Many people I know have been making plans to flee Texas. One has made it to Washington state, while two others are angling for Colorado (as am I). It’s an incredibly regressive state, and it’s only gotten worse since Trump was crowned a second time.

Finally, some good news.

Hey, if the woman I lived with for seven years still doesn’t know how a newsroom works, you’re doing just fine!

It’s honestly more of an art than a science. You learn to feel the tenor of an unwritten story and make decisions that may or may not prove correct. But if you’ve got Plan B in place, it’s just “swap that story we thought we had for the AP News Digest item we didn’t have room for.”

I mean, deadline is usually around midnight. The reporter can be done by 8 p.m., the assigning ed hands it off by 8:30, and the desk has 3.5 hours to get it onto the page.

The only thing is, budget is usually around 3 p.m. But if your editor already knows you have a 4 p.m. interview, you can get a sort of “we’ll hold some space for you” dispensation. You can’t really budget without knowing how the story will develop, but you can hold 12-15" in case it’s solid, and if it falls through, well, some papers still pay for wire services, so you just slot in that copy, and no harm done.

I don’t think those are particularly load-bearing. Well, they can bear one sort of load, but an architect wouldn’t suggest them for an arch.

I think we can leave that to the pigeons. I’m way too out of shape to scale a 250-foot wall.

While, as a fellow mid-lifer, I agree with everything you said, there is always the Insurrection Act waiting in the wings if things really go off the rails. Essentially, the worse things get in terms of civil disobedience, the closer we are to Trump having an excuse to do election fuckery.

Do you prefer Scylla or Charybdis?

Over the years, I’ve come to determine that the main difference between Catholicism and evangelical movements is the former focuses on the New Testament, whereas the latter focuses on the Torah with a little Jesus sprinkled on top.

I’m going to guess the pope has read the bible a few times. I’m an atheist, so I have no horse in this race, but I don’t see his entreaty here as being counter to Jesus’ teachings.

But then how can I bitch to pundits on Fox News to pretend the election never ended?

Yeah, it’s kinda hard to not see.

It’s astounding to me that the DNC still trots out “well, she lost because she was a woman.”

Slightly different tone than in 2008, when the argument was “a Black man can’t get elected.”

It’s about the fucking policies! If they only work for corporations, it matters little what letter is after the name.

Just as a folo, consider the difference between fast food and a full-service restaurant. People will head to Taco Bell for a known quantity and pay before the food is served. In a restaurant setting, being expected to pay before your meal arrives will make customers leave.

Amazon (and other companies) want you to think of entertainment like going to a movie, where you could waste $30 on a shitty production. I don’t care to do that at home.

To extend the metaphor, it’s not their fault.

It’s all optics at this point. And, more pragmatically, ensuring future access. You can’t cover anything you aren’t there to witness.

Oh, I’ve got more than I know what to do with. Thing is, as with all USB cables, just because it plugs in doesn’t mean it will accomplish the desired goal.

Oh, AI companies still have the budget to take things they don’t like to the Supreme Court. This will be a lot of wasted time and money, which could have been spent on, say, housing the unhoused.

I’m not a betting man, but my guess is it was bullshit from the beginning.

With the right cable! The world has long since moved onto USB-C.

Ebooks are to me like music and movies/TV shows. I pirate first, and if I like it, I go back and pay. But the critical thing to remember is that discovery is the gateway. They want to act like it’s the '90s, and you have to pay $20 for a CD to find out if anything but the one track played on the radio was any good.

Must suck that people know how to try something on for size before making a purchase. That used to be common at things called “shopping malls.”

“Oops! All Epsteins!” Going to war to solve domestic charges should, itself, be a war crime.