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I was so so sure last time that it would turn out ok and it didn’t. This time I feel optimistic but I don’t trust that feeling. I can’t afford to, after the way I felt last time. I haven’t been able to imagine a world after today since the election started. I’m just trying to be like a sapling or whatever the fuck people say. Just existing and waiting.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:52 AM on November 3, 2020

Well my "don't scroll and scroll and scroll here and on SomethingAwful" resolution is clearly an abject failure, so I'm gonna go out now and buy bacon and wine and ice cream and whatever else catches my eye so that at least the rest of the evening's scrolling can be done in comfort.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:26 AM on November 3, 2020

Didn’t have to wait to vote but, goddamn, this grocery store right now
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:43 AM on November 3, 2020

Stopped at the grocery store, the liquor store, and Popeyes. I am now ready to binge my way through the next 8 to 12 hours. God this spicy chicken sandwich is good. Tastes like a Senate majority.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:40 PM on November 3, 2020

If Biden wins NC it's quite likely that you can go to bed safely though. The path for Trump gets horrible to thread if he loses NC.

I'm really hopeful. I know a teacher down there and the statewide teacher's association has been doing a huge GOTV push, thanks to their newly elected leftist leadership. It could make a huge difference.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:19 PM on November 3, 2020

Oh my god. So I live right by a popular taco place in Brooklyn that always has a long line in front of it, and just now I heard someone yell "hey, y'all in line! Y'all vote today?" I heard a few people shout "hell yeah" and then the first voice yelled "THEY VOTED!" and then I heard A WHOLE ASS DRUM LINE start playing and chanting

*bum badum badadadadadadadum* "THEY VOTED! THEY VOTED! THEY VOTED! THEY VOTED!" *bum badum… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:33 PM on November 3, 2020

The meter of these poems is so good. I get irrationally annoyed when I see people doing parody poems with bad meter, but this person is ON POINT.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:35 AM on November 2, 2020

Also I thought "surely this is the same person as 'i lik the bred'" but it isn't! How many of these reddit poets are there?
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:36 AM on November 2, 2020

I read some speculation along the lines of, Roberts has told the conservative justices to keep their shit in line specifically re: the election, because if they don't, court-packing will go from a lefty dream to a serious possibility, and he doesn't want that.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:18 PM on October 29, 2020

Part of what will clinch the argument for enlarging the court is several decisions wrecking Roe, the ACA, etc. against the overwhelming wishes and interests of Americans, crafted with tortured originalist nonsense.

I think the biggest problem we're facing right now is that most people don't KNOW that most Americans support Roe and the ACA etc, even people who support those things. So Republicans can argue "well we represent… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM on October 31, 2020

I've never been to Colonial Williamsburg -- is this kind of work, celebrating queer Virginian history, likely to be welcomed by the visitor and donor base?

I've never been either - I found this link on a friend's social media - but I just found this article suggesting that this is part of a recent broader push at Colonial Williamsburg to explore and publicize queer history.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:06 PM on October 29, 2020

So is he going to Fox or OANN? Or Russia Today?

I figured he was maybe gunning for an early spot at whatever Trump media empire he tries to gin up if he loses.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on October 29, 2020

I'm officially spooked
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:20 PM on October 26, 2020

We ordered a PS4 during quarantine and I quickly got addicted to "Skyrim". Shortly after that, I discovered Brian David Gilbert through his "I read all 337 books in Skyrim so you don't have to"

I've never played any Zelda game but his We made all 78 Breath of the Wild recipes in one day video is not only hilarious, it also first prompted me to make what then became my regular quarantine breakfast of runny fried eggs over rice.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:50 PM on October 26, 2020

I'm a little disheartened by all the comments saying this is actually pointless and we shouldn't bother. No one is telling you specifically to go do any of this. But apparently it can work. Like, yay. Good. That's good information to have.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:40 PM on October 26, 2020

When my dad was a kid, there was a solid decade or two where every third movie was a cowboy movie. It went away eventually. I’m assuming the superheroes will too at some point.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:50 AM on October 24, 2020

