Handy.

Helen Rosner writing for The New Yorker:

There is, of course, a German word for it: Hamsterkäufe, meaning to shop like a nervous, bulging-cheeked hamster.

Via the great Derek Willis, Ricardo De La Fuente has a super generic congressional campaign website.

Why? Ballotpedia knows:

Ricardo De La Fuente is a Democratic candidate for Texas’ 27th Congressional District. The primary is March 3, 2020.

De La Fuente is also a candidate for California’s 21st Congressional District. De La Fuente declared candidacy for the primary election on March 3, 2020.

That’s pretty special.

Note also:

De La Fuente was a Democratic candidate for Florida’s 24th Congressional District in the U.S. House. De La Fuente was defeated in the primary on August 28, 2018.

Practically speaking there must be an upper limit on the number of districts a candidate could compete in at the same time, right? I’m so basic, I would’ve thought that number was one. One district seems like a lot of districts to campaign in already.

Jonathan Chait dropping one hell of an argument:

Polarization has given any major party nominee a high enough floor of support that the term “unelectable” has no real place in the discussion. What’s more, every candidate in the race brings a suite of their own liabilities Trump could exploit. That said, the totality of the evidence suggests Sanders is an extremely, perhaps uniquely, risky nominee.

And

At this point there is hardly any serious evidence to believe that the best strategy to defeat Trump is to mobilize voters with a radical economic agenda. Public satisfaction with the economy is now at its highest point since the peak of the dot-com boom two decades ago. Trump has serious weaknesses of issues like health care, corruption, taxes, and the environment, and a majority of the public disapproves of Trump’s performance, but he does enjoy broad approval of his economic management. Therefore, his reelection strategy revolves around painting his opponents as radical and dangerous. You may not like me, he will argue, but my opponents are going to turn over the apple cart. A Sanders campaign seems almost designed to play directly into Trump’s message.

I don’t think Chait is wrong.

A very appealing stab at explaining contemporary politics from Ezra Klein which also serves as a great argument for reading his book, out next week.

Jonathan Bernstein:

[T]o put it more or less as Schiff did: Will the U.S. wind up a stronger democracy after this trial — or a lesser one?

The answer to all those questions depends in part on how the public comes to understand what happened in 2019-2020. And that understanding will be, in part, created by what happens in the Senate right now, how it is reported, and how the citizenry reacts to it.

I don’t know who needs to read this but, people should stop putting up with high prices for cable and stop worrying about cyclical battles and outages cable providers have with broadcasters. But reading coverage of these fraught negations you’d think consumers had no outside options for “free TV.”

From a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article entitled, “Why TV Stations and Cable Providers Keep Viewers in the Dark About Their Contracts:”

“Rabbit ears” are a relic now. Those old-fashioned, bent-up pieces of metal — which are likely gathering dust in a grandparent’s attic or basement — are the antennas that people hooked up to their television sets to get broadcast signals, free of charge. They hearken back to a simpler time when one had to get off the couch or up from an easy chair to turn a dial from channel 2 to 4 or 11.

Now, it’s remote controlled and shown on a high-definition, 60-inch flat screen mounted above the mantel with an endless, ever-changing array of providers, channels and streaming services that allow you to watch the programs you want, when you have time to watch them.

The convenience comes with a catch, however, as each service charges subscription fees beyond the price of electricity to power up the set.

Maybe everything above is technically correct. But it’s also all wrong. Antennas are still a thing even if HDTV ones don’t look like rabbit ears. They will work with your TV’s remote. There is no service charge.

Anyways, don’t believe me – go visit the Wirecutter for their advice on the The Best Indoor HDTV Antenna.

If you live in dense enough part of the world an indoor HDTV antenna will probably get all the major broadcast stations and your local PBS affiliate. If all you watch are the biggest televised spectacles – major breaking news, presidential debates, the biggest sporting events, etc. – this is enough Broadcast TV for you. Add one or more streaming services if desired. It’s not hard to skip that cable bill.

More blog posts which could have been written ten years ago coming soon.

Pretty gripping account about what’s going on with nginx by Vicki Boykis.

Recommended for people interested in the web or Russian political intrigue and drama.

Q: “Is there a character you feel particular ownership of now? Like if somebody comes in and changes Kite Man, are you going to throw the issue across the room and scream, ‘Fuck no, that’s not how this is supposed to be done.’”

It’s kind of like when you sign up for this gig, that’s part of the agreement and coming into comics is realizing that this is a medium that extends to other people and no one has benefited more from that than me, who’s twisted the work of Jack Kirby and Marv Wolfman and Bob Kane and Bill Finger for my own benefits. I feel like denying that to others would be hypocritical.