Scott Barolo

Judge is not impressed

great job everybody, we ruined the word “cringe” by using it to dunk on sincere people and now I have no words to describe what this worthless government laywer’s testimony is doing to me

Judge pointing out that all of the fabricated quotes lean in the same direction (restricting the court's review) which tends to indicate that this was done to deceive the court

Paleochicken

A woman would put her clothes into the first washtub and wash them by bending over the washboard. Back in those days they couldn’t afford store-bought soap, so they would use soap made of lye. “Do you know what it's like to use lye soap all day?” they'd ask me. “Well, that soap would strip the skin off your hands like it was a glove.” Then they’d shift the clothes to the vat of boiling water and try to get out the rest of the dirt by “punching” the clothes with a broom handle—standing there and swirling them around like the agitator in a washing machine. Then they’d shift the clothes to the second zinc washtub—the rinsing tub—and finally to the bluing tub. The clothes would be shifted from tub to tub by lifting them out on the end of a broomstick. These old women would say to me, "You’re from the city—I bet you don't know how heavy a load of wet clothes on the end of a broomstick is. Here, feel it.” And I did—and in that moment I understood more about what electricity had meant to the Hill Country and why the people loved the man who brought it. A dripping load of soggy clothes on the end of a broomstick is heavy. Each load had to be moved on that broomstick from one washtub to the other. For the average Hill Country farm family, a week’s wash consisted of eight loads. For each load, of course, the woman had to go back to the well and haul more water on her yoke. And all this effort was in addition to bending all day over the scrubboards. Lyndon's cousin Ava, who still lives in Johnson City, told me one day, “By the time you got done washing, your back was broke. I’ll tell you—of the things in my life that I will never forget, I will never forget how my back hurt on washdays.” Hauling the water, scrubbing, punching the clothes, rinsing: a Hill Country wife did this for hours on end; a city wife did it by pressing the button on her electric washing machine.

Robert Caro chapter about laundry in the Texas Hill Country remains evergreen

No one wants to read your thesis! That’s not why you write one!

This is a really good contemporary romance IMO. Funny, 🌶️, great character development & dialogue

Universities you work for love to be like:

💖 ✨ YOU ARE INVITED ✨ 💖
🪩 🕺 to give us money 💃🏼 🪩

Spoiler: they live happily every after

LOVE IN DISGUISE by M.A. Nichols

My current read that has this beloved trope:

I greatly enjoy the historical romance trope “Man Learns How to Apologize Properly After Having His Ass Handed to Him Many Times” and I’m not entirely clear on what that says about me

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

holy shit

one of my favorite moments of TNG is when Picard is immediately unable to contain his horse autism

Sandwich!

Sandwich

It was going on one, two in the morning, and we were shooting what I felt was an important scene for me, when he makes an attempt to be quote-unquote straight, in a suit, and at the end of it he gets emotional and locks himself in the other room. And I felt like, I’m not getting what I want—I’m not happy with it. Mike was happy with it. He called me the next day and said, “I know you weren’t happy with the scene last night. Believe me, we wouldn’t have gone home if I had felt we weren’t getting it.” And then he sort of became my psychiatrist and said, “You find it difficult to be happy, don’t you? You find it difficult to enjoy things.” And I said, “Well, sometimes. Last night was about feeling too tired and not feeling I was reaching what I needed to reach for the scene.” He talked to me then about when he was making, I don’t know whether it was Virginia Woolf or The Graduate. He said, “I didn’t enjoy it for a second. I was worried about so many things.” And then he said, “You know, this is never going to happen again quite this way. You should try to allow yourself to enjoy this more. Take a minute a day, and then add a minute the next day, and another minute. Pretty soon, you’ll have hours of happiness.”

The Birdcage opened thirty years ago today, so in its honor, I want to share one of my favorite stories about Mike Nichols that didn't make it into my biography. This is from an interview I did with Nathan Lane.

MTV REWIND - I Want My MTV Celebrating 44 years of continuous music videos. Stream classic music videos 24/7.

Today's delight: wantmymtv.vercel.app - 27,000 music videos to stream

fun fact: today is the shortest day of the year. winter solstice my ass

First 24 hours of embryonic development in 9 different animal species: (From left to right) Zebrafish, Sea urchin, Black widow spider, Tardigrade, Sea squirt, Comb jelly, Parchment tube worm, Roundworm, Slipper snail. Credit to @tessamontague.bsky.social & Zuzka Vavrušová. #ZebrafishZunday #devbio 🧪

A covered litter box. A fluffy kitten sits inside, facing out, her little front paws resting on the bottom edge of the entrance opening. She looks a little concerned.

This pic for a litter box looks like the kitten is working at a beachside snack shack and it's her first day and in her head, as she says, "Welcome to Herring House, how may I help you today?" she's silently thinking, "Please just want oyster crackers," because she ate all the herring.

me every single day

On Fandom, Heartbreak, and Joss Whedon One night at the dinner table my kids asked which I like better: Star Wars or Star Trek. I demurred; they insisted; I insisted I couldn’t…

(I wrote this. I stand by every word. I was right. And also I am 𝗏̶𝖾̶𝗋̶𝗒̶ ̶𝗅̶𝗂̶𝗄̶𝖾̶𝗅̶𝗒̶ absolutely going to disappoint Past Emily and consume every last moment of any reboot of the browncoat show, even if it involves, as it surely will, the person about whom I wrote that my relationship with them "is over.")

istg we are gonna make Mr Collins marry Mary this time so help me

*snort*

I never ever watch eps out of order! In such a miniseries as this it would be insupportable

capital peepers

Capital!

a woman with curly hair is standing in front of a candle holder . Alt: Ehle and Firth as our dear couple making goo goo eyes at each other

ok fuck it, watching ‘95 Pride and Prejudice right now. tgif

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%