My 90 year old mom has been getting into World Cup this time around. Knows absolutely nothing about soccer. Very first game she was all "why are they rolling around on the ground like that? Nobody touched them."

was distracted enough to not reign-in Raban until it was too late

His whole plan was to let Raban be a monstrous asshole and then replace him with Feyd-Rautha who would be slightly less of an asshole so that the people would love him. He wasn't distracted at all.

We'll see if the Trump-Vance arc mirrors this.

Whatever you do, don't read Guns, Germs and Steel. It's just fucking nonsense.

Mann's follow-up book 1493 is equally good.

Actually, they did. The clones were all written for cable companies and ISPs and offered to their customers as a free perk. These companies promoted the shit out of them and still nobody ever used them.

I even "starred" in one of these ads. I had the amusing role of being amazed that I could make a phone call with the app ... when the app was running on a fucking iPhone.

Best I can do is the drunk doctor at urgent care.

We're also #1 in per capita health care spending, and it's #1 by a lot -- literally twice as much as any other country. This goes fantastically well with that "worst in the developed world in healthcare outcomes" bit.

I was in an online meeting years ago when a formation of F-16s flew over my house at 500 feet. Ain't no cancelling that noise. That was a good day.

I think I used it to manage my parents' computers remotely so I could fix shit for them during their winters in Florida. Maybe I'm thinking of something else, though.

I also liked Skype, even though I spent five years of my career writing Skype clones that absolutely nobody used.

Leaving aside the issue of credit rating and focusing just on the cost of home ownership, a house costs a lot more than just the mortgage payment. I bought my house for $142K and it had previously been renting for $1300 a month. My property taxes plus homeowner's insurance alone come to $400 a month, so if I had a $900 per month mortgage I'd be at $1300 a month minimum, before considering the cost of maintenance and repairs and upgrades and whatnot.

Nuts in the wind, all we are is nuts in the wind.