what's the difference?

That's how I took it, until I got to the part about how she was casually acquainted with two convicted terrorists, one of whom she even visited in prison. There's no way she didn't realize that counts as something you'd have to bring up in a background check.

The article even says that she visited one of the murderers in prison - I'd call that more than a "casual acquaintance." And definitely the kind of thing you should bring up in a background check.

I don't know, I like the variety you get from having different studios doing their own takes on superheros. And I think it's only been good for Marvel to be forced to get creative and pull ideas from their back catalog rather than just cashing in on existing popularity.

I would have liked a "Spider-Man fights wacky villains like the Rhino and Electro and saves the city" action movie. I would have liked a "Peter and Harry have daddy issues" drama. I would have liked a "Peter-and-Gwen" rom-com. But combining pieces of all of those into one bloated film just... didn't work. It's really…

Not quite - they aren't waiting in line, they're climbing. That section is really steep and slipping can be deadly, so there are a set of ropes you have to hold on to. The line is people is walking single file along the ropes.

I used to hate red delicious because of how mealy they were, but for some reason in the last few years growers seem to have figured out how to make them crisp and crunchy. I have no idea what changed, but now they're my favorite apple.

That doesn't sound like fan backlash, it's just people expressing their opinions on the cover.

This is one of those things that I think is actually *more* realistic than it appears on the surface. Any group of people that has to interact with each other will adopt a lingua franca. Most people who are reasonably educated will speak this lingua franca in addition to their own native language.

Yeah, my reaction to their "simple, compelling premise" was basically "oh, so it's a clone of The Walking Dead." It's going to be hard to convince anyone this isn't just a knock-off.

Oh wow, I hadn't thought about the change thing, I usually buy metro passes with a credit card. That actually does kind of make sense - I probably would rather lose a dollar or so of spare money on the card rather than have to put in a 20 and deal with nine $1 coins.

But you still end up with $9 and change on the card, right? Why would anyone want that?

A ride costs $2.50, and they offer you a $9 card? Even leaving aside the whole 5% bonus thing, that's insane. They're deliberately making the process of buying a ticket more time-consuming and less user-friendly, in a bid for extra money.

What else is there to agree with? English still has no official language authority either.

I doubt this will happen, because Marvel, but it's exactly what I want.

Oh man, I can't wait for naturally caffeine-free coffee. There's *definitely* a market for that.

This has nothing to do with being self-conscious and everything to do with how politeness works in the English language. We don't have explicit grammatical forms for politeness (the T-V distinction, for example), so instead we rely on being indirect and hiding requests and questions in statements about ourselves. It's…

Since when are smartphone cameras crappy? They've gotten way better than they even need to be. If you're only going to be looking at the pictures digitally, at normal sizes, you really don't need any better quality than you're getting.

There are lots of people who don't really do social media. But how likely are those people to pursue online-only relationships? If someone spends all day romancing me on twitter, I'd be pretty suspicious if they didn't do anything else social online.

"Inspired by Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar [...] learn to visit Belzhar"