The show’s in three weeks! Everybody drop your pants and do a headstand. We can’t afford to miss practice

The answer is always ska. The question can be anything

Chef Andres

Give me your favourite Non-Trek performance from a Star Trek actor: William Shatner in Airplane 2, so-called because it’s two movies. The first one is an hour-long inert mess. The second starts the instant Shatner appears on screen, and has some zip to it. Shatner saved as much ot it as he could

We should admit what a relief this is. None of us could imagine how we were going to survive until January 2029 anyway

And here, a passage from the inimitable Virginia Woolf #booksky

Evergreen

Someone, Jesus Christ, I don’t care if it’s a media personality, a citizen or a legislator, when he says this COVID and measles on kill people who are already sick, say, “So what? Sick people matter too,” to his nasty fucking face.

Kennedy doesn’t die until much later

A bonus track from my most recent podcast episode: a mashup of "Blackbird" as recorded by Billy Preston, the Beatles, Brad Mehldau, the Swingle Singers and Beyoncé, plus various related songs ethanhein.bandcamp.com/track/blackb...

Doing an observe from the hill in the back yard

I don’t like algebraic notation but it’s ubiquitous now

I love Luray Caverns and should go back

“Take this landscaping tool. It doesn’t know or care if you’re black, white, brown, rich, poor, man, woman, gay , straight…” “Sounds like a problem mattock” “Get out of my store”

Not an issue here, but as a musician, it always takes me an extra moment if someone writes Bb7, Bb2 or Bb4. Even Bb6 and Bb5 carry a smidge of ambiguity. Of course my first instrument is the piano. The guitarists reading this are all thinking, “Bb? What even is that?” (We kid because we love!)

I think the fact I just came down with strep throat is making me irritable

Your occasional reminder we have a perfectly good English word for blackmail material: dirt. Why do we have it? Because Russia didn’t invent the idea of extortion any more than they invented baseball.

I wish the internet never learned the word 'kompromat.'

/7 Anyway if I had to describe my differences with FIRE’s politics (as opposed to its legal work), it would be this: I would defend the right of the Nazis to march at Skokie, but I would not afterwards invite them to speak, nor present them as heroes of freedom.

We need to appreciate the bit players in movies more. Like these guys from The Next Karate Kid. They make the movies go, even if you’ve never heard of them. Even if they never hit the big time

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, May 6th 2026 (Medium), in less than 11 minutes 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 cluesbysam.com

It's enough to make you crazy to watch our entire media-political apparatus ridicule all left of center opinion in the leadup to every major crisis in the last 30 years only to then shrug about how no one could've seen it coming

This is our version of service journalism. Save this one as an easy reference for when you’re called upon to address how things got this bad:

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, May 5th 2026 (Medium), in 05:50 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 cluesbysam.com

They shot Alex Pretti ten times while he was face down in the street.

I had the chance to interview @rustysellsword.com about the new Cortex Community License! Thanks for taking the time to answer all my questions, Cam! #TTRPG #RPG #Cortex

In honor of the day: May the Force be wiss you

TFW you have a justified belief your diaries will one day be read by strangers

A way to be an ally to Jews is to relentlessly point out that there are more Christian Zionists in the US alone then there are Jews in the entire world (many of whom are not even Zionists). The conversation about Zionism should be dominated by that rather than laying all blame at the feet of Jews.

Praying for Rudy Giuliani. Complicated man, but he taught me that marriage and family don't mean anything. You can just do whatever you want. Humiliate and lie to everyone you're supposed to love whenever you want, or are bored. Honestly fuck them. Also he taught me everything else is like that too.

A Farewell to Wrists

A billion dollars is the socio-economic equivalent of a loose nuke, and we should work to prevent the acquisition of the former with the same urgency and ruthlessness we use to prevent the acquisition of the latter.

The Mosquito Coast

anyway follow me on youtube. i try to put out a video a day, usually no longer than 10 minutes unless i’m especially animated about something. youtube.com/@jamelle-bou...

I discovered tonight that Tobey Maguire played Bobby Fischer in a 2015 movie called Pawn Sacrifice. Then I discovered Steven Knight wrote the screenplay, so it became an instant watch. I like the movie much better than the (7/10) aggregate reviewers of IMDB.

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, May 1st 2026 (Tricky), in less than 27 minutes 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟩🟩🟩 cluesbysam.com

I have two models of nontoxic manhood: Peter Riegert in Crossing Delancy, and Spencer Tracey in this

Columbia, Burtonsville, Wheaton

“Blue No Matter Who” like “Never Trump” always comes with an unspoken “except” at the end. Platner is a piece of work, but he’s a piece of work that makes a Democrat who I hope is not Chuck Schumer majority leader. And if worse came to worst, it would take him years to do as much damage as Collins.

The amphetamines were so good Phil Dick could write a novel a week *and* front a ska band

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, Apr 30th 2026 (Tricky), in less than 14 minutes 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 cluesbysam.com

I think I might reread Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley. I read it in the 1990s and it has stuck with me.

Today is a reminder that except for a brief period running roughly from Brown v. Board to Roe v. Wade, throughout its history the Supreme Court has been a reactionary force protecting the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, almost always hostile to equality and justice.

as long as john roberts has his majority, there is simply no pro democracy reform that will survive the supreme court. none.

People ought to be saying *An* I

Reminder: there was never any further elaboration or medical report on the supposed injury Jonathan Ross sustained that caused “internal bleeding.”

Apparently a lot of people consider Hot Hot Hot to be a lesser Cure song, which makes sense because a lot of people are silly

There used to be a somewhat reasonable outline of an argument that maybe eventually the race-based protections in American law could be repealed, leaving a purely colorblind society. The Trump administration has given us the strongest possible evidence in favor of saying “Not now, if ever.”