Jake Wildstrom

Y'know, sometimes you go to the USA, and you forget to write "soybeans" down on your shopping list, and then when you go home your wife says, "did you get the soybeans?" and then you say, "ugh, the USA is so far and I'm tired so I'm just gonna make a quick jaunt down to Argentina for those."

Sure, one _could_ argue that the FBI as an institution retained significant pre-2017 identity (including leadership) through to January 6, 2021. But that wouldn't be "the Biden FBI"; Joe Biden wasn't the president in 2016. That would be "the Obama FBI".

The "a zillion tiny dialogue panels" image from Hawkeye v4 brings up one aspect of writing Hawkeye you don't discuss: namely, if you have a character named "Clint" appearing in the all-caps medium of comic books, you have to be extra-careful with the spacing on your lettering.

Aw, Laura Nyro's only charting single was a cover of a Carole King-written song? That's kinda sad, since it's so easy to read her as a kind of cut-rate Carole King even without that data point.

I'm not thrilled about it going to a politician, even one resisting autocracy. It seems like in our current world there are a lot of brave aid workers in difficult circumstances (Sudan, Gaza) who are worthier.
Shades here of Aung San Suu Kyi, whose legacy has not lived up to a Nobel Prize standard.

If they can get _any_ money out of an uninsured ER visitor, it's through a collection agency. But they probably get nothing. Whereas most citizens carry some manner of governmental/marketplace/employer-mandated health insurance, and the medical provider gets paid (usually less than their rack rate).

It's also very much not clear who "they" denotes here. Like, if an ER patient is indigent and uninsured (which is presumably the undocumented immigrant case here), the hospital is obligated to stabilize them before discharge and don't generally get reimbursed at all.

The pull quote strikes me as odd. Is "camp" supposed to be unwitting? I've encountered the term mostly in the context of cultures and performances which enact it very deliberately, e.g. "camp" as an intentional aesthetic of queer identity.

AIUI, vindictive prosecution is usually a hard case to make, because typically prosecutors with a chip on their shoulder are smart enough to not ever do anything unequivocally demonstrating their maliciousness. Fortunately, these are not smart people and they keep on _talking_ about their motives.

This is journalistic malpractice. Nothing whatsoever is "not clear". The plain text of an established law forbids it. That's all that need be said about whether it can be done.

On the flipside, in the 80s and 90s Dominos Pizza was _unbelievably awful_, and now they're reasonably good by fast-food pizza standards. So, yeah, change happens and if you build your identity around a fast-food menu you're gonna get disappointed someday.

I mean, I remember Pizza Hut being a sit-down place with a buffet and waiters and dim lighting and everything (and Pac-Man arcade tables). But that ceased to be true in, uh, the late 80s? Early 90s? Hardly a recent phenomenon.

e.g. from the article: "UPFs are industrially formulated products that are often high in fats, starches, sugars and additives". "Industrially formulated" is not nutritionally relevant. "High in [whatever]" _is_ nutritionally relevant, but it's a completely different metric from "processing level".

I'm very dubious about the scientific basis for defining a cohesive "UPF" category and asserting its unhealthiness; dig deep into rhetoric about it and it's mostly naturalistic fallacy and moral scolds against people who don't cook.

Toad sits glumly on his bed while Frog looks on. From "Tomorrow" In *Days with Frog and Toad*

Toad sat on the edge of his bed. “Blah,” said Toad. “I feel down in the dumps.”

“Why?” asked Frog.

“I am thinking about tomorrow,” said Toad.

about repentance as a process (repeating the OR&R shoutout above, here), it's clear that's something I have, til now, avoided doing. What I have said above might not be enough. It might not be fully right. But it's better than what I have done so far.

I'm focusing mostly on individual repair; becoming someone who would not do those things. Therapy is part of that, and medication. And honest self-reflection, which has had me turning over this misbehavior for decades now. But public acknowledgment is part of the process, and as I learn more

Unsurprisingly, those closest to this matter would just as soon never interact with me again, and I wouldn't try for any sort of personal act of forgiveness unless doing so seems like it would do more good than harm (which at present it seems it would not).

This is fundamentally an objectification of others --- interpreting their own agency and autonomy as an offense against my privilege rather than as their right. Letting it become a rage which persists for months is emotional abuse both of the target of the grievance, and of others subjected to me.

So, it's 23 years ago. I have a tendency to dig in on an emotional state, and a modest (and mistaken) sense of having been treated badly balloons into a personal and persistent notion of having legitimate grievance and rage.

(I still haven't finished @theradr.bsky.social's excellent On Repair And Repentance, but the Day of Repentance does not wait for my convenience. If my contrition is inappropriately done, it's hopefully harmlessly so, and the necessary amendments and improvements can come when I am able to do so.)

As these are sins against others, I'm not going to get so particular on details as to call attention to them against their will, but hopefully particular enough to earnestly acknowledge publicly my faults, contextualize the real changes I have made, and express appropriate remorse.

It is time for a self-accounting, and it is always, I fear, rife with potential pain and ugliness. Like most folks, I have done less, and done worse in many respects over my life than I wished, but repentance requires focus, and I'm going to focus on particular sins.

Yeah, the focus on physical fitness is telling. Yes, it's useful in an actual deployment, but mostly for unloading stuff from trucks and assembling shelters and digging latrines and suchlike unsexy (but important!) logistics activities. Actual out-and-out melee brawls with enemy combatants are rare.

when a new writer joins your fanfic board and they have _opinions_

In this theory, he's authentically eager to comprehend how, say, Sam Alito is a bastion of liberalism, and it's only when he hears his subject saying, "well, I like Kissinger because he's so receptive to my Star Wars fanfic" that he realizes that he is, in fact, talking to a very stupid person.

Then he crafts questions to help them illuminate their internal tension, and his subjects, who have never _read_ a Chotiner interview, promptly step on their own dicks.

Note: This theory makes Chotiner himself a tragic figure, seeking beautiful humanity and finding only stupidity and hypocrisy.

My fan-theory: Isaac Chotiner never goes into an interview intending to make his subject look foolish. He sees fascinating contradictions in people of apparent intelligence, and says, "ah, what an opportunity for my, my audience, and my subject to better understand human complexity!"

Eh, if Krissy's cool, why should the rest of us care?

Irrational demand for the day: a cover by Mongolian tribal-rock group The HU of German 70s disco group Dschinghis Khan's eponymous hit. They can translate the lyrics and change the more egregiously ahistorical bits, as long as it's recognizably the same song.