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Yeah, I think this is correct. It's why a lot of kids say they want to be athletes. Most kids don't know a ton of jobs and even the jobs they know seem opaque. It's also why a lot of kids show up to college wanting to be doctors or lawyers, then quickly change when they realize how that works.

And yes, they rule live.

This was a long time ago but one of the strangest bills I ever saw was High on Fire and Mono, which I just had to look up to see if I was remembering correct.

Actual image of an audience member when the end of Halcyon (Beautiful Days) hits.

Whipple. Bissell.

DECIDEDLY unintentional. Just some folks who haven't redecorated or changed a thing about their establishment for 40 years.

There's a place in my town that's the 80s version of this. Walking into it is like walking into any given diner in 1985. The sign outside has the vibe. There's an ineffable 80s quality everything has, from the color scheme to the material the tables are made out of, to the font on the menu.

I have always assumed (but may be wrong!) those were references to cyberpunk the genre as opposed to punk punk.

If you play Mirror Reaper backwards it says "Paul is giving hot takes."

Like, I get why someone who didn't know what the term actually refers to would look at Platner and go "ah, yes, the Dirtbag Left!" But the more people do that the less all our words mean and the more we're unable to actually use terms to identify and discuss things.

Yeah, I think you're right. One of the problems with overlapping online discourses is that it's real easy to pick up terms or ideas or points without getting the full context or meaning, and it's real easy for that to happen several times. So meanings drift, contexts are lost, etc.

Right! The Pod Save guys worked for Obama! They're insider liberals! There's a real problem online of people taking things specific, actual individuals are doing and then attributing them to a giant, amorphous collective they hate, and it makes conversations worse and more confusing for everyone.

Dang, sometimes adults younger than me, even. I'm still surprised like every time I answer the door that the person on the other side doesn't ask if my dad is home. It's me! I'm dad now.

Patchwork, Splendor Duel, A Wild Venture, 7 Wonders Duel, Cascadia. Two player games often have "duel" affixed to them now, so if you search for "duel" board games you'll get some.

I used to get sad voicemails from an old lady trying to reach her son, who clearly had problems. I could never decide if I should just tell her she has the wrong number or answer and Armin Tamzarian it. I chose "neither, and she eventually stopped calling, I assume, because everything worked out."

Yeah, if you drive like 10 minutes to the outskirts of my town this is literally everyone.

"Golf and hunting dads" feels like a line in a political consultant's executive summary somewhere.

I think an under appreciated phenomenon is the growing cultural clout of the upper-middle class "country" guy, who combines various lifestyle signifiers of both the well-off (golf, McMansion) and the rural working-class (hunting, fishing), in hyper-consumerist ways (a giant, $80,000 truck).

On the cameraphone/social media point, 12 years ago I saw my first manfluencer guy on Facebook. The algo shoved me a middle aged bearded guy posting pin up pics of him with a gun next to a car, with captions about being a real man. I remember thinking "no one will fall for this trash." Oops.

Almost everyday I think of how my grandpa was an actual steelmill worker with a purple heart and 2020s masculinity would be unrecognizable to him and, even more, he would be unrecognizable to it, despite its trappings. He was just a normal guy! He liked animals and kids! He cooked!