My partner and I have a theory that MacFarlane pitched The Orville as “Family Guy in space,” and he got to make it because of his success with Family Guy. But the actual goal he had all along was to make Star Trek.

In order to keep the game up and get a second season, he had to sell the pitch at least a bit. So the early episodes are like Star Trek with cringey Family Guy-esque jokes. But as the series goes on, the cringe stops, the jokes slow down, and the plots get deeper.

I can’t stand cringe humor and did not consider myself a fan of MacFarlane, but The Orville changed that.

I have a new 6-month-old kitten. She’s shown interest in the toilet. Last night I discovered what she’s been so interested in. Warning: the following story is equally disgusting and hilarious.

We use flushable litter, so after using the toilet, I scoop litter then flush it all together. After scooping, I caught her with both paws in the toilet and chased her out. She managed to get a little bit of her target, the toilet paper!!!, away with her. So she could EAT IT.

I was laughing and shouting in shock and horror so loudly my partner came to check on us.

After cleaning her up, as I continue getting ready for bed, she went back to the toilet to bat at the water. I pulled her off then took one square of TP to wipe the seat off where she left a couple drops and threw it in the toilet. She immediately grabbed the square of TP (from a thankfully otherwise empty toilet bowl) and ran away with her prize, carrying it like a proud huntress. I had to chase her around the bedroom to get it back and clean her paws again.

So yeah, she’s going to train me to always leave the lid closed because of my disgusting but adorable pet.

I’ve also seen the concept of weighted cars on tracks that move uphill during the day then fall at night. (Probably a horrible description but that’s the best my brain can do right now.)

Thank you for taking the time to read it! The metaphor gives us a simple way to convey a big, difficult concept.

My partner and I both deal with chronic physical issues and mental issues. A common question is, “How many spoons do you have for dinner?” And it opens the door to discuss things like I might have (physical) spoons to cook, but I don’t have (mental/social) spoons to go out to get something. It still feels like a chore to figure out dinner, but it’s at least easier to talk about. (Oh, and meal prepping or cooking a large meal for a week will typically use up all my spoons for a day and sometimes more, so as nice as it would be to only need to think about it once, I just don’t have the physical capacity to do that kind of prep.)

I also work for a large corpo org here, but instead of “DEI” we have “Belonging.” Under that label we have a council that informs and recommends things to our senior leadership, groups which offer support and community (LGBTQ+, Latinx, women, etc.), and provides learning resources. Overall I’m proud of the work we do. (I’m also proud of the two of people I’ve hired internally who were chairs in Belonging groups at some point!)

A couple months ago at a large event, someone asked if we’d be getting rid of DEI. Our Chief People Officer was able to say something to the effect of, “We’ve never had a DEI program but we are committed to continuing our Belonging practices.”

So basically we’re not backtracking on anything, and we have pretty good DEI, but because we never used the term “DEI” she was able to deflect the challenge to it. I never thought about it before that happened, but it made me wonder if it was an intentional choice to avoid the buzzword and so some of the criticism that comes of it.

Anyway, cheers to you also having a safe place of work!

I got my membership as a 20-something living alone and have never regretted it. Purchasing contact solution alone made up the cost of the membership! Then if I got gas there a couple times a year I was definitely saving.

The one thing I dislike about Costco is that I have to psyche myself up to go. I hate shopping in general because it uses up a lot of spoons for me, and Costco tends to take even more. It’s usually crowded, there’s so much stuff that I typically want to wander, and then everything I buy is huge so loading up the car can be a pain. By the end my back hurts, I’m tired, and I’m sick of people.

And yet I still haven’t even considered giving up my membership in over 10 years.

The statement was 1% of the US population is watching it on any given night. Some quick searching I found the most-watched cable news show is The Five from Fox News with 3.57M viewership.

335M people in the US, so that number is actually a bit greater than 1% of the entire US population.

• 36% of eligible voters didn’t vote last year(I know this is not equally representative across all ages but I’m trying to keep it back-of-napkin)
• 60+ accounts for 24% of the population (80M people)

335M * 24% * 64% = 51.5M

If the all their viewers are >60, then about 7% of all >60 people who care about politics could be watching that one Fox News show.

