I think it should serve the story it’s in. There are good stories to be told about teenage Peter Parker. I liked the new Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man cartoon, and him being a teenager really works there.

With that said, I’ve seen a lot of that version. For new stories I’d be a lot more interested in stories following an older Peter.

It was good natured. I wasn’t offended.

I just think it’s funny how some people are all about marble runs and some people just don’t get it. No in between. Personally I’m all about marble runs.

I once bought my niece a marble run. I got some shit for it, because I guess some people just don’t get it? But she loved it, and my 6-year-old daughter now loves marble runs too.

My daughter also collects rocks, so a rock tumbler was a big one for her.

Another gift for a niece I got shit for was a drum. She loved it. She was so excited that it was a real instrument. My brother always said he’d get me back, but my daughter got a full-ass drum kit for Christmas, and I think it’s great.

Oh, and make your own slime kits are huge right now. It’s science-y, DIY, and kids love slime.

It’s 2025. The US government is under the complete control of a fascist regime.

Yelling at Democrats would be a silly thing to do.

I’m lucky. My parents flipped in 2016. My dad became a Democrat at 60 years old and hasn’t looked back.

I was talking to him the other day and said, “Sometimes I wish you were still Republican, so I’d have someone to yell at.” Like it’s frustrating in a way, because I want to shake these people, like, how can you be this shitty? My dad laughed and said: “Sorry, it turns out I have morals.”

Meanwhile my mother-in-law is still a conservative but refuses to talk about it, and it’s not my place to push too hard. She’ll be cut off eventually, when we have to flee the regime, but for now I point out the insane shit that’s going on and she just giggles nervously, because she’s incapable of confrontation. If she were my mother she’d have been cut off by now.

It’s a shame, because in every other respect she’s a wonderful lady. She always welcomed me into her family, and she’s such an active, loving grandmother. Except for the part where she sold out her grandchildren’s future because minorities make her nervous, of course.

Oh yeah there’s also Vampire Survivors which is weirdly good.

Mobile gaming is so good. There is a lot of chaff to sort through though.

• Balatro is amazing. Great to pass the time with, very playable even for people who aren’t that into games.

• Slay the Spire is one of the greatest games ever made.

• Root is very good if you’re into board games.

• Baba Is You if you want a mind-bending puzzle game.

• Marvel Snap if you like competitive card games, have way too much time on your hands, and hate yourself a little.

Tlaloc from Destiny. Scout rifles weren’t usually my thing, but Tlaloc just worked for me.

What are you waiting for? It’s so good!

Mostly UFO 50 on the Switch.

Don’t sleep on UFO 50. If you’re unfamiliar: it’s a collection of 50 faux retro indie games, packaged as a recently discovered collection from a defunct 80s company called UFOSoft.

It’s like plumbing through the Nintendo retro collections looking for hidden gems, except it’s full of hidden gems. There’s also a deeply hidden dark meta-narrative.

Within UFO 50 I’ve spent a lot of time on Party House, a deck builder where you invite wacky guests to a series of house parties, trying to build the ultimate party. Other than that I’m just focusing on the games I haven’t beaten yet, of which there are 27.

At night I’ve been playing Silksong on my Xbox. It’s brilliant, but if I’m being honest the difficulty sometimes does make it less fun.

It may fall by the wayside, because in a few hours I’ll be playing Hades 2 for the first time. I’m very excited for that.

This has been a great year for gaming.

There’s a series of underground shops and restaurants in downtown Houston, connected by tunnels. Great way for someone working downtown to walk to lunch when it’s too hot to go outside.

There is some underground parking on the edge of downtown.

With that said, it’s actually very difficult to build underground in Houston because of the high water table.

I’ve got a family of four, soon to be five. There’s no way I could possibly do all my grocery shopping on foot. It’s just too much to carry. I’d have to bring a wheelbarrow, and all the ice cream would melt.

If they blocked it now, people would just sideload it.

I’ve never liked most of their food, but you used to be able to get a hot, cheap, and quick meal there. And at least the fries were tasty, and the Coca-Cola was perfect.

In the 80s and 90s, going to McDonald’s felt like a guilty pleasure. It felt cheap, but you were in on it so it was ok.

Now it feels cheap at your expense. It’s sparse, like they’re providing the minimal viable product. The fries are garbage, the Coke is garbage, and the service is garbage.

I hope that as we all learn to cope with climate change, they let the king’s guard wear shorts. Tiny ones, like a postal worker would wear.

In addition to all that, Jesus has some really specific things to say about how to treat foreigners. A lot of his teachings are open for interpretation, but that one is pretty clear.

I’m enthusiastically not a Christian, but as I get older (or maybe as the world gets more fucked up) I’m starting to appreciate that there’s some value in the teachings. And I’m of the opinion that voting for Donald Trump was absolutely incompatible with Christianity.

To actually answer your question: it’s because they’re hypocrites. The same kind of hypocrites that are mentioned in the Bible.

But that’s what he’s doing. He’s being a “good” queer, which means he’s publicly denying it. That’s the kind of homosexual they tolerate: the one who’s ashamed of it.

Fun story: I once watched a lone star tick crawl into the headphone jack of my phone. After trying for hours to get it out, I did two google searches:

• What eats ticks?

• Guinea hen mating sounds.

Thirty seconds later, it crawled out.

when actual rates of childhood abduction and abuse are at historic lows.

So you’re saying that parents are more cautious than ever, and childhood abduction rates are at an all time low, and you don’t think maybe those two things are related?

Do you also think we should stop vaccinations when the diseases they protect against are at historic lows?

Besides which, the overall rate of child abductions only matters if we’re talking about the measures that society should take.

On a personal level, if my child got abducted and I didn’t do everything in my power to prevent that, I doubt I’d be comforted by the knowledge that it was extremely unlikely to have happened. I wouldn’t walk into my child’s empty bedroom and say to my grieving wife, “Man, what were the odds?”

I don’t want to actively track their every move because I’m not a psycho, but there’s no downside to giving myself the ability to find them in an emergency.