-Trance Junior. It takes the "electronic babysitter" to a whole new horrendous level.

He also points out that "Most of what's available so for for Vir-Gogs are adaptations of existing movies and TV shows", done by computer. "It's colorization all over again." And it meddles with the original creators' visions. "If George Lucas decides that he wants to digitize and dimensionalize the Star Wars series for another special edition, that's fine with me. No one else, though, has any right to touch those films or change them in any way."

Throwaway detail.

June 21-26
[Aberrant] Monaco plays host to the 35th annual International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo.

This is relevant because the festival is where the events of "Permanent Vacation" end up, after starting in Ibiza and detouring to Morocco. No dates have been given because different troupes will have moved at different paces. Also because, in OTL, this year's circus festival was only the 32nd and was held in January.

Produced with instruments? By people?

May
[Aberrant] Dave Petch's Zine article "Fie on Digital!" laments the replacement of CDs by data chips.

Aberrant: Year One (which reprints the article) notes that these chips are "actually domino-sized blocks of computer chips in a sealed plastic box, with a plug at one end", which sounds a lot like a flashdrive except that these are usually ROM rather than RAM. "Only a small label distinguishes a music chip from a video game chip, a program chip or any other sort of data storage chip." (This is a potential story hook, of course.) They can easily hold 100 tracks, which means that (to pick an example close to my shriveled heart) Absolute Garbage could've been the equivalent of a boxed set (with all their albums, all the bonus tracks and B-sides from various album and single releases, and maybe even a video album equivalent to the AG DVD).

Back at the ranch, Petch remembers the last time we went through this, when CDs replaced vinyl and banished

all the hisses and pops of random noise, any unwanted echoes, the breathing of the musicians...

any hint that a live person had any role in making the "perfect digital sound."

[...]

Now the sinister Illuminati that control the recording industry have conspired with the electronics industry to do it again. [...] Yet I don't recall anyone asking me if I wanted to change technologies, again. I never heard anyone say "Golly gosh, I sure wish I had to buy my favorite music all over again."

He has a chip player, sure... but he's also kept his CD player, and even his turntable.

Well, sort of.

2005
[Aberrant] Something happens to set up or develop another element of the game's metaplot, and thus of the TU metaplot in general. Or else it's a piece of corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to the otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative of the Nova Age. Either way, some of my friendslist would need major surgery to be capable of caring any less about it, and others would need such surgery to be capable of caring about it at all.

[EDIT 7:33 AM 4/23: Now I'm going to talk for a paragraph or two about the larger ramifications of the event. I'll probably throw in links to earlier TDiTUH entries, if there are any relevant ones. If it's something radically different from OTL in a way not obviously linked to the presence of novas, I may speculate on the underlying causes, or I may just shrug and put it down to long-running butterfly effects from the Hammersmith Incident. (Addendum 9:45 AM: Occasionally, I'll take the meta route and attribute it to the fact that the game's writers, in 1998 and '99, were plotting out events through 2008.)]

Actually, nothing I know of happens today specifically in the TU. This is an example of the generic post meme, from nihilistic_kid via rollick. Now, if you feel like it, go update your lj with a generic post that fits the tenor of your journal.

Not the real-world election result, but one a lot of people would prefer. (I'd certainly prefer this to a Bush victory. Then again, if Bob Schroer were the GOP candidate seeking re-election this year, I'd side with Hugh in wanting him back, from the sound of him.) And wouldn't it be a hoot if Michael Badnarik (the OTL Libertarian candidate) got in?

2004
[Aberrant] Lauren Pendleton is elected both the first female and first Libertarian president of the United States. The press credits her victory to voters disgruntled with two sex scandals by two consecutive presidents from both traditional political parties. The Libertarian Party and various independent candidates claim a sizable portion of legislative seats in the election.

And I suspect the TU's James maliszewski has put his credibility on the betting table in calling it for her, just as his OTL counterpart has done by calling it for Bush. We'll see, though I certainly have hopes.

Okay, I admit it, that post was to provide a buffer. Not one datum, but two data.

( Weapons are people too. )

( Another of the old guard cleared away. )