I think it's significant that they chose one of very few storylines from the series that can be pulled off with ZERO scenes in cities or towns. The cost of making this movie with real-ass ships and crews must have been astronomical already - but triple that once you start adding in book scenes where Jack has to go visit the Admiralty or Stephen has to go on a spy mission or whatever.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:21 AM on October 25, 2020

The bit I got to was Lt. James and Maturin having for the first moment and opportunity to speak privately about their pasts, you get to the point where they are talking about their political beliefs and it is perfectly obvious that *of course* neither of them were into popular democracy because real aristocrats (which they both are after a fashion) of that period were overwhelmingly not. A few years after The Terror, it would have been weird for a man who has thousands of acres of land… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:01 AM on October 26, 2020

I know one guy who voted for Trump and is now gonna vote for Biden. He just doesn't follow or pay attention to politics the same way we here do. But he's a former cop who is now a nurse, so... yeah, you can kinda see the journey there.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:39 AM on October 19, 2020

Just like when he was governor of Indiana, Mike Pence is again ignoring the aides virus
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:29 AM on October 25, 2020

That Was The Year That Was was my favorite album when I was a kid... in the mid-90s. I would insist on it being played during dinner until my parents told me "listen we like it too but give it a rest." But I learned a lot of history from it, of the variety they don't teach in school. And I've been thinking a lot about So Long Mom over the past little bit, as it really really prefigured experiencing-disaster-via-social-media without realizing it. "No need for you to miss a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:22 AM on October 20, 2020

Oh I loved the Vatican Rag, even though as a vague Lutheran it was all foreign to me. But the rhymes are all incredible. That whole verse deserves reposting.

Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional.
There the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original.
If it is, try playin' it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:21 AM on October 22, 2020

All of those shows sound like background jokes from other shows. Like Bojack Horseman or 30 Rock could have had an episode about any of those.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:18 AM on October 22, 2020

The concept of "specialist teams responding to certain circumstances" shouldn't feel radical. It's not like we call up the cops to shoot fires out. Fingers crossed for this.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:08 AM on October 21, 2020

Fear of child protective social services especially in minority communities is really really real.

My dad worked for CPS (behind a desk) and he said he felt like at least half the kids he saw removed would have been better off with their parents.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:09 AM on October 21, 2020

I like the Instagram best because if you look at the main page you can only see the pre-gripped foods. It's like the first 15 minutes of a horror movie.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:36 AM on October 20, 2020

Yep, beard cover.

Sorry I believe you'll find they're actually called BEARD SNOODS
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:45 AM on October 19, 2020

My favorite part was the metal detector bit at the end, where the offending packet of waffles is blasted off the conveyor belt like it's just been attacked with an energy weapon.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:53 AM on October 19, 2020

Frozen waffles are to waffles what frozen pizza is to pizza. Look up Goodnight Waffles, make them and you’ll never eat frozen waffles again. Also, stop by waffle and pancake mix, you’re being scammed.

You know why I don't own a waffle iron? because

FUCK

CLEANING

A WAFFLE IRON
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:50 AM on October 19, 2020

If waffle irons could use silicon molds, would that make cleaning less horrible? Like a waffle iron condom?

I was with you all the way through the first sentence, and then
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:33 PM on October 19, 2020

That needle picking drum is DEEPLY unsettling.

Why, because you can't help but imagine a massive horror movie version where instead of waffles it's your fragile human body? That definitely didn't occur to me at all
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:47 PM on October 19, 2020

If you want to hear why some people genuinely like the movie, I very much enjoyed the Blank Check episode about it, featuring king of podcasts Paul F Tompkins.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:50 AM on October 16, 2020

OK sure a lot of these are tasteless but I would absolutely put this one on my wall as a poster. Sacre bleu!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:58 AM on October 16, 2020

Looking at them now, they are still a little unsettling, although I had completely forgotten the giant bug ones, or else they didn't worry me so much. I did grow up to be an entomologist, after all. One thing I've always wondered about giant-insect attack films is why no-one ever thinks of deploying insecticides, especially in the early 60s. My dad was a gardener, and he used buckets of the stuff in those days.

