Call me America because my history is full of missed opportunities to make things better.

I got Hades on sale for $6 and it’s great so I’ll probably get Hades II in like 2030.

Trying to wrap my head around the fact that humanity created the written word by hand from like Sumeria to the 1800s, then for almost a century it was typewriters, then starting in the 1970s computers took over.

I've noticed that typewriters pretty much exclusively use flathead screws. Phillips screws were invented in 1930 and saw wider adoption in the 40s, but even my Valentine, made in Spain probably in the 70s, has all flathead screws. I have no idea why, but it's an interesting little factoid.

I got my Olivetti Valentine typewriter back from being repaired and cleaned at Berkeley Typewriter (berkeleytypewriter.com)! It's an adorable and lightweight portable typewriter, and I genuinely like the way the keys feel. It also inspired my Lexicon keyboard! #typewriter #mechanicalkeyboard

I agree with @gavtrdq.bsky.social... this is one of the greatest comic panels of all time.

I attempted to re-play Wolfenstein: The New Age and (1) nope, FPS games still make me too nauseous and (2) it crashed twice in about 30 minutes.

Yet another thing from my Xeroverse meta-setting that I wish I could see: in that world's equivalent of Batman & Robin, JCVD played a scenery-chewing flame-themed villain and made lots of fire puns.

gee i sure hope it does

All my Apple devices are updated so now I get their "liquid glass" UI on everything, and the changes range from lateral moves to mildly annoying, but mostly it just feels like they're trying too hard and fixing something that wasn't broken.

Clearly the team behind The Boys/Gen V needs to do a full-on puppet show, because they're kinda amazing at it.

Assigned Pumpkin At Birth (APAB)

I'm belatedly finishing watching Superman II, and Zod's followers Ursa and Non are amazing. Ursa is the more imperious, violent lady with a British accent, while Non is mute and brutish, but initially struggles with figuring out how to do heat vision.

I've done a decent amount of writing with the Quiet-Riter, and I'm finding I like the effect it has on my writing. It's faster than handwriting, but still more organic than using a computer, and the force required to type makes me a bit more deliberate. #typewriter

I just realized that Eric Adams would've been perfect as the mayor of New York as depicted in 30 Rock.

So like Sinclair said they're not going to air Kimmel when the show comes back, and I'm wondering if broadcast TV is really still that big of a deal in the first place. I don't know *anyone* who still watches it. Even restaurants will use a streaming box around here.

TIL there was a novelization of Spaceballs, written by R.L. Stine (using a pseudonym), called (of course) Spaceballs: The Book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8vu...

So John Oliver did an aside about how there's a German kids' TV character called Bernd the Bread, whose catchphrases include "My life is hell."

I need the sites where I went typewriter shopping to stop showing me typewriters because if I see like a Smith-Corona Galaxie or Hermes 3000 for a reasonable price I'm gonna be sorely tempted when two typewriters is already a lot in terms of the space they take up.

Vintage typewriters have a very particular smell, a combination of metal, lubricant, ink, and the general mustiness of old things, and lately my brain has been playing that smell in my head a lot.

I don't think they should force every Oklahoma college to have a Charlie Kirk statue, but if they we'll presumably see some of the most fucked up statues imaginable. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

When a reply begins with “So” there’s about an 80% chance that what follows is weirdly hostile fanfic about the person they’re replying to.

Him is great, a disturbing and often surreal story about the Cult of Sports and what it really means to be the GOAT. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEy...

The three genders

There's a new animated comedy series called Haunted Hotel, about a family that inherited a hotel that turned out to be full of ghosts and the occasional demon. I'm enjoying it so far, so I fully expect Netflix to cancel it.

Inside of you are two wolves yarukizero.threadless.com/designs/two-...

I put on a video analyzing the Jordan Peterson Jubilee video, and I really want someone to just retort, "That isn't what that word means to most people." There are like half a dozen instances where that would be appropriate. Dude just does not respect the normal definitions of words.

It took an extra two weeks for the Olivetti Valentine I bought off eBay to go from a cargo company to FedEx, but from there it's traveled from southern Japan to California in about two days, and I should be getting it today and it's been a while since I was this excited about much of anything.

Alex Jones used to pretend that he was a libertarian and "above the left-right paradigm." Now he's screaming that *everyone* in that shooter's Discord should be executed. The guy he pretended to be should be horrified at what he's become.

I had the idea to try using a continuous roll of paper in the typewriter, and got two rolls of masking paper for about $8. The quality isn't as good as printer paper, but it does work. #typewriter

The gorgeous Olivetti Valentine typewriter I ordered from Japan is finally shipping and this Japanese ad for the Valentine is buck wild. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIh...

*taps sign*

New Tyler Robinson posts leaked to me tell a very different story than you've heard before: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

I now have a more or less functional manual typewriter! I'll have to figure out why the text is inconsistent and often faint (and do some cleaning), but it's here and it works!

Seriously, podcasting was supposed to be something a few guys did in their apartments.

Government of the podcasters, by the podcasters, and for the podcasters.

Others have gotten the obvious dunks in, so I’ll just add: I’ve owned two pairs of smart glasses, albeit the kind that are basically just glasses with Bluetooth headphones built in. I like them a lot but they have mediocre battery life even without constantly running AI nonsense.

Some people are cynically exploiting the murder of that one podcaster guy, but others seem to have a worryingly deep parasocial bond. When I think of the online personalities I like, I can’t think of any I have that kind of all-consuming passion about.

The problem with being such a reasonable person is that I stop myself from getting mad about e.g. the typewriter I bought from eBay taking longer than the original estimate FedEx gave, so I'm left just being some combination of annoyed and depressed about it.

It's paywalled, but apparently the argument is that index funds take advantage of active investors and don't help efficiently/accurately rate the value of stocks, and like I have some bad news about the stock market in general. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It just occurred to me how weird the name “grapefruit” is. Here’s a large, sour, orangish-pink citrus fruit. You know, just like a grape.

Better Off Ted!

The depths of Apple Music are something else

Ideas people are having trouble with: 1. Shooters often have incoherent ideologies 2. People on the same "side" can have deadly disagreements 3. There are whole subcultures based on relentless, nihilistic irony, so you can't take what they say at face value 4. Those subcultures spread disinfo

Welp. Got a jury summons for next month. And as always, I'd be fine with doing jury service *if it weren't a major financial burden*. If we have to make people come in for jury service, it seems incredibly basic to not make untenable for people who have jobs.

Thanks to Cosmonaut Variety Hour's video on Catwoman, I realized that to properly capture superhero movies of the era, my Xero (2004) novel needs to include: (1) A cringey basketball scene (2) An ending with the hero on a rooftop (Already got the nu-metal though) www.youtube.com/watch?v=OllD...

She leans forward, giving you an ample view of her cleavage and whispers, “Invalid JSON.” By the time you notice her extra fingers it’s too late.

whyyyyyy do people think it's okay to schedule mystery meetings if you set up a meeting, tell people what it's about so they know it's not an "everyone's getting fired" meeting

Since the Xero book I'm working on takes place in 2004, I started reading Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything by Colette Shade, which means reliving the Bush years. Also the part about how she has liberal Unitarian Universalist parents is intensely relatable for me.

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind