Syril’s arc is an interesting one. He always genuinely believed that the Empire was necessary and even good, bringing order and a kind of draconian but honest justice to the galaxy. To be confronted with that being made a lie, and him as the link, must have been quite the mind-fuck.

I think seeing Andor was rage and lashing out at the man who set him on the path to losing his religion, as it were. I think the little delay when he was going to shoot Cassian (before, well, that happened) had a lot packed into it, and with a slightly different turn of events you could almost see him becoming a vociferous rebel, no zealot like the convert.

Overall, this was definitely the best arc of the three, but it needed the first two to land how it did. I also appreciate the intelligent use of the setting and lore and foreshadowing to make it all hit that much harder. “The Force” even made an appearance, sort of.

Literally the one undeniable success of the post-WW2 order was the lack of a global-scale hot war. Everything else is tainted by smaller scale conflicts and self-interest and economic inequality and picking winners and losers in a callous and awful way. But, you could always say it’s been 60, 70, and then 80 years with no world war 3. We didn’t nuke ourselves. We didn’t devastate our species’ potential to make the world better for more people. I guess on net there was even progress, statistically speaking, though that’s small comfort to those it bypassed and the benefits sure as shit were not distributed equitably.

That one thing, that lowest of bars – no global shooting war – is now at risk because a handful of men who are stupid or evil or both, surrounded by people orbiting around them on those axes of stupidity and evilness, have decided that too much is not enough.

Maybe for any sort of food-supplementing gardening and/or egg-farming. For simple living space, it’s extravagant. I live in the Texas suburbs, and half-acre lots are nowhere near the norm until you get way out into the exurbs. Quarter acre lots are a rather generous and (and resource intensive), and 1/8 would be standard for “starter” homes.

And this:

https://www.theverge.com/news/656720/ed-martin-dc-attorney-wikipedia-nonprofit-threat

What keycaps are the alphas? I see plenty of Keychron (KSA?) elsewhere.

Texas: does something extra stupid and fascist.

Oklahoma: “Hold my three point two!”

Yup! They got the safest of safe Albertan Conservatives to just cuck himself publicly (that’s what they like to say? Right?) for Poilievre’s benefit, because an “unstoppable movement has grown under his leadership.”

1. NFL Football free agency (free transfer)
2. Same
3. American college sports, which is in a bit of an existential crisis because it started 130 years ago as roughly equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge doing rowing regattas, but football and basketball have been “wink and nod” U23 professional leagues for 80+ of them, and the legal underpinnings of its version of amateurism are being eroded in the courts. The “transfer portal” is meant to organize the chaos that comes when athletes request to continue their eligibility for an “athletic scholarship” at a new school.
4. Same
5. NBA basketball mandatory injury reporting.

And I thought… it smelled bad… on the outside!

Fair enough. Is it possible our guy Luthen is growing a conscience? Or at least some better person-management skills?

Folks, I’m gonna say something, and it’s this: IMO this book is pretty bad. I would only recommend it to a dedicated completionist who simply can’t bear to leave any stone unturned, or maybe to people who will simply always prefer books to movies.

HERE is a nice and legal link to some of it.

And here is my take from a post in the dying days of kbin.social. I have read more of it than I had then (probably about a quarter to a third of it), and if the trudge of the plot is often workmanlike enough, I stand by what I said for the passages that are trotted out as something special, but they are not. If anything, they’re the worst parts of it. It’s a work-for-hire adaption of a script that is the worst part of a mediocre movie, one that commits most of the same watchability sins as AOTC. Stover didn’t have much to work with, and maybe sensing that, he overplayed his hand stylistically.

So, the interrogation doctor thing…

Was that Luthen giving them a mission involving some catharis, or did Bix and Cassian go… {lowers KB’s Skeleton Crew shades}… rogue?

Yeah, if Tay died “in a speeder crash”, obviously Vel could have put that together. I guess it still could have been, but I’m persuaded that it must have been something else.

Basically seems like Waltz is the designated fall guy to preserve Hegseth, most likely because Hegseth has a jawline and more pomade.

A figure across the border was noted to have objected, “Bar bar bar, bar bar bar bar bar”

BARBARIANS!

by and large, our manufacturing days are behind us.

I agree, but even if one were convinced that they aren’t, the proper way to do it is to use your congressional majority to come up with a package of actual targeted tariffs that phase in over time and thereby incentivize investment, which you can also do by subsidizing industrial development and getting labor on your side (other than the lukewarm conditional support of UAW and only UAW).

This, though, is a stupid and angry old man desperate for a legacy, being counseled by nativists and Christian Nationalists and nothing is coherent or likely to be effective. It’s tearing down the existing system that, for better or worse, people have had to build their lives around, with nothing more than “concepts of a plan” for how to replace it, and with no real intention to have anything new benefit anyone but the super-rich for whom the worst outcomes are delayed megaprojects and lowered spots on a ranked list of billionaires.

Well, it came out great! I’ve always liked the concept of ortho with normal keycap kitting, though it’s kind of amusing that you went with a custom and unsculpted set for the one and only ortho that didn’t need them. Absolutely no judgment, though. I have spent a lot of time making “bespoke” boards in my garage that are barely any different from commercial offerings.

Is that texture on the case from your build plate or the fancy new topside fuzzy skin algorithms?

Yeah, the dropoff in linear TV viewing is staggering. CBS does the best because their broadcast lineup skews old, not because it’s particularly good. It also makes you understand why the suits sell their souls for live sports (especially gridiron football).

It’s not a super new phenomenon either. The BBT was CBS’s huge comedy hit of the 2010s, but it never had raw numbers that matched “The Single Guy,” a two-season nothingburger that got canceled for not adequately holding onto its Friends lead-in audience.

I guess technically this is a spoiler, so…