Aaron van Dorn

My father was a manager at a McDonald's for a while when I was a kid, specifically when McDonald's gave out Beanie Babies with Happy Meals. They gave the whole staff "I Survived Beanie Babies" T-shirts afterwards.

it’s not just true generally, in a long-term sense, it’s also specifically true *right now*. a hell of a lot of what trump has done in this second term can be easily rescinded or overruled by congress, but congressional republicans refuse to do so because they either agree or don’t care.

The conductor on the MARC train usually get always walks through the car and says "Tickets, please" without stopping and then never comes back.

I dunno, you seem to care tbh

The crowd is silent, hands over their hearts, eyes gazing reverently at the ceiling of the arena as "Codified" is lifted up into the rafters to join "Neoliberal," "Centerist," "Emotional Labor," and the others.

If you need someone to hold your hand and wrap you in a flannel blanket warmed by the fire before someone can tell you why you're wrong, perhaps you don't belong on the Internet arguing with strangers.

Criticizing the views of people who are incorrect but have feelings is bad and I should feel bad about doing it is something I've been told multiple times on Bluesky and I'm bo closer to understanding what exactly I'm supposed to do with that insight.

If you have fewer than 100 followers/follows and our first interaction is snide, that's a one way trip to a block.

[Being forced to perform a land acknowledgement as I walk into an Old Navy] Please I just want a pair of chinos

"Memento mori" for the dumbest and most self-satisfied people on the internet.

The thing about dooming is that entropy is a thing so you're always right or not yet proven right and that's a dumb and exhausting way to live your life.

The public has thought that crime was at an all time high for the last thirty years all evidence and experience to the contrary! And none of them are actually *acting* like the things they claim to believe are true are true. I have no idea what you do with that.

I also worry about that, but I also kinda think this is all just going to get a big "This was a whole Trump thing" that not anyone else is going to be able to weaponize as easily. It's all built on sand.

Yeah, I don't like any of this, but I also think we need to be realistic that so far all that's happened as far as I can tell is that one guy was briefly detained for crossing a cordon and some guardsmen played minders for ICE goons, right?

Getting a table at Phillips.

The direct to camera, "this is just between us" style of Tiktok videos is so completely foreign to my nature but also seems to just completely unlock people's cerebral cortex.

Where would they even go? DC is a *city* in a way Baltimore isn't. Are they just going to stand around in Mount Vernon? Are they going to walk around Sowebo and Edmondson? Just along Monument Avenue? I don't even know what that would look like.

That's a lot of CDs!

"Pensive" is a weird word choice

I saw a lowered F-150 this weekend. We need to get right with the lord.

a woman in a red dress is sitting in a bar Alt: a woman in a red dress is sitting in a bar

"Room for one more?"

Trying and failing to imagine Toru Takemitsu and Fela Kuti jamming.

Why? Why would people watch this?

I'll leave that to Wendy, but it does, in fact, rule.

Someday they'll have to deal with Jake Cardigan and the devastation that tek has wrought on the streets. But that day is not today.

Campanelle is an s-tier pasta shape

My son keeps begging me, "Papa, papa, please let me read read the classic 'Lensmen' series by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, the forerunner of both 'Star Wars' and 'Green Lantern,'" and I keep telling him, "You finish Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' first and then we'll talk, mister."

Piers Anthony is the only acceptable entryway to genre fiction, and anyone who tells you different is a Fake Fan.