Never listened to OA, but Strict Scrutiny is one I listen to for Supreme Court news and analysis.

This is the way.

I was trying to watch the original Nosferatu but the version I was watching had dogshit Casio keyboard accompaniment. I muted it and had Spotify put on a playlist based on “Danse Macabre.” Much better. That said, a proper silent movie with live accompaniment is fucking fantastic. I saw Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall that way and loved it.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

Laser thermometer. It makes cooking things at really specific temperatures a lot easier.

Some long-handle sundae spoons. They’re incredibly useful for getting to the bottom of a deep jar or yogurt tub.

Collapsible screw-together travel chopsticks. They take up virtually no space, come with their own holder so they stay clean, and you’ve always got some nice chopsticks to eat with.

Blue painter’s tape. You can label anything (especially stuff that’s going into the freezer), and it’ll peel off again without leaving any residue.

Beaded reusable cable ties. It’s always nice to be able to tie up a power cord.

A nice headlamp. It’s really nice to be able to put on a headlamp and have your hands free when you’re doing stuff outside at night. Fair warning: you may fall down a nice flashlight rabbit hole.

We got the under cabinet Un-skru kind, and it works like a dream.

I got a Zojirushi at the thrift store and I love it, but then I realized that the pot has a nonstick coating inside, and there doesn’t seem to be a replacement that doesn’t have nonstick. No more rice cooker for me. :(

I haven’t seen Come and See and based on what I’ve read I’m not really inclined to.

You take some raw meat, not even necessarily very good meat, and run it through a meat grinder. You’ve got hamburger, and you can make a pretty delicious hamburger.

You take a cooked hamburger and run it through a meat grinder, and you’re getting something else, and if you try to make a new hamburger, it’s going to taste weird.

There’s not enough raw pulp going into the meat grinder for the latter entries.

I thought there was plenty to like about both Solo and Rogue One, but they both relied too much on nostalgia and familiarity to be actually decent on their own. I’ve heard good things about the original cut of Solo and wish we could have seen that.

I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor!

No you’re not, you’re Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! You play basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers.

That tens of thousands number is always brought up, but it’s an average that is affected by the actions of Spiders Georg, an outlier who should not be counted.

And down to get its friction on!

The seed is strong.

I was curious about a guy who bullied me in elementary school so I looked up his name on Facebook. His profile picture had a pro-life message in it. I was not at all surprised.

I think it’s unreasonable that women are somehow expected, as a general heteronormative baseline, to be gentle and not use violence, whereas for men violence is just “part of male culture.” Fuck that. Violence is terrible, but it’s also the birthright of any animal trying to defend itself. Nobody should feel in any way ashamed or shy about using as much violence as they need, if they have no other options. No human should ever feel safe hurting another human without fearing for their own safety, and the fact that some boys are raised to be men who feel that way is appalling.

Wasn’t there something that said that Wookiees have a cultural taboo against receiving things like medals in exchange for great deeds, or am I just making that up in my memories?

There’s a thing I heard somewhere about how your magical system needs to have a balance between how well it’s understood vs. how useful it is, or else it will break the plot.

If a magic system is extremely useful, then it must also be extremely mysterious, so that you can say “Well, it can’t immediately fix all problems because the gods work in mysterious ways.” Gandalf or Tom Bombadil seem incredibly powerful, but they don’t solve all of the problems in Middle Earth, and that’s okay because they’re terribly mysterious.

If a magic system is extremely well understood in-universe, then it has to have hard limits on how useful it is, so you can say something like “Well, the Law of Equivalent Exchange says that to solve all our problems would require a blood sacrifice of the entire population, so that’s not an option.”

If your magic is pretty well-understood AND very useful, then by all rights it OUGHT to solve all your problems, and when it doesn’t then readers rightly begin to question why any of the plot needs to happen at all (see, for example, the time turners in Harry Potter).

We got a service. We’ve two cats, a dog, and a toddler, and no family closeby to help with child care. We did the math and decided we needed the help. It’s fantastic.

Or they could sell the damaged but otherwise luxurious royal yacht and buy a smaller but still-functional ship to get them to Coruscant. Or even just tickets to Coruscant. Even if it’s just tickets for “Padme” and her one handmaid who looks like Natalie Portman, plus Qui Gon and Obi-Wan, and everyone else in the royal party has to hole up for a while, it’s not like it’s going to take very long for them to send someone back to pick them up.