“Getting to the facts can be difficult, but it’s always the right thing to do. Except when it isn’t.”
Act 3 argues what I’ve been saying for years about “UFOs” and life from other planets.
Direct link to the podcast in the This American Life archive.
Related: Metabunk
Marc talks with Abigail about her social awakening earlier in life and her current roles as an activist, philanthropist and filmmaker. They also discuss her new documentary, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, about the unequal economy as exemplified by the corporation that bears her name.
A terrific conversation that may light a fire under one’s ass.
Direct link to this episode in the WTF with Marc Maron archive.
Weekends are weirdly abstract when your work shift is Sunday through Thursday, 9:30 p.m. to 6:15 a.m. as has been my experience since June. This particular weekend is no exception. I pretty much slept all of Friday, got out of bed, watched Real Time with Bill Maher, then went back to bed. I woke up about 6 a.m. Saturday and played with the cat. There are a few errands that might get done today and hopefully a lunch with Dad / phone call with Mom.
I wanted to mention that if you watch the television program The Good Fight and you’re enough of a fan to want to discuss the show online, there is a Facebook group for that. Unlike many Facebook groups, this bunch of fans seem to generate some smart discussion.
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. There might be some uh, spoilers.
Season 6 is two episodes in on its Paramount+ platform. It’s been a weird ride. They seem to be going for a disconnected vibe that flirts with feeling like the dream sequence from season 4, but there’s been no reveal, so it’s not a dream. As I posted in Fans of the Good Fight on Facebook:
I have not been in on the current season yet. The premiere did not fish me in so much. Ask me when I got fished in by the current season. Just ask me.
Christine Baranski on an elevator holding a sunflower singing from West Side Story.
I’m in.
So they’re doing something interesting on the show. There are protests in the streets all around, and some of the protesters are tossing fake grenades into the elevators. The first time this happens is episode 1, and all who are on the elevator react as one would expect. By episode 2, Eli Gold grabs the thing and hands it to the receptionist without any sense of danger, so these things are becoming quite normal. The grenades all have a message printed warning of escalated protests on 11/10.
Why 11/10? I think this can be explained in a seemingly unremarkable conversation in episode 2 between Diane Lockhart and Eli Gold. As I posted in the Facebook group:
It is interesting that the show is taking part in real time, apparently. In episode 2, Diane asks Eli what the date is, and Eli responds that it is September 15, which is the date episode 2 originally aired. November 10 is a Thursday, which means that episode will be available for streaming on the real November 10. Whatever they have in store for us, it’s probably going to happen in episode 10.
Noting also that November 10 is two days after Election Day. I think they might be setting us up for an art-imitates-life moment on The Good Fight.
So. This happened.
Preaching from a Bible verse, Lauren Boebert got stumped by the meaning of “wanton killing” and pronounced “wanton” like wonton, the Chinese dumpling:
“I don’t know what a [wonton] killing is. I’m going to have to look that one up, but it sounds interesting.” #WontonKilling pic.twitter.com/xwXxSIMbjO
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) September 13, 2022
This person is a member of the House of Representatives.
I will offer my unsolicited advice at the beginning to save you some time: If your early-2015 era MacBook starts throwing errors and restarting and you take it to the Genius Bar and they wipe the drive to fix the problem, and you take it home and set it up again and you keep seeing the errors and the restarting, do not throw up your hands and give up and go and order a new MacBook Air.
Keep running your machine. Keep restarting. Keep seeing the errors. Push the thing for a while. It may require this before the issue is fixed, and apparently, the geniuses at the Genius Bar do not tell you this.
That’s the kind of month I’ve been having. Spending every Saturday for the last three Saturdays milling around in the Eastview Apple store, the first Saturday they wiped the drive completely only to see the problems continue; the second Saturday to be told that the logic board, which is essentially a Mac’s motherboard but Apple has to name everything differently, and the third Saturday to order a new MacBook Air.
So last night, I got out my vintage machine and fired it up to collect some information for trade-in. I’d been running it on and off throughout this whole process. So I left the Mac running while doing my “day job.” And the thing has been running ever since. No errors. No restarting. I’m typing on it right now.
So by way of explanation: The reason they wiped data to try to resolve the issue is because they assume that some third-party app is running a process that is interfering with the computer’s boot-up. Wiping the data, including all third-party apps, is thought to cease the harmful process.
But wiping the offending app apparently didn’t stop the process from running. It needed to run its course before it stopped. So I experienced the errors after the alleged fix. And now, I’m not. One would think the geniuses at the Genius Bar would inform its customers.
Looks like I’m about to cancel a MacBook Air order and save myself a couple thousand dollars.