There were very slight hints back to the original score, but so much of Rogue One was generic horns and generic strings, it was REALLY disappointing. Scenes that could've swelled with an amazing Williams score felt really empty to me.

If you thought Force Awakens wasn't memorable, try the nonexistent score from Rogue One. Yikes.

Just saw Rogue One, and thought, "Did this even have a composer?" Not to be a dick, but it was just "generic horns here" and "generic strings there"…there was NOTHING memorable about it. And I think it really hurt the film.

Maybe not those exact words, okay, but just read his tweets back through time here:
8-13-16: Most delusional part of Trump thinking he has a silent majority is how small a fraction of the population he's even bothering to appeal to.
8-18-16: You're not going to believe this but Trump's new strategy is probably dumb.
8-16-…

Respectfully, for Silver to repeat "Relax, trust the models, Trump won't win" over and over was simply the wrong thing to do. Just my opinion though.

It's not the estimate that bothers me, it's the obnoxious appeal to the authority of the data. The hyper-specific-to-the-tenth decimal place shit only makes it worse. There was just too much at stake in this election to tell the voting public "Hillary's got this wrapped up, it's cool, just relax." Which he did SEVERAL…

FiveThirtyEight's headline today was: The ‘Most Powerful Political Players Of 2017’ Draft Extravaganza!!

But the 30% chance of winning they gave Trump was less wrong than everyone else! Huzzah!

It sucks when there's a few truly shitty gifts and you get screwed with one. A few years ago I had a bottle of wine stolen and all I got was an oversized stocking someone probably regifted. Totally sucked.

Getting Closer…

Welcome to 2016 America.

Def. I gave up buying books years ago (only buy VERY favorite books). The library has absolutely everything I need (as well as TV series, blu-rays, etc).

No spoilers from me here, but did you buy the actual cause of the crash? It seemed almost silly to me.

My spouse is OBSESSED with microbiomes. She ordered some fecal test kits to map your stomach biome…and let's just leave it at that.

Yea, you're right. But I like how Goodreads also tracks pages read. I'm a stat junkie and I think that's a more accurate assessment of how much you've read.

My goal was to hit 40 books. Was easily on pace to destroy that goal but completely stalled in the final months of this year. I like how you can track this stuff on GoodReads, but unfortunately it doesn't allow you to log "re-reads" as a book read this year.

I read the first book of The Expanse and kinda hated it…it focused on just two primary characters and it kinda turned into a cliche "mystery organism makes people zombies" thing. Should I give the rest of the series a chance?

Yes. "Under Heaven" is a perfect standalone story. (It has a quasi-sequel, but it's not a series). The prose is simple and beautiful. The "historical" backdrop of China's Tang Dynasty is extremely well done. If you don't like it, you probably won't like much of his work. If you like it, welcome to the club.

What, you don't like 300 pages of Chuck Klosterman's pretentious bullshitting?

Had to check my goodreads account to remember the…good reads this year.