Castle Magus

"Swing your arms from side to side, because it's time to do Mario! In a Bad Quiz! Well, more of a scavenger hunt.

"Whatever, just watch and see for yourself."

<sarcastic monotone> Yay. </sarcastic monotone>

Summons is for Rockingham County, NC "for the week beginning Friday, March 6, 2026." (Bold and underline theirs.)

Well, technically, I "got" it on January 20, or at least that's the date on the form, but since my sister with whom I currently live picked up the mail during that time period, and she had been staying with one of my other sisters for roughly half of January and half of February, my mail only just got handed to me about 15 minutes ago.

This is a first for me, so I have no real idea what to expect, other than what the Internet tells me, which isn't too awfully much. Hopefully, it'll just be a one-to-two-day thing at most, and not some high profile, multi-week murder trial or some shit. And that's assuming I even get selected for a jury, I guess. Either way, I suppose I'll be able to say that I've finally done jury duty, or at least got summoned for it, if nothing else. *shrug*

"In an era when many say the news finds them, there is no consensus about the importance of following the news"

(Just to note, this thing is nine pagesscreens long, some much longer than others, and I didn't bother to carefully read the whole thing. I did read most of the first pagescreen, and when I saw that "next" button at the bottom, with an indicator of eight more screens after the first... I did at least skim over the rest of it, but I could already feel my eyes glazing over.)

( Lot of text behind cut )

Okay, that's pretty strong. It's not inaccurate, either. I like it. It's a good name for the current geologic epoch.

"While Billie Eilish slams non-philanthropic billionaires, this CEO says telling people what to do with their cash is 'invasive' and to 'butt out'"

Anyway, with that infinitesimal bit of catharsis out of the way, I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I'm a fan of Billie Eilish, have been for at least four or five years now, and not just (or even mostly) because of stuff like this.

Here, have a few Charles Cornell videos about Billie Eilish:

( Youtube embeds behind cut )

I think of all the "major" holidays, Thanksgiving is probably my least favorite. Or maybe tied at the bottom with Christmas, these years.

A (re)post (of a Threads post) on John Scalzi's Whatever.

I'm guessing the title says "@$$holes" instead of "Assholes" for aLgOrItHm reasons.

Yeah, the gist of this video is "people, just in general, are incredibly fucking stupid."

A post on The Daily Cartoonist.

Only the first two or three are about Trump or politics in general. The rest is about family stuff, writing, money management, sportsball stuff, and driving stuff.

And in response to this preposterous dumbfuckery that was linked to in the above post, I'll just leave the same quote here (which also sits in my Dreamwidth profile) that I left over there on The Daily Cartoonist:

---

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, The Kansas City Star - May 7, 1918

Honestly, at this point, whenever I hear about someone going on a tirade against "cancel culture," all it does is make me think, "Well... hmm... so I wonder what kind of heinous skeletons this person has in their closet waiting to be exposed to the light that they're trying to get ahead of by wailing about cancel culture."

On the one hand, Denzel Washington isn't necessarily wrong, ridiculous angry word salad about followers and leaders and "can't be canceled if you haven't signed up" (whatever the fuck that dumbshit is supposed to mean) and "faith in God" dumbfuckery aside. Cancel culture doesn't really exist at all in any truly meaningful way, given how so many of the high profile asshats who ostensibly have been "canceled" over the years now have multi-million dollar Netflix specials in which they do nothing but whinge and baw about how "canceled" they are.

On the other hand, if you say or do something incredibly stupid or incredibly evil or incredibly squicky, and the general public finds out about it, then they tend to turn against you, and that may or may not lead to you losing work that you otherwise would have had, had you not done or said the incredibly stupid/evil/squicky thing. If "cancel culture" exists at all, then that is all it is, no more and no less. It has been that way ever since the very concept of fame came into existence. It comes part and parcel with being a celebrity. Your career lives or dies solely at the whim of everyone else, simple as that. If people no longer want to watch your movies or read your books or listen to your music or whatever, because you said or did something incredibly stupid or evil or squicky, then if you want to cry and say you've been "canceled," then sure. If you want to call that "cancel culture" rather than "suffering the consequences of your own dipshit actions," then fine. But then, of course, if there are enough lickspittles out there who still want to continue watching/reading/listening to you, either despite or because of the incredibly stupid/evil/squicky thing you did or said, then no, you have not been "canceled."

(Well, unless your name is Donald Trump, of course. In that particular case, you can do/say every stupid/evil/squicky thing, and all it means is that you get to be the President twice and that you get a legion of sycophants who bow and scrape to your every whim and who want to dictate to everyone else, in your name, exactly how the country is to be run, despite every other non-stupid, non-evil, non-squicky person in the world wanting you and your army of adulators dead and gone.)

See also.