Showing us Haley’s parade of former boyfriends was a bad choice because it underlined how completely arbitrary and uninteresting her relationship with Arvin is.

Alex, Inc. has improved some since the pilot and now works reasonably well as a perfectly conventional family sitcom. I still don’t know what Splitting Up Together is about; “divorced couple sharing the house” is fine, but the showrunners need to realize that’s the premise, not the story. It doesn’t help that the…

You’re absolutely right. I’m not accusing the creative team of “tricking” me as too Barry’s character; they just gave me the tools I needed to trick myself. As a Breaking Bad-esque morality play, Barry plays fair and works well. I’m not just sure that the juxtaposition of that Barry and and Barry the wacky satire…

As powerful as the car scene was, the problem is that it firmly establishes that Barry is a monster. On the one hand, I respect the show for forcing us to deal with that; TV often makes it too easy to treat violence as just another story beat. But it makes it hard to see how Barry can work as a sympathetic character…

I suspect the snap is going to happen during the finale with some good/bad guy disappearing at a pivotal moment making things much harder/easier for the team. And if AoS is back next year, it wouldn’t surprise me if the cast isn’t pared down significantly just for budget reasons. There has been a lot of cheap on the…

Perception isn’t reality; reality exists independent of our perceptions.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but by definition we can’t rule out the placebo effect just based on people’s self reported experiences under non-blinded conditions.

Is there any science to back up the claim that certain glasses “funnel aromas” or whatever better than others? A little Googling suggests that the information in this article is the conventional wisdom, but I couldn’t find anything where the densities of aroma compounds with different glasses had actually been…

Can any law talking dudes or dudettes comment on the whether these spicy food waivers are anything more than an advertising stunt?

I don’t know how much anger is the “right” amount for this situation. On the one hand the actual consequences to the unborn child were likely nonexistant, on the other I imagine that even the most ill-defined fear for their child is a hard thing to bear. But I will say that in general if you only feel a certain amount…

Ok, so Kevin Pang is history’s greatest monster. That’s handy to know.

My argument against tipping in general is that it is fraught with uncertainty for people on both sides that causes unnecessary financial and social stress and that many other countries seem like they can manage their hospitality industries without it.

And my point is that some of that lost money would simply be in the form of servers paying taxes that they owe anyway. I get why servers wouldn’t like that, but I don’t think that argument in particular against ditching tipping holds water.

Under reporting is relevant because if Alice earns $20/hour in reported wages and Bob earns $20/hour unreported, Bob is going to “make more” than Alice just because he’s cheating on her taxes, not because his underlying salary structure is better.

So admittedly I pulled the claim that “most servers” would rather lose the tip system out of my ass, but that’s the general impression I’ve gotten from reading comments here.

Off the main topic, but relevant to 90% of the questions that come up here:

I don’t care about the peanuts. I don’t think parents should be giving their children any messy / gooey foods to eat in the middle of Target. If junior’s blood sugar is about to drop and cause a meltdown, give him a snack before you go in.

Timely. I just finished Enlightenment Now and while there was a lot I liked about it, I was somewhat disappointed that so much of it was argument via data and graphs rather than exposition of big ideas. Sounds like the David Deutch book is what I’m looking for.

This. Yes, it sucks to be the one without food, but watching your companions not eat doesn’t make it any better. I do think the waiting to be told “Go ahead” is important - it shows consideration your food-impaired companions - but once they have been given the chance to return the favor by telling you to start, just…

Modern Family’s best days are certainly behind it, but “Not again I just came from an intervention.” is one of the best opening lines for a scene that I have ever heard.