At this point dealing with the predictable and polite asshole is easier than the unpredictable and rude one. Trump is making a diplomacy mess that will take decades to clean up, if ever.

Well, I did say possibility.

If nothing else, and back in the Bush days it’s pretty much all we had, they accept the possibility that they can lose elections. The bar is literally laying on the ground, yet MAGA still can’t clear it.

drive through Lubbock

Well, yes. Lubbock is as Lubbock was. It is known.

Texas is a mess.

This is also true.

This is pretty much what I said to my wife while scritching my dogs. First it’ll just be expanded to missing kids and olds, because of course everyone wants to reunite families, but eventually it’ll be something that “law enforcement” can request for whatever the hell they want, because after all they’re the good guys keeping us safe!

But, and hear me out here, it’s also wicked cool.

Ours is more stick-shaped though, and really only good for candle wicks. If we smoked, you might be able to get a cigarette into the arc. It’d probably also work well if your grill’s or gas stove’s spark igniter was broken.

Interesting. These say they’re from Mexico. It would be pretty underwhelming if there’s a blander variety.

But the tart ones are the good ones.

Raspberry for me, though I’m not sure if it’s fully artificial or “just” ultra-processed. It’s also partly because I like that flavor but I’m mildly allergic and about 25% of the time I eat it, my lip swells a bit, so I try to minimize how often I have it.

I was using a 2012 “vintage” minitower PC that originally came with Win7 as a crappy little plex/local FTP/Minecraft server, and I had been wanting to try MacOS after not seeing it for a while, so I got a Mac Mini with an M2 in it, and while I’ve hardly stressed it, it seems really nice. It’s small and completely silent, and if I did want to use it more, Apple has certainly tried to keep their walled garden pretty and well-organized.

Sweet tea, at least proper sweet tea, isn’t really about the tea. The tea is just there to add some color and a subtle note to make it caramel water instead of sugar water. It’s pure diabeetus juice, but it knows what it is. Like many methodical killers, it has a clarity of purpose that can be acknowledged and respected.

The real question is why are you punishing yourself by drinking unsweetened iced tea? That’s just cold dishwater that no one respects.

Some highlights:

“They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,” wrote Biery.

He said the case of Conejo Arias and his son “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children."

“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

…boiled peanuts are best purchased from the elderly or a fat kid at a minivan in a parking lot.

and if any word is spelled correctly on the sign, that’s a sign that they won’t be quite as good.

“If you have nothing to hide…” always assumes some modicum of goodwill, or at least restraint, from those doing to the looking.

I always liked them better when they were Corvettes.

Naaah, fill it up with weird saber-tooth deer meat. We already know that shit’s irresistible to Wookiees.

For it’s not so much that it’s going to be an unnecessary call than that the person just doesn’t want to collect their thoughts or (worse) doesn’t want to say what they want in writing. It’s usually going to be some ask that’s completely apart from anything I’ve been thinking about in the past 5-10 days, might be sketchy, and they apparently seem to think it’s urgent and/or nuanced, yet they’re just going to completely hold out on providing context and time that would let me be prepared for whatever pile of shit they’re about to dump on me.

If you can’t communicate it to me in a slack message or two, there’s a very real possibility that either you don’t know what you want, or that I can’t help you with it on a cold call.

I can literally feel myself deflating when I get these, like it’s a huge involuntary sigh accompanied by the classic heart-sinking…

…followed by a deep breath and a “Sure! 👍”

Both things could be true.

7-11 theoretically already has it for their app; you scan with your phone and pay with Apple or Google Pay. The only thing is that you’re supposed to sort of wave the completed transaction at the cashier as you go, but the only reason you’d really need to use portable self-checkout is if the cashier is busy, and when they’re busy they don’t want you breaking in line or to stop what they’re doing to see that you’re showing them a plausibly legitimate checkout screen.

In a completely, utterly, definitely unrelated story, I got accused of shoplifting by a 7-11 cashier the other day.