The Dunk and Egg books are so goddamn good, I'm so excited for this! www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPFR...

Me over the last few weeks ranting to all of my friends about Allen Dulles

Waiting for Ghost of Yotei to come to PC has me finally playing the Ikki Island dlc and remembering just how much fun and how beautiful Ghost of Tsushima is.

When your custom character appears in a cut scene

It’s funny that in three of the last history books I read about awful people in the 1940s (The Power Broker, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Devil’s Chessboard), FDR shows up as a major antagonist in each. Boosts your respect for someone when you read how awful the people against him were.

Kind of like the original series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is full of some really franchise-defining highs and some absolutely abysmal lows, but the cast and "vibe" is absolutely rock-solid throughout and I cringe at the bad stuff but I can't even really hate it.

Favorite movie of 2025 and I’d argue the defining time-capsule movie for the vibe of 2025 youtu.be/feOQFKv2Lw4?...

The hill I’ll die on is that for something to be truly great art, it’s medium has to be nearly inextricable from its narrative. It’s why I roll my eyes anytime someone brings up a Bioshock adaptation.

First day on the new job

Catching up on SNW and I literally said out loud "Well at least it's in the Original Series timeframe so there's no 'malfunctioning holodeck' shit" Next episode description: "When La'An tests a prototype holodeck with a fictional case only she can solve, the consequences of failure.."

Wait we need to re-open Ewald Park feedback I have an idea

Played Helldivers last night in the ODST gear. Swapped the soundtrack over to the beautiful ODST soundtrack. Was surreal hearing that with the feeling of wandering around a big empty city, signs of battle all around but just... stillness. So good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSMq...

Longtime reporter and editor Vernon Miles departs for job in television www.arlnow.com/2025/09/25/l...

Happy I got to bookend my years at ARLnow getting to work in a newsroom with an incredible staff. I’m going to miss everyone at the site. I’m also having some really nostalgic pangs missing folks that used to work here. I met some of my best friends and have so many memories here

[Adeptus Mechanicus noises intensify]

I had an urge to rank space operas from most dystopian to most utopian then had a weird sense of deja vu and it turns out I did that almost exactly a year ago. Time is a flat circle. Only changes here are I'd put Battlestar and Babylon 5 a few shades more dystopian

The only good part about no longer covering Alexandria is that I'm free to retweet Councilman McPike on the things I care most about: the politics of popular sci-fi franchises

Also, while I’m on a Star Trek bent: quick, what’s everyone’s favorite Star Trek episodes? Bonus points if it’s not a classic like Best of Both Worlds or City on the Edge of Forever

Also, I’m catching up on Strange New Worlds and I love that it has the classic Trek range of episode types S3E1: The Enterprise is crippled in a vicious Gorn attack. The crew must act quickly to thwart an invasion of the Federation E2: an alien traps Spock in a dream where he marries Nurse Chapel!

Getting back into Darktide and remembering just how hard this intro goes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dt...

I love Star Trek, Star Wars and Warhammer 40k and I used to grapple with how I'd rank them (because I also love ranking stuff) but I've since accepted that the order completely upends week to week

Real generational fumble here, not just Star Wars in general but The Mandalorian specifically. In 2019 everybody was watching the Baby Yoda show. It was the shot in the arm Star Wars needed, and they dropped the ball so hard the trailer for a new Star Wars film is out and there's a collective shrug

Kind of like Halloween, my year is divided into "Maryland Renaissance Fair Season" and "waiting for the Maryland Renaissance Fair to come back"

New Tron movie / New Tron soundtrack

Also, another bit of news: a new player is joining our party early next year.

I am begging Spotify for some way to filter out AI generated music. It keeps showing up in my recommendations and I hate it every time. Purge it with fire.

Been on a Vietnam War history binge over the last couple weeks and thinking about the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary always reminds me how great the soundtrack is. One of those that's constantly in the rotation while I'm working open.spotify.com/track/2UdGao...

Here’s the TL:DR. I’ve loved ALXnow, ARLnow and FFXnow (in order of preference) but starting on the 29th I’m moving over to a new writer/producer job with Fox 5

Bear with me for a minute; I’ve got a little bit of a long story with some personal news. I want to tell you about four newsrooms.

Been playing Vermintide 2 with a friend (her first time with the game) and it's reminding me how much I absolutely love its gritty, dark fantasy vibes. It's also nice playing with someone for the first time because it encourages you to stop and really take in the art direction.

A friend on my gaming Discord never watched sci-fi growing up, and so we've all been living vicariously through her -- for the first time -- watching Next Generation and DS9, then Babylon 5 and Farscape. Now we're fighting over whether she should watch Stargate or Battlestar Galactica next

Made a chart to explain the lineage at Local News Now and the “who are all these people” from all my back in the day stories. Started funny but quickly got me very bittersweet and nostalgic.

Andor should have swept at the Emmys but I'm happy it still won for writing. It's my favorite show this year by a mile and in my Top 5 all-time sci-fi shows right up there with Star Trek: Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYnE...

Though he’s not the actor with the biggest impact on my life (that was Alan Alda in MASH), Robert Redford was probably my all time favorite actor. From the best Twilight Zone episode to Old Man and the Gun, every performance I’ve seen left an indelible impact. But there’s one above all-

Finally watched Thunderbolts this weekend. Enjoyed it a lot more than expected. Sometimes a movie comeat the right (or wrong) time for an audience and a scene near the end made me more emotional than the movie probably merited on its own, but I had a rough week and it hit different.

Marco Polo was an big budget adaptation of a fascinating era with Benedict Wong giving an Emmy-worthy performance and an incredible supporting cast. It was a nearly perfect show — unfortunately anchored by a very milquetoast version of the eponymous character that led to it sinking into obscurity

Like It Or Not again on Fox 5 tonight at 7! Talking whether or not it’s acceptable to put ice in beer (spoilers: it’s not) and other topics!

*Wookie growling noises*

Completely forgot I had my Space Marine voicemod on from last night until I was in an editorial meeting and @ryanbelmore.bsky.social was like "Vernon why do you sound like Darth Vader"

The Tyranids in Warhammer 40k live only to destroy and consume everything in their path and I’m worried playing this game in front of Hugo is only going to reinforce some negative habits

It’s been like seven months since I moved to covering Fairfax and Arlington instead of Alexandria and I still miss covering the city just about every day. It’s hard to explain to people who aren’t from the city, but it’s *special* in a way no other area I’ve covered is. City full of characters.

I’m always baffled by people saying stuff like “the media isn’t covering this” and they link to a story on it from something like CNN or Washington Post

A few years ago my grandfather sent me some of the stories he’d typed up (at my request) and I’d been meaning to put them in a Google doc for posterity. Had some time so doing that today. (My family calls me Chip, so that’s me in the story at the end)

Was playing Space Marine 2 last night and ran into another guy that happened to be decked out in the same chapter armor (Space Wolves). We played for hours together in perfect sync and didn't exchange a word except, at every checkpoint, clasping arms and going "Brother." "Brother."

The staff at the Midas garage on Columbia Pike watch my Fox 5 shows and comment on it when I come in -- I'm just vain enough that that's turned me into a loyal customer

Rereading The Things They Carried for the first time since high school and not only is it still great, but there's so much that age has given me better perspective on that hits differently.

You can tell I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 when I start signing off more of my emails as “ - V”

Realized mid-call that the random stack of books I was using to prop up my laptop is kind of “Vernon in a nutshell”

Straight up the highlight of my day today was getting a friend of mine into Warhammer