For those who are complaining: a Democrat challenging an incumbent Democrat because he doesn't think the incumbent is doing a good job, and voters getting the chance to decide if they agree, is exactly how the system is supposed to work. If you give up on that, I don't know what you're rooting for.

The black and white scan means you miss out on the bright crayon colors....

This is the one time this year I'll root for the Ravens, do not screw this up.

I first read this headline more than 20 years ago, but even now, any time I go into a record store, I think about it.

Text blocks and cascading bullet points are a dreadful location for actual narrative discussion. Get them to look at you, not the slide deck.

Watching the #Patriots and the #USWNT at the same time is some sort of peak sports. Though I missed the return of a punt for a touchdown while I was trying to figure out where the hell that foul in the box was.

>>> @universalhub.com spots a super-dumb headline in the dead-tree edition of the @bostonglobe.com. The digital edition gets it right. www.universalhub.com/2025/fun-hea...

Oh fine, @profanity.accountant, tell me how much I've cussed in the last year.

“A character without conflict, and a character who has nowhere to go is not a character that anybody wants to watch.” Home drama, plus a boss who yells at the detective/applies constant pressure, feels so old.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you've seen multiple times: Richard Thompson The Reverend Horton Heat Godspeed You! Black Emperor Elvis Costello (1982, 2022) Cecilia Bartoli

"Arrogant puritanism gets its comeuppance" seems like a reasonable Thanksgiving logline for this one.

Revvatching a venerable New England classic with the family, as one does on Thanksgiving.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you've seen. BB King, Gladys Knight & The Pips, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Park Central, Dallas Chuck Berry at the Varsity, Austin Talking Heads, Agora, Dallas Ramones, Agora, Dallas Van Cliburn at The Cliburn, Fort Worth

I really dislike papers that end with"here is a list of significant confounders we couldn't actually account for, but hopefully this [limited insight and potentially mislead title] will lead to further research."

My day and discussion with beloved Udo from 2014 when we drove around the desert and talked ... and went to thrift stores. And more: thesunsetgun.com/2025/11/25/t...

But that would rob a certain type of journalist of access to "some people are saying" narratives.

We played it again! #PaxUnplugged (also, Septima and some other games)

Next step in progress: saying there's no ticket found in the system and you'll have to resubmit.

Funny how I don't miss Van Jones a single bit.

Go to #PAXUnplugged, and what kind of shiny new game do you play? Die Macher, of course! (1986) Always good to get together with friends....

Went to the Rosenbach today, where a highly knowledgeable librarian let me (carefully) leaf through their #Ulysses manuscript, as well as giving me a lot of fantastic background/insights. Of course I took a run at Scylla & Charybdis, with Hans Walter Gabler's favorite passage....

The guy next to me on the train is typing an email with the subject line "FIX PRODUCTION" and all I can think is my god I'm so glad I'm retired.

I said this elsewhere but it bears repeating: There is not ONE JOB worth staying silent for when hearing a "superior" say "quiet piggy" to another. Those other reporters should be ashamed. SPEAK UP.

The things people tell themselves without noting any signs of dissonance.

Today I learned to my surprise how many sites I visit daily rely on Cloudflare. Happy Find Something Else to Do Day!

Goretzka with the sliding pass to Gnabry is a joy to see. #GERSVK

Three turnovers in the first six minutes for Sané invokes a real sense of nostalgia. Hopefully he settles in. #GERSVK

I was wondering today: to what extent does the Queen Bee score provide a clue of the number of pangrams in a NYT Spelling Bee? The answer: looking at almost 1,700 puzzles…not much.

Repeatedly referencing her father as though she didn't earn her way in.

Toy Story is on tap for summer, 2026, and it looks like the main cast will all be back! Logline: Bonnie is going to get a new toy called Lily Pad, a touchpad ‘friend’ who will try to separate her from her other toys. #MechaLily

Even after all these years of hating FIFA, it turns out they can still surprise me by achieving new, even more squalid levels of corruption. www.nytimes.com/athletic/678...

The dataset for this study has some serious problems: pubpeer.com/publications...

Okay, so yes, I admit it, I've fallen a bit behind in my reading. But I'm working on it!

Rereading Proust tonight, The Guemantes Way: "... but neither can we tolerate a brawl encouraged by those elements on the Right, who instead of serving the patriotic ideal themselves, are hoping to make it serve them." Plus ca change, and all that.

My dog will sleep like this for hours while I watch football, blissfully snoring, but her ears perked up like this lest she miss Something Important happening

#30DayMapChallenge Day 2: Lines + Day 3: Polygons (yeah, I'm double-dipping here). Depth chart/bathymetry of the Quabbin Reservoir here in Massachusetts, using #rstats, polygons, and a color spectrum from white to - yes - dodgerblue. (also, I'd forgotten just how powerful the sf function is)

#30daymapchallenge Day 1: points. NOAA shipwreck data + #rstats (marmap), Known Shipwrecks of the Gulf of Mexico. There may be some imprecision in the NOAA lat/long along the coast, or perhaps it includes inland waterways. But lots of them, unfortunately.

"Hoffenheim's Hranac checks Afolayan into the boards like an ice hockey player." Huh. There might be some real roller derby possibilities for association football that we haven't even considered yet.

I read something like this and can't help remembering Coogan and his co-writers wildly adulterating the timeline of another Frears film - Philomena - to make it more dramatic than real life, despite the fact that real life was very much dramatic enough.

Playing the board game "Search for Planet X" for the first time in a while, I'd forgotten how fun it is. One of the few app-based games that I really enjoy.

An older lady with (I think) an Eastern European accent motioned me to a pause while jogging today & indicated that I need to breathe through my nose, not my mouth. "It's healthier!" she said several times. Lady. Listen. I'm old and heavy. The simple fact that I'm jogging will have to do for now.

One day, my #rstats friends, one day....

This is exactly the kind of joke that made me groan in despair, but I would have made it myself if I'd thought of it first.

I tried this in Copilot, and after repeated pressing I ended up with this, which even at the end is the AI trying to please me by confessing. You can see why some tech billionaires have fallen in love with AI - part plutocracy, part praise machine. “Great idea, Sam!” “Very perceptive, Elon!”

Les Pyrénées - 1956 📸 Justin Lock

Hey #boardgamesky! I'm looking for examples of /weird/ board games. Games that do something you don't expect games to do, whether theme, mechanic, player experience/emotion, or other surprises. Bonus points for being cheap, recent and/or quick to play, but none of these are essential.

I've been thinking about the idea that the top player ELO ratings for a #boardgame on #BoardGameArena might reflect the amount of the game's "luck" - that is, measuring the extent to which expert players (or bots) can arbitrage away randomness through their play. The games below happen to be ones

What's important about this battle of ascendancy at Guinness isn't a fight amongst the plutocrats, it's that under the chairmanship of the winner the company hired a lot of bright science grads, including William Sealy Gosset, who would go on to invent a sampling test under the pseudonym 'Student'.

It's my first #tidytuesday ever, and I'm already cheating by grabbing extra data (2005 FIDE ratings)...but I wanted to learn ggalluvial and also see the growth in the top 100 players from India.