That's a major false equivalency.

He said *white* and straight.

Most of those movies with a gay character had just that - one, maybe 2 gay characters (if you count the significant other of the named one). If the movie only had 20 named characters total, that would be adequate representation for that one movie, by your numbers. But, that other 88% of movies have 0% gay…

It can seem like a lot of work to keep up with it, but I can see why the other letters care about getting in there - while there's not much gay or lesbian representation in our culture, there's almost no representation of, say, asexual or intersex characters.

True, although the vast majority of the viewing public will assume any character to be straight until they're given evidence to the contrary, so it's not helping representation to leave it up to the audience. There are ways to casually introduce such info, but it requires forethought and a careful hand.

I think just because there's lots of comedies in the past where the whole joke was just that some character was gay. I don't think it had anything to do with the specific writers and actors involved.

I like that one, because at least it's pronounceable. Seems to be some confusion about what the Q is for - is it both Queer and Questioning? I think U is Unisex and I is Intersex?

I see how it's slightly harder to do better on LGBT representation in movies than it is for gender and race, because it's not like every character introduces themselves by announcing "Hi, I'm attracted to __!" or whatever the case may be, but since studios aren't really doing noticeably better in any area, it really…

Exactly - most people assume that if they paid a significant amount of money for something then the manufacturer must have made sure it was safe, but when it comes to these devices, that's really not the case. I pulled the binaries off of an LG smart tv, and it's got a full Linux operating system, but without any of…

I thought you were going to say that an angel gets its wings.

I dunno, maybe you can - I'm not very coordinated.

That seems plausible.

I figured it was about 50/50 chance it was an attempted joke, vs him just not understanding the meaning of simple words.

That seems like a really weird context to use the word "irredeemable" - is it a joke/reference to something, or does he just not understand what the word means?

Totally reasonable (and smart) way to feel about it - I have friends who refer to it jokingly as the "internet of things that can kill you", but these products do tend to be incredibly insecure, as recent major attacks leveraging hacked IoT devices have shown. I always say, "if you don't *need* the 'smart' whatever,…

You forgot My Side of the Mountain. :) Some of those books were more fun than others, but I'm with you - I really don't get why that particular theme is so ubiquitous.

Jim Gaffigan has that bit about his son pointing at something and saying "stick!". He corrects him, "no, son, that's an antenna". "What's an antenna?" "well, radio waves…something….That's right, it's a silver stick! You guessed it buddy!"

I'm a big fan of They Might Be Giants' "Here Comes Science" album - they've got really cute animated videos to go along with all the songs, and they illustrate the concepts nicely.

Exactly! There's certainly educational jumping off points available in the Rick Riordan books, with all the mythological elements. I loved reading as a kid, but from an early age distinguished between "fun books" and "school books". That can't possibly be the goal of educators, can it?

I know someone who worked with him, and he said that part of the inconsistency in behavior is due to the fact that McCain really doesn't seem to be entirely all there. The torture he endured gets mentioned a lot, but people don't generally seem to consider the ways that that could have really messed him up long term.…