For those who may be confused, we're pregaming the #PrincessBrideReunion by rewatching the original. (Available free on Disney+, for pay various other places.)
The actual #PrincessBrideReunion is at 6 Central, 7 Eastern—a little less than two hours from now. It's gonna be amazing, and supporting @WisDems. Never to be repeated! Sign up!
BTW, Elvis is very much in a phase of glare-smirking at me any time we're watching something and she thinks I might get misty. (Schitt's Creek, Phineas and Ferb, Casablanca.) Every time she does it during Princess Bride, I give @WisDems ten bucks. DON'T TELL HER.
"Anybody wanna peanut?"
"I swear on my father Domingo Montoya you will reach the top alive." This scene is so adorably soft.
For every time either of my kids audibly, verbally squees, I give @WisDems a buck. We're up to $3.
"THIS IS JUST SO GOOD." —Casey, in the first swordfight. And then again, whispering to herself. $5.
Wally Shawn ... Sicilian.
"Okay, maybe THIS is my favorite scene." $6.
The "Boo! Boo! Boo!" lady has the precise energy of the 1973 Mark Alan Stamaty children's book "Who Needs Donuts?"
Of all the pieces of tonight's #PrincessBrideReunion that I'm excited about, that Carol Kane is going to be there is what has me the excitedest.
And now Elvis is giggling uncontrollably at Carol Kane. $8.
"And then there's this scene, which is my favorite scene." $9.
As the thread suggests, this is an example of a larger problem in politics. "One person should change his mind" is an actionable demand. "Ten million people should change their minds" is not.
Anytime you ask someone what should happen next and their answer is "everybody needs to..."? You can stop listening. That's not a strategy. It's not a plan. It's a wish.
When people here and on Bsky tell me to shut up and get behind Biden, I tell them they're talking to the wrong person.
Me getting behind Biden does nothing. Pelosi and Schumer and Obama, on the other hand? Getting behind Biden two weeks ago? That would have changed a lot.
(I tweeted about it last night, but as I sometimes do, I frontloaded conclusions rather than explanation, so I'm rebooting.)
There are a lot of people around—including a lot of people in my comments—who start from the premise that tearing down these posters is hostile to free expression, and so what happened to this guy was a free-speech victory. Let's unpack that.
I ran the first paragraph of Orwell's 1984 through ChatGPT, asking it to fix any "spelling, grammatical, or usage errors."
I think my copyediting gig is safe. Check it out:
Orwell: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions..."
ChatGPT: "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, with his chin nuzzled into his chest in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped rapidly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions..."
It's only—the quoted text—not dangerous because it's so ignorant. If your goal is to "evaluate grammar" in order to determine whether a manuscript is publishably competently written, all you need to do is have a copy editor spend three minutes reading a random page. (1/?)
It's not an onerous task. But it's not also a useful task. Because lots of books that get published are written by authors who have a shaky grasp of grammar. Lots of GOOD books are written by such authors. Such manuscripts are the baby, not the bathwater.
Me, to my partner, also a copy editor, or vice versa: "How's the book you're working on going?"
Them, to me, or v-v: "It's fine. The author doesn't know how commas work, but it's fine."
"Meryl Streep is grievously miscast in Postcards from the Edge."
My view: Streep was perfect in the breakup scene with Dennis Quaid and a few others, but she needed to (1) be meaner to, and more like, her mom and (2) give the impression that she'd be a fun person to get high with.
I can buy Streep being Maclaine's daughter in Postcards, and I can buy her living the life she's living in the movie, but to believe the former I have to disbelieve the latter, and vice versa.
It would have been SO EASY to leverage the cachet of the celeb blue-checks in monetizing the new buy-in system. It really is astonishingly perverse how far he’s gone to do the opposite.