Midrange Weekly Oct 25
Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention
Midrange Staff @midrangeyvr
Hello friends and welcome back to Midrange Weekly. Normally we like to use this opening space for some fairly unimpressive weekly observations or the occasional snide remark, but instead we’d like to use our time here to talk about Andrew Morrison. Andrew was a co-founder and editor-in-chief of Scout, Vancouver’s preeminent food and culture magazine. Jamie has been a contributor for Scout since 2016. Tristan and Mickey have had music profiles on the magazine as well. On October 14h, Andrew passed away from a short battle with kidney cancer. He is survived by his wife, Michelle and two sons James and Pip.
Throughout his career Andrew was indispensable in helping develop and foster the journalism industry in Vancouver, for which a great many of us are thankful. This is the kind of field we often resign ourselves to a 'the work must continue’ kind of attitude, but a lot of that work to begin with was made possible by him, something that may go without saying when it comes to Andrew but is still worth saying anyways. Gone far far too soon, we salute the man he was and the legacy he has left behind. Midrange wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for mentors like Andrew. Mad respect and love from the three of us here.
At the bottom we have a link to the episode of Track and Food Andrew did with Jamie and Mickey a few years back. We encourage you to listen and savour who he was. It’s great and funny as hell.
We salute you Andrew Morrison. May you rest in peace.
Trump’s New Social Media Platform Is Called Truth Social Because Of Course It Is
Trump has been threatening some kind of media empire for sometime now, be it the social or more talking heads formats. While I’m sure we were dreading the eventual nadir of disinformation and animus that it would inevitably become, I don’t’ know if were expecting it to be this objectively hilarious. After a string of unceremonious failures within the post Twitter world, Trump and his former supplicants will now allegedly coalesce under a new media conglomerate Trump Media & Technology Group. The idea behind TMTG is to form a recombinant media ecosystem- with Trump acting as its functional patriarch and messiah- that combines all of the refracted and sectarian social media upstarts that have tried, and mostly failed to gain traction, since Trump got booted off of Twitter. The usual Trump sycophants like Trump Jr have done the media rounds saying how this will be a safe haven for all free speech and that acerbic conservative view points won’t get censored to the extent they are on the big ones like Twitter and Facebook. This is as good a time as any to mention once again that complaints in this regard are hilariously off the mark and that the reality is the exact opposite of what they bemoan. Research has shown time and time again that conservative viewpoints on Facebook and Twitter are in fact algorithmically boosted as such negative discourse drives engagement.
While Trump claims that TMTG will eventually become an omnivorous media gestalt that will rival that of CNN or Disney, it’s unclear what exactly his grand machinations actually are. At the moment we only have the introduction of his social media app Truth Social. It’s called Truth Social. Lest anyone think that Trump is not still incensed by his ban from Twitter for his role in instigating the January 6th insurrection, the interface and design aperture of Truth Social is so narrow that even calling it a Twitter clone is generous; this looks like copyright infringement. On Truth Social you don’t tweet, you post ‘truths’. You don’t re-tweet, you re-truth. Sure. The mission statement of the app assures us that this is an open and free space for any and all users to express opinions of any time without fear of reprimand. This of course is tired and clichéd rhetorical manoeuvring to pre-emptively absolve any explicit statements of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, or any other bilious tenants that have become endemic of Trump’s reframing of the Republican Party.
Will any of this work? Will Truth Social take off in a way other right wing Twitter copies have failed to? If recent history is any indication, I’m going to go with a resounding no. Right wing platforms like Gab, Parlour, or Gettr have failed to gain traction, often due to further fragmenting the extremely online but also extremely onerous factions within the conservative base. Egregious and virulent racism, and its evident adjacency to the attempted coup in January caused Parlour to get booted from its hosting site. Gettr, despite former Trump aide Jason Miller’s incessant hyping, couldn’t even garner the former President’s interest. Miller has so far failed to negotiate a deal in which Gettr is absorbed into TMTG along side Truth Social, which again, is hilarious. Trump himself, in a distinctly petty attempt to fill the twitter shaped void in his pathology started a micro blog of sorts earlier this year called From The Desk Of Donald J Trump. The whole thing was weirdly anachronistic, harkening back to the neophyte blogosphere of the mid 2000s, and predictably went under due to lack of user engagement.
Things have not gone smoothly for Truth Social, despite it only being in closed beta stage. Lest one think that a Trump social media platform would be built upon ethical and scrupled foundations, is that ever not the case. Users have excavated the code that Truth Social is based on and found it is lifted from the open source-coding platform Mastodon. Mastodon, by design and mission statement is fully open and intended for anyone to be able to use. One of the big sticking points however is in Mastodon’s terms of service conditions that state that anyone who uses their code and alters it in any way must also make it completely free and open. Truth Social however, with its own variations have claimed that their code is proprietary and closed it off from examination and moding. They even went as far to say that the Mastodon logo embedded in the code was there in error. Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko is looking into legal recourse for these terms and service violations.
