There’s this scene towards the end of an episode of The Simpsons^[1] where, after a dramatic standoff with zoo animals on a little amusement park train, our characters make a dramatic escape, passing under a sign that says “Leaving Baboon County USA.” They cheer, they lay out the moral of the story, and everything goes back to normal. Just as we’re about to cut, the little train finishes its loop and passes under another sign:

Guess what the new house shorthand is for a week when every crisis leads directly into the next? Yeah, we’re having one of those.

The vibes are once again in shambles in journalism town, as the editorial boards of both the L.A. Times and The Washington Post had their presidential endorsements spiked at the last minute by ownership. We need to amend the billionaire fantasy of buying a struggling newspaper with “…and just sign the checks and leave it the fuck alone.”

Dropped off our ballots. Ours always have like 100 appellate judges that you need to individually vote to retain or kick off the bench. So grateful for Injustice Watch for pulling together all their histories and bar ratings so you can make some kind of informed decision.

Tried out the hearing test in iOS 18.1 with a decent amount of apprehension, but turns out my ears are still in okay shape! Guess I have to attribute my total inability to process any information in a loud room to something else.

Got the reminder to renew my authorizations for Movies Anywhere, a service so good it feels like it must have been court-ordered into existence to avoid an antitrust lawsuit. I honestly can’t believe it’s a Disney joint. You log in to all your media libraries (Apple, Amazon, Google Play/YouTube, etc) and suddenly all the movies you’ve purchased on any of them show up on all the others. It just works.