Well, thankfully we made NASCAR stop using leaded fuel way back in [checks notes] fucking 2007?! Holeee shiiit.

Catra would never try to use the power of friendship to pay off gambling debt.

She’d either cheat at gambling so as to win big, or she’d run up a bunch of debt and then leave Scorpia holding the bag, with the possible long-term consequence of having to burn down the casino.

Red Cross

Counterpoint

I was watching Labyrinth on a loop as a young boy, and I thought David Bowie was awesome, but I turned out… more or less straight. Mostly. Pretty much. I mean, of course Bowie is gorgeous, I’m not an idiot.

I fucking loved him as Mr. Hand. When he gets the John Murdoch memory upload he starts doing Rufus Sewell’s mannerisms and it’s honestly a little uncanny. Great performance.

Honestly, given the available evidence, this is just as likely an outcome as any other.

I haven’t used AeroPress, but I appreciate that the French press is equally useful for making both hot and cold brew coffee. Mine is all-metal and you could just about beat someone to death with it.

Oof, ouch, my bones.

Electric kettle.

Bone conduction headphones.

Rechargeable head lamp.

Nice EDC knife.

Driving gloves.

A really good insulated cup.

French press.

Digital kitchen scale.

Slow cooker.

Someday I’d like to replicate Eratosthenes’ experiment with a long north-south road trip, but I never remember to make the measurements.

We do this at a used book store. It’s books that we don’t think we can sell inside for whatever reason, and we put them on shelves outside. There’s a big awning so they don’t really get rained on unless it’s raining sideways. We sell them for a dime or a quarter, and there’s a slot for overnight drops in case people want to get books at night. Every morning there’s at least a couple of bucks from the previous day/night.

We donate the proceeds to public radio, and over the years we’ve donated over $100,000.

Conan the Barbarian (1982) has no right to be as good as it is. On paper, it’s a dumb sword and sorcery flick with a body builder who could barely speak English in the lead. But everyone involved does an incredible job, from the acting to the directing, to the score. It’s a crime that Destroyer trashed up the formula, and we never got Conan the King.

I’m reminded of the movie Long Way North where a heavily-accented sailor tells a girl about a dog that lives on the ship: “He is punished. He chews the rigging and steals.”

I usually read sci-fi / fantasy, but I’ve come to recognize that certain authors are dense, and Tolkien is one of them. Trying to read too much of Tolkien at once is like trying to eat too much rich food; you’ve got to take a break from time to time. All the annotations in the above book make the text even more dense, but it’s still interesting stuff, like the mythological origins of Gandalf, or the tiny changes Tolkien made from early editions of the book. So I want to read this, it’s not like I’m forcing myself to read some godawful textbook, but I think when I’m reading it at night, my brain gets to a point where it just goes “Ah fuck it,” and I start to nod off.

Also pretty good for this: Isaac Asimov, or Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August.