Year: 2019
Sri Lanka and the Ongoing Social Media Panic
Immediately after the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, the government there took the questionable step of blocking a bunch of social media sites. There can be legitimate reasons for such drastic measures: If you know the terrorists are using cell phones or the internet to set off remote-detonated bombs, it makes a lot… Read more
Getting a Few Things Off My Chest: Game of Thrones Edition
The final season of Game of Thrones is starting today (you may have heard something about it) and there are a few things I want to get off my chest. For one thing, I’m wondering if all the death-related magic is connected in some way. Everybody makes a big deal about the Night King and… Read more
The Software Engineer’s Bar Exam
I follow a bunch of legal blogs, and one of the things they consistently complain about is the content of the bar exam. As Ilya Somin describes it, “the bar exam is primarily a test of memorization that covers huge amounts of material most lawyers won’t need.” As a consequence, time and effort spent preparing… Read more
Shazam! – Review
The first trailer for Shazam! came out eight months ago, and it looked like a pretty good movie. Unlike certain other DC superhero movies, it looked like the Shazam! filmmakers remembered that comics were supposed to be fun. I managed to catch one of the sneak preview showings of Shazam! last week, and I thought… Read more
The Walking Authorial Intrusion
Walking Dead is pissing me off. Again. The problem started with the final episode of Season 6, when Negan finally appears. The show had been building up to this for several episodes, as Rick’s group had a series of run-ins with Negan’s minions. In this episode, several of Rick’s group were captured by Negan’s much… Read more