Joseph Salvador, writing for Sports Illustrated, has the story on Aaron Rodgers and his torn Achilles.

The 39-year-old played just four snaps before the catastrophic injury when he was sacked by Buffalo’s Leonard Floyd. The hit itself didn’t seem like much, but a pop can be seen in Rodgers’s left calf and the signal-caller proceeded to just sit on the ground before getting helped off the field as if he already knew of its severity.

It’s sad and funny, but mostly funny.

This is a link.

This is another link

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, et has odio adversarium, cu cum omnes insolens voluptatum. His in quis recusabo reprimique, modus dignissim eum in. Nonumes tibique adipiscing sea in. Te ferri iisque consequat pro, qui in eros dictas meliore. Eu oporteat postulant sadipscing quo, no est corrumpit intellegam concludaturque, vis ne tempor altera scribentur. Ponderum verterem ea eum, id nam incorrupte complectitur contentiones, no partem quodsi abhorreant mea. Ea doming molestie ius. Nibh omnis mnesarchum mei ex. Mea lorem eligendi te.

Cu nusquam fastidii cotidieque qui, ex qui enim euismod antiopam. Id usu ignota pertinacia.

Quo mazim commune phaedrum at, sit ea error sanctus vocibus, usu tempor electram eu. Atqui platonem persecuti eam id, mei erat liber quodsi cu. Nam at graece salutandi repudiare, mei in sapientem erroribus.

Verear admodum at sea. Inani salutandi posidonium ex pro, ex sit legere neglegentur. Id vim laudem putent, quo nonumes alienum no. Ad cum vide vocent, has delenit labores percipitur at. Ne dicat tollit sapientem sit. Ei solet dolore suscipiantur vim, nullam oblique placerat ex duo.

Short line right here below?

AP News –

A judge sentenced ‘That ’70s Show’ show star Danny Masterson to 30 years to life in prison Thursday for raping two women, giving them some relief after they spoke in court about the decades of damage he inflicted.

What a horrible human being.

Lane Brown, writing for Vulture, outlines the overrated metric of Rotten Tomatoes.

Another problem — and where the trickery often begins — is that Rotten Tomatoes scores are posted after a movie receives only a handful of reviews, sometimes as few as five, even if those reviews may be an unrepresentative sample. This is sort of like a cable-news network declaring an Election Night winner after a single county reports its results. But studios see it as a feature, since, with a little elbow grease, they can sometimes fool people into believing a movie is better than it is.

I haven’t looked at a Rotten Tomatoes review in years.

The Stones just released their first new song in 18 years.

In The Atlantic, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt cover the state of American democracy.

Since 2016, America has experienced what political scientists call ‘democratic backsliding.’ The country has seen a surge in political violence; threats against election workers; efforts to make voting harder; and a campaign by the then-president to overturn the results of an election—hallmarks of a democracy in distress. Organizations that track the health of democracies around the world have captured this problem in numerical terms. Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index gives countries a score from 0 to 100 each year; 100 indicates the most democratic. In 2015, the United States received a score of 90, roughly in line with countries such as Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. But since then, America’s score has declined steadily, reaching 83 in 2021. Not only was that score lower than every established democracy in Western Europe; it was lower than new or historically troubled democracies such as Argentina, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Taiwan.

Obviously, our problems are all homegrown.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, et has odio adversarium, cu cum omnes insolens voluptatum. His in quis recusabo reprimique, modus dignissim eum in. Nonumes tibique adipiscing sea in. Te ferri iisque consequat pro, qui in eros dictas meliore. Eu oporteat postulant sadipscing quo, no est corrumpit intellegam concludaturque, vis ne tempor altera scribentur. Ponderum verterem ea eum, id nam incorrupte complectitur contentiones, no partem quodsi abhorreant mea. Ea doming molestie ius. Nibh omnis mnesarchum mei ex. Mea lorem eligendi te.

Cu nusquam fastidii cotidieque qui, ex qui enim euismod antiopam. Id usu ignota pertinacia.

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Quo mazim commune phaedrum at, sit ea error sanctus vocibus, usu tempor electram eu. Atqui platonem persecuti eam id, mei erat liber quodsi cu. Nam at graece salutandi repudiare, mei in sapientem erroribus.

Verear admodum at sea. Inani salutandi posidonium ex pro, ex sit legere neglegentur. Id vim laudem putent, quo nonumes alienum no. Ad cum vide vocent, has delenit labores percipitur at. Ne dicat tollit sapientem sit. Ei solet dolore suscipiantur vim, nullam oblique placerat ex duo.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, et has odio adversarium, cu cum omnes insolens voluptatum. His in quis recusabo reprimique, modus dignissim eum in. Nonumes tibique adipiscing sea in. Te ferri iisque consequat pro, qui in eros dictas meliore. Eu oporteat postulant sadipscing quo, no est corrumpit intellegam concludaturque, vis ne tempor altera scribentur. Ponderum verterem ea eum, id nam incorrupte complectitur contentiones, no partem quodsi abhorreant mea. Ea doming molestie ius. Nibh omnis mnesarchum mei ex. Mea lorem eligendi te.

Rob Harvilla, writing for The Ringer, remembers the endless summer of Jimmy Buffett.

His job was just beach. His art, his science, his philosophy, his religion, his ethos, his billion-dollar brand: beach. Just beach. “No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote John Donne; “If we couldn’t laugh / We would all go insane,” sang Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday, of skin cancer, at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” per a post on his Twitter account, which added, “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.” That collective grief, that camaraderie, that interconnectedness: Of course that’s what “No man is an island” means, but also, no man was more of an island than Jimmy Buffett, a cheerfully boozy and poignantly serene walking vacation of a man where all were welcome and nobody ever had to leave.

