Matthew A. Hoffman
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matthewahoff.bsky.social
Matthew A. Hoffman
@matthewahoff.bsky.social
You may be a Hoff, but I am the Hoff. The definite article, you might say
I gave up after the incredibly racist episode whose twist is “well Japanese people all look the same, right?”
January 29, 2026 at 12:07 AM
Reposted by Matthew A. Hoffman
Training is not a panacea for a system whose purpose is the application of violence in the name of “law and order.” “More training” is a red herring that police say they need instead of meaningful reform and dismantling.
January 24, 2026 at 5:49 PM
Improve our lives? No. Football money is separate. Make our lives worse? Oh they’ll find a way
January 20, 2026 at 5:26 AM
College sports are a scam that undermine the universities that are their foundation. Pro sports are a scam that cheat taxpayers out of public goods.
January 20, 2026 at 5:08 AM
IU can’t find five cents to rub together to keep undergrad and grad programs running, why the fuck should I care about football? Grad students aren’t paid a living wage, but you can find millions to give to some dude to yell at kids on a field?
January 20, 2026 at 5:07 AM
Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Show Marx a football game
January 20, 2026 at 5:06 AM
By the way, the downer ending would maybe work better if the final episode hadn’t started with the world’s dogs being eaten by the fish people. Gonna be hard to get anyone on board for peace when they killed everyone’s dog! (also this scene exists in order to make a racist joke? Bizarre choice)
January 12, 2026 at 4:49 AM
Of course, the bizarre choice to sideline UNIT in the UNIT spinoff makes sense when this is just reheated leftovers of the Silurians and the Sea Devils. Kate can’t be the one to genocide the fish people and stick around. So instead she’s here to get progressively more unhinged but never do much
January 12, 2026 at 4:46 AM
A related problem, seen especially with this show, is that either UNIT can be the Avengers Tower whiz bang technology alien fighters, or they can be a realistic organization. TWBTLATS gives us the worst of both worlds: a UNIT with magic food scanning devices but also no security on a vital mission
January 12, 2026 at 4:43 AM
I wish UNIT were still ten squaddies in a van like the 70s. There’s an interesting story to be told about the military industrial complex, but then we’re back to the same problem McTighe had in Lucky Day - you can’t criticize UNIT for military overreach while simultaneously making them The Good Guys
January 12, 2026 at 4:43 AM
It ends up feeling like another case of “everyone is sexy and no one is horny.” And I’m usually the one who is happy with no one being horny! But you wrote a monster fucker show and then can’t deliver
January 12, 2026 at 4:41 AM
I will pay Pete McTighe actual money to never write a love scene again. His idea of sexy dialogue is apparently “the pressure of two orifices sealed together” and “I’m sort of regulating my body for you too.”
January 12, 2026 at 4:40 AM
The good scene of Salt telling the humans they’ve won is then followed by a pop song montage, because there’s no time left to explain things like why Barclay is turning into a fish. Gotta show him swimming around instead. But as far as RTD endings go, better than the Reality War
January 12, 2026 at 4:38 AM
Foot simply takes it as obvious that the driver should switch tracks. The question is what explains this, and why these two different moral frameworks come to their conclusions. Thus, of course, the language is “the driver switching tracks” rather than “should *you* pull the lever?”
January 7, 2026 at 1:44 AM
Foot uses the tram driver as one among her examples to distinguish the positive and negative duties approach from the doctrine of double effect. It’s not an example that stands alone, nor does she present it as a problem -
January 7, 2026 at 1:34 AM