Perhaps a 27th lane might cheer them up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas

I really wish Baby Steps had won something.

Why do you think that?

If I can’t find any ghosts, I guess I’ll have to make my own.

Olive drab?

I don’t know, I’ve probably never been nearer to a life of crime then in the depths of the black deck.

Are you a glass half full, or a glass half empty kind of person. 'Cause half of your dream is almost certainly going to happen.

Possibly unpopular opinion, but the black deck basically ruins this game. I was obsessed before black deck, and to be sure continued playing for a while afterwards. But the black deck was so miserable that I realized it wasn’t even fun. It made me feel like if I had any self respect I’d call LocalThunk’s bluff and quit playing. But I didn’t. Loss after loss I continued to debase myself and continue grinding, waiting for essentially pure luck to release me and allow me to have fun again. But I never regained my enthusiasm.

She said ‘This was why I couldn’t get off and stay off. Just as the cliché warns. I literally wasn’t keeping it in the day. I was adding the clean days up in my head.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘Did you ever hear of this fellow Evel Knievel? This motorcycle-jumper?’

Gately nods slightly, being careful of a tube he now feels. This is why his throat had had that raped feeling in it. The tube. He actually has an old cutout action picture of the historical Evel Knievel, from an old Life magazine, in a white leather Elvisish suit, in the air, aloft, haloed in spotlights, upright on a bike, a row of well-waxed trucks below.

‘At St. Collie only the Crocodiles’d heard of him. My own Daddy’d followed him, cut out pictures, as a boy.’ Gately can tell she’s smiling under there. ‘But what I used to do, I’d throw away the pipe and shake my fist at the sky and say As God is my fucking witness NEVER AGAIN, as of this minute right here I QUIT FOR ALL TIME.’ She also has this habit of absently patting the top of her head when she talks, where little barrettes and spongy clamps hold the veil in place. ‘And I’d bunker up all white-knuckled and stay straight. And count the days. I was proud of each day I stayed off. Each day seemed evidence of something, and I counted them. I’d add them up. Line them up end to end. You know?’ Gately knows very well but doesn’t nod, lets her do this on just her own steam. She says ‘And soon it would get… improbable. As if each day was a car Knievel had to clear. One car, two cars. By the time I’d get up to say like maybe about 14 cars, it would begin to seem like this staggering number. Jumping over 14 cars. And the rest of the year, looking ahead, hundreds and hundreds of cars, me in the air trying to clear them.’ She left her head alone and cocked it. ‘Who could do it? How did I ever think anyone could do it that way?’

-Infinite Jest

That “Y” is a very nice touch.

Am I missing the article link?

What’s going on in Malta?

The “lesson” will be that the truly wealthy will stay so, and the rest of us will be pushed farther away, the discrepancy between our stations will diverge even further, and the relative wealth of the tippy top will increase just that much more. Don’t think for a minute that this bubble, or any bubble for that matter, is not egged on by those insulated from it’s poppings consequences.

For what it’s worth, it looks more like someone tiled on top of tile for some reason? Like under the big square is the hexagonal, and the big tiles are cracking along the low spots of the tiles below.

You’re more right than you may know.

An actual city wall existed on the street from 1653 to 1699. During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site, and from 1703 onward

Well, with inflation this will inevitably become true. Be careful what you wish for.

Yeah, the thing about this asshole is that he has no sense of humor. There’s no way he doesn’t mean it. And the fact that he proudly displays this in the fucking whitehouse is most troubling indeed. Best case scenario, he means one of his idiot sons, but let’s be real about who we’re dealing with here.

Nature has been pulling this fast one with our own species since the literal dawn of man.

who knows

Better. We know they would look better. We could have elected a dryer with a magic 8-ball inside of it and done better.

His mismanagement of covid alone is damning.