You want to do the Sad, Wistful Song first or the Goofy, Ribald Song? Mmm. Yes. You’re absolutely right.

So you hear that Jimmy Buffett died, and maybe you reach instinctively for 1985’s Songs You Know by Heart, his first greatest-hits collection, though the original album cover styles it “Greatest Hit(s),” the parenthetical a typically wry and self-effacing nod to the fact that at the time, at least, his biggest/greatest hit by an order of magnitude was “Margaritaville,” his wistful and absurdly anthemic 1977 sing-along that forever defined his art/religion/brand. But I put this record on this morning, and really every song was a colossal hit, especially “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” which I used to bellow with my goofy and ribald teenage friends (the chorus begins, “Why don’t we get drunk and screw,” you see) as we drove around the landlocked Midwest in the mid-’90s. But let me politely suggest that you, also, know all of Songs You Know by Heart by heart, even if you’ve never listened to this record (or any other Jimmy Buffett record) by choice, even if you never caught him live, even if you’re no Parrothead, even if tequila’s not your thing.

Jillian Willson, writing for Huffington Post, says Read This If You Never Take Your Shoes Off When You Go Into Your House.

It’s worth noting that there is risk associated with bringing another human being into your home, too. This is because every human releases about 30 million bacterial cells each hour just by standing in a room.

Ugh. I hardly ever take my shoes off.

There aren’t many bass/drummer duos in the world, but Royal Blood is one of them. They have such a unique sound.

They are out with a new album, and it sounds good so far. Check out Royal Blood’s Back to the Water Below.

Arleen Sorkin, noted stage and television actress who was the inspiration and first voice actress for Batman: The Animated Series and DC villain Harley Quinn, has passed away at 67 following a long term illness. I had no idea she was sick.

In my college days, we would watch Days of Our Lives and I remember distinctly the episodes where Sorkin was in a clown costume and her voice cutting through everything. I’m aware this was the inspiration for Harley Quinn.

Sad.

David Roth, writing at Defector, has a simple essay about the joys of writing things down in a notebook.

My little diary of all the art I looked at and movies and TV shows I watched and shows I went to and books I read will not be made public, and not only because I find my own handwriting very difficult to read and my own thoughts generally unpleasant to behold. It is nice to have something that is just for you, and it is also nice to make the time to note all the stuff that daily life tends to flush out and away. A painful part of getting older is bumping up against not just the finitude of what you can remember and do, but how much of it you will invariably wind up forgetting.

I keep thinking I need my own dumb little book.

Margaret Atwood, writing in The Atlantic about the news an AI is being trained on her work without permission, thinks it’s mostly crap. At least for now.

Once fully trained, the bot may be given a command—“Write a Margaret Atwood novel”—and the thing will glurp forth 50,000 words, like soft ice cream spiraling out of its dispenser, that will be indistinguishable from something I might grind out. (But minus the typos.) I myself can then be dispensed with—murdered by my replica, as it were—because, to quote a vulgar saying of my youth, who needs the cow when the milk’s free?

The AI/LLM revolution is coming. It’s not quite there yet, but soon. Best be prepared.

Bob Barker, legendary The Price Is Right host, has died at the age of 99, confirmed by his publicist Roger Neal. Bob, thanks for encouraging the world to have our pets spayed or neutered. What a life.

This is Bob Barker’s greatest moment.

Kevin Drum –

This is going to sound weird, but hear me out. There are upwards of 4,300 religions in the world, and even faithful churchgoers don’t believe in 4,299 of them. My only difference with them is that I don’t believe in 4,300.

Is that really such a big deal?

Perfect.

Jay Peters, writing for The Verge, has the story about the long-awaited web version of Threads.

The new desktop web interface looks a lot like the one in the mobile app, though with some small differences; the navigation icons are on the top of the page, and to switch between the For You and Following feeds, you’ll click a button in the bottom-left corner.

However, the web experience doesn’t let you do everything that you can in the mobile app. According to Pai, that means you can’t do things like edit your profile or send a post to Instagram DMs from the web. After using the web version for a couple days, I don’t like that there’s no notification dot on the heart icon and that you can’t quote post (aka quote tweet).

It’s a start, but really the whole app is still in beta. I want a Tweetdeck-like interface, but I’d settle for Lists.

Susan B. Glasser, writing for The New Yorker, talks about the surrender, the mug shot, and what this all means.

There was no real news in this, of course, since he was indicted earlier this month. But that did not stop the breathless hours of coverage—the scenes of his plane slowly rolling down the tarmac, the extensive motorcade ride through Atlanta, his self-reported and highly suspect description of himself as six feet three and two hundred and fifteen pounds. The big reveal of the evening was his photo, in which he wore a navy suit and red tie. He glared straight into the camera for his big moment; the trademark Trump glower—eyebrows raised, vaguely menacing, closer to a scowl than a smile—is one he has cultivated for years. In the White House, his aides called it, simply, the Stare.

He thinks he looks like Churchill. I think he looks constipated. What a loser.

Pamela McClintock and Aaron Couch, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, has the story that Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to the Frank Herbert adaptation Dune will now release March 15, 2024, a four-month delay from its original planned November 2023 release.

This sucks. Pay the writers, set AI guidelines, and end the strike.