1) Oh God, Rob Liefeld has discovered Photoshop. (Where exactly does Tom Holland's head fit on his body?)
2) All plots and characters in the MCU will henceforth be determined entirely by the actors' schedules.
3) Jon Favreau? Third lead? Really?

🤔, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, 😏.

I watched the first five minutes of "Fire + Water" and then bailed. It's the only episode of Lost I haven't seen, and I feel comfortable in that decision.

Most definitely. It's a long but not difficult read, and Christian has a way with timelines, graphs, tables, and (of course) maps. It's a more rigorous version of what Jared Diamond has done.

Oh I freely admit that having trained in both science (mostly physics and chemistry) and history (mostly institutional and American), the major appeal of Big History is that it gives me the opportunity to geek out over many disciplines and get paid for it.

I do think it's the themes that justify it; the nature of exponential growth (slow build at the beginning, rapid rise at the end) is another one that I use a lot. It's what he found (or, more honestly, what I can use) at the large timescales that make it a valuable work to me. Christian himself has a kind of…

Real tasty. David C. was a colleague of mine and I've taught Maps of Time several times as a World History text, starting with the formation of the earth and skipping the first 10 billion years or so. (Also, whoever has my autographed copy, GIVE IT BACK.) John Cage said that he'd be happy if the term "music" were…

Little bit o' the Interstellar ticking, little bit o' BWAAAAAAMP. . .

Huh. Did not expect to find that Caitlyn Jenner and I had something in common (well, besides an appreciation for Wheaties). 's all good.

The Shield: Consequence
Lost: Causation
Breaking Bad: Dominance
Law and Order (early years): Compromise (or Responsibility)
Mad Men: Transition
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Losers
Archer: Inebriation
The West Wing (Sorkin years): Service
The West Wing (Wells years): Management
Buffy: Growth
Angel: Atonement
The X-Files:…

Our Fearless Leader at The Solute has been reviewing the series episode by episode, and he expands on that point.

A man wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it (George "Why Yes I'm Fine with Saying 'I Told You So' Thanks for Asking" Orwell)

DISQUS will do that occasionally.

You'd think that, wouldn't you? Yet this is the nation that came up with the term "premature antifascist."

Back in '08, I think. It happened in stages—first we had pictures for our usernames, but it was still an AVC-exclusive system. Later it started the nested comments, and I think '13 was when we switched to DISQUS-wide usernames.

Ah, here we go—nymag.com did it exactly right:

Hrm. Without disputing any of this—and certainly the sexual insecurity of these constituents should be pointed out at every opportunity—wasn't pretty much the etymological origin of many if not most words once some kind of neologistic portmanteau?

Yup. In the pre-DISQUS days, comments had titles; when the system was switched, the titles became the first line of the comments.

I'll let you find out the specific meaning of "cuck." It started out as "cuckold" and then came to mean, well, something else.

We're doing our best, dammit!