It’s more complicated than that. Black people started moving out of Oakland in the 1990s, not so much because of Brooklyn-style gentrification, but because we were in the middle of a vicious drug war (almost 200 homicides a year in the early ‘90s), we had a mediocre public school system, and lots of cheap new housing…

Oh, like someone has never tried to pawn you off with a Zabar or some Oompa Loompas when you know damn well there’s a Toblerone bar on the top shelf behind the Thanksgiving plates.

See it. By the hand of Crom, I command you.

If you lived in Oakland and had been following the story in the local papers*, “knowingly” wouldn’t seem like a stretch at all. Witnesses say Almena broke through a wall and ran electric wires from the auto body shop next door. The “staircase” to the dance floor was a ladder made of wooden pallets. Subtenants were…

That candy is obviously just decorative. You do not leave the good candy in plain sight!

One of my first employers was blind. However, in his case, “blind” meant he had no vision straight ahead but some peripheral vision. He could actually read large print if he held it close and in the right spot, but when he came storming into the office yelling for somebody do something, you could sometimes elude him…

This sounds an awful lot like Penny Dreadful.

For two books, Pippi tells everyone her father was a pirate who was washed overboard, but he is probably the king of the cannibal islands so that’s OK. She also pays for everything out of a suitcase of gold coins her father supposedly gave her. We assume Pippi is making shit up. 

I’ve been told it’s on the narcissism spectrum: We imagine we are so important to other people, our awkward interactions must be something they will think about and hold against us forever.

Well, the first bit assumes you have a comprehensive knowledge of all the Pippi Longstocking books, so that’s a little esoteric. If you DO have a comprehensive knowledge of all the Pippi Longstocking books, it’s mildly funny.

I do not know these, and I love Connie Willis!

I actually thought it was a somewhat shady reference to Trump calling Barron his cyber security expert. But, hey, your explanation works, too.

I want to call this the Kremlin Corollary to Godwin’s Law.

(smacks forehead)

It REALLY bugged me that Leslie Jones’ character had no STEM skills, and it would have been so easy to make her someone working her way through grad school or even just someone with a B.A. in theoretical physics working for the subway for the union benefits.

Oh, he definitely had a right to be a vocal racist. He just didn’t have a right to threaten two girls and knife three guys.

“Hey, he likes black women, he can’t possibly be racist!”

“First Amendment absolutist” usually just means that, like the ACLU, you feel even very offensive speech deserves protection.

I did not know people misused penultimate this way. Man, that would get on my next-to-last nerve.

It’s not like I plan to keep rewatching Hunger Games for the rest of my life. One heroine isn’t enough.