There are lots of reasons for women to keep their maiden name. In the case of my wife, she had two good ones:

1. She didn’t want to become disassociated from her scientific publications.

2. She didn’t want to complicate or redo any immigration paperwork.

That I will never enjoy the taste of wine.

I figured out I would never like coffee in my teens, and had the same realization about beer in my 20s.

But it wasn’t until this year, in my mid-thirties, that I finally accepted that I don’t like the taste of wine and probably never will. After years of trying the full spectrum of wines, I had to admit that it wasn’t the “notes” that were turning me off, nor was it a problem with the quality of the wine. It was the fundamental “wine-ness” that I disliked, the same as I don’t like the “beer-ness” of beer or the “coffee-ness” of coffee.

Anti-bullying policies at schools aren’t meant to protect victims. But they aren’t meant to protect perpetrators either.

They are instead meant to protect the school administration, notably from having to actually assign fault in bullying situations. They can simply say “zero tolerance,” punish all parties equally, and wash their hands of it.

It really wants me to host a webinar. I get a pop-up every day telling me about how great this function supposedly is. You’d think there was a VC generative AI project attached to it with how hard it’s being pushed.

I think that was Kent Hovind, not Ken Ham.

A Canadian airline being complete trash, what else is new.

And this is Porter, which in my experience is at least somewhat better than Air Canada.

They are mostly a toy store now. Last time I visited a GameStop I was told they don’t even stock new games at release, except for pre-orders. There doesn’t seem to be a point in going there anymore.

Nah, just the sad message of “Pretty please love me (because we sunk a bunch of money into this).”

Connections Puzzle #445
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One of the things I initially liked about Pixels was that I could uninstall/disable a lot of the proprietary garbage that would be mandatory on other phones. But now it looks like Google is abandoning that flexibility in favour of shoehorning Gemini into everything.

My only interaction with Gemini so far was telling it to kick rocks when it sent me an unsolicited text message. I also barely use Assistant to begin with. So once my current phone dies, I guess I’ll have to find something new.

While jarring and ad hoc, I didn’t think BSG’s finale was catastrophic. I honestly disliked the transition from S2 to S3 more than I disliked the ending.

Here’s the story.

The actual monetary loss to Air Canada (known affectionately as Fuckstick Flights Inc.) was insignificant, but the PR was bad.

Then again, I can’t remember the last time AC had positive press. Before that they forced a guy with cerebral palsy to drag himself off the plane.

Wordle 1,162 3/6*

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I changed up my starter word and it paid off.

I phrase my dislike of dogs differently: I do not care for 99.9% of dogs. If a (human) friend has a dog, I will dutifully engage with it on a limited basis. I may even enjoy myself a bit, too.

But a random person walking their dog in the park? Please keep it away from me. I don’t care how much of a “good boy” you think your pup is, I don’t know or trust them.

Furthermore, there is an option to destroy the special “gift” if you can resist accepting it. However, all you get for doing so is a few brief lines from the Emperor. Your companions don’t seem to notice, and there isn’t even an quest log update.

Anxious Times by The Luka State or Hardship to Sail by Excuses Excuses.

So say we all.

I’ll fully admit to being completely ignorant about voting the first time I did it. I was politically disengaged for moody teenager reasons, but my parents forced me to go to the polling station anyway. I didn’t care to vote for any of the candidates, but was also worried that I would get in trouble if I spoiled my ballot because I hadn’t paid attention in civics (again, for moody teenager reasons).

I’m just getting to the end of reading Orconomics, and it had a somewhat novel take on this. Basically, elves live so long that their entire personality can change century over century because they meet, and subsequently outlive, so many new people.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for almost three decades and I think almost all Disney Star Wars is “fine” at worst. Even most of the things I didn’t like had some sort of redeeming qualities, or I could recognize that I wasn’t the target audience. The only thing I truly hated was Rise of the Skywalker, which is quite possibly my least favourite Star Wars thing ever.

I realize this puts me in the very small minority among Star Wars fans, and it’s the reason I tend to avoid fan discussions these days - the relentless negativity is exhausting and leaves little room for discussing the things about Disney Star Wars I find good and/or interesting.