I totally appreciated your annoying internet pedantry, btw. I am a huge fan of pedantry; the more inconsequential, the better.

Durian's inexplicable — I flummoxed the person who made me try it for the first time ("Eat this, it's nasty!") because once it was actually in my mouth, I loved it. It's everything I love about pineapple minus everything I hate about pineapple, plus rotten foot smell. Interestingly, I used to love the taste and…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/maga…

Read this. It's heartbreaking, won a Pulitzer, and totally explains the "autopilot" that causes accidents like this. Carseats should come with alarms — not that it would entirely solve the problem. No one pays attention to car alarms as it is, including one parent in the article, who, heartbreakingly, kept turning off…

ohnooo she was IN THE MIDDLE of the song and no one told her. I have a recurring nightmare like that.

For everyone who, like me, was already belting out, "I hear people say BAAAYYBEEE, so sweet!" and was super disappointed when the video cut off:

I mean, think about it: if you read an article in an American publication about how some really grody variety of stinky cheese made by some gross process is gaining in popularity in France, would you be like "RACISM, WAAHHHH". Or would you be able to parse the difference between prejudice and rare/unusual food…

Sorry, how is it racism again? TFA notes many Koreans think hangeo's gross. There are quotes about how it tastes like licking a urinal and an aside about how people IN SOUTH KOREA will move away from those who've recently dined on it on the subway.

Hhmm.. new food challenge, eh? I look forward to it!

So, I don't know if you watch Orphan Black, but I just finished yesterday's episode right before I clicked on this article (strange coincidence!) and they just introduced a trans character and not a single pronoun has been misused. Yay! Faith in humanity. What's more is, pretty much every other character would have an…

Hey, anybody know the name of the first woman Burton speaks to in the Kickstarter video? She seems really familiar to me, but I'm blanking on what I know her from.

YES! I was always like, "My book report is SO MUCH BETTER than that kid's! I should be on TV instead!" (...Because I was the kind of nerd who wrote extracurricular book reviews for her own reference.)

I think you misunderstood my post. First of all, many, many people are arguing this. It's even in the very post we're discussing — "that casting her is a form of black face." That's why I mentioned it.

Sure, but Saldana is an actress. When it comes to questions of cultural identity and mentality, that's why actors research. I mean, Forrest Whitaker is neither Ugandan nor is he a sociopath, but he did a damn good Idi Amin.

There was at least one black female immortal, on the TV show! She, like Sean Connery in the movie, was also Egyptian. (But she was actually black.) Sean Connery's background in that movie always blew my mind. You have a film set in Scotland, starring probably the most famous living Scotsman — and he's an Egyptian…

Right now, Saldana is Nyong'o's helpful mentor — tutoring her in the ways survival as the female black Hollywood A-lister. They know the Gathering will occur someday, and one may be forced to take the other's quickening, but in the meantime, they're in this together.

Haha, great username. Do you sing songs of the great tribble hunt?

Love your acknowledgement that sexual orientation, like many aspects of our identities, is, as much as it's biological capacity, also tied up in cultural definitions. I always felt like that was what Cynthia Nixon was getting at when she stated that she used to be straight and now she's gay. I've long felt similarly:…

Also, she's, like, a professional singer. I mean, I don't know if Saldana can sing at all, but Aduba does have her beat in terms of already having the trained vocal background.

I somehow avoided drifting off during the midnight screening of the first one — I think every time I started to lose consciousness, I would start to have a nightmare about the shit all over Radagast's head and jolt awake. And the second one? I caught an afternoon matinee, but I just walked out halfway through.