For anyone curious, here’s the contents the email:

Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.

The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy.

“This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” said Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. “For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans. By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned."

The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned.

Social Security remains committed to providing timely, accurate information to the public and will continue working closely with federal partners to ensure beneficiaries understand how this legislation may affect them.

• 3 (tots)
• 2 (curly)
• 6 (zigzag crinkle cut)
• 4 (waffle)
• 7 (wedges Jo-Jo’s)
• 5 (sweet potato)
• 8 (onion rings) - tied with sweet potatoes; they’re both lost and in the wrong part of town
• 1 (shoestring) - potato chip sticks with more steps

Missing: coniques.

All aboard! 📯 📯

I could not be less interested in what the New York Times has to say about this topic.

Your mom is a social construct.

Vote results for “a motion to table Impeaching Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors” can be found here (where “yay” means a vote to shut down impeachment proceedings and “nay” means a vote to continue with them): https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2025/roll175.xml

Representatives are listed by last name only in this list (without state affiliation unless there are multiple). Find your rep and let them know what you think about their choices.

Maned wolves have a musky odor very similar skunks. I volunteered at a facility that cared for one of these and can confirm.

Weed smells like weed.

I’d buy the fuck out of a denim jacket with a rainbow painted seahorse saying either of those quotes on the back.

There’s a GitHub project for that: https://gist.github.com/joostrijneveld/59ab61faa21910c8434c

I think this might technically qualify as docking.

As wacky as this seems, this makes a ton of sense the more that I think about it, specifically for smaller regional airports that are less than a 2-hr drive from a larger airport.

If your origin or destination is anywhere aside from a major city, there’s a lot of value in starting your trip at a closer regional airport. You get the small-airport TSA treatment, which is always faster than major city airports. The terminal itself is going to be considerably better-appointed than virtually any bus terminal (commerce, staffing, accessibility, etc). No need to travel between a bus and airport terminal if it’s all in the same building. Ticketing works along-side existing systems, as well as baggage-handling. And a bus requires a hell of a lot less fuel than a jet, making it a more eco-friendly option as well.

People better at modeling than me could probably build a graph of time and feature benefits for air and bus travel, which I’d imagine would show bang-for-buck on buses being superior (despite their speed and moderate prestige) for trips or travel-legs less than 150 miles or so. Any destination or hop further than that would probably make more sense for a plane.

Ranking the bead track options of the Anatex Enterprise’s Classic Bead Maze

https://i0.wp.com/deiequipment.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CBM1310.jpg

• Yellow: A fine tutorial track for bead maze novices. If you have no idea where to start, this functions as a passable introduction and training option. There’s not much elevation to be found here, though you do get one brief vertical drop and a 180-degree direction change midway through the track, but this is undercut by the track not ending with this drop, forcing the player to trudge the bead along to its final destination. This track isn’t completely devoid of thrills, but they’re meager at best.
  • C Tier
• Orange: Less-refined maze fans may be excused for considering this their personal favorite. It does boast the most vertically pronounced track, both track routes end with satisfying vertical drops (including the single largest drop of all options provided) and the bead options, which we rarely discuss, are all the satisfying heavy spherical variety. But, despite all these superlatives, the fatal flaw of the orange track lies in the middle; the TWO vertical hairpin turns diving into the center of the maze field are buckets of cold water that ruin an otherwise terrific experience. Beads are hijacked from their high-flying dreams and drop coldly into this prison where fun goes to die. We all know this to be true as beads will inevitably stack up here, like so many dirty dishes in a lazy person’s kitchen sink, until all other options have been spent and you unwillingly are forced into the drudgery of pushing them through the pair of hairpins to their destinations. But, once again, the final drops do provide the user with genuine satisfaction; perhaps an early lesson in cold adult maturity for toddlers that life will be filled with grand ups and downs but they may not be had without hard-earned repetitive effort. These good times are served with a side of morality. You can’t ask for much more.
  • A Tier
• Red & Blue : These tracks are neither complex or satisfying enough to warrant separate ranking descriptions. They exist merely to fill space, offering all the fun and delight of a sliding puzzle piece CAPTCHA. With short track heights, it’s not uncommon for these tracks to be left untouched entirely during gaming sessions. I will give the red track slightly more credit for both it’s height and the choice to be routed through the Orange track’s hairpin vertical; a morsel of drama in an otherwise bland, uninspired endeavor.
  • C Tier and D Tier (respectfully)
• Green: When people remember their childhood bead maze experiences, this is what comes to mind. Undoubtedly sacrifices had to be made at the expense of other tracks for this one to shine as it does. Swooping playfully among the highest heights of the field, beads can often complete their full track circuit without the need to retract and re-extend one’s hand, this is the experience that designers envisioned, with each track rider capable of completing its journey to either end from the apex with a single flick of the finger. The green track is the pinnacle, a grand achievement in track design, both in form and function.
  • S Tier

The first season is pretty bad, but necessary to set up the various arcs.

Season 4 crammed the final two major plot arcs into it because they thought they were getting cancelled. But then they didn’t. Season 5 is almost entirely filler.

In fact, once you finish Season 4, I’d recommend jumping right to the series finale (last episode of S5) and watching that. Then watch Season 5 from the beginning and think of it as a spin-off show that didn’t go anywhere.

This was how I went through my last rewatch of the series a few years ago and it was perfect.

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Heuristics are real things deserving of both respect and fear.

I wonder how much Scarjo got paid to sit there and pretend to not laugh.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17%2F-27.990030%2F153.423950

Not to mention Chicagoland’s bestest EV cheerleader, Alec at Technology Connections. :D

FYI, Sesame Street went public-private in 2016 when they signed a deal with HBO to fund new episodes which then were permitted to air on PBS several months later.

In Dec 2024, HBO/Max called the deal off and effectively cancelled the show. Now they’re shopping for a new home and, with the threats of PBS funding cuts, the notion of returning to PBS is in question.

So basically the showrunners of Sesame Street are at least partially responsible for the corner they painted themselves into here.