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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • There’s still an important distinction: JMS likened Babylon 5 to a novel for television. It had a defined beginning, a middle, and an end, conceptualized that way from the start of development.

    Yes, soap operas are serialized television, but totally open-ended. The producers of Dallas didn’t plan for J.R. Ewing to get shot as part of the series arc; they didn’t even plan him as a main character. A lot of soap operas have a very throw-it-against-the-wall feel. My grandmother was a Days of Our Lives watcher, and stuck it out even through the alien abduction storyline. Other people I know would stop watching for even years at a time, then come back and pick up whatever new storylines were then current.

    I mean no disrespect to soap operas, as they give lots of people years of enjoyment. TNG itself was largely episodic, but had some soap opera elements, following evolving relationships among the crew which were carried through. But that’s still not the novel-for-television concept.









  • That would explain my first experience driving in Massachusetts. We came down from New Hampshire to pick up a family member at Logan. At one point, I got onto the freeway from an entrance ramp on the right, into stop-and-go traffic, with about 1/4 mile to the left exit ramp I needed to take to the airport. I put on my signal; immediately somebody let me merge. Signal again; immediate merge into the middle lane. Signal and merge into the left lane, again right away. I’d heard about Massholes, so this was perplexing.

    Now I understand: They were dazed and confused by the strange, blinking light!



  • Back in 2020, I read op-eds from several pundits who worried that choosing Biden was a mistake, as he ran on a platform essentially of returning politics to “normal.” They worried that once he won, people would settle back into the old routines, and forget about the simmering fascist threat and do diddly about it. I remember this well, because I feared the same.

    That’s pretty much what happened. Credit to the House January 6th special committee for finally forcing Merrick Garland to get off his ass and do a something about the insurrection… 2 years later. (Which made it easy to delay the trial until after the next election.) That’s about it, though. Hell, this wasn’t difficult to predict, given the way that Obama decided to “look forward” and not hold Bush administration officials accountable for their crimes.

    That is to say, if Harris wins, I predict more of the same. Folks on the blue side will breathe a sigh of relief, make excuses for why they can’t act, and do their best to forget about it until the next most-important-election-in-history. We (Americans) don’t have a plan to deal with it, and they’ll instead just get angry and call you and me disingenuous, or Russian bots, for pointing it out.



  • Maybe it’s genetic, but also, my skin improved vastly after I stopped doing the things that harm it, primarily long, hot showers, scrubbing/exfoliating, and overuse of strong soaps. Plus, bonuses like no more oily hair, no more stinky socks, and greatly reduced pit odor. These things are backed up by good science; I just saw a WaPo article the other day with these recommendations from dermatologists. I see a lot of talk about exfoliating, and I know from experience that most people take long, hot showers, so I figure it’s worth passing that information along.


  • That is my answer, though. I shower in lukewarm water and a little bit of dilute Castile soap where needed, and wear wide-brimmed hats in the sun. I get compliments on my skin softness, people guess that I’m 10 years younger. Honestly, it seems to me that a good half of people’s elaborate skin-care routines are just trying to undo the damage caused by the other half. Our skin is really remarkable in taking care of itself, if you let it.







  • Clarke’s third law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I have the notion that any technology becomes uninteresting and not cool once reaches the level of magic. We are tactile and inquisitive creatures, so objects that appeal to our hands and perceptions are cool. Once we can no longer grasp the parts, literally or metaphorically, they’re no longer alluring.

    Phones, cars, screens, computers, anything. Why is Amiga HAM mode fascinating to many people still, even when they’re emulating it on a 32-bit-depth screen that can concurrently play high-quality video streamed over the Internet? That’s why.