A sweetie has convinced me to download the TikTok app so I can get messages from her.

Current status: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS HOW THE FUCK DO I FIND ANYTHING OR ANYONE I CARE ABOUT

Not all heroes wear capes.

In Cleveland there's a bougie bar called Amazonia that had a stick of honey with black ants to go with its drink. It was not something I'd have again, but it did match the flavor profile.

Current menu: www.amazoniabar.com/_files/ugd/c...

My wife and I met in a Star Wars chat room in 1996, and holy crap our interactions with our chat room buddies were gushing firehoses of glee because, omg, we had finally found SOMEONE to debate the Death Star Trench Run with.

The extent to which fandom has permeated culture is WILD to us.

I cannot explain how when I was growing up in the 80s/90s, there were no public discussions of Batman. There was, at best, a vague understanding that the Joker was a blurred smear between Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero.

Fandom was a huddled, secretive mass that did not talk to the outside.

Just wanted to remind folks, especially the GOP and the FDD, that Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal didn’t give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz or allow it to keep 60% enriched uranium. It sent $1.7 billion to Iran versus the tens of billions Iran will now make from tolls. 🤷🏽‍♂️

At this point I'm a gramp

For the first time in fifty years, astronauts are rounding the moon, hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth - just as the evil President threatens to start a nuclear war.

If this happened in a TV show, I'd call it ham-fisted foreshadowing.

Proof that you don't need big stakes to create a compelling narrative: I have just watched an Australian dude trying to clear a curbside drain for ten minutes, and I am rooting for him SO HARD.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=95AT...

Unbelievably, I was thirteen and had never heard of The Cars. But I heard this absolutely amazing pop gem with this perfect guitar riff, and after looking through a *lot* of record stores I eventually stumbled across "Just What I Needed."

Okay so here’s my actual Bluesky-is-dying hypothesis:

The entire web is dying. Users aren’t going from BlueSky to another site (x/insta/threada/tiktok). Users are going to chatbots.

I know traffic to news sites has cratered (like 90%). My hunch is traffic to all the social platforms is down too.

Problem is, I *did* binge-watch it. I watched S1-5 when S6 was coming up, and all I could see was "Wait, that didn't matter either."

The ending didn't help much either, alas. It's an enjoyable ride but it felt carnival-y

Infamously, Babylon 5 had A MASTER PLAN, which dealt with the lead actor quitting at the end of Season 1, others also leaving, budget cuts, network demands, etc etc. And it works, but only because JMS did *not* stick slavishly to the master plan.

The difference between a Breaking Bad and a Lost is that the Breaking Bad creators respected the clues they placed earlier and did their best to resolve every one.

The "YOU MUST HAVE A PLAN" is a reaction to Abrams flinging out random shit, then shrugging when he couldn't devise a reason for them

a man in a tan suit with a flower in his lapel is sitting next to another man in a yellow shirt ALT: a man in a tan suit with a flower in his lapel is sitting next to another man in a yellow shirt

I was comfort-watching old Peter Davison Doctor Whos to get my mind off my depression until I thought, "It's probably a bad sign that your favorite Doctor is the one who failed over and over again until he committed suicide"

Not quite the same, but this commit is everlasting

Gonna be honest and say I haven't had one I didn't like, but on the other hand I've never been at a less-than-stellar bar that dared to put this on the menu

Highlighted section of the Copilot ToS which says "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only"

www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros... is it good to build an entire economy and software infrastructure on this

Thank you!

Honest question: Is there a way you distinguish between "fandom" and "fanboys" aside from "One does good stuff, the other is bad?" I've never been able to come up with a definition that works in the field, so for me, fandom is a mishmash of good and bad.

The idea that "This isn't great, but it's not the worst" doesn't seem to exist in the gestalt's vocabulary any more, and that's a big fucking problem

HEADLINE: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review - Is this the end of cinema?

There's two Internet problems here, intersecting:

1) Fandom has eroded the idea of a "mid" movie, videogame, whatever - if it doesn't live up to expectations, then it must be a spectacle of a disaster.

2) If something's a disaster, that's a personal insult inflicted on the loyal, wonderful fans

(This could apply to any number of things. If you're all like "THIS SPECIFIC PERSON WASN'T DOING THE JOB PERFECTLY FOR FREE" while you personally are unwilling to do anything other than shitpost about perceived imperfections, jump in a ditch.)

The answer to "I was doing this nice thing for folks for free, but a lot of you were assholes about it and made me really stressed out" is:

a) Okay, sure, if you're doing something for fun I guess it's not fair to ask you to endure discomfort for our convenience
b) SUCK IT UP ASSHOLE IT'S YOUR JOB

As much as I hate doctors running late, I remember when I had a triple bypass and my GP doc took time out of his day to stop by the hospital and ask if there was anything he could do for me.

He was late for other patients that day but there for me, and I've been a lot more forgiving since.

One of the lessons from Vietnam is that when they start bombarding you with numbers like these -- ordinance used, targets struck, so many killed and wounded -- there's more we're not being told.

All they have is negging and pickup artist techniques. Diplomacy by incel forum.

Kind of a shame the Pentagon has been rapidly trying to expunge anyone who has an actual grasp of history then, innit?

For every person who says "It took me way too long to realize I was on the spectrum," there are three friends apologizing with "...I had no idea you didn't know already."

HARD DISK WORRIES My only fear about PlayStation 2 is concerning the forthcoming Hard Disk Drive. How can gamers be sure that this won't tempt some developers to send out 'unfinished' games as they did with the PC? I hope that you can somehow convince me that this won't be the case. Kenneth, Denmark

In January 2001, in the OPM2 letters page, Kenneth from Denmark saw the future.