Thirdly and finally, he said, I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT. He spoke this last word so loudly and suddenly that everyone sat up who still could.
Though thirteen years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits, I regret to announce that, as of this year, I am retiring from the co-editorship of the journal Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review.
Health concerns are the proximate cause for my retirement. But I will continue to be associated with and do work for the journal as availability permits.
My co-editors, Michael D.C. Drout and Yvette Kisor, have appointed as the new co-editor of the journal, with my enthusiastic approval, Kristine Larsen, noted and prolific Tolkien scholar, sometime contributor to TS, and professor at Central Connecticut State University.
They are hoping to send the next issue, Tolkien Studies 22, to press with our courteous publisher, West Virginia University Press, sometime in the spring of 2026.
- David Bratman, former co-editor, Tolkien Studies
And of course it’s shit. Of course it’s shit. Holy gods, it is such hot garbage, and I’m not even talking about the implied higher situational awareness of someone wearing an AI PHONE ON THEIR FACE over people looking down at their regular phones
tho’ that’s a pretty fuckin’ hot take for them to have right there too, I have to say
I’m talking about the raw clownery of this image. Holy hell. Let’s zoom in at one of the insults to imagery:
And I’m not even mentioning the ghost in the room, by which I mean the four ghosts in this one particular rendered room:
And I have to ask:
HOW CAN ALL THIS STILL BE THIS SHITTY AND PASS MUSTER FOR THEM? HOW?
Christ it’s so insultingly bad. It’s infuriatingly bad. As photography substitute, as AI generated Not Art. It’s… it’s like it’s Anti-art, an opposite of art that mocks the real, that imitates while degrading both itself and its opposite.
Anybody can make bad art. I’ve made plenty. Also some good art.
But it takes real work to make anti-art.
And that’s what makes me want to fucking scream.
We all know how monstrously wealthy Fuckerberg is. How much money he and his company have. How he could jerk off with thousand dollar bills, wipe himself clean, and burn the dirties the rest of his wretched life and not even notice the difference.
So when you see that they’d rather put out this slapdash, revolting, uncaring – no sneeringinsult of a render than pay a photographer and a few models a few bucks for an afternoon photo shoot, what’s that say?
It’s not the money. He has all the money. All of it. Well, him, and the other TESCREAL fascists.
I think… I think I have to think… that it’s a matter of principle for them. A sick principle, but a principle nonetheless. It has to be, because otherwise it makes no. goddamn. sense.
I literally have to conclude that they hate art, and even more, hate artists. They have to, to consider this better. It must be principle for them to not care about artistic creative work, to not pay artistic workers. It has to be principle to hold all that in contempt, to say, “see? We just steal everything you’ve ever done, throw it into our churn machine, and then rub out our own version in half an hour to show you’re not any better than us. And you can’t do shit about it.”
They’ve made it clear that they’d not only spew this kind of rancid splatter, this metaphorical scrawl of shit, urine, blood, and theft across the walls of a city than break that principle.
And they’ll enjoy it.
I used to think, once upon a time, that Syndrome from The Incredibles was a little too on the nose,a little too pointed, maybe – dare I say it – a little too cartoonish for even a cartoon.
I’m starting to think maybe he wasn’t on the nose enough.
But that’s flippant, and maybe a little too easy.
What I really feel is that… I’m finally starting to understand – really understand, at a gut level – what Hayao Miyazaki meant when he called AI “art” an insult to life itself.
Because, well, almost anything can be art. Art is an observation and an intent, as much as anything else, and handing that mantle to something which has no awareness, no observation, no actual knowledge of meaning, no ability to opine, no personhood at all, a chum machine with less actual awareness than a housefly maggot…
…how could that be anything less than an insult to life, itself?
It took me a while to understand, Hayao. But I think I’ve finally got there.
50 years ago, Minneapolis redefined LGBTQ+ rights On December 30, 1975, just before the New Year, the city council passed trans-inclusive protections unlike anything the U.S. has been able to achieve. Kate Sosin https://19thnews.org/2025/12/minneapolis-redefined-lgbtq-history-1975/
US librarians tackle ‘manufactured crisis’ of book bans to protect LGBTQ+ rights In at least half a dozen states, librarians have joined forces with civil rights groups to oppose book bans, often facing personal and professional repercussions Claire Wang https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/15/us-librarianbook-bans-lgbtq-rights
I bought something for my second bike trailer build on Saturday.
