I think Twitter teaches people a lot of incredibly bespoke ways to be unhappy. Using it looks more and more like self-inflicted mental illness the further from it I get.

If you're reactionary-curious that's fine as far as it goes but you should have to wear a name badge or lanyard or something indicating as much so I can pretend I'm hearing "The Girl from Ipanema" whenever you talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVdaFQhS86E

I find myself incredibly grumpy tonight, and it's only partly because Street Fighter 6 (or rather, several key components of its underlying infrastructure) melted the second it became available to the public.

The most essential element of a good writing session, in my experience, is that you sit down thirsty, needing to pee, or both, with a vague plan to relieve either or both needs in just a few minutes, once you've gotten started, and then you sit there and suffer for hours from doing neither.

It often feels to me as if the main political alignment of most people is, "Anything but kindness."

It was a really fun night of matches in a variety of styles, highlighting a lot of what is enjoyable about the various junior heavyweights in NJPW. In general, these are the folks I would recommend to people who don't watch wrestling, because the more spectacular moves are extremely easy to read, which makes the drama of the matches clearer. When a dude backflips out of the ring and onto another guy, you'll know what that meant.

For anyone who is even mildly pro wrestling-curious, the first night of New Japan's Best of the Super Juniors tournament is free to watch here: https://njpwworld.com/p/s_00651_3_1

@anphimimor Maybe we need to give it one more big publicity push to make sure absolutely everyone knows. I have been watching people discover this situation for the last twenty years of my life.

I no longer believe people who say they "just learned" about Monopoly once being "The Landlord's Game"

Stop saying that there will never be consequences and focus on becoming the consequences.

If this constitutes "everything" for you, your world must be incredibly small.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-interview.html

I don't have much to say about this one; it's just a really memorable joke for me that I've loved since the first time I saw it. I'm pretty sure I've tried to render this one for other people verbally. (If so, it didn't work.)

https://achewood.com/index.php?date=10152001

This is the 10/11/2001 Achewood. Early strips lean heavily on Philippe's cuteness, but I like this one more than most because it reveals something more about his character. It's cute that Philippe is listening to a self-guided tour cassette for a place that he isn't, but his attentive listening also tells us a lot about him: he is earnest, curious, thoughtful, and capable of exercising surprising patience.

I have been thinking of undertaking an Achewood re-read, and now I am thinking I'll do it here with you all, because it would be fun to talk about the comics as I read. Here's the very first Achewood.

Of course part of the fun with this one is that there isn't much of a joke—we're told that Philippe is standing on a manual, and then we see that this is true—but I also like the punchline-esque "aha" feeling of learning who/what a Philippe is. It's that!
https://achewood.com/index.php?date=10012001

The supreme court being full of corrupt judges taking colossal bribes should be bigger news.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/04/28/chief-justice-john-roberts-wife-made-over-10-million-as-legal-consultant-report-says/?sh=29c2d3361e9a

@therebeccametz Maybe this is what's wrong with me but I tend to think axe throwing should be done in a state of cool and calm, after careful contemplation

You know what Word does when I save unnecessarily? Absolutely nothing! It pretends to think about it for like a quarter of a second, and that's all I need. Just humor me, program. Pretend I'm accomplishing something; or at least don't tell me I'm not.

I'm using a weird, niche cloud-based thing to work on my novel these days and sometimes when I hit save (as I am in the habit of doing randomly, frequently, with no thought, just in case) it gives me the following error message: "No need to save. There're no changes made to the document."

This makes me FURIOUS.

current mood:

AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google: must-read Nilay Patel post about the copyright conflict between Google's AI efforts and YouTube's relationships with publishers https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689879/ai-drake-song-google-youtube-fair-use