Welcome to Tuesday Morning Commute! I’m busier than a mofuckah’ here the last week of the semester. Students coming out of the woodwork, not wanting to fail. Tutees wanting me to salvage papers last moment. And grading! Oh, the fucking grading. But I’m almost at the end. I can see six weeks of gluttony, literature, and gaming right around the corner. Here’s what I’m looking forward to this week though. The materials that are dragging me through this sad limp to the finish.

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At its worst, science fiction (or just speculative fiction) is a Hollywood CGI robot punch to the balls. At its best, it’s Black Mirror. Last weekend a friend of mine from the UK recommended Black Mirror to me and the next day, I sat through all three episodes of the miniseries while experiencing a revolving series of reactions: shock, nervous laughter, welling up, and cursing our society for the hubristic turds we are. Black Mirror also renewed a bit of my hope that clever, original sci-fi can be done on television again (albeit overseas) without taking the ideas and simply injecting giant action set pieces.

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