Today, in TV watching with my mother:

[conuly]

I knew the guy who plays Detective Ryan on Castle was attractive, but I didn't realize he was smart too! Yet another game show, and boy, he trounced the opposition there with his trivia knowledge.

Also, in other shows: Admitting you voted for Trump is a good way to get voted off if it's one of those shows where your teammates vote you off. Better to claim you didn't vote at all, no matter how you voted. Never know what the other guys think! But meh, he didn't even understand the questions half the time.

********************

Board games get messy with squirting toilets, soggy dogs

Riding a Time Capsule to Apartment 8G

Smør Bullar: The Classic Danish Christmas Cookie No One Has Heard Of

Santa’s Adventures in Science Fiction

In World War II America, Female Santas Took the Reins

The Forgotten Houdini

Being Different Helped A NASA Roboticist Achieve Her Dream (Video)

Mice help find gene for bad breath (Quick, give them more funding!)

The Ancient Greeks Created Golden Passports to Paradise

Human societies evolve along similar paths

Can This Man Build a Better Bitcoin?

Inside the world of a Kenyan cryptocurrency miner

Bitcoin: New Financial System or Same Old Boys' Club?

A new kind of spiral wave embraces disorder

Could A Zap To The Brain Derail Destructive Impulses?

6 Utterly Terrifying Unsolved Mysteries No One Can Explain

The harmonics of 'entitlement'

Exercise, pills, brain training show little hard evidence of slowing dementia

The Heroes of Burial Road

Men and Women Don't Agree on What Sexual Harassment Is

Australia's escalating addiction to gambling

What is positive train control, and could it have prevented the Amtrak crash?

US outnumbered 14 to 1 as it vetoes UN vote on status of Jerusalem

Tax bill whacks liberal big cities

Trump Doesn't Seem to Buy His Own National Security Strategy

Why Trump Continues To Forge An Unlikely Bond With Religious Conservatives

This Evangelical Leader Denounced Trump. Then the Death Threats Started.

America still hasn't reckoned with the election of a reckless con man as president

The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment

What (if Anything) Does Carter Page Know?

Boom! Eric Holder Fires Warning Shot to Republicans Undermining Mueller Investigation

In Yemen, the markets have food, but children are starving to death

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I like the messy board games story. Yes, kids do like things like that. Anything gross or quasi-nasty is hysterical to them.

The roboticist is cool.

The terrifying mysteries? Just weird.

[conuly]

Though I want to suggest to the quoted mom that it isn't an either/or between this and Candyland. There are fun games that aren't hilariously gross (or at least aren't literally making your house a mess).

[zesty_pinto]

I always felt like a lot of these "messy" board games were meant to be played outside. I'm surprised that it didn't include "Gooey Louie" or that one where you made a dog biscuit out of playdoh and feed it to this dog to see how many turns you have before a turd comes out. That one always intrigued me.

Adding to the bitcoin outrage, I'm glad the Fortune article lightly broached an equally important stance that Bitcoin lost every single point about what it was supposed to represent.

I also caught up on this Neovatara editorial that I think really hit home for me with regards to the conservative phenomena of supporting Trump: that if they don't stay, the GOP themselves slowly twists and destroys itself further in the process. It reminds me a lot of the very countries that suffered from a severe brain and economic drain as all their skilled and wealthy citizens fled the country (e.g. Iran, Afghanistan, etc.) and the author acknowledges that that's the only way to go at this rate for him.

“Trump won because of racial resentment”

[nodrog]

That's not wrong, no, but “racial resentment” was only one facet of something much larger, and that much larger issue is what put him in office.

It's also what maintains his support, despite - as one pundit put it - the widespread indications that his presidency is a disaster:  For all that, it's still far, far better than the alternative would have been.

[Did you notice, during their debates, one loose thread that was left out - one camera caught Hillary's hidden cheat-screen turning off as she stepped away from her podium.  It's now openly admitted (and stiffly ignored) that she rigged the primary - first Obama, now Bernie, coming to take away her ‘entitlement’ to the nomination?  “Oh no you don't:  Fool me twice, shame on me…”]

       


Trump may be something of a clod, but he's not a conniving, corrupt crook second only to LBJ and maybe more so.

[dragonyphoenix]

Hee, Santa!

There's also Harlan Ellison's short story, Santa Claus vs S.P.I.D.E.R where Santa is a James Bondy type spy.

And Santa Claus vs the Martians where Pia Zadora played a hipster.

[conuly]

IS THAT STORY AVAILABLE ONLINE OR DO I HAVE TO PAY $$$ FOR IT?

[nodrog]

So far I'm only finding references to it, tho' this is a good article in its own right:

[update:]

- which turned out to be the very same @#%!! article you linked to, so never mind…

(Great thinks mind alike.)

[conuly]

Geez.

[nodrog]

Well, to be fair, the article was reprinted several times; yours was 2017, mine was 2012.  Same article, tho'.

[dragonyphoenix]

It looks like the story is available in Ellison's collection The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. My library carries it which means if yours doesn't you could get it through interlibrary loan.

[conuly]

Thanks.

[nodrog]

“No war toys to you, too.”  A demented, brilliant piece of work.

[dragonyphoenix]

*grin*

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I never heard them called 'Smør Bullar', but I ate a zillion of them as a child. One of the main perks of growing up Lutheran is coffee and cookies after the church service, because old Scandinavian ladies compete by trying to out-bake each other, and boy howdy, they make some amazing cookies.