“Is there anything I should be more clear about?” or “Is there anything I have not made clear?”  It shifts the responsibility from the students to me.  I learned this one from my high school drama teacher more than thirty years ago when I was volunteering in his class to get come cred to apply to teacher’s college. …

My take on the whole Stan and Jack thing is that they were absolutely both essential to the success of what they did together. The best proof of that is the crap nature of what they did apart. Without Stan, Jack Kirby was increasingly ungrounded. Some of his DC stuff is fun, but his indy stuff in the 80s was nonsense.…

That whole “separate internet for trolls” is kind of a sub-plot in Neal Stephenson’s newest novel, Fall, Or Dodge in Hell, which is hella good.

Aaaand now I’m off to listen to that song.  It’s such a good one!  That Phil Collins!

Right on.  So well said.  Thank-you for saying it like it is.  He’s not going to listen, but he doesn’t matter.  Other people need to hear you take on that shit.

Interesting. I wonder if Joe Hill is one of those writers for whom it matters in which order you encounter his books. I read Heart-Shaped Box first and for me it remains the best. Horns worked for me but seemed gimmicky as did The Fireman, though I still found it compelling. I really liked NOS4A2, but it didn’t chill…

Maybe just that one episode where nothing happened.

Which, snark aside, I actually loved

I mean ... yes on the polar bears. Kind of. I don’t remember much follow-up on the fact that Walt had seen polar bears in his comic book right before we saw them in the show. It gave it a kind of “It’s a good life” feel, which turned into a red-herring-y feel when they didn’t do much with it.

I like how you said stop harshing my buzz, and everyone came in specifically to harsh your buzz.

Wait, it's been since last fall and you still haven't hooked the kid up with some camburt already? Monster.

Actually, he probably didn’t even do that; looks like it was mostly clever propaganda plus taking credit for earlier construction spending:  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/

Shoulda linked it before. I hope you enjoy it.

Ever heard the cover by Frente?  It’s heartbreakingly good.

Thanks for your kind words. Truth is I fucking love my job. Just started my 29th year, and there’s always something new.

I’m a high school English teacher and pretty much the same way. Even when it comes to irony. I think there was an Oatmeal comic a while ago that told me to chill out on misidentifications of irony, but I’m holding the line on this one: a mere coincidence is not irony.

Hashtag down with prescriptivism lawl! You go, human!

You know us well.

Except that it’s the richest capitalist nation that has the greatest incarceration rate...

Can someone explain this to me? I’m a Canadian, and don’t understand so much about this system. Here in Toronto, most kids just go to their neighbourhood schools. We have very few magnet schools — some IB programs, some special needs programs, a few specialist programs — but most kids know which school they’re going…

I’m curious as to what age people think this might be best for. I read what you said about personality, and I get it, but I’m trying to figure if it would be right for my almost-eleven-year-old. He likes his Switch, though he likes his PS4 better, especially because of the social thing. We keep him to mostly E games —…