The trailer’s basically been done for weeks already. I’m adding details and accessories now, like, I want to sew a cover, and I want to add reflectors. So I took it for another little shakedown ride, this time to a hardware store I found out had DOT-grade adhesive reflectors in stock for… more money than I’d like, but not unreasonable money.
Here’s what I’ve done with those stickers so far. I think it’s pretty good. The rear view is my biggest concern, given that my bike is well-lit, and this… frankly ugly flash photo… makes the reflectors pop well, showing how they’d reflect headlights. It’ll help:
But it occurred to me as I was doing all this that…
This is the first time I’ve bought something for this project.
The trailer frame was salvaged from a semi-wrecked kiddo hauler abandoned outdoors for over a year. The platform is made from a cargo pallet someone illegally dumped and I salvaged; the metal clamps holding it in place I shaped out of old building strapping. I literally found the warning flag pole on the street, and it inserts into a metal tube salvaged from a housemate’s broken laundry rack. I made a flag for it from scrap fabric. The cage is made from Buy Nothing-listed DIY cube shelving, the kind that never really works right, but there’s nothing wrong with the wire squares that a whole bunch of zip ties can’t fix. Other parts are 3D-printed, designed by me, printed by me, at home.
Everything else was just ordinary supplies I already had.
But when it came to the reflectors… I looked around a little, but then… I just went and bought something. And I have kind of mixed feelings about that!
I mean, it’s fine. Really. At some point, I’m going to want to replace these tyres, too, and that’s a purchase – they were also in the outdoors for at least a year and as a result are semi-rotted. They’re only still usable because I used a lot of silicone glue to make a reinforcement coat on the walls. (Hey, it’s not stupid if it works, and it works.) So sooner or later, money was going to be spent.
But even so, just buying something – even if it’s something you legitimately can’t make at home, like DOT-spec reflective material – feels like cheating. I kinda don’t like it.
Part of it is that I started making these cargo carriers around the time Anna got laid off, and even after she finally got a new job earlier this year, I kept the same approach. Sure, it helped that I already had basically everything I needed by that time, but also, we’re trying to make up for a lot of lost money and time, so I kept doing things the same way.
Until today, when I didn’t. I did it the normal way instead. It’s a very normal thing. You need an item, a part, whatever – you can just buy it.
And… maybe… maybe it’s just how extremely abnormal everything else is right now, in this endless emergency… but…
Bondi -- It was heading for 100 degrees fondly Fahrenheit, the only time I've been to Bondi Beach. No shooters, though. FYI: It's pronounced BOND-EYE Beach, not Bondy Beach. Who knew?
Hanukkah tonight, but not a happy one. Some forty people shot, eleven of them killed, in an attack on a first-night Hanukkah celebration on a beach in Sydney, Australia. Anti-Semitism the apparent cause. Yes, again.
More celebratory news in the actor-comedian-dancer Dick Van Dyke reaching his centenary yesterday. He's good at what he does, I saw a couple of his movies when I was very small and enjoyed them, and that's about all I have to say about that. Such an intensely American figure should never have been asked to play a cockney chimney sweep in the first place, but his talent did a good job with the performance, accent or no.
Say, I've been to a couple of concerts. A Stanford student recital, various groups doing movements of chamber music pieces. The only work I knew well was Brahms's Op. 60 piano quartet, and I could hear how far the students had to stretch in this tumultuously dark work, but they tried hard. Most interesting was Chausson's Op. 3 piano trio, with its extremely strange first-movement ending. Two pianists playing a movement from a Rachmaninoff suite changed places with their page turners for the next movement; that was nice.
Up in the City, the Esmé Quartet was joined by Kronos cellist Paul Wiancko for Schubert's String Quintet, though the program book kept stating that it was a quartet. This was the last concert in the Robert Greenberg-curated series of morning Schubert concerts, and Greenberg had some useful things to say about how the piece is constructed from sub-ensembles: two overlapping quartets in the opening bars, a trio playing the theme in the slow movement with the first violin dancing descant above and the second cello providing pizzicato below. In that slow movement, when Schubert lowers the already pp volume to ppp, the softness and beauty were truly exquisite.
The great outdoor freezer has roared back to life! Stay warm!
