Mangela Lansbury

I think this who-knew-what-when thing is a pretty good base for season 2 of Serial. Does anyone have Sarah Koenig's number?

Woof as an interjection or... really as an anything just makes me think of the weird old men in gay bars who hit on me when I was younger. They'd leer over me, make the most intimidating and creepy eye contact ever, and just say woof. Nothing else. Just woof.

Yes and no. Depends on which part of the Jewish diaspora you're talking about. If you mean Israeli culture, the answer is pretty much yes. Compulsory service in the IDF and a broad political and cultural conservatism probably has something to do with that.

S3 has two of my favorite dramatic episodes of the series and is pretty funny throughout. The weird things from S2 are mostly swept under the rug. The whole tone changes, and it's way better. If you liked S1, at least give the first few episodes a look and see if you like it.

Season 2 of Girls was weird. A lot of it just didn't work for a lot of people, me included. Season one was kind of about the city, then season two takes a hard left and is basically about Hannah. It was jarring and awkward. Season 3 picks back up, though. It focuses a lot more on the relationships the girls all have with each other and goes to some really interesting places, and I think it was the funniest season yet.

Congratulations to both of y'all!

I guess to be serious about it, I realized this year (read: my therapist told me this year) that I'm not very kind to myself. I want to change that. I've already started doing this a little bit, but I want to go further. For my entire adult life, I thought I was just really socially awkward about 50% of the time for arbitrary reasons -- but it turns out that I just turn into myself when I'm uncomfortable around people or in a situation, and all I need to do is not be around that person/those people/that place and I'm not awkward at all. I still have social anxieties and all, but re-framing what I'm experiencing not as awkwardness but discomfort lets me think of the experience in a way that doesn't lend itself to me telling myself that I'm a worthless fuck up which ends up making the anxiety less... bad...? Basically, ever since I left my last really fucking awful relationship, my mental health has been improving in leaps and bounds and I really want to continue down that road. And all it takes is not telling yourself you're worth less than the contents of a McDonald's dumpster! Who knew! That and actually apply to grad schools, which is gonna be way fun since I've been out of school for 2 years and I'll be applying to programs in the humanities when all my degrees are STEM degrees. Hahahahahahorrifying!

I'm holding out for another year of Luigi.

Milo wrote a review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. That's a quote from it, addressing how his suspension of disbelief was broken by the fact that lesbians are attractive and not bitter because obviously that's just total farce.

How the fuck does Milo still get paid to write?

The sequel is a visual novel where you play as Wapeach, whose friends are all trying to get her to break up with that crazy guy who went on a cross county rampage because she went on vacation. Be chill, Wario.

Seinfeld was even on a programming block called Must See TV, so I guess everything that NBC aired in primetime on Thursdays for a while counts as must see TV.

Everyone remember to pick up Eyes Wide Shut, one of the greatest Christmas movies ever made, so you have something to watch with your family this holiday season!

Murder, She Wrote is the pinnacle of human achievement

Whoops. She somehow slipped my mind entirely. That's embarrassing. My bad.

I guess they also missed the hubbub around the NYT reviewing NYT reviewers' friends' books multiple times and not reviewing other big releases. There were some minor cries of corruption back a year or so ago I think, but then the NYT basically published a thing that said "Deal with it, nerds," and so the nerds learned to deal with it. I guess most book reviewers I can think of off the top of my head are male though, so who would they even target?

As I paid for some organic, handmade, sustainable lotion and vegan soap today, I looked back on my life and tried to pick out the exact moment that I became a monster.

It's that and other things. Like her reaction to a kid being told they can't give rides to girls anymore is just "hahaha, how ridiculous, what an overprotective dad," not, you know, "I guess certain people believed -- with or without merit -- that a young boy who looks like you look and who worships like you worship was facing malicious prosecution for doing something similar for a model minority, so that makes sense." Or comparing growing up in a small town to growing up as a part of an isolated community in a larger city, where the first is the case because there's no one around and the second is the case even though there are people around, and you're isolated in part because of racism. The overt grossness of her just saying, "No, I don't think racial prejudice is really a factor," is what made me start really paying attention to that kind of thing, though.

It was really interesting this episode to hear Adnan react to being a character in a story. His reaction to Koenig asking about the donations was just a really human way to react to being commodified and reduced to basically the main character in a narrative about how bad he maybe is, probably. But even more interesting to me is the way that Koenig has become a character herself recently. Mostly though, it's just that hearing her reactions to Islamophobia and the effect it has on a community -- her disbelief and incredulity, how she glosses over it or just laughs nervously -- is sometimes really uncomfortable. Has anyone else picked up on this or am I just hearing something that isn't there? I have thoughts on the pacing and format of the show too, but I'll hold off until after next week to type that all up. But basically, I think it's been fine and the more recent episodes are just as interesting as the early ones, just in a different way. There's less concrete evidence being discussed -- here's this timeline that falls apart, they had 14 cell tower pings to go on and used 4, etc -- and more treating Adnan as a person who is alive and had the lived experience of going through the trial and everything before and after, not just as some personality that exists completely within this story that's being told.

The earliest CIA action I can think of off hand is... overthrowing governments...? So yeah, pretty much.

Part of what DiFi and Udall have complained about was that the redactions in the executive summary served only to keep certain unclassified knowledge privileged. For instance, the executive summary apparently mostly refers to CIA staff with pseudonyms -- but those pseudonyms have been redacted. Part of the reason for doing something like this is to hide how few people are involved, and by doing that pressure people to say "why do we need a CIA" instead of saying "holy shit, Director Killemall deserves to be behind bars." The CIA isn't going away but someone could very well be put on trial -- and inaction is better than a deeper inquiry. Hahaha I might sound like a crazy conspiracy theory nut oops Also this was mostly done by independent contractors. I think it was something like 80% independent contractor work, if I'm remembering right? I'm at work, so I can't really pull up the report right now. I'll double check when I get home. So, you know, be pissed at the CIA, but also be pissed at independent contractors, and the weaponizing of redactions.

The writing -- from the small sample there is in the video -- reminds me of Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! which was both terrible and really fun in turns. And I think it's okay to be on unsure footing with your mystery writing skills. It's a really difficult genre to work in. Not everyone is JB Fletcher.

Please, please, please reach out to someone for help, GraysonEvans. You are a talented and smart individual and the world would be worse off without you. If talking to a stranger on the internet would help, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. It wouldn't be a waste of time.

Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything this week is about how terrible the internet is for women. It doesn't specifically mention "ethics in gaming journalism," but something that Kathy Sierra said about her experience being targeted for harassment just really echoes something I've seen women targeted by GamerGate try to say. It's about a third of the way through the episode, but the whole thing is worth listening to -- at the very least the first part, which is just Kathy Sierra talking about how she was harassed off the internet in 2007, seems really pertinent to this whole GG thing.

The anonymity doesn't play at all the way it did in the 30s, and just as someone who's dealt with AA through research -- the whole system doesn't work in a very fundamental way. If it works for an individual that's awesome and I'm really happy for that person, but there are a lot of people thrown into it who it just won't work for.