Tom Dickinson's Delightfully Intermittent Newsletter - Mid-2019-ish

NOTE: This post was originally sent via my old TinyLetter newsletter. It's been backdated here to reflect the date it was sent.

Hello.

Guff!

A number of readers have given me guff about how few newsletters I've sent. So I've decided to take that guff, and hone it, and turn it into a newsletter for your consumption. Please read on.

The Moment!

As you probably already know, I have been working on the second season of my podcast, which is called Doctor Who: The Moment. In the previous newsletter I said,

My initial hope had been to drop season 2 starting in February, but for a number of different reasons, that has not happened. Late March or early April seems more likely now, but that's not a promise, it's just a projection.

Well, that projection was pretty wrong. Turns out: I am far lazier than I thought I was, and making podcasts is kind of hard. But make them I must, for that is the podcaster's curse. And so Season 2 of The Moment begins tomorrow, July 3, 2019.

You can listen to a trailer here!

Here are some teasery tidbits and dank behind the scenes nugs regarding this season of The Moment:

• The first episode, which is releasing tomorrow, features Chip, from the newly-reawakened Two-Minute Time Lord podcast, talking about his Moment. If you know Chip, then you can probably guess what story his moment comes from. If you don't know Chip, then you'll find out tomorrow.
• This season the Ninth Doctor makes his Moment debut!
• There will be thirteen episodes, but so far I have only recorded ten. I'm not anxious about that. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
• This season you will find out what my moment is! I think it's a good one.
• I invested in a substantial equipment and software upgrade for season 2, which has... mostly paid off? I think? I am still kind of learning the ropes of Logic for editing, and I'm sure there are ways I can work more efficiently in it.

Oh and if you want to give me some money, subscribing to The Moment's Patreon is a way to do that.

Ethics!

Remember how I mentioned the talk I gave at the Gallifrey One Academic Symposium? Remember how it was about using the lens of moral philosophy to examine how Doctor Who treats the question whether history should be changed? Remember how I said I'd make it into a YouTube video, and then I would notify you once I did?

Well, I did make a YouTube video. It's just that I failed to notify you all. Sorry, newsletter readers. The video is called "Time Can Be Rewritten: Meddling and Morals". I'm very proud of how it turned out! Even if you are not a Doctor Who person, so long as you're a person who likes thinking about what it means to be a good person, I think the video is worth checking out.

Social Media!

Someone recently asked me, "Tom, what happened to quitting social media? Why are you back on Twitter? You were doing so well!" To that I say two things:

• First, no I wasn't doing that well. In secret, I was checking a very limited, curated, private twitter list, on a fairly regular basis. Also I broke hiatus to tweet things several times, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes for barely any reason at all.
• Second: it was always supposed to be temporary! I always said that! I was always gonna come back in March! I said that in my first newsletter! Leave me alone! Stop nagging me!

Anyway, I'm back on Twitter. It's not that I stopped thinking Twitter is bad. No, it's because of how bad it is, that I force myself to look at it. I will confront the badness and not run away from it. See, I'm being very brave here. I'm not addicted to social media, I can stop any time. Shut up.

Facebook, however? I'm done with that. Not only deactivated it, but deleted the thing entirely. I still have to maintain a dummy account so I can manage the page for The Moment, and Facebook in its infinite wisdom seems to have realized who I am and it's suggesting all my friends to me, but I will not engage. If Zuckerberg wants me to give him anything he'll have to content himself with my weird Instagram stories, like the one about this thing.

That's all for now. When will the next newsletter be? I don't know. If you're so smart, why don't you reply telling me when you think it should be?

If these demands are not met, a disaster beyond your imagination will occur.

Tom