So, umm, Replika is a Russian intelligence operation, huh?

Trump Says 'I Guess' Americans Should Worry About Iran Retaliating on U.S. Soil: 'Like I Said, Some People Will Die' people.com/trump-says-i...

we protected my mom from COVID for 5 years. She caught it at the hospital during an outbreak in the dialysis ward (!!) and died 5 days later. we will do nothing with this information as a society

Black to move #chess

I dunno of this is real or something invented for a plot point, but if I'm ever murdered nobody had better cut my murderer a deal for revealing the location of my body. It's a dead body. You don't need it for anything.

I think people often do "describe X poorly" wrong. Here's my attempts to do it right: * Man leaves government job over handling of pandemic * Bartender doesn't show up for work after playing video game all night * Drunk cleans up neighborhood after turning over new leaf

Black to move #chess

So do we think things work out for Eloise (of The Plaza), or does she end up in more of a John Cheever story by the 1970s?

Black to move #chess

I feel like we need something that's the exact opposite of an HOA. Like a constitutionally-protected list of freedoms in one's home that municipalities, covenants, HOAs, and contracts are forbidden from restricting in any way.

Did not realize how weak of a constraint it is for words to fit into a grid like ZYMES YOUTH MUSHY ETHYL SHYLY There is just one constraint on each word in the list, coming from the words before it. By my count, using a dictionary with 8,636 five-letter words, there are 5.5 million such grids!

Usually when I've misheard a lyric, reading the correct one causes me to hear it correctly in the future. But I am 100% sure that Sweidsh House Mafia is singing Don't you worry / Don't you worry, child / T. Hammer's got a plan for you. Who is T. Hammer? You tell me.

Reminder that the stock market should always be (and basically *is* always) at an all-time high. If it's not, that basically means that almost 200 million of us went to work every day and collectively produced less than nothing. That's not the work of the White House. That's the work of us.

How can black avoid white's fork in this #chess position?

Post a banger that's not in English "The Gereg" by The HU I randomly happened to walk past a live performance by this group and it was insane. Unfortunately most of their online videos start with extremely long cinematic intros and the mixing doesn't convey the experience of seeing them live.

Post a banger that's not in English "wasurerarenaino" by sakanaction A tribute to 1980's Japanese city pop

Post a banger that's not in English: "Aguas de Março" by Antonio Carlos Jobim (Original in Portuguese here. He also wrote a companion version in English, which is NOT a translation of the Portuguese, for two reasons -- see thread.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1tO...

Post a banger that's not in English: Micaela by Pete Rodriguez (intro in English, actual song in Spanish) www.youtube.com/watch?v=icr_...

Business idea: LaCroix, but just make the 3 good flavors instead of the 58 others nobody wants that just sit on the shelves forever.

For #PuzzleDay I contribute SATOR, a single-player word-making game inspired by crossword puzzles, acrostics, and related board games. danielmclaury.github.io/sator/ Free to play in browser on desktop or mobile.

Cannot believe I figured this out. Black to move. #chess

My first perfect #chess game.

"If a gadget has a part that is frequently broken by users fidgeting with it, provide a harmless part that is a more attractive option to fidget with." Is this a known design principle?

There are two equally-good moves here. Find the funnier one. (White to move.)

Most recent movies I've seen, to the best of my recollection, that engage with Christianity in America as something that exists in characters' lives: 1. Wake Up, Dead Man (2025) 2. Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) 3. The Apostle (1997) Anything past this is probably from the 1960s?

Maybe more satisfying than actually winning a game of #chess

White to move #chess

Black to move #chess

My wife wouldn't let me send this surreal, #twinpeaks inspired Christmas card to our friends and family, so I'm sharing it with you all instead.

Micro-review of No Other Choice (어쩔수가없다): A perfect film, but judging from what I heard in the lobby afterwards a lot of the audience didn't get it.

Micro-review of "Wake Up, Dead Man" Like everything with Rian Johnson: good concept, highly uneven execution.

Watching someone play a game over their shoulder is a way better ad for a game than the opening cinematic. That's why streamers are a thing. And yet every game trailer buries the gameplay. Why?

If the Sep. 2 boat really had "narco-terrorists" on board, questioning the survivors would have been a way to learn about how the organization worked, where more drugs were stashed, etc. But this isn't a counter-terrorism campaign. It's a shooting gallery with helpless targets.

Pentiment's game mechanics are amazing, but the actual game doesn't work that well because they didn't get the pacing right -- you're constantly breaking immersion to check the glossary, and the "walking simulator" sections don't really work because the layout is so complex you get lost.

Merry Christmas from Peach, who I fear I've inadvertently made into a mall rat.

First impression of Mid-Century Modern: * Nathan Lane makes a serviceable replacement for Bea Arthur * Matt Bomer will never be Betty White * Writing is hit or miss, like someone is making them cram in random topical references * Is this literally the same set from Golden Girls?

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." -FDR, 1937

Concept: a concert band that's just the wrong version of every instrument. Slide trumpet, valve trombone, mellophone, sousaphone, xaphoon, bass oboe, etc.

As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history. Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX

Hit an interesting vulnerability I've never heard of. Someone posted a link to a Google doc in Slack. I don't have access to the doc, but Slack (or Google?) helpfully created a thumbnail that showed me the first page of data.

Direct from the federal government: the next time you see someone pepper-spraying children, we are safe to conclude that they are NOT actual law enforcement and respond accordingly.

Amazing how all the alarmist things the Christian right warned about are coming true, but they're the one doing it.

I get that everyone is trying to help, but making your employees ask your customers face-to-face to donate to a charity nobody's ever heard of, which turns out to be run by and branded like your company, gives off weird vibes. #Dunkin #TacoBell

The verdict comes after the case came to represent broader resistance in the nation's capital to the Trump administration's law enforcement surge to the city. n.pr/47rmYsS

Me: [Shows up with a roll of film containing selfies of a teenager, followed by shots from several angles of what is clearly the rotting corpse of the same person] Fotodome clerk: That will be $1.99, sir. #firewatch

They're making Naomi Watts act across from Kim Kardashian now? Do we need to take up a collection or something so she can have better roles?

Hardy's estate should sue

It is not uncommon for an attempt at clicking something to misregister as a click-and-drag. If you don't provide any obvious way to cancel an undesired click-and-drag without any effect, you're forcing users to do stuff they don't want, and they'll hate you for it.