It's an empty-calories kind of twist, though, like finishing off a nice healthy meal with a gallon of ice cream. Feels great at the moment, but you regret it afterwards and it sabotages everything you set out to do in the first place.

FTWD was a bad move. You can't show the zombie apocalypse, because it's impossible to convince the audience that a bunch of mindless weaponless shufflers could destroy an entire armed and organized civilization. It just wouldn't happen. That's why TWD starts with Rick waking up after it's over.

I live in iTunes Storeland: it's just like Screenerville, except you get the episode a day late instead of a week early, and it costs money.

Dear The Walking Dead:

Remember the days when reporting involved more than regurgitating corporate press releases? Remember when reporters would keep an eye on who got out of which limo with whom, and ply corporate execs with free drinks go get the inside scoop?

An Australian bush, eh? But doesn't Tony Abbott already have a page?

I was just annoyed that it wasn't on a logarithmic scale. And then I was annoyed that nobody knows how to use a logarithmic scale.

Great job de-escalating the situation, SXSW. Thanks to your timely intervention, there's no chance this new event will blow up into a massive riot.

Yeah, I got curious myself.

Feel free to look it up, and prove me wrong.

While the style is referred to as "1970s", all the books and authors I recognize are from quite a bit earlier. Could be reprints I suppose, but I usually associate this sort of bold geometric modernism with 1945-1967ish.

I grew up in Hawaii, so I didn't learn American birds as a kid. I was on vacation on the mainland once, and asked my Mom "what's that bird?" "It's a grackle", she said. It was such a stupid name that my brother and I assumed Mom was making a joke, so we went along with it, and called everything a grackle: "Hey…

That'd be such a huge evolutionary disadvantage that it can't possibly be true. If simple brains were prone to seizing up, fish would go rigid and float around like turds every time a snorkeler came by. And if it were just marsupials, well, kangaroos don't go catatonic. I guess koalas might, I mean, how could you…

Sure, but since the American ones were called possums before the Oceanian ones were discovered, it seems petty to say that the American nickname is wrong. Your link says "in a scientific context", but this thread doesn't look too scientific to me. But whatever, I probably shouldn't spend more time on what I've said…

If you insist on feeding wild animals and want to save some money, I can confirm that both possums and raccoons love cheap dry cat food.

I was working from home one day when I noticed my cats stalking a spot behind the TV, I assumed it was a mouse. It made a run for it, then jumped up onto the back of a chair and flew (flew?!!) into the kitchen. Turns out it was a flying squirrel. Totally adorable, like an anime chipmunk wearing a coat two sizes too…

Watching this video I'm just amazed at the huge range of things a raccoon will eat. I mean, I know they're omnivores, but so am I, and I wouldn't eat a lot of that crap!

It's just not fair. Australia got all these fucking amazing marsupials, and the Americas get opossums. Ah well, at least we get raccoons.

There is nothing good to say about opossums. They're ugly, they move weird, they're hostile, they smell awful, they have disgusting diets, they're big enough to fuck up your car, stupid enough to run out in front of it, and too small to see before it's too late.

Since as far as I can tell Americans have been using "possum" as a nickname for an opossum since 1613, long before Australia was colonized or NZ discovered, this seems like a pretty silly correction.