World Nations

TOM: Everything's done like it's in a U.N., uh, like it's "Nations" ... uh, what's that thing you do in school, that they didn't actually do in anyone's school ever. They only do it in like TV shows. You know that thing I'm talking about, Mike? That thing like "world nations"?
MIKE: Oh yeah.
TOM: You know that thing where everybody's like, "I'm from Switzerland."
MIKE: Yeah, very whimsical.
TOM: What do you call that?
MIKE: Whimsy.
TOM: No!

The Best Show

Top 2 Songs of 2019

1. Sharon Van Etten -- "Seventeen"
2. Charli XCX and Christine and the Queens -- "Gone"

HM:
21 Savage with J Cole -- "A Lot"
Anderson Paak with Brandy -- "Jet Black"
Charly Bliss -- "Chatroom"
Ex Hex -- "Rainbow Shiner"
Four Tet -- "Teenage Birdsong"
Georgia -- "About Work the Dancefloor"
James Blake with Rosalia -- "Barefoot in the Park"
Martha -- "Love Keeps Kicking"
Post Malone and Swae Lee -- "Sunflower"

Older Songs I Played on Repeat in 2019:
Amen Dunes -- "Miki Dora"
Car Seat Headrest -- "Vincent"
Tegan and Sara -- "I Was a Fool"

Spotify Playlist here.

Best Songs of 2018

boygenius -- "Me and My Dog" (Spotify version)
Charli XCX -- "Porsche"
Flasher -- "Pressure"
Helena Deland -- "Claudion"
Nipsey Hussle and YG -- "Last Time That I Checc'd"
Saba -- "Prom / King"
Sylvan Esso and Collections of Colonies of Bees -- "Funeral Singers" (Califone cover)
Twin Shadow and Rainsford -- "Brace"
Youmi Zouma -- "Powder Blue / Cascine Park"
Zedd and 20 other people -- "The Middle"

HM: Christine and the Queens, Daniella Mason, Emmit Fenn, Empress Of, Miya Folick, Noname, OneOhTrix Point Never, The Weeknd, Young Fathers

Spotify playlist.

best longreads of 2017

1. Jenny Odell -- "There's No Such Thing As a Free Watch"
2. Hamilton Nolan -- "Hell Is Empty and All the Hedge Fund Managers Are At The Bellagio"
3. David Zax -- "The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare"

4-10:

Rachel Aviv -- "How The Elderly Lose Their Rights"
Jason Fagone -- "What Bullets Do To Bodies"
Hamilton Nolan -- "Trump Voters Explain Themselves"
Osita Nwanevu -- "Run For Office"
Patrick Redford -- "The Future of Innovation Is Innovation"
Rachel Sherman -- "What The Rich Won't Tell You"
Jia Tolentino -- "Megyn Kelly, the Glittering Aberration"

best songs of 2017

Alex G -- "Bobby"
Charli XCX -- "Boys"
Charly Bliss -- "Steal My Sunshine" (Len cover)
Dear Evan Hansen -- "Waving Through A Window"
Haim -- "Right Now" (video version)
Kendrick Lamar -- "Humble"
Mitski -- "Fireproof" (One Direction cover)
Sylvan Esso -- "Die Young"
SZA -- "Drew Barrymore"
Shawn Wasabi -- "Spicy Boyfriend"

EDIT -- Wish I had included:
Sun-EL Musician and Samthing Soweto -- "Akanamali"
Sylvan Esso -- "Song"

notes from penn bowl 2015

I went to Penn Bowl 2015 at Carleton just to hang out. It turned out they didn't need me for staff so I watched the games and wrote "coverage," which is notes that I then forgot for two years. Here are highlights from these notes.

questions
stats

R2 -- Toronto vs. Ottawa
(Toronto is Rein and Jeffrey. Ottawa is Dennis, Shelby, Ian, and Vinh.)

- Ottawa has a moose.
- Dennis hates Amnesty International.
- Dennis loves America (Palmer Raids).
- Rein tries to neg Ian but Ian is correct. (This was for a question on linear run-time that also accepted the answers O(n) or just n.)
- No one gets Bar at the Folies Bergeres.
- Dennis struggles and pulls al-Abadi.
- Rein negs a lot and is sad.

Ottawa 300 - Toronto 65
(tossups 11-5 for Ottawa)

R3 -- Carleton vs Carleton
(Players are Cameron, Ted, Andrej, Janusz, Aaron, Heather, Max, Michael. I think all the competitive players were stacked on one team.)

