Oh— I know. I was a postdoc at UCLA for three years, and lived sorta near there. Westwood and the surrounding area isn’t bad. It was a bit of a shock when I drove down to USC to meet with a prof there to discuss a research project. It’s a very different neighborhood. But man. Commuting from the UCLA area to the USC…

Oh, look, I am not describing my views. I am talking about what I heard amongst the social groups I hung out with (meaning, what they had heard from their social groups, etc.) while I was living there. (And working at UCLA.)

I think the strangest thing to come out of this whole college admissions scandal is that USC is somehow considered an “elite” university.

Pins rarely come out of nowhere anymore, especially at WrestleMania.

Yeah, I think some people have written on this. If you’re a guy like me in your 40s, you have a whole host of media fiction that you grew up on— from Star Wars and Star Trek to the A-Team to various comic book heros, to Transformers, etc., etc., etc. It is much easier for a movie studio to simply draw upon those…

Avenatti allegedly lowered his price to $22.5 million to get rid of it in “one fell swoop.”

Is it me, or is that letter using two spaces after a period to begin a new sentence?

Yeah, that’s not how it works. Fortunately, CA (assuming you’re in-state) has a quality higher education system, and I hope she is able to take advantage of another of their quality schools.

To the defense of some of those parents, in college (so, many years ago), I dated a girl whose birthday was December 24. Her parents named her Meredith Eve, and she went by “Mery.” I feel like sometimes there are legit reasons to play around with kids’ names. 

As I have brought up elsewhere, no one (or few people; I recall hearing some grumblings now and again) complains about gubenatorial elections being popular vote, even though the same argument for a state “electoral college” could be made.

Right?!? I mean, I know little about the inner workings of Congress, but one has to imagine that one has people on staff who can-- after much discussion, etc.-- help compose questions in a way (on the record, and all) that drive a point home, and forces the person being questioned to answer in a way that allows for…

I’m not sure why it is surprising that, in an age where there were baically four networks putting out original content that over a span of three years, we’d see the same shows nominated for awards. I mean, something like Seinfeld or the X-Files had from year-to-year the same cast, the same tone, the same writers, etc.…

an extremely expensive but academically so-so university

There is a lot to unpack here. One is that it is sort of sad that the vanity of school status is so powerful. Most of these people are in California and it seemes to me that USC exactly fits the bill of what they want. It’s well-regarded (US News #22), but in a different way than Berkeley or Stanford. And unlike UCLA…

sports like tennis, track/cross country and rowing are easy to fake out coaches as coaches don’t have money to go out and recruit

(Also, can I just say that I am NOT COOL with 52-year-olds dying of massive strokes?? I’m 51.)

Right? When I am stuck on a flight and some baby is crying nearby (or even if one is just there) and some parent does the whole “I’m sorry” I make a point to actually just say “I don’t care. It’s a baby. We will all live. Have a nice flight.”

One way, as Krebs on Security notes, is to go inside to the cashier to pay with a debit or credit card, but particularly a debit card. In fact, it’s best not to use a debit card at all, if you can help it.

Third, if the location of the microwave were the actual problem (and not just a convenient excuse by this creep), move the fucking microwave or get another one for the coaches office. The damn things cost $50 at WalMart. Problem solved.

This isn’t a hot take, but I haven’t seen it talked about. So usually, in a SotU talk, the President mentions guests to put a human face to some issue being addressed in the actual speech. We all know Melania has said she wants to make an issue of bullying in school— a valide topic to take on, even if it seems like…