Subzero temperatures are on their way to the Twin Cities this weekend, and it could be the coldest December day in decades. If “the temperature drops to -11 or colder Saturday night, that will be the earliest we’ve seen that kind of reading or colder since 1996. If we can slip to -12 or colder, that bar is even farther back, 1989,” according to Bring Me The News. And while that’s cold, it’s also worth noting that we had much colder Decembers in decades past: “December as a whole has warmed an eye-popping 5.5 degrees in just 50 years, our fastest warming winter month.” https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-weather/deep-freeze-could-bring-cold-the-twin-cities-hasnt-felt-this-early-in-30-years
The level of disfunction in Twin Lakes has grown such that many townsfolk are calling for the city government to be dissolved, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports. “The shouting, threats and sarcastic barbs have been flying for months at city meetings in this town of 130 near the Iowa border. There are complaints about tap water running black, fights over city hiring and multiple allegations of misdeeds. … In a small-town smackdown, 34 residents have signed a petition to take Twin Lakes off the map by dissolving the city government.” This piece reads with all the intrigue and tension of a reality TV drama. Via MinnPost https://www.startribune.com/twin-lakes-minnesota-dissolve-city-township/601536850?utm_source=gift
Trump attacks old foe Biden – but presidential parallels hard to avoid US president finds himself shouldering same burdens of affordability crisis and the inexorable march of time David Smith in Washington https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/13/trump-biden-rivals
The crossword puzzle clue read "Get lost!" with the quotation marks around it, and the first three letters of the answer were GOF. I was hoping the fourth letter would be U and so on, but there weren't enough spaces for the expected conclusion of YOURSELF. It was when the cross word revealed that the fourth letter was in fact L that I realized the entire answer was GOFLYAKITE, which fit, but who says that any more?
Mike Lindell has officially decided to throw his pillow, er, hat, into the ring, WCCO reports. The MyPillow founder and staunch supporter of President Donald Trump has joined the contest to be the GOP nominee for governor of Minnesota. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Tim Walz is running for an unprecedented third consecutive term. Via MinnPost https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/mike-lindell-minnesota-governor-republican-campaign-mypillow/
And so I see also that the SF writer John Varley has died. He burst upon the SF scene in the mid-1970s with a series of stories set in a future in which various planets and moons in our system are colonized, dubbed the Eight Worlds. Sex changes for aesthetic purposes, and artificial environments for artistic purposes, were common. The most famous of these stories was probably "The Phantom of Kansas." Several of these were Hugo nominees, but they didn't win, which frustrated me; at one point I called Varley the best SF writer currently operating who'd never won a Hugo.
He did finally get a Hugo in 1979 for a story outside that universe, a searingly memorable one called "The Persistence of Vision," which resembled Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End in being framed as a hopeful scenario but which really comes across as a horror story. I once quoted, purely as an allusion without identifying it, the memorable last line of this story in a post about my relief after having had to be talking all day, and someone caught the allusion, to my pleasure. His two successor Hugo winners, "The Pusher" and "Press Enter█", both from the 1980s, were also stand-alones and searingly memorable, the former also with a killer last line, which casts a chilling air back over the whole story; the latter more openly a horror story from early on, with a surprisingly intense Luddite air. All three of these stories were excellent of their kinds, and are the Varley stories I remember the best.
He also wrote novels, of which I've read two and a half. As with many SF writers, he was better at short fiction. Also like many SF writers, he turned mostly to novels in his later years, and I know nothing about those later works.
I met him a couple of times in the early days, in passing at conventions. He was tall and looming, with a full mustache, and latterly a beard. His middle name was Herbert, and he was known informally to friends as Herb, which confused people who didn't already know that. One time when he had two stories in the same issue of Asimov's, he used "Herb Boehm" as a pseudonym on one of them, "Air Raid", a particularly gruesome story about (to mischaracterize it wickedly) rescuing passengers from an airplane crash, which turned out to be by far the better-known of those two stories. But he quickly reprinted "Air Raid" under his usual byline, and later expanded it into a novel, Millennium, which I read (it wasn't as tight as the original story), which in turn was eventually made into a movie, which I haven't seen.