- Cameron knows Operation Anvil.
- Clue about daughter named Sorrow -- poor Aaron!*
- Moderator pronounces "Ashkenazi" the Hitler way.
- Aaron wins race on sublime and they get fun coffee bonus for 30.
- Everyone races to the violinist abortion clue.
- Ted probably got all four lit TUs at the end.
- Max knows Arkansas on National Guard clue.

The "Sorrow" clue is Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and it's a weird clue. The book hinges on an incident about a quarter of the way through, where Tess is raped and becomes pregnant. The child doesn't live long, and Tess manages to move on and get a new job and new boyfriend. The question is then lingering over the rest of the book, whether anyone will find out that Tess is a "fallen woman" and how much that revelation might hurt her.

Hardy fought a lot with the publishers and serializers about what could be included in the book. Different editions have different bits missing or cleaned up. I remember Jordan Palmer insisting that Tess never had a child, he was certain because he had just bought the book and read it. So the existence of the child Sorrow is missing from some reader's experience.

In the final posted version of Penn Bowl 2015, the wording is changed to say there's a "son named Sorrow," and there's an answerline note saying that the "s" in "D'Urbervilles" is supposed to be silent.

The coffee bonus was mostly names of places around the world where coffee is grown, but it had a third part asking for the "unusual process" that Kopi Luwak beans go through before they're roasted.

R4 -- Toronto vs. Carleton
(Toronto was Rein and Jeffrey. This Carleton was Heather, Max, Alex, and Stuart.)

- Rein has opinions on nozzle / Bernoulli's Law bonus.
- Max gets Rand Paul from insane chainsaw clue.
- Alex gets weird music -- "dodecaphonic."
- Carleton laughs at easy Hockey Sweater bonus part. (A certain Quebec native on the Penn team may have written that one.)
- Rein enjoys missing Mayerling Incident.
- Rein gets Themistocles -- everyone starts listening at "oracle."

Toronto 300 -- Carleton 90
(tossups 13-4 Toronto)

R5 -- Waterloo vs. Carleton
(Waterloo is just Aayush. This Carleton is Cameron, Ted, Andrej, and Janusz. Yana from Carleton also watched this game and refused to sub in or keep score.)

- Aayush sucks at Australia bonus.
- Aayush early on Panipat (child king who beheads people).
- Aayush: "Is Yana just here to drag her teammates?"
- Cameron is early on Fourth Crusade (with Simon de Montfort's dad).
- Aayush 0s a chem bonus and claps for himself.
- Everyone is confused by a stats tossup which turns out to be on residuals. Yana makes it clear that she could have answered that.
- Ted early on Decameron (buried head in Basel).
- Only Janusz knows baseball. Aayush negs on purpose.
- Andrej 30s Dostoyevsky ("White Nights").
- Andrej early on Sanskrit linguistics -- everyone laughs.

Carleton 260 -- Waterloo 120
(tossups 10-7 for Carleton)

R6 -- Carleton vs McGill
(Carleton is Aaron, Michael, Max, and Stuart. McGill is Derek, Joe, Hugh, and Austen.)

- Max knows Iran nuclear deal (30-day swapbacks).
- Joe 30s a lactose bonus.
- Derek 30s every lit: Auden bonus, La Malinche bonus, French poetry bonus with A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance.
- Hugh knows "broken windows" early.
- Stuart powers nuclear tests on a Genghis Khan clue.
- Derek gets Noriega from the bands they blasted at him.
- McGill 30s a natural gas bonus including Turkmenistan.

McGill 465 -- Carleton 65
(tossups 16-3)


There were four more rounds after this, but I did not do coverage for those rounds. I think I got invited to actually staff those rounds. McGill went 10-0 and finished 100 PPG ahead of the second-place team (Ottawa). Aayush and Rein each got more negs than the winning McGill team.

texts from my mom

Watching repeat of Wolf Hall. Part 3. This is where things are falling apart and Anne B. is going to get it. Oh boy!
King not happy with Anne's dalliances and other things such as no male heir. Not looking good in the short term.
Can't help noticing that all the men in the show are quite pasty faced. Must have been something to do with their diet -- or all the rain.

texts from rodrigo

So I just remembered watching Tonight show in like 2009
And Miley Cyrus was the guest and she talked about how she likes eating ketchup by itself
And so Leno brought a bottle of ketchup and she ate some
Then Leno tried a little bit of Ketchup and the crowd said "eww"
And he just yells "oh come on! It's just ketchup!"