“Toto, before I tell you this I need to make sure you don’t have any headsets within reach, and there needs to be a table or desk or other flat surface between us.”

Dude's a Christian Zionist.

I actually doubt that. Zionism is usually an Evangelical Protestant trait, this notion that we need to force prophecy to be true isn’t associated with Catholicism.

I realize that from the outside all flavors of any given religion look pretty similar, but there is a stark difference between your average Catholic and your average Evangelical. And between various flavors of Protestantism, some of which are far more similar to Catholicism than they are to the more “Evangelical” Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, or non-denominational megachurches.

Point is, I would be shocked to find that Zionism is a religious belief for J’Biden. It’s far more likely that his position regarding Israel is more rooted in realpolitik support for one’s allies at any cost, which is also reprehensible.

I genuinely did concert a bunch of my stuff to 32kbps MP3 when I had a shitty like, 64MB MP3 player. It sounded horrible but I could have more songs.

Then I got a job and literally the moment I had saved enough I bought an iPod. That’s when I learned about how much sales tax can scale on larger purchases. And also how overdraft fees work. Very valuable lessons for a high school student.

SPATULA CITY!

Coreen Miranda

Mildly interesting coincidence that this administrator shares a last name with the man who wrote and starred in the musical.

Blasphemous. Dipping fries into the Frosty improves both the fries and the Frosty.

Nah, Magic Head’s uncle!

Being mean is willfully making people around you feel worse. Being cringe is negligently making people around you feel worse. Once you're aware you're cringe, if you do nothing to mitigate it, you're being willfully negligent, which is just as bad as doing something intentionally.

Cringe is just vicarious embarrassment. You are feeling embarrassed on behalf of someone else. Unlike empathy, where you share the emotion someone else is experiencing, cringe is generally embarrassment for the actions of someone else who is not embarrassed.

I suspect this is an instinct that helps us create social norms. We are embarrassed that someone else is acting in a way that would embarrass us, so we are encouraged to let them know that what they’re doing isn’t right. This is helpful if someone has toilet paper stuck to their shoe, or their fly is down, or they have some food stuck in their teeth.

But it isn’t helpful if the thing they’re doing is intentional, harmless, and they’re owning it. Let people live their lives, and work on your response to their behavior or appearance rather than policing them to make yourself feel better.

NB: I am not a psychologist.

Modulation fluctuates in popularity. About a quarter of number one hits from the 60s through the 90s utilized it, whereas in the 2010s only one number one hit did.

Why the key change has disappeared from top-charting tune - NPR - All Things Considered

Edit: I realize this doesn’t answer your question, but I’m not sure there really is an answer. It’s such an old technique, musically speaking.

That style actually pre-dates the 80's by at least a few decades. In more traditional music, particularly Christian hymns, that's referred to as a "descant". It was popularized in church music in the early 20th century by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Descant is a vocal harmony above the melody, whereas in hymnody most harmony is below the melody. They show up in final stanzas, most frequently.

What they’re talking about here is modulation, where the key shifts by a step or two (or maybe a half step). It’s sometimes seen as a bit cheesy nowadays, but I love a good modulation.

I had forgotten the name of his Vision Pro app, so I was very confused. Is it 1998 and they’re banning my dial-up internet/email service?

Juno: Because email was meant to be free!

We use ! because keyboards no longer have buttons for ¬, which is the other logical not.