1. Sign up for Fastrak account so I can auto-pay tolls on a route I’ll …

1. Sign up for Fastrak account so I can auto-pay tolls on a route I’ll be driving a lot for a few months.

2. Realize that the agency I signed up through doesn’t manage the route I’m using, so I have to wait for the transponder to arrive. 🤦‍♂️

3. Look at the agency that does manage it…and they have both a monthly fee and a setup fee…while the one I went with only charges for the actual tolls incurred. 🙄

I’m a bit less annoyed over number 2 now!

On Wandering.shop

Parenting, metaphor

Me: Ok, you want to be at the top of this cliff. Here’s a staircase, a ladder, and an elevator.

Kid: What if I free-climb the cliff?

Me: There aren’t any handholds.

Kid: What if I wear climbing gloves?

Me: That doesn’t work without handholds, try one of the options you have.

Kid: But what if I wear climbing gloves *and* boots?

Me: …

Kid: A rope?

Me: Attached to what?

Kid: Why won’t you let me be at the top of the cliff!!!!

On Wandering.shop

Also: catapult, human cannonball, hitching a ride on a large bird, rocket shoes, giant springs, freak windstorm, tunneling under the cliff and somehow ending up at the top, helicopter pickup, teleportation, and portals.

*Anything* but the stairs, ladder or elevator that are actually *available to use*

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Oh, and of course insisting that he’s already at the top of the cliff he’s looking up at, and that we’re trying to send him back to the bottom

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The kid finally uninstalled the game he’s been screaming at all week.

The kid finally uninstalled the game he’s been screaming at all week.

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Responding to a comment about a similar incident with Flight Simulator

He’s gotten more persistent since then. Even though I don’t think he enjoyed more than about 20% of the time he was playing it, including the stealth levels he asked me to play for him. (He can hyper-focus, but has no patience.)

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Who Are Les Miserables?

A response to @matthewjmandel asking my thoughts on A Comparative Book / Movie Review of LES MISÉRABLES

It’s interesting. I agree with a lot of the comments about losing complexity, but I don’t have as much of a problem with the character changes (partly because I’m used to the stage version, where Gavroche is less political & the the Thenardiers are funny, but still dangerous)

Eponine’s probably the biggest change that isn’t just a simplification, but I think her role in the story still works, even if the details have been changed.

I do have a problem with the finale, because it’s *not* Jean Valjean’s heaven by any stretch of the imagination. It works better on stage, where it’s more like a curtain call for all the characters who have died.

The main place I disagree with the post, though, is about the theme and title. Listening to @readlesmispod talking about how the word is perceived in French makes it clear that *all* of the main characters are “miserables” and Hugo is linking the sympathetic wretched like Valjean and Fantine with the clearly evil wretched like the Thenardiers because, as far as society is concerned, they’re the same. Society looks at Fantine and thinks she’s just as depraved as Thenardier.

And Hugo is arguing that they *all* deserve compassion, that they *all* should have a better life, that society should treat them *all* better, whether they turn to evil when they fall or not.

So the musical is less of a complete inversion of the theme and (once again) more of a simplification.

Fiction can’t *prove* a point about about reality, but it can make you *think*…

Something I wrote after my third time through #LesMiserables:

Fiction can’t *prove* a point about about reality, but it can make you *think* about it, and consider connections or perspectives that you might not have considered before. And that’s a very valuable thing.

https://hyperborea.org/les-mis/about/third-time-through/

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Thanks, Trending Topics, for yet another example of a prominent conservative shouting about persecution when he discovers he’s subject to the same rules and economic consequences as everyone else. Like all the other comics canceled by the same conglomerate.

Thanks, Trending Topics, for yet another example of a prominent conservative shouting about persecution when he discovers he’s subject to the same rules and economic consequences as everyone else. Like all the other comics canceled by the same conglomerate.