Ahhh, that makes some amount of sense. Jasmine is a breath of fresh air, and one way or another I do think we’ll be hearing from her for a long time, but yeah, “hopium” is probably the right notion for this run.

I think a lot of it will come down just how bad polling looks in her district and whether Talarico brings in enough money. Allred is better than any Texas Republican, but he neither excites the base nor reassures the squishier right-leaning suburbanites.

Whoever runs for Senate could possibly win, I guess, especially if its Paxton who emerges bloodied from the primary, but it’s more likely that it’s a means to show you can overperform and gain a higher profile in the national Democratic party.

Why is this here? Crockett is one of the loudest voices on the left in Texas, and along with James Talarico the closest thing to rising stars we have here.

Crockett has come under fire from Republican members of Congress because of her often terse criticisms of President Donald Trump. Earlier this month, she called the president an “old white nepo baby” and a bully.

Did they finally punt it off OTA CBS? One summer when I was a kid, I watched every day with my mom, only to give it up when I realized the constant parade of menace and torment that is inherent to an open-ended serialized drama was not something I found satisfying.

To this day I absolutely respect the commitment and hustle to getting stories told though, even to the point of recasting characters, including aging kids up 10 years in a single summer at boarding school, or even using stand-ins with a soft voiceover announcing that “This week, the role of Kensington McRichashell will be played by Jennifer Whodafuqisdat.”

Been watching Helluva Boss on Amazon. I watched Hazbin Hotel season 1 a little while ago. I swear the elevator pitch and absolutely over the top sex and violence are there just to hide that Vivienne Medrano is a big softie. I also think there’s an interesting critique of modern culture inherent in making life in Hell less like an existential horror and more like the “Gilded Age + the 1950s,” but cloaked in the aesthetics of Beetlejuice (and similarly in making Heaven how it is).

HTC had quite a run there. I still miss my HTC One X, back when it was actually interesting to get a new phone. These days I routinely forget which iPhone it is that I have.

Can’t contaminate the motor oil, soot, rubber, broken glass, microplastics, litter, and accidentally-spilled coffee with purposely-spilled coffee! I hope the enforcement officers didn’t damage their pearls, or let them slip into the drain, from all that clutching.

More seriously, this smacks of citation quotas to me.

This one is way below $100, but about ten years ago I bought a roll of twist tie wire at a dollar store. It’s fifty or a hundred feet, with a little guillotine cutter. It’s still just a bunch of twist tie, but it punches WAY above its weight with quality of life improvement. No more hunting for the one you dropped, or wondering how you’ll close up a veggie bag. Also good for (fairly light) pictures that use wire instead of sawtooth hardware, and I’ve used it in a pinch when I didn’t have cable ties. I dunno. It’s just an oddly useful substance to have lying in your junk drawer.

There are biting midges, and I presume they’re very annoying, but most don’t bite and they’re all different from mosquitoes.

Peacemaker

Slow Horses

Call the Midwife, though it’s pretty much straight hate-watch at this point.

Just watched the first episode of S3 of Loot

I’m a week or two behind, but I’m enjoying Peacemaker as well. Gunn’s style and preferred themes could eventually wear thin, but he knows how to combine gross and camp and likeable. PM feels a lot like a much swearier GOTG.

I wonder if this has to do with actual growth of the faith, or consolidating in light of shrinking temple attendance, which is different from and more exclusive than church attendance . Western Europe in particular can’t be fertile proselytizing ground these days.

Oh, and my personal experience is a couple of decades out of date by now, but ExMo here. Happy to field questions. I’m no fan of the church, but I try to be somewhat even handed when discussing with folks.

Which is really how you’re supposed to present it in any ladder ranking. The top two being level on points doesn’t mean you weren’t third-best.

Or 35th best, apparently.

I wonder if this is just because it was made cheaply in Asia and not designed for the average heft of a trumpet.

I’m sure it’s this. Everything about this, down to the variable delays that different customers endure, screams out that this is a shady, shoestring operation stalling until they finally hit minimum order quantity with their drop-shipper in China.

That is certainly the highest “setup complexity to punchline payoff” ratio I’ve seen in a while. I’m not laughing exactly, but I am impressed.

I absolutely adore my kiddo and find meaning in my role as a dad that I did in very few other things I’ve done in life.

That said, it definitely does change your life in a way where you will not be able to prioritize the things that are just for you anymore. I am both deeply happy to have become a parent and simultaneously very glad that my wife and I waited and got our finances in order and traveled and lived our life as a couple for almost a decade before we decided to be parents. For parents whose story wasn’t quite as deliberate, I can imagine a lot of conflicting feelings.

Dear Jordan Catalano, Angela is not as into you as she thought.

Also, for Tron Ares specifically, I know that I am instantly turned off the moment a franchise that mostly exists in another world/dimension/etc. decides it’s going to do something in “the real world.” I know Tron isn’t as bright-line as other IPs, but the appeal is still largely in seeing how the inside of computers and networks is anthropomorphized and analogized into an alternate universe that comments on contemporary anxieties about technology. Nobody was asking to see light cycles and recognizers in LA.

wHaT dO yOu MeAn I dOn’T hAvE tO rEaD tHeM!?

My groom’s cake at my wedding was Tux.

I’m not even particularly hard core, lol. I still dual boot my desktop because of CAD, and I have to look up most console commands more complex than cd and cp and apt, but I’ve been using Linux off and on for over twenty years.

Counterpoint: it was nowhere near as good as its ratings warranted, and shows featuring stock characters slinging zingers amid half-assed farce plots are a dime a dozen for most of TV’s history.