I chuckled at the Ben Reilly scenes in the second Spider-Verse movie because I know the jokes about 90s superhero comics, but I hadn’t actually experienced 90s superhero comics.

While, now I have, and I get the jokes even more. This was hard to convince myself to finish: It felt like a trying-too-hard attempt to build an interesting comics universe, but it just wound up being dumb and sometimes poorly illustrated.

Queen has always had a place in my musical heart, but my exposure was mostly limited to the one CD I bought in high school. Turns out that I’ve been missing out on bangers like Under Pressure and Radio Ga Ga.

I wasn’t sure if I would like Irish Breakfast, because I have mixed experiences with English Breakfasr blends, and I knew this would be stronger. I think I like it stronger, though!!

This was okay. Kind of boring, too, but in an “enjoyable but not life altering way” and not a “I hoped for more from this blend” way like the chaimander.

Maybe this will grow on me as I finish the sampler pack I bought, but I don’t see myself buying any more. It is not bad so much as boring.

I’m slowly coming up on a year since I migrated my exported Facebook posts into Day One, and while some of it (much of it) is cringeworthy, it still surfaces gems every once in a while. Fourteen years ago today, I posted something that was actually on my mind earlier this morning and that (like other parts of my life) Jacques Ellul’s work has given me a framework to understand better. Here’s the post:

Hey, guess what, I bought a sampler from this company, so I have a bunch to review. This was good and reminded me of drinking the blood orange-flavored Orangina knockoff I would buy with my roommates (read: fellow Mormon missionaries) from an E. Leclerc in Ferney-Voltaire and bring across the border to where we lived in Geneva.

I haven’t had yerba maté in a while, and it definitely has a distinct flavor to get used to, but the chocolate mint flavors of the rest of the blend are super helpful in that regard.

It’s hard for a tv show to follow up on an amazing season 1 premise with a solid season 2. This definitely has some creaky spots in it at the beginning, but it works up to something that won my trust back. What a deliberately, excellently weird show this is.

I understand why this movie is well-regarded, and if I were watching it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time in 1991 (which I couldn’t have, because I was 3 and from a no-R-rated-movies Mormon family), I might have different thoughts.

Instead, though, I noticed all the obvious ADR, I learned the context for all the lines I already know from playground conversations and pop culture osmosis, I shrugged at the over-the-top action, and I thought about how much more banal the threats of AI are these days than Skynet and a T-1000. It was a real meh for me.

Today is the first day I’ve ever had to think about how I pronounce the word “almond,” and it’s not how I expected.

One day, I will own a Fairphone.

Some English words see a g-to-w difference when compared to French (e.g., gaufre ↔️ waffle, Galles ↔️ Wales) BUT in some cases, English has both the different AND original versions, so we have near synonyms like warranty/guarantee and warden/guardian.

Sometimes The Onion is at its best when it’s at its most morbid.

Look, to enjoy this film, I had to set aside a lot of concerns about the glorification of war and violence, uncritical U.S. patriotism, and more besides. I did set those (mostly) aside, though, and it’s a fun, well-done movie. I wish there were more Stellan Skarsgård (the actor) in it, but I really enjoyed Jerry Westerby (the character from another franchise) popping up as the Soviet ambassador.

I’m not proud that I’ve switched feed readers twice in six months (hi Tapestry, you’ve finally won me over), but I am thrilled to now have one interface filled with train pictures.

I have one question about the upcoming season of Slow Horses, and it is whether it will confirm my theory that one throwaway detail in the source material is a deliberate reference to the Franco-Belgian comic series XIII.

On one hand, this is the first manga I’ve read where I saw why the art form is as revered as it is. Good art, interesting premise (somewhat silly, but no more than XIII, which I love more than I should), and not too gratuitous (but still some).

On the other, I felt that it didn’t catch my attention for the whole volume, and I’m torn on whether I’d enjoy reading the next four.

Top Gun is probably the better movie, but if I had to watch one US Navy aviation recruitment video dressed up as a blockbuster film, I think I’d pick this one. It wrestles with more interesting ideas, and more of it happens on a carrier, which is fun.

And yet, I am annoyed by two things that I recognize stand in tension with each other: 1) the jingoistic “look how cool our war toys are” vibes and 2) the shaggy dog nature of the story that ultimately rules out showing off those war toys and doesn’t do anything with the time travel premise that a short story couldn’t do better.

No idea how Queen albums (including live albums, which are something I’ve recently discovered I like) wound up on the fourth-tier streaming service my library provides access to, but I’m quite glad.

I struggled with how to rate this one. I’m going to settle for this: Just because a series that knows it’s being dumb and fanservicey does not automatically elevate it above being dumb and fanservicey.

Need another cup of this before I make up my mind definitively, but that’s part of the fun story behind this blend.

Over the weekend, I discovered for the first time a place that serves Elmwood Inn by the cup, so that let me try a new blend without having to buy a bunch at once. This sounded interesting enough to give it a shot, and it was good! I may buy more of this the next time I’m buying from this company.

Not life-changing, but a pretty good comic. I didn’t know about this apparently legendary story, but it was fun to learn about.

There’s nothing like subscribing to a new podcast with dynamic ad insertion to teach you about the two businesses in your area that do podcast advertising. (Though I did VPN to Bordeaux for the next set of episodes, so let’s see what that changes.)

Like the last volume, I’m less convinced by the plot as it continues, but there’s still so much about this that’s good. I appreciate the portrayal of faith without being preachy, I like the art, and there is still plenty of humor.

This is the last PDF I own, and I didn’t realize there was a fifth TPB that rounds out the story. I’ll have to track it down somehow…