So Penn & Teller used to do a show called Bullshit where they would investigate things and explain why the "common knowledge" on them was, well, bullshit.

In the episode on handwashing, they took samples from people's hands, faces, and groins before and after using the bathroom. They came to the conclusion that the before/after on hands was negligible, because most people's groins are under multiple layers of protection and don't get exposed to germs.

What they didn't bring up in the show is that that's not why you wash your hands when you're in the bathroom. It doesn't matter if your asshole is downright sterile, because it's everything else in the world that is filthy. You wash your hands when you're in the bathroom because you should be washing your hands regularly throughout the day and it's easiest to do when you're already in the room with the soap and running water. It's got very little to do with anything else you may be doing in the bathroom.

Melbourne Sexual Offences and Child abuse Investigation Team (SOCIT) detectives

Sounds like one team investigates both sexual crimes and child abuse. This looks like it has nothing to do with minors.

Oh man, it's my second-favorite short, half-irish and half-jewish (but secular), dark-haired, light-eyed former child actor with a severe nickel allergy who played the title character from a beloved British children's book about a child with magic powers!

My position is that the Schumacher Batman films are better than any Batman film that's come out since, and it's because of a fundamental ideological question:

Nolan, Snyder, Reeves, all of these guys, have continually asked, "What would Batman look like in the real world?" And the answer has meant grittier, darker reboots all inspired by the same couple of Miller books. They need to constrain Batman to things that "make sense" and find ways to make him "seem realistic."

Schumacher, and Burton before him, asked the much more entertaining question: "What would the world need to look like to idolize a vigilante in a furry costume?" And that opens up so many more possibilities, so much more fun. The Riddler made elaborate pop-up clues rather than staging brutal crime scenes. Two-Face didn't mourn his almost-relationship with an assistant DA because he was too busy macking on a different girl for each face. Bane? Doesn't matter if I could understand him, because he doesn't have any lines anyway. He's still the evil lady's main henchman, but now he's actually monstrously big.

The '90s approach says yes to every wild idea the directors had, every silly gag from the comics or other TV that it wanted to steal, because it wasn't beholden to a sense of the real. It was okay to enjoy the silly superhero movie on its own terms.

Unfortunately, we're stuck in a world where each decade brings a grimmer, darker reboot of Batman.

Doesn't the Jurassic Park power-restore scene align with this, too? Muldoon gets wrecked by a raptor on his side, while Ellie immediately notices/dodges the one that pokes through the wiring.

I was having this conversation with a co-worker recently. He was buying a second home with the intention of renting it to his brother "at cost." Which is to say, his brother is paying the mortgage while he gets the equity. When I pointed out how fucked up that was, he agreed and bought the house anyway.

It's in part because Biden ran on opposing fascism, got elected, and then did nothing to oppose fascism. He sold himself as a dragonslayer, but once he got in, he didn't want to upset the pro-dragon crowd.

So, yeah, when his protege ran the exact same campaign, it didn't instill a lot of confidence.

I mean, no scientists have ever done a double-blind study on the effectiveness of parachutes at height. There's a possibility that landing safely is just a placebo effect.

gameplay didn't evolve

Massive understatement. The PS5's biggest titles were remakes and direct sequels. Coupling it with the "upgraded" versions of PS4 games like Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us Part 2, and GTA5, even the marketing seemed to boil down to "This is just a really nice PS4."

I think if you marry young, it starts at 1% and grows from there. My wife and I are approaching middle age, and we're only unknowingly taking to ourselves about 20% of the time.

I'm wondering why I even need a smartphone at this point. I'm tempted to go back to a flip phone.

NPR as a national organization might be fine, but regional stations have smaller operating budgets and also get funding, and their programming gets picked up. Member stations will suffer or fail under this update, and that will feed back to national programming when something like WAMC's On the Media or WBEZ's Wait Wait gets axed.