-Just as I like when movies/TV shows use actual years to place themselves (instead of trying for a nebulous timelessness), I also like when they use actual public figures. The E Corp CEO met with Fed chair Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and—I couldn't place the third person. Mary?

Between The Leftovers and Gone Girl, 2014 was my year of discovering Carrie Coon. What an actor. Yep, this is awesome news.

My big complaint about this season? Teasing us with David Rasche, but giving us so little.

Out of curiosity, I googled a couple of the VC names Erlich drops here to see if they're real (indeed, they are).

The first-day board member silently shaking his head at that question had me in stitches.

George C. Scott tripping, rolling, and getting back up while raving about the Big Board is one of the funniest damn things in film.

This episode somehow managed to bring Scott the Clam Man to new levels of horror. Impressive.

It's a house of gawrd.

!!!

Uruguayan girl.

Is it pronounced bee or bay? It's never been clear to me.

I assume they'll become roommates in Moscow and we'll follow their misadventures as two swinging bachelors in the big city.

As it it happens, Life is Strange is next in my gaming queue, and now I'm very much looking forward to that contrast.

As an occasional gamer not too up on in-game photography, I was really impressed by Uncharted 4's Photo Mode (doesn't hurt to be coupled with a beautiful-looking game). Maybe its features have been used elsewhere before, but I myself hadn't experienced them and their degree of control before.

And I think, interestingly, another Nixon does, too—Philip Baker Hall's in Secret Honor.

Block chain?…like, the Bitcoin thing for tracing transactions? Is cryptocurrency record keeping going to be big when "the barbarians" come? Hmm.

For a moment I still thought it was improbable they'd risk that in public, but then I thought about how few Americans would probably be able to recognize the Speaker of the House. So, yeah, that was clever.

I don't watch this show—-I was waiting for Silicon Valley—but somebody still could've had the decency to tell me Richard E. Grant is on it, damnit!

"AIDS. For example."

Last Saturday I caught Pitfall (1948), part of a TCM lineup programmed around insurance noirs (leading with Double Indemnity, natch. I've got to learn how to light a match with just my thumb), directed by André De Toth, who also helmed Crime Wave (1954) and the Vincent Price House of Wax. Unhappy-in-the-suburbs lead…