Speaking of terms of service conditions, some of the constituent parts of Truth Social’s user agreement are pretty weird, and acutely emblematic of Trump’s world famously fragile ego. One of the stipulations around signing up to Truth Social intones that while this is nominally a free speech platform, you can’t say anything mean about it or Trump. The specific language states users, “may not disparage, tarnish, or other wise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the site”. This is comically petty, and also considering the broadly interpretational ‘our opinion’ part, obtusely vague versus the bureaucratic and antiseptic specificity of other ToS from social media platforms. Basically you can’t make of fun of Trump. What constitutes thoughtful criticism or mean spirited bullying is left up to, I guess Trump’s mood that day?
This hasn’t stopped people from having some fun with the platform. Despite it being a closed beta, users found the actual URL and discovered there is more or less no verification process in place yet and that user names are pretty much just up for grabs. Someone snagged the user name @donaldtrump and swiftly posted an image of a pig defecating on itself, which I’m pretty sure is meant to be a metaphor for something. A reporter at the Washington Post managed to register the username @mikepence just to see if they could. Of course Mike Pence is still allowed on twitter. Honestly there does seem to more structural planning and long-term strategy behind TMTG and Truth Social than some of the other half assed attempts at virility Trump has been involved with over the last year, but even if it this one makes it past its nascent early days, it’s going to be a shit show. Still, if the occasional gratuitous farm animal pic is the price one must pay for pure, distilled and unadulterated freedom, sign me up (do not sign me up). -Tristan
A Few Thoughts On The NBA Season So Far
It was a tough week to say the least, with the news of the passing of my editor and friend Andrew Morrison from Scout Magazine. Rather than try to capture my thoughts on the man here for you, I’ve saved those for this week’s podcast of Track and Food. Look for that later this week.
In the meantime, my favourite sport, the NBA, returned this past Tuesday. Normally I write a preview column in which I dispel and puke up all my thoughts on the coming season with as much detail and comedy as I can muster (this Ben Simmons saga is a treasure trove of goods in the comedy department) but ultimately, I decided not too mostly out of spite for the league itself and how I hated last season so much.
First, don’t get me wrong, hate is probably not the appropriate word to use in trying to describe my feelings towards the league as a whole, as love will always be my ultimate go to there. Frustration is probably a more suitable word choice, so let’s go with that. In short this feeling of mine comes in a few forms. The first is with how he league has swung too far in the direction of shooting 3s and playing little to no defence. I’m not a big fan of this style of play and I’m not alone in thinking this way. The second issue comes with how the players view “playing” games and doing their job as a subjective choice versus a must do. This amount of disrespect towards us fans baffles me. If you want a clearer picture of my resentment on this particular topic, you can read this column I posted from last January. It covers the entire scope of my feelings on this matter, which are long and varied.
But before you go and do that, let’s examine what I’ve seen and noticed so far. It’s only been two games so a lot of what I’ve written here is me overreacting to small sample sizes. Dumb I know, but oh so fun. Anyways…a few thoughts.
My Lakers Lakers look trash, but it’s early
Whoa! What a brutal two games so far from LeBron and co. A sloppy loss at home on opening night to Steph and a few juniors then a total beatdown from CP3 and co a few nights later. Down 30 points at one time in that game is inexcusable. At that point it’s all about pride and effort. Where was it? They made a slight run in the 4th to keep things respectable, but by then time was running short and the damage had been done. This team needs shooting and Russ has to change his game or move to the bench for this to work. LeBron looks great, he’s shooting well and moving the ball. But that’s the issue, he has the ball and Russ does not. When Russ doesn’t have the ball, he’s effectively useless. Sad to say but the man just hovers around the 3 point line waiting for the ball to return to him before he’ll do anything else. He’s no Steph or Reggie Miller, a man about town setting picks and diving around curls in constant motion to free himself or another. In game one, Russ set zero, count them, zero, ball screens. How is that even possible?
Carmelo is washed and at best a 7th man at this point in career. Davis looks rested and healthy, but with him it’s only a matter of time before he’s out for a few weeks or months. Dwight’s position on the team is tenuous as evidenced by his altercation with Davis in game 2. The return of Rondo has been good to see. He’s hit several wide open 3s so far, a good sign. They need more shooting and athleticism. The return of Horten-Tucker should juice the bench some in a few weeks. I like this team and will never count out a LeBron led squad, but this is year 19 for him. He’s over 60,000 minutes played. Only one man has played as much as him and his name is Kareem. That’s it. Father time has never been beaten. We’ll see how this plays out. They’ll either overachieve and win it all or flame out in a blaze a glory. Fears of what happened in 2013 linger heavily in my mind. But it’s only been two games, no time to panic.
