Also, as cute as her famous Grouponing with the Pinkett-Smiths story is, it happened because she was gonna go on some Cajun swamp tour by herself just for the hell of it. I can see someone like that saying “why not?” to an invitation to go hiking with Kevin Neelon.

When I saved this article to Pocket, the recommendations pop-up included this BBC story. Apparently Stand on Zanzibar is synonymous with prescient sci-fi. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190509-the-1968-sci-fi-that-spookily-predicted-today

There is even a popular, well-meaning yet beleaguered leader name Obomi, for heaven’s sake. The whole thing is strangely prescient but that part made my jaw drop.

I loved that moment so much. I was shocked when I read an interview where one of the creators said their first choice was Take Me Home by Phil Collins but it was too expensive. Thank god — that would’ve felt a little cheesy by comparison. Also as far as former Genesis members go, HACF is the quirkier, under-the-radar…

The dead fish is a nice touch.

Try Project Gutenberg.

If you like Tana French (who I love), check out Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series. Ruth Ware is another good one, though she shades more into thriller.

I can’t believe how many of my favorite musicians died by suicide. And they always managed to convey so eloquently the struggle with their demons, in a way that made it seem like music was what helped them win that struggle. Until it didn’t.

Rainer Wolfcastle, who in English is obviously a mock version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is also a mock version of him in the German dub — he has a thick Austrian yokel accent, which is how Arnold sounds in his native German.

You might enjoy this twitter thread. Some children of narcissists chime in, and there’s a nice general sense of not diminishing people’s experiences b/c they weren’t physically abused.

I once spent an afternoon watching this movie on continuous loop while ignoring anxious texts from my dad, who was outside my building because I’d called him up drunk and yelled at him at 3am that morning. I’d just coincidentally rented the DVD the day before, and while I watched I thought, “Oh right, I guess I never…

Ditto on the gift-wrapping, although I feel like that isn’t a matter of skill so much as interest. All my gifts look like an elf had a seizure, but I can’t be bothered when it’s just gonna get torn open anyway.

I grew up in one of the two states in the US where you’re not allowed to pump your own gas, so I didn’t learn how to do it until well into adulthood. I had to ask a stranger in a gas station to show me and hope they understood what I meant when I said apologetically, “I’m from New Jersey.”

Sort of related, I just discovered that a reasonably intelligent, worldly friend of mine who’s in her 30s thought that winter starts on 12/1, spring starts on 3/1, summer on 6/1, etc.

I grew up by the ocean and I’m a terrible swimmer. It’s hard to learn actual strokes in the waves — you just learn how to not drown.

PSA — I once had to take these huge antibiotic tablets, and the only way I could get them down was by dissolving them in a glass of water. By the time I’d finished the prescription my mouth was raw hamburger, I think because 10 days of drinking 2 glasses of antibiotic water per day destroyed my mouth microbes and…

I would imagine that riding a bike for the first time as an adult would be kind of exhilarating, though. I taught myself to get from point A to point B on a skateboard when I was in my 30s and it was a hell of a rush.

I think it’s a Yanny/Laurel kind of thing.

Needs more Hot Priest and Hot Stark.

If you have Netflix it’s really cool to skip from their parking lot moment at the end of S1E4 to that scene in the finale, especially if you like crying.