Oh, the article is absolutely salacious, and that's at least half of why it's worth reading if you're a newcomer to this case—to see the kind of media spin that even reputable publications had surrounded the case with and why it was so difficult for Avery and Dassey to get fair trials. I'm a little disappointed in the…

In Brendan's case, they argued that the murder occurred in the bedroom (because that's what he confessed to, and juries have a very strong faith in confessions no matter how bullshit they might seem, as this case attests to). In Steven's case, they argued that the murder occurred in the garage (because in his case…

I think that last part was due to the fact that, while Jodi was arguing that her phone call took place at the same time as the murder allegedly did, she was wrong—her phone call was at 5:30 while the police were arguing that the murder occurred prior to 5 o'clock. (Brendan's mom said he was back home by then.)

This story from Milwaukee magazine in 2006 is a good read, both in that it shows the kind of press that Avery's case was getting at the time (not good!) and that it includes some of the evidence against Avery that the filmmakers, for whatever reason, decided not to include. It does confirm that Avery specifically…

Also an agnostic, and I'm unabashedly pro-Jesus. Jesus is probably the least potentially offensive thing about Christianity.

I'm thinking that it was probably meant to reference the fact that the vast majority of (explicitly pro-Jesus) Christian pop/rock is terrible from an artistic standpoint, and not the fact that Jesus sucks generally. Some headline revision might help us from getting flooded with trolls in 16-20 hours, though.

Yeah, I think a lot of Americans see something like Uganda as an isolated example when it's really not in any way. The anti-gay movement there is heavily financed and supported by American evangelicals, by the way, and they're working hard to pass anti-gay legislation in several nearby countries and to inflame…

Side note: I actually just went and looked up the casting directors for The Martian because I was interested in their background. Believe it or not, one of the two is a British woman whose last name is Park. I couldn't find a picture of her, so I don't know if she's white or Asian, but if she's white that might give…

Yeah, this example is worth discussing, but saying the book explicitly described her as of Korean descent is wrong. The only indication that she's supposed to be Korean-American is her name, and while Park is a really common Korean surname, it's also a (less common but not uncommon) Scottish/British surname as well.…

Except that if you actually watched pageants, you'd know that that's actually not true at all—depending on the judge, a fall might met you anything from a zero to a perfect score in the poise category. (Many judges operate on the maxim that recovering well from a fall should net you more points than the fall itself…

The actual cash/living expense/apartment/etc. portion of the prize is pretty negligible, and if Trump was still running the pageant I'm sure he'd have no trouble shelling out a little extra in exchange for looking benevolent in the news for a little while. The sponsors likewise would be pretty easily persuaded to…

In a competition where there's some degree of objectivity to the scoring system this would be a reasonable argument, but beauty pageant scoring is almost entirely arbitrary (thus why celebrity judges can do it!), so there isn't a whole lot of integrity left to defend.

At lower-level pageants where there's been a scoring mistake or something, that tends to be what happens. I figured that was the accepted solution at this point and was pretty surprised they didn't implement it in this case. (Also surprised they didn't have some kind of set-up in place to fix his mistake more…

Yeah, my frustration was less the quantity of the rapes and more that they've depicted rape multiple times now but refused to engage with it authentically in most of those cases. It's filler or it's there for shock value or its there to further the arc of a supporting character. They aren't touching on how it affects…

Oh, unless it's one of the smaller maps, that eight-hour estimate is inevitably wildly optimistic and ends with me swearing at my computer at 3 in the morning. Which has not stopped me from doing it, no matter how many times that happens.

Yeah, of course video games are a waste of time! Are they inherently a greater waste of time than watching movies or TV or commenting on the A.V. Club? Nah.

Here, I'm going to stack the deck against you so that you make less money than I do for doing the same work, where it's very difficult for you to get a better job unless you go to college (which costs money that you don't have), where I'm less likely to give you a job even when you do have qualifications identical to…

Where exactly is this paradise where sexual harassment and assault don't exist? Because I would be happy to move there, if only I could figure out where it was.

Apparently (and inexplicably) this isn't a live-action version of the Disney movie.

Seriously though, I'm trying to visualize exactly how much time the stars of this film are going to have to spend in water while filming, and it seems miserable.