Just came up with a phrase for when I need to force myself to write something for work that I don't feel like writing. Hit the hack. "I really gotta hit the hack tomorrow morning."

Support your local libraries.

You could throw a pitch that literally burrowed underground, and Pete Crow-Armstrong would swing at it. #Cubs #futility

Welcome back, Artemus!

I can never remember the NASA play-by-play announcer's name, but he always sounds like Wally Ballou to me, the Bob Elliott character.

Here's proof that I was making Avignon Papacy jokes way before it was hip.

I'm not satisfied with the robot challenge system in MLB. There are still way too many bad calls. All balls and strikes should be called by machine, and the home plate ump's only purpose should be to stand there and take the occasional wild pitch off the baubles.

The weirdly miraculous thing about my job (I guess you could call it a career) has been that I get to spend my time studying and writing about law (especially IP law, my favorite), while not having to practice law or teach it. Magical for an introverted underachieving honor student.

Cubs are in mid-season form already, staring at third strikes right down the middle, failing to capitalize on a leadoff double. Hey hey, holy mackerel, no doubt about it. The Cubs are gonna Cub.

My family crest is an array of fork-tine holes rendered by an angry dad in the kitchen table and a border of bent forks, akimbo.

Doc suggested I go on Ozempic. I declined. At my age, when people lose weight, they look older. They go from ambiguously middle-aged-looking to demonstrably elderly. Chubbiness smooths out wrinkles. That's why I look like a gray-bearded baby. Off-putting, but young!

What's Moby's take on Weird Al's "Yoda"?

This is why I only read legal reporting from *legal journalists*. No matter how amazing a tech/entertainment/science/policy journalist you are, reporting on court proceedings is a whole different speciality.

Someone on LinkedIn seems to be trying to justify using AI chatbots for "writing" because Hemingway was an alcoholic with a lot of relationship problems. I'm not sure what the point is, because I'm not going to read that whole crappy post.

Ghost sign at Broadway and Carmen, Chicago. This is the former site of the 5100 Club, where Danny Thomas was discovered.

What's up? Nothing much. Just minding my own business, immanentizing the eschaton.

Fuck the cloud.

Rush if Neil Peart were into Nietzsche instead of Ayn Rand: "If you choose not to deicide, you still have made God dead."

The whole concept of generations is stupid, but also, Gen X is the worst generation. This is Maoist self-criticism, which I was taught in college in the '80s, before anyone was using the term Gen X. Those were the days. I blame Douglas Coupland and myself.

Watchin' World Baseball Classic, rootin' for the communists.

Amen

What is Democrats? Never heard of em.

I hope nobody cares about the World Baseball Classic except for me. I like small crowds.

One was a coal miner, then a shipbuilder (WW2), then a farmer, then a whole bunch of things during "retirement" (never stopped working while he physically could). The other was an electric lineman for a large utility company for 40 years (and worked on his family's farm as a youngster).

Oh now I get it. Dubai is Golgafrinchan Ark B.

Yeah, it's wrinkled. I don't care. Had to take it out of the bottom of the drawer for today.

I could not agree more.

Blocking pretty much anyone who makes any kind of "yeah but" argument about anything. Yeah but me no yeah buts!

As I was just saying!!

Sick of hearing all this "it's a distraction" crap. The admin is doing things it wants to do. They're actual projects. Distraction from whatever one thinks they're distracting from is not necessary because without a real opposition there will be no consequences anyway. So why bother?

Literally it’s statement after statement about how he should’ve gone with diplomacy & had congress vote. Like military imperialism has a process, you guys, you can’t mass murder brown babies without taking the appropriate steps!

The angle of "the Iran strikes are bad bc they didn't ask Congress for permission" reminds me of the Norm Macdonald bit about people saying "the hypocrisy" of Bill Cosby's actions was "the worst part." Macdonald:"I disagree. I think all the raping was the worst part."

Suddenly Anthropic is the babyface AI company? People weren't talking so nice about Anthropic last September, when they settled copyright infringement claims for $1.5 billion. Remember that?

Yes yes yes. Shout it from the treetops.

I've been to Portland, and flogging with inflatables is a popular kink there.

"ICE agents are the equivalent of cartel hitmen" is a wild take, but Mike Lee is here for it.

Triple play because Matt Shaw is an idiot. Get rid of that maga fool.

5 authors I've read 5 books by: Charles Portis Thomas Berger Vladimir Nabokov Harry Mathews Flann O'Brien

Seeing altercations and near-altercations between drivers on my residential street several times every day, I'm starting to think that people who drive *should* be on 'ludes -- the opposite of what Sean Penn said in that teen sex comedy movie with Uncle Martin in it as the history teacher.

Oh yeah, you think you can do legal analysis? Well ... of course you can. Sure. But can you do it well? I guess so. Probably. Why not? Wait. I forgot what my point was. It's been a pretty long day. #NoTariffsNoTariffsNoTariffsNoTariffsNoTariffsNoTariffs #YesTariffsYesTariffsYesTariffs

I listened to and wrote about the oral argument session in Learning Resources, so the ruling against Trump doesn't shock me, but I'm immediately wondering what "Plan B" the administration has in mind for tariffs. What other statute(s) will they try to stretch out of shape?

The fuck, man.

I got the impression when I was in law school (early 1990s) that overreliance on judicial review was going to bite us very hard sooner or later, and that is very apparent now.

Drop an album that was important to you when you were nineteen.

Sometimes I wonder what goes through these people's so-called minds. I imagine it sounds like tinnitus.