The Trump administration’s fight against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives has reached Minneapolis Public Schools. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against the state’s third-largest school district, accusing it “of providing discriminatory protections to teachers of color in layoff and reassignment decisions,” specially “the district’s efforts to bolster its minority teaching ranks,” The Minnesota Star Tribune reports. Via MinnPost https://www.startribune.com/trump-administration-accuses-minneapolis-schools-of-racism-in-protecting-minority-teachers/601543618?utm_source=gift
It’s cold outside. But what should you do if it’s cold indoors? If you have drafty windows or a sputtering furnace, MPR News offers “five things to know about making improvements to your home to save energy and cut heating costs this winter.” Via MinnPost https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/10/reducing-home-heating-costs-5-things-to-know
Arthur was an old friend of mine, in both senses of the word. I'd known him through apas from 1978, and we met in person a couple years after that. But he was also older than most of his cohort in fandom, having entered with a splash with his first personalzine in the spring of 1977, when he was 34, an unusual age when most neofans were in their teens or early 20s. He died a couple days ago at 83, after long illnesses.
Living at first in Westchester County, New York, and then moving to Durham, N.C., to attend library school, he was geographically far removed from most of the members of the apas I knew him in. When one of the apas ran a photo-cover, Arthur submitted a picture taken in a photo booth which made him look like a gnome tucked in a corner. I attended the collation, and as members perused the completed mailing with its key to the cover photos, I heard occasional cries of "That's Arthur?"
Without physical presence, it was the quality of his writing that made him a valued member of both our apas and fanzine fandom in general. He wrote long and thoughtful essays, many informed by his reading of Thomas Pynchon, Ayn Rand, H.P. Lovecraft, and above all the Illuminatus! trilogy of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, all of which he took as very interesting and provocative, but none of which he viewed without a skeptical eye. Arthur was also a great quipster, leaving fanzines littered with witty and insightful bon mots. Someone sent him as a joke some volumes of treacly moral tales for children called Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories, and our Arthur used that as a fanzine title for a while.
He was full of wit and bon mots in person, also, in a light textured voice with a trace of New York accent, when I finally met him at a convention. Without the gnome extension, he looked like this - a little later on, after his dark hair and beard turned white. Earlier than that, in 1983, I actually ventured down to Durham to visit Arthur at home. By this time he had acquired a permanent romantic partner, an English lit grad student named Bernadette Bosky, whom Arthur had first met in the pages of a Lovecraft-oriented apa. She seemed so perfectly matched for Arthur's distinctive character that some of those reading about her from far away doubted that she could possibly be real, and one of my goals in traveling to Durham was to be one of the first outside fans to meet her and confirm her corporeal existence.
Later, after my visit, Arthur and Bernadette were joined by Kevin Maroney as a third for their romantic triad. I'm not the only observer who's frequently pointed at them as proof that such a relationship can be stable and permanent. Then they moved back up to Westchester, whence Arthur had originally come, and settled in a house in Yonkers they called Valentine's Castle (Valentine was the name of the street). Here they became much more personally active in fandom, going to conventions especially the ICFA in Florida. I never got to that, but I do cherish having introduced my own B. to all three of them at Nolacon in 1988. Meanwhile, they had founded their own apa and held private conventions for its members; and many people came to see them at home, including me. I think I stayed over twice, and I met their pet rats, which were actually quite cute and had rat-pun names.
I got to know both Bernadette and Kevin as individuals, but Arthur was always there, though receding in the background a little as age-related illnesses began to take over. I'm sorry that physical problems of my own prevented my attendance at a big party they held a couple years ago. And now Arthur is gone, but at least we still have vivid memories of him, and his fanzines to read.
Multiple appointments this week for various kinds of body work:
Monday - blood draw for Vitamin D levels Tuesday - pedicure Wednesday (today) - physio for strained calf muscle Thursday - deep tissue massage
Nothing (yet) for Friday
I want to be as physically prepared as I can be for two days of dancing at Borealis' Yule feast this weekend. There's a social dance on Saturday and an extended dance practice on Sunday. I'm looking forward to the event!
This is correct. The document is very clear on that point. But here’s more from Anders:
The United States sees it as a strategic priority… that MAGA movements come to power in Europe, and they intend to use the means that they have to support such movements in the fight against the current centrist governments.
These are some very dramatic statements that have raised deep questions about whether there is any foundation for NATO to function going forward if the United States sees it as a strategic priority to undermine the governments of other NATO countries. …
It’s really hard to see how there can be an alliance any more. The reality is that the views expressed in this [policy document] are in many ways identical to the Russian viewpoints on Europe and the Russian goals of regime change in European countries.