That’s not quite 2/5, but it’s still significant! And again, that accounts for only 1 show’s viewership. I couldn’t find easy numbers for how many people watch Fox News in a given day or week.

Sorry, you probably don’t care but your comment made me curious.

There was literally an executive order on it yesterday. Link

TL;DR: he’s ordered Denali to be renamed back to Mount McKinley and Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

Sadly not The Onion.

Kansas City airport also has this!

Gotcha. Thanks for providing the additional detail! It is comforting to learn why it’s unlikely this could affect ad block.

You’re looking at it from an end user perspective. “I want it to do this, so it’s ok” for an ad blocker, but “I didn’t know it was doing this so it’s bad” for Honey.

But the LE/GN cases are that Honey changed URLs and cost them the sale revenue, no? That’s not the end user experience. Seems like that could easily be pivoted to a website who claims lost revenue was stolen from them because ad blockers are manipulating their site/URLs, end users’ desires be damned.

I am wondering too, and I’m kind of worried it’s an awful spelling of Zoë?

It’s been a while but I think it was some of the individual prose that seemed more like Gaiman, mostly like scene setting/ambiance. I only noticed in on a reread I did shortly after reading one of Gaiman’s. On the other hand, all of the memorable stuff like characters, plot, and humor were all very typical Pratchett.

GNU Terry Pratchett <3

Better resumes are good, but there are plenty of studies showing bias towards the name alone on a resume and that a white-sounding name gets more bites than names more associated with a minority race.

People have biases, conscious or not. Did you know that women’s positions in orchestras increased greatly after switching to blind auditions? And I can’t find a legit source in 2 min of searching, but there’s also been indication that the sound of high heels affects hiring outcomes even in blind auditions.

Example studies on names and hiring outcomes: 2004, 2023, 2024 (even the “best” companies still showed a 3% bias towards white candidates vs 24% for the worst), 2016

So yeah, there are a fuckton of steps to addressing systemic racism and starting early in the process is a critical step. But the narrative that an equivalent resume is all that’s needed to close the gap is false and dangerous.

How pickles are made

Blueberries

I was kinda hoping to see blueberry pickles.

My partner and I are right there with you. Could never understand why so many people were so enamored. I tried really hard to like his writing, and there were a few that were ok, and some had a neat concept, but that was the best I could dredge up to say about them.

I doubt I was subconsciously seeing something in them, but I do think there’s a stylistic thing that never resonated with me. And now I’m glad. I am grateful to not feel the grief of losing an artist who meant something to me.

Yeah, that’s occurred to me as well. For context I haven’t brought myself to read the specifics yet, so I don’t know all the details. I don’t like to comment when I’ve only read the title, but I’ve seen enough trigger warnings to put this one off until I’m ready.

Side story: I have a number of dear friends who were huge Gaiman fans, so I tried to be one too. And I just could not. I could hardly get through most of his books. I liked the concept of American Gods but didn’t care for the story and Neverwhere was ok, but I didn’t see what my friends kept going on about.

Then I read Good Omens and loved it. Finally! I was enjoying Gaiman.

Years later, my now-partner introduced me to Discworld. Then I reread Good Omens and realized that everything I enjoyed so much in it almost certainly came from Pratchett, not Gaiman. When you know some of each’s writing, some parts start to stand out as one or the other. And I have no doubt what made that book so great (to me, at least) was Sir Terry’s influence.

Is it awful that a part of me is glad Terry Pratchett is gone and doesn’t have to face this about someone who was a friend and co-writer?

Given how progressive Pratchett’s stories were I would have a hard time believing he was a bad person or could support bad people, and I imagine this would be hard on him. Then again perhaps I’m just selfishly glad that I don’t have to know if he didn’t respond appropriately by distancing himself.

Don’t know if I’m even making sense. This is just so disheartening given how many people I know absolutely loved Gaiman.

Why did “Eye of the Tiger” immediately start playing in my head when I saw this?