Just in case

Combination of free bookmarks I’ve gotten from book orders and old Pokémon cards

Not part of the Fediverse, but The Movie Database is a good alternative to IMDb without all the adds and stuff like that. A lot of the information is user added and supported, so you can contribute as well as consume. Also for iOS, there’s a new app for it called Callsheet that gets its data from TMDb

“The Snowman” by Jo Nesbø. Most of the Harry Hole series are pretty great

Blackhawks fan here, I’m going to say Mackenzie Entwistle. May not put up big numbers, but is one of the hardest working guys on the ice when he’s out there and fought his way out of the AHL a couple years ago during the preseason

Capitalism has become such a bore Wish waged labor existed no more I’d rather pay taxes Take billionaires assets And distribute some wealth to the poor

Swiss Army knife, bottle opener, pocket pen, and most important of all: one of those wavy keys to open toilet paper and paper towel dispensers

In my opinion, most Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle is an amazing songwriter, and he tackles very difficult subjects, especially in his earlier stuff. The Sunset Tree album is all about growing up with an abusive step-father, Tallahassee about a couple who fall apart, Full Force Galesburg about a small town you can disappear in, etc. Some of my favorites include “The Mess Inside” about two people that can’t find the love they lost, “No Children” about a couple that hate each other, and “Jeff Davis County Blues” about a sort of meditative experience after a breakup. I’d give it all a listen. To go even deeper, the albums All Hail West Texas and In League With Dragons have sort of companion podcast seasons (I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats) where Darnielle and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale go through each song, the inspiration, the meaning, stuff like that.

Also check Weir’s book Artemis. Not as good as the Martian or Project Hail Mary, but still pretty good.

Depends a lot on your interests! Some good ones I’ve aggregated over the years:

• Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow: Daily links for reading by a very pro-decentralization and free web person
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: History and Pop Culture, usually one post per week on Friday
• Pedestrian Observations: Public transportation and urban design
• People’s Policy Project: RSS feed for articles from the only crowd funded think tank (Lefty if you’re interested)
• Bartosz Ciechanowski: Great blog with interesting animations, all very well researched. Only downside is that you usually have to use the RSS feed as a method of knowing when the article is posted and following the link to the website, plus he usually only posts one every 3 months or so
• xkcd: Old guard web comics, always fun to read

There are a lot of great RSS feeds out there though! I encourage you to see if your favorite blogs or news sites or things like that also have RSS feeds and suggest consuming them on there (for example I read CBC and Radio Canada exclusively through RSS) as it usually streamlines the whole reading experience.

If you use Apple’s Ecosystem, I would also suggest using MacStories’ Find RSS Feed Shortcut which will grab any available feeds from any website you feed it and let you copy the link to your clipboard to add to your favorite app. Enjoy!

Someone who lives in California not originally from here chiming in. For me personally, I hate it because of the weather. I live in SoCal, which people claim to have good weather, but to me it’s hell. It never rains, the sun is always shining, and it’s always hot while most apartments don’t have AC. This may sound lovely to you, in which case more power to you. I’m the kind of person where the sun saps all energy out of my body and I prefer being cold to warm, so this sucks. Other main downside is housing cost. My 650 square foot one bed apartment in suburban LA costs over $2000 a month and it’s cheap for the size and area. Maybe Northern California is nicer, but SoCal ain’t it

Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested

Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between

Not sure if this qualifies, but the Church of Scientology. Not cause I think it’s got some good points or that I vibe with any of their ideas, I just think everything about the structure to the Bridge to the mind of LRH is super fascinating

Does BookWyrm have an app?