He further discusses the document’s demands for ‘free speech,’ in the sense of ending social media moderation and opposing the exclusion of hate speech, the lifeblood of MAGA fascism. There are several demands in the document around these topics, which he sees – correctly – as focused on helping Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg push MAGA/fascist propaganda into Europe through their algorithmically-driven propaganda machines.
Elon Musk’s “X” is the bigger threat, of course. As Nielsen puts it: “If you’re European, then it is a national security priority to stop using X.” Elon Musk bought Twitter to turn it into a fascist propaganda fountain, as opposed to Zuckerberg’s primary intention of making as much money as possible, working with fascists if that’s what gets the job done.
I have, of course, been saying that it’s time to stop using X since a few months into Elon Musk’s takeover of the site because of this exact reason, but, well – who the fuck listens to me?
Anders’s final key takeaway here is that this document doesn’t show a MAGA-led US deciding not to care at all about Europe, but instead shows a US deciding to care very much about Europe – mostly western Europe – with the specific and stated intention of installing MAGA governments, telling Europe that they must be MAGA – fascist – to be allied with the US.
This move would be an extension of what MAGA see as “their” western hemisphere, which other than western Europe means North and South America, including Greenland.
Naturally, this process would include granting Russia and Trump’s second-best pal Putin their own sphere of influence in the east. This portends the US’s impending betrayal of Ukraine, and later, a betrayal of the Baltic states, Poland, probably a couple of others (Moldova? Romania? Bulgaria?) as well.
But why? Does Trump love Putin and Orban that much?
I believe It’s more than that, and more than Trump’s ego, believe it or not. It’s more than his desperate longing to be a dictator and it’s more than his sheer will to steal every dollar in sight. Trump and MAGA, well… they are definitively fools, morons, white nationalists, imperialists, longing for a white imperial past. But I still think that Putin has more choate strategic plans than Trump, and I still think Ukraine is a climate war, so…
…shall I post this line again? Sure, I’ll post this line again. Here’s what I think Putin really wants – not what he’ll get, what he wants. It’s a minimum goal, to “secure” the nation:
That’s oversimplified, of course, but this is a small map and a big thick line. The reality would be far different, and most likely more like existing national boundaries, but still: it gets the idea across.
Meanwhile, when Russian maximalists and propaganda shills talk about how “we should march all the way to Paris” – which they do, repeatedly – here’s what I think they want:
And what do these lines have in common?
Mountains.
Tall, easier to defend, mountainous, migration-blocking borders.
It’s simple-minded in a lot of ways, I suppose, but so is keeping the border at the Rhine and that kept French foreign policy busy for a few centuries, so border politics don’t have to be all that complex.
Putin et al – they know climate change is real. Trump’s a decaying fool and might not know now if he ever did, but Putin? He knows. But heading a petrostate dictatorship with lots of far-northern land? He doesn’t want to stop it, because it’s the outsourced expense of allllllll Russia’s money, and if billions die, well, that’s the cost of doing business.
I call map one Putin’s Wall. Map two? Let’s call it Solovyov’s Wall, since as far as I can tell he’s the most famous proponent of “marching all the way to Paris.” Soloyvov’s Wall isn’t attainable – it won’t happen, it’s (ugh) aspirational – but I do think Trump wants to give Putin his wall, and that Putin has enough trust in Russia’s ability to handle MAGA that he’s willing to let Trump and his replacements handle the west.
Personally, I think MAGA has enough interest in a semi-mythical White Europe that they’re willing to do it. As long as they’re lead by the right – white, fascist – governments.
Hence, this hideous betrayal of a document.
That said, let me be real clear about something: On their own, Russia cannot attain Putin’s Wall. It’d take a complete American betrayal and European capitulation for them to have any chance. They cannot do it alone.
But thanks to MAGA and Trump, they’re on the edge of getting that American betrayal. They want to push that betrayal to completion. If they get it, then they’ll help the US make MAGA happen in Europe, in order to get the second necessary condition of European collapse and capitulation.
Russia’s no match for the EU as a whole. But torn apart? Picking off one little country at a time is… it’s not easy, it’s absolutely not, but they’re willing to kill as many of their own as is necessary for as long as is necessary to do it. Particularly if they’re ethnic minorities. And since nobody wants to flee a climate disaster to a war zone anyway, so he wins either way. Whether deterred by mountains or by war, refugees would go elsewhere, or not at all.
