Task-based fMRI isn't bad for that sort of thing. I mean, it's not magic-lie-detector level, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a real classification between Sanders and Trump supporters—or, perhaps more likely, between ardent Sanders/Trump supporters and less ardent supporters of any candidate.

Yeah, this is what I don't get about the telenovela argument — it's never been entirely a telenovela. Like, that's certainly a big part of its DNA, but it's also a show about tiny details of family life and relationships, and those grounded storylines are far and away the best part of it. The telenovela trappings are…

I'm honestly having trouble deciding whether this is flawed storytelling, or just storytelling I don't like. I'm inclined to say the former, but I think I'd be inclined to say that no matter what, and there is a difference between the two.

The first three were easy. The Miserable Mill has lost me a little, but that may just be because I've gotten busy. It's not bad, though, just a little repetitive.

I mean, it's definitely possible, but I think that Michael and Shaun were improvising, at this point. They seem to have been legitimately surprised by what was going on with Janet; she's the one aspect of the Place system (save, you know, humanity) that's honestly beyond their control.

Oh my god. From the pilot—the Bad Place is the one topic that Janet's not allowed to tell them about.

I think that a lot of the details we get about the history and structure of the afterlife are either accurate or just a little bit off. It doesn't appear that architects are hugely imaginative. For instance, there really does appear to be a points system that determines what happens in the afterlife—all that Michael…

Janet knew about and suggested Mindy, which makes me think Mindy is real.

Okay, that does it. I'm doing a full series re-read. Reading all of this, I'm realizing that my memories of the last half of the series are way too fuzzy.

By the fourteenth chapter, or before that? I remember that she still had some "nonsense" words in The Penultimate Peril, because one of them was a dig at Antonin Scalia.

My memories are a bit fuzzy, but I believe that Violet and Klaus each explicitly get one year older. I don't think Sunny ever starts talking like a normal person, but she gains her own non-biting-related interest (cooking) and more real words do start to show up in her dialogue.

The news of Dr. Montgomery's collection being scattered and the discussion of the burning of the ball (and the hint that Beatrice is dead) are in separate letters. An equally possible timeline: Lemony warns Beatrice of Count Olaf. The ball is burned down, but Beatrice and Lemony escape. Shortly thereafter, the…

Right. I don't think any of the supplementary material ever outright confirms that. Hints, perhaps, but never confirms, and never gives an idea of what important it would have if it were true.

I think that the ASoUE books (if you read all the books and all the supplementary material, which is kind of a cheat, but whatever) do, more or less, answer the big questions. I mean, they don't answer them in detail, and there are weird oddball red herrings that never really lead anywhere, but the basic facts of the…

Spoiler for The Wide Window

Weirdly, I feel like the idea of concrete answers to questions like that is one of the things I'm most apprehensive about, with a TV series. I like the way the ASoUE mythology is constructed out of insinuation and coincidence, rather than Big Reveals. It gives the whole universe a much more conspiratorial flavor than…

I don't think that The Beatrice Letters or The Unauthorized Autobiography ever outright confirms that either of the Baudelaire parents survived the fire, although the author's notes in the "rare edition" of The Bad Beginning kind of hints in that direction, as does one line in The Horrible Hospital. But it's always…

The bit of "Judas' Death" that turns into a reprise of "I Don't Know How to Love Him."

Best wishes, nonetheless.

There have been better birthday weeks, it's true.