• There's a classic filk song called "The Ballad of Transport 18" about a cargo ship stranded in deep space that gets rescued by Mr. Spock at the expense of its cargo of beer. My brain is trying to parody it about COVID-19, but there are just too many possibilities.
• [January 6] So, we always hear that peaceful protests are more effective. Is that why the police are so much rougher on peaceful protestors than violent ones? 🤔
• [January 6] Even George Orwell stopped short of saying "treason is patriotism." Who would have believed that?

Are we really ready to revisit 2020? Here goes...

• A Russian-American comedian I heard on BBC world service a few minutes ago was just saying how in the Soviet Union, when someone important died they would broadcast Swan Lake for 24 hours on all stations with no explanation, causing everyone who lived through it to develop a pavlovian stress response to the music. So here I am a few minutes later minding my own business, and what starts playing in the next room? Daaaaaa da da da da daaaaaa da daaaaaa...

mining ever closer to the present...

• I suspect the reason there's no movie of Han and Leia's wedding is because they changed their last names to Duet. Kyllo Ren's birth name was Ben Trio. If they'd had another kid, they would have just gone with Ensemble.

If I were a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I would think that the reason the Democrats are allowing the Trump presidency farce to play out is so that all the white supremacists and misogynists feel comfortable identifying themselves on social media, in order to compile a registry of such people for use after Clinton takes office. Because otherwise I would have to admit that I was totally dead wrong about Obama's motives for the last 8 years, and that would be awkward.Mining ever closer to the present...

Continuing on towards the present:

mining progressively closer to the surface:

More stuff worth saving from a sinking ship:

Continuing to mine the past for what's worth keeping: