Ran into this on my subscriptions. Boyle is great.

I’ve been somewhat baffled by some of your posts as well.

But claiming that “dive bar” is a niche term is disingenuous.

This is definitely one of those “the longer you look, the worse it gets” things.

At lower right, we apparently have a real-world option to turn off that damn noise. Moving slightly up, at the top of what appears to be a pneumatic lift towering to six inches are marshmallows or ice cubes. Both are an issue as they are known for not being pink.

We have avocado-shaped markings on these … what are they, anyway? The one on the left literally has a pig snout and ears, plus something from Tron designed for a dog.

To the right? The ultimate symbol of depravity (one notes Macavity wasn’t there). This is a rat who isn’t just evil (red … thing) but also poorly stroked. Can you imagine going through life with one or two points of white outline on your body?

Rats, as we know, famously enjoy caviar, hence our friend at the counter both speaking and thinking about red spheres.

We have found a new use for a dashed yellow arrow!

Like turtle carcasses in the sewer lines, these are the days of our lives.

I expect to see waves of Dolly Parton-related layoffs in the coming months.

Great. Relevance to the topic at hand?

Going to Faux News for science is … a choice. Also, jesus christ, kids these days and the luxury of having the space to replace “glaucoma” with “eye disease that can cause irreversible vision loss.”

We all fucking know what glaucoma is. This isn’t some 2026 development that’s flown under the radar.

I also have no idea what this has to do with technology.

Anyway, for those interested in the paper, it’s here.

I prefer buying my music by the track at a reasonable price, having a couple of backups and not paying monthly.

I mean, if you’ve got 15 grand to burn, I can promise to never ask you to go SCUBA diving.

Fucking hell. Really?

Also, a pox on any hed writer that goes with “Goodbye, Dolly!”

Yeah, and I’m going to urinate ahead of death. At least, I hope so.

Point being, the hed is a cheque the threadbare story can’t cash. There’s no causality. “Apple lays off staffers ahead of heat death of universe” also works. In the latter case, no reasonable person would see entropy at fault.

When I got to Oregon in 2003, Dead Indian Road had just been renamed to Dead Indian Memorial Road, which literally no one ever said. ODOT put up some new signs, and that was that.

I was thinking of what I wanted for breakfast.

The Texas cities are an AP Style aneurysm.

Welcome back, otter!

(This is not my hed, but rather one from The Taos News. Shout out to Marilyn!)

Little Pentagonal Bowl sounds like a band name.

If you have to ask if something is satire, then if it is, it’s done its job; if it isn’t, it’s propaganda.

I’m in my late 40s, and Casablanca was always on my radar, but it wasn’t something I sought out until I ran into a reference last night and thought “maybe I should finally fucking watch this.”

The movie was far better than I was expecting. The writing is tight, the cinematography excellent, and the acting top-notch. I can easily see why it is the movie everything started referencing.

But at this point, damn near every scene has been redone either as homage or satire, making the original seem oddly like the joke itself.

Seriously. Give it a rewatch and try to turn off the voice that says “Oh, they did that in …”

I was hoping using variations of “thing” thrice in two sentences would indicate the tenor. It did not.

Fascinating read. Thanks for the link!

My experience with diamonds is limited. I grew up in the '80s, so I of course remember the ubiquitous DeBeers ads with everything in silhouette except the ring.

By the time engagement sauntered my way for the first time, it was totally unplanned. My girlfriend had moved in after the end of the academic year, though functionally living with me for months before that (turns out the dorms suck as a freshman at 21), and one Saturday morning in September, I took a shower and on returning to the bedroom asked if we were headed toward marriage.

“I guess so.”

“Does that mean we’re engaged?”

“I suppose it does.”

So we decided apparently the order of the day is finding engagement rings. Both of us being oblivious to fashion, we set out on this journey with bleached hair of the same length, matching shirts and matching pants.

“Oh, twins!” someone remarked passing us on the street downtown.

Now, don’t get me wrong, at this point, we’re both giddy. We’d not so much ever discussed marriage, and neither of us was big on the institution, and yet, here we are.

First off, jewelry stores find this to be an odd situation. “We’re looking for each others’ engagement rings” was weird in 2005, I guess. The first two places we went were keen on … things neither of us was. They also found our target spend pedestrian, and explaining these were mere engagement rings and that the real money comes for the wedding rings didn’t improve matters.

This being a city of 20,000, options were limited, but we found success at the third place. This one wasn’t just a jewelry store; the guy actually was a jeweler and had a selection available but preferred doing custom pieces.

In the end, I got her a silver bypass ring with a negligible diamond off the shelf, and she got me a simple white gold band that he assured us he could add to for the wedding ring.

We were both very happy with what we picked up a week later, with hers needing to be resized and mine needing to be made.

Obviously, some phone calls happened the evening of the engagement, and my mom was a bit miffed that she only learned after the fact, despite assuring her I’d not, myself, woken up that morning thinking I’d discuss getting married.

But the net result was she offered me her engagement and wedding rings to use for the one I would design. Three diamonds were included in this, with the largest having been appraised at $7,900. I turned the smaller two into earrings and then went with a bypass solitaire. After we’d moved to another town (yay, newspapers!), we went into a jeweler and asked what we could get for the ring as a whole, gold and stone, and were told about $3,000.

It’s a racket.

(also, no diamonds were involved in my second wedding … a welded cone-spiked 1/2" stainless-steel collar is also forever)