Steph Curry’s game is just incredible
Few players continue to impress me this late into their careers as much as Steph still does. He’s 33 and still just as lethal as he was when he won his first MVP at 27. His game will age like fine wine with the way he shoots. Twenty five points in the first quarter of game two against the Clippers and it hardly felt out of the ordinary. A 35 foot three just flies off his hands like no big deal, yet, when he does it you can’t help but marvel at the artistry. I just love watching him play.
The NBA is in the throes of celebrating it’s 75th season and in that time, only a handful of players have connected and had the kind of impact on the game as Steph has. By my count the list is Doctor J, Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and Steph. You could possibly put Magic and LeBron in there but few young kids play like or want to be either of them. Their games don’t translate like the five I’ve mentioned. How Steph shoots effectively changed the NBA. Every school kid wants to be like him and seeing him this effective this early in the season is just awesome to watch. If Klay can come back even to 80% of what he once was, you’ve got a dark horse sleeper in my minds eye.
I wonder if he could hit 20 3s in one game? The fact that I’m even thinking of this possibility is just crazy. Steph makes watching the NBA that much more appealing and fun. He’s apex Steph right now. Enjoy it while you can.
Ugh Jason Kidd
He was a terrible coach in Brooklyn. Even worse in Milwaukee and now he’s been tasked to guide the best young player in the league in Luka Doncic. I do not like this scenario. So far the Mavs look blah. They got demolished by Atlanta then barely got by the Raptors. They have only one playmaker and I’m not a fan of the Powell and Porzingis starting front court. I’m dubious if this pairing will work. Kidd was a great player, just not sure if he’s a good coach. I guess we’ll see but so far, the results don’t look promising. This team could flirt with a .500 record or one way higher. They have such a variance in my eye and it all starts with their coach, who I just don’t trust.
Ugh Ben Simmons
Well, leave it up to Joel Embiid to not sugar coat his disdain for this whole mess. He’s over it and doesn’t care if Ben knows. It’s an unfortunate truth but one I respect. How Simmons has behaved throughout this who saga has been embbarassing. After a horrible playoff run last summer, he asked to be traded. GM Darryl Morey won’t have it unless they get a fair offer. End of story. How he’s conducted himself since hasn’t helped his case. First by not showing up to camp, then second by refusing to practise and do drills and then third by saying he’s mentally unfit to play. All of this is a bunch of horse shit if you ask me. The Sixers are on the hook to the tune of a $146 million with this man for the next four seasons. He needs to get over himself, suit up and play or forfeit his contract. End of story. It’s this type of player empowerment bs, the stuff James Harden pulled off last year and what Anthony Davis did three years ago that bugs the hell out of me. You’re paid to play regardless if you’re happy or not. It’s disrespectful to us fans and the game itself if you don’t.
Ultimately, I hope this ends soon for all parties involved. It isn’t helping Ben or the league whatsoever the longer this drags out.
In the end all of this might not matter, Giannis is that good
It might be his league now and he’s still only 26. Fear the deer is right. - Jamie
Things From The Internet We Liked
Why Watch The Batman Trailer When You Could Watch It Recreated With Old Cartoon Footage
One of the best emergent sub genres of our immutable online misery is whenever a pop culture movie trailer comes out, you can bet that someone out there will recreate it with footage from the IP’s adjacent cartoon. Case and point, the new Batman trailer- which is awesome- has been faithfully reconstructed with clips from the old 90s cartoon and it’s honestly pretty spot on. Looking forward to the whole film eventually getting bootlegged in this aesthetic.
Could The Uncharted Movie Actually Be Good?
Truthfully, probably not- but hey we can dream. Video game film adaptions have a storied and ruinous history of being awful, like historically awful; each time a new one attempts to break the pattern it crashes and burns under the weight of various narrative or cinematic ineptitudes. Still, there’s really no video game franchise out there as stylistically designed to imitate a Hollywood blockbuster like the Uncharted games. Tom Holland so far is not nailing the sarcastic, slightly goofy but nevertheless charming swagger of character Nathan Drake- he’s just too young and hasn’t been through the ringer enough to capture the glib responses to life or death situations the way his video game analogue does. However the trailer’s attempts at recreating pivotal and dramatic moments from the games are far more convincing than a sceptical mind may expect. The plane sequence, one of the absolute pinnacles of action game sequences literally ever, looks just as breathtaking here so maybe there’s hope for this one?