It’s obviously not an absolute rule, because nothing is, but: I very rarely like drama series that are all about, like, embezzlement or financial fraud. I won’t say it can’t be interesting, but it’s VERY EASY for it to be boring.

This is true for both creative and practical reasons. Carole Hathaway and Jesse Pinkman, legend has it, were both supposed to die. Dawson was supposed to get the girl. The best makers of TV have their eyes open and are willing to see what’s happening and lean into what’s working.

We already subsidize like 15 years of free public school for the kids of many, many people who have plenty of money. Why would anybody suddenly freak out about a couple of years of preschool?

Also streaming for free on Kanopy!

I feel like a lot of this is hyper-consumerism. Like: How do I hack reading? How do I get a better deal? How do I beat the system that’s trying to trick me into reading extra pages? How do I prove that I am not dumb enough to just read the book the way they hand it to me, like a chump?

There’s a good documentary about Louis CK that is illuminating about the effects of his behavior and covers the essential truths (as I see them) that (1) he was not cancelled and (2) he was not sorry. It’s a good watch. You can rent it on demand; here’s the trailer. youtu.be/YjWetrSafmc?...

This is also relevant to why it’s hard to make short podcast seasons profitable, regardless of the show’s quality or how beloved it is, in an advertising-spot model.

If LLMs could make your writing better, that’s what they would be telling you.

Apparently the retirement of the fake AI “performer” was an April Fool’s Day “joke,” which is sort of perfect, because it isn’t even arguably funny; it’s just made up? It makes sense that the people who created that mess would not know what jokes are, I guess.

I think this is very key: If you have had serious pain before, or if you’re having it during the procedure, *tell the tech*. A good one does not want to hurt you and knows that there are ways to make it more and less likely that they will.

Absolutely inevitable and unsurprising.

When you have a cold that works its way down into your chest, what makes you feel better *other than* hot tea or hot toddies or the like? Cough medicines are tricky to navigate, once you make your way past acetaminophen (which I don’t need) and cough suppressants (which seem counterproductive).

As I told my sister the Nats fan, that was a good, hard-fought series apart from the game in which we were administered an embarrassing spanking. #phillies

So much respect for including the dog. WHOLE FAMILY!!

HBO MAX has the entire archive of SAY YES TO THE DRESS, which offers occasional opportunities to watch someone brag about how perfect their perfect love with their rich dude is and how much money they have and how they have no budget, and then to google them and find out when they got divorced.

This is some Carl Hiassen-ass scamming.

The only thing that truly makes me feel better when I have a cold is a hot toddy. What I’m saying is that the household whiskey consumption uptick is not my fault.

A sad thing about all this is that I have gotten kind of tuned out of space stuff because so much of it now is at least partly billionaire propaganda. To be honest, I didn’t even fully understand that this launch wasn’t until today. Just another thing I’d love to feel better about someday.

GET SOME EDMUNDO SOSA MERCH IN THE SHOP YOU COWARDS #phillies

It’s really fun seeing good starts for both Painter and Crawford when both have been kind of out there like mirages for quite a while now, like, “Just wait till we get that guy ready.” Still early, but for now: really fun.

I had a friend in college who worked in college governance. And when a new president came in, he gave them a list of readily doable things you can accomplish quickly that people will appreciate but that just haven’t gotten done. I feel like somebody has helped Mamdani write a similar list.

Thank goodness I can now go back to hearing the Phillies announcers. The Nats booth is … I mean, even grading on a curve of homerism, they are hard to take.

Also: Cue the montage in “Winning Time” where like ten people say “presence of mind.”

If Sosa is going to do *that*, that’s going to be very good news.

Just for clarity: This is from Deadline, which is a Hollywood trade publication. This is the only angle I would expect them, in particular, to cover.

The great (?) thing about conversations on here is that you can carefully limit your comment to journalism and creative industries, and people will blow right by that and start talking about other things entirely, thus completely derailing the conversation you were trying to have.

It is one million percent true that in appellate advocacy, sometimes you have to identify the moments when you do not need to say very much.

You need this Flame-in-a-robe photo.

I think in general, this is going to lead to some pretty spectacular anger.

What a good call.

Always smart to follow Chris. Extra smart to follow Chris today.

I appreciated this reminder from Courtney, not only for its substance but for the fact that it is written as if it’s addressed to a lot of people who are erring but are erring with generally good intentions, which I think it is.

I can’t speak to how many authors use it (the authors I know are in the “revulsion” camp), but nobody is forced to lie about it, that’s silly. You might be “forced to lie about it” in order to do it and attempt to avoid the consequences, but the same could be said for straight-up plagiarism.

It just occurred to me that ABS challenges may prevent us from having another one of those amazing games like we did when Angel Hernandez (who, yes, is fortunately retired) made so many bad calls that Schwarber, who is pretty even-keeled, lost his entire grip. A bit sad.

Good and helpful context here as well.

As the story points out, this decision does not restore the funding that Congress rescinded, nor does it revive the CPB. But if it held, it could make restoring funding easier in the future.

To the person who gave me Canadian Cheetos on the cruise and told me I would be ruined for regular Cheetos and would not be able to stop thinking about them: How dare you. Also thank you I GUESS.

There is something so perverse about claiming to be interested enough in writing to REVIEW BOOKS and nevertheless think it’s fine to do this. As Woody would say: YOU ARE A TOYYYYEEEEEEE.

I agree with this too! Agitating to distribute the dressing is a reasonable step (I believe), but you actually don’t want to shake as hard as you can. A nice gentle back-and-forth flipping motion is going to leave you a better result, even if it’s not as virile as I guess beating up your salad is.

This is the kind of lede that will make people suspect you have never prepared food for yourself in your life. Shaking things is actually quite common. Often you are meant to do it “well,” and do it “before using.” In fact, sometimes you do it “and bake” as a way to prepare chicken.

Truly, Charles Barkley seems like one of the great examples of the mixed blessing of people who say literally whatever pops into their heads at all times.

Being on a boat is great, but being back at home with a dog who’s happy to see me is the BEST.

I’m sure it’s hard to completely prevent this kind of thing from happening, but the specific language he used (about the landslide, especially) should have been a sign that this was a political operative and not a random perplexed bystander. You can still quote him! But it needed context.

Yes. Note: If you see the Capitol and the gold horsies, that’s not Minneapolis!

I am in here, somehow on stage with a bunch of actual stage performers (just me chilling by the Oscar winner), at the conclusion of a remarkable week. Thanks to everybody at JoCo Cruise; I have never done anything quite like it.

Good lord, this franchise is insufferable. Yes, poor you, life is unfair, boo hoo, everybody is so mean. Speaking solely for myself, I don’t see them as bad guys for anything except this attitude. You’re going to win the World Series again! Just be overdogs and don’t be babies about it!

I briefly wondered if this letter might be fake because it’s so bad, but what ultimately convinced me is the self-pity.

There are similarities between what I wrote about PROJECT HAIL MARY today and what I wrote about ARRIVAL in 2016—which, by the way, I wrote when I was in a deep and scary depression.

Courtesy of the very strange selection of free movies on planes, I just want to say: SOMETHING BORROWED (2011) is one of the most incoherent and genuinely bizarre movies I have ever seen.

Okay, y’all. I’m on vacation.