That whole aesthetic is cassette futurism, as distinct from the glass touchscreens of Star Trek TNG.

The definitive greebled cube.

“No, that wasn’t a metaphor! The Bible is literal truth!”

“What about ‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me,’ or ‘But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,’ or ‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.’?”

“Those parts were metaphorical!”

Psychology furiously staring from the corner but afraid to speak lest it be made to sit at the folding table with Astrology and Tarot readings.

Electronic countertop scale for the kitchen. Start cooking by mass rather than trying to decide if that’s a half a cup packed or unpacked.

If you regularly store things in jars, a canning funnel. So much easier to pour sauces into jars without spillage.

Bone conduction headphones. Listen to music or talk on the phone hands-free while still leaving your ears open to what’s going on around you.

If you’ve got sore muscles, a percussive massage gun. It looks like a horse vibrator, but it does wonders on a sore back.

A warhammer. Don’t get a sword unless you are actually trained and know how to use and maintain it. A warhammer isn’t going to get bent, chipped, or rusty, and even if it does, it’s still a warhammer and will still smash things just fine. Don’t smash melons or coconuts unless you’re prepared for the biological mess that will get left behind; smash blocks of ice frozen inside of old yogurt tubs instead. Wear goggles.

The podcast “You Made It Weird,” with Pete Holmes is great. He has a lot of smart and funny people on, and the pattern is usually to start with “What’s going on with you? What are you working on? What makes you laugh?” for the first two thirds of a given episode, and then the last third is stuff like “Do you believe there is a purpose to life? Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever tried psychedelics?” Pete is clearly on his own spiritual journey and has a lot of heavy stuff to talk about and share, and he makes for a great conversation.

Two highlights were when Reggie Watts talked about going on a trip in a bathroom where he traveled to a parallel universe and met with a sentient planet, and when Judd Apatow talked about how ayahuasca brought him into a meeting with the embodiment of his childhood self.

I don’t necessarily want to get into psychedelics, but it’s a very interesting topic of conversation, if the person is smart enough to ask and answer intelligent questions.

God, smiting dinosaurs one by one: “This is taking forever! There’s got to be a better way…”

Cyber women.

I want to see it all fluffed up for winter.

Also they shouldn’t have called the category of “things that aren’t planets despite being in some ways planet-like” “dwarf planet,” they should have called them “planetoids.” Star Trek had been referring to small planet-like objects as planetoids for decades, so the work in the popular consciousness had already been done. Dwarf planet not being a planet makes it sound like they’re saying dwarf people don’t count as people, and I don’t care for that at all.

Pfft

Man, fuck wild parsnip.

Can one trademark a brand and then announce that it is immediately public domain so that no one else can ever trademark it? Someone should trademark No Buy Stuff or some such phrase and do that.

Well, now I want to know if there’s a regular schedule to the Jupiter-Sun barycenter being in or outside of the Sun, and how we can schedule holidays around it.

“Foxes getting married”

I talked to a guy who had a master’s degree in philosophy. He told me he worked for an investment firm.

Me: What do you do there, convince investment bankers not to kill themselves?

Him: Yeah, pretty much.

Me: 😳

Alexandra Daddario in the AMC show The Mayfair Witches.

She ostensibly plays a brilliant brain surgeon. She starts experiencing some spooky witch and demon-related goings on.

She meets up with a guy working for a paranormal research group. He tells her in no uncertain terms “Do not leave this magically-protected apartment. You are in great danger.” She agrees.

Five minutes later she walks out of the apartment onto the street. She immediately wanders into a New Orleans street party, is handed an open drink from a stranger, drinks it, and whoopsy daisy gets magically roofied into a demon-engineered hallucination of her dead mother.

Brilliant. Brain. Surgeon.

“Mr. Franklin, of what use is this hot air balloon contraption?”

“You can take ladies up in it with a bottle of wine and a blanket and you know, they can’t refuse, because of the implication. Think about it. She’s floating up in the middle of the sky with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around, and what does she see? Nothing but open air. 'Ahhhh! There’s nowhere for me to run. What am I gonna do, say ‘no?’”