And that’s why I think this is a climate war. Not a war triggered by climate changes in Russia, but by Russia wanting to keep oil and gas going forever and keep out the people that will starve and kill.
You noticed Iran saying that Tehran will have to be abandoned as a capital, didn’t you? It’s more corruption and incompetence than climate change – but it’s a bit of all three. Climate change has moved the timetable. Made things worse. And yet, we’re just getting started.
So, then. Where are we? Ah, yes. How this all plays out.
There’s a bit of a feeling out there that Trump is weakened and even some who think that this nightmare is… more or less over. That Trump is a “lame duck,” that there is no MAGA without him.
That’s partially true. Trump is weakened. MAGA is, too, and they’ve been dependant upon his stardom – and fandom – to reach critical mass. They will be badly wounded – but not out – once he goes.
But none of that means this is over. The more trouble MAGA and Trump think they’re in, the more Trump and MAGA will lash out, trying to push their fascist power fantasies into existence. We will all see more betrayals, more sabotage, more oppression – the ICE army of white supremacists they’re working to summon into existence, funded by the so-called “big beautiful bill,” will actively work to dwarf the violence and abuses we’ve seen this year.
It’s their vision of the future, and they’re going to fight for it. It’s what they want, it’s what they’re all in to get, and it’s what they will do anything to achieve.
And they will not go down quietly. Take heart in the recent massive election shifts. Take heart in Trump’s decay and weakness and failing… opinion polls. Take heart in the America First/MAGA civil war. Take heart in all of it.
But do not, for a moment, think this is actually over.
Nothing to see here, folks. These aren't the grifters you're looking for. Move along. US senator calls for insider trading inquiry over Trump donors buying $12m worth of shares Co-chairs of LNG firm, who bought stock worth almost $12m each after meeting with Trump officials, deny wrongdoing Nina Lakhani and Joseph Gedeon https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/10/trump-donors-insider-trading-investigation-senate
Hindsight is always 20/20 Wrong voters, wrong message: progressives’ autopsy lays bare Kamala Harris failures RootsAction report finds Harris courted moderates instead of working-class Democrats – and Gaza stance did not help David Smith in Washington https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/kamala-harris-election-autopsy
Gen-Zine: DIY publications find new life as form of resistance against Trump an illustration of people making zines People of all ages, from all regions, are making, printing and distributing zines on the streets, in libraries and at local gathering spots. Zines have made a resurgence as communities seek to share information on everything from ICE raids to local elections Mallory Carra https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/10/zine-revival-organizing-social-media
Sean Duffy wants passengers to dress up for airplane flights, like they used to do in, I guess, the 1950s. OK, I'll do that if the airlines will resume treating passengers as they did then: in the way of diners in fancy restaurants, or passengers on luxury cruises. Then it would be appropriate. As it is now, it would be ludicrous.
He also wants them to exercise while waiting for their flights. In their dress clothes? RFK Jr demonstrated pull-ups while wearing a dress shirt and a tie, so I guess so. Especially from a man who's been known to pose shirtless.
That kind of exercise I wouldn't do, though, however dressed. I have never been able to do a pull-up, not even when I was a scrawny little kid, and I was a scrawny little kid. The other boys in the phys ed class, who could all execute a dozen without breaking a sweat, would stare in disbelief as I strained and strained and was not able to pull my head, let alone my chin, up to the bar.
I was also the slowest runner in the class. I was proud of getting the highest score in the 50-yard dash until I realized what that meant.
And DT wants visitors to the US to declare their social media use. Yet another reason to discourage visitors from coming here. My answer to that one would be a big MYOB. It doesn't say what counts as "social media," and lists I've seen usually don't include blogging platforms. Other than that, I've rarely indulged. I've left occasional comments on YouTube videos. I've been persuaded to get accounts on LinkedIn and Discord, both of which I've found pretty useless. I've never used Facebook or Twitter, but at least I've seen them and know what they are. Most of the rest, the likes of TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest (which I had to extract from a list as names I'd heard before), I've never seen and don't even know what specifically within the realm of social media they do. I may have been told but I can't maintain a memory of something that has no referent for me.
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calimac