Many years later, when I was watching Starship… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:57 PM on October 16, 2020

The Anchorage Daily News's story is pretty thorough.

Hey, the Anchorage logo you can see behind him in that image is a nice bit of design!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:02 PM on October 16, 2020

Oh my god, from a complicated history's link:

Blakeley [the interview guest who happened to be in the studio before this happened] chimed in with an anecdote of her own.

“I said something like: ‘I’m not his biggest fan either, I believe my daughter was trafficked a few years ago and he was one of her customers.’ ”

At the time, Blakeley believed what she was saying was true, she said.

Two… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:07 PM on October 16, 2020

Gosh I wish I could find the lyrics to this. I don't know if this is a me problem or not but I could only understand about a third of it, but I liked it!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:28 AM on October 15, 2020

I've transcribed here as well as I can:

THANK YOU and oh no I'm relating far too hard to this
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:46 AM on October 15, 2020

Also no cowboy would use an English saddle, c'mon.

Well that would seem to be the whole point, right? She's NOT a cowboy. The video is full of "cowboy" trappings that are about three levels of irony removed from actual cowboy culture - that's all she has access to.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:38 PM on October 15, 2020

As a kid I can't say I ever really cared about the narratives of Mark Trail (and having read the Comics Curmudgeon for a while, I stand by that decision), but I always really loved the Sunday strips with the beautifully illustrated animals. I hope those stick around.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:59 AM on October 14, 2020

As far as I can tell, the problems are:

1) the main character has stubble instead of being clean shaven
2) his assistant has an undercut

So, as a long-time reader of The Comics Curmudgeon (here's his post about the new Mark Trail), these are actually both major departures worthy of note.

1. The fundamental plot of most Mark Trail storylines is "Mark uncovers some sort of illegal… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:06 AM on October 14, 2020

I went looking for a good example of a Cherry-centric strip and honestly they're few and far between, but this one's pretty great and shows what her old look was.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:16 AM on October 14, 2020

Oh yeah - another ludicrous thing about Old Mark Trail was that his job was "nature magazine writer" who seemed to turn in about one article every six months, yet was able to support a household of four on his writing salary and was constantly jetting all around the planet (and was almost universally recognized wherever he went). Like Cherry having a job and Mark having stubble, "Mark struggling because he's not getting assignments" is a very deliberate reversal of, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:26 AM on October 14, 2020

Interesting to contrast some of these comments with what is happening over on the LOTR discussion. Apparently re-telling and re-purposing some old stories can be acceptable?

The thing about newspaper comic strips is, basically no newspaper editors are out there shopping around for brand new strips. Often if a long-running one gets cancelled outright, the paper just won't replace it, or will replace it with a rerun strip like Peanuts or something.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:06 AM on October 14, 2020

And somehow the digital copies I can see if recent-ish strips online seem... blurry? like they were bad scans? But I don't think they actually were scans and have somehow just been drawn poorly with wet ink or something?

He was definitely reusing art, so it's very possible they WERE bad scans, or parts of them were.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:47 AM on October 14, 2020

I would say chances are about 0. It's an anthropocentric origin myth, Pascal's Wager updated for the VR age.

Pascal's Gamer
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:01 AM on October 14, 2020

This, exactly. The whole "we're inside a simulation but the programmers can't program the next galaxy and also we can make them run out of computing power" business just seems like such a weird thing to believe - like "the simulation" would be run by Very Large Humans using Unimaginably Huge Desktops or something. If anything, it seems a bit like evangelical christianity -the idea that you can understand exactly what god is like because god is just a giant, slightly… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:22 AM on October 14, 2020

The planet will not recover. The planet has been irreparably harmed. Some version of the planet will continue, but it will not be the planet with the same ecosystems and organisms it would have been with more responsible human consumption.

I think the point is, this is not the first mass extinction event on Earth and it will probably not literally exterminate all life on Earth. Of course we have done irreparable harm. But the Earth is not and has… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:42 AM on October 13, 2020

I don’t know why you think I don’t agree with you.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:10 AM on October 13, 2020

Oh yeah, that photo shows exactly what I'm talking about!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:37 AM on October 13, 2020