Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We had a great Divergent League Baseball opening day, 3D printed some housewares, plus I got a cheap guitar and was pleasantly surprised.
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1/21/21
It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… it’s time for Phil’s Newsletter.
First and foremost on my mind today is how thankful I am that nothing happened.
Inauguration Day came and went like it has for 200 years. We were all sitting here holding just a bit more of our breath hour by hour waiting for the other shoe to drop, the dangerously-deluded Q followers were all amped up for the Big Thing That Was Supposed To Happen… and nothing. Unsurprisingly, those followers are freaking the hell out. The Reddit threads feature people being physically attacked by broken Q-pilled relatives, friends, and lovers. The damage will take a generation to even fully understand.
And people all over the globe wept! With joy and fear and in some cases not even knowing why. I kept seeing variations on the phrase “exhaling the breath you did not know you were holding.” I get it.
Joe Biden is the president. Overall this is an improvement… but we are not out of the woods, riding hoods. The real work of dismantling white supremacy and the carceral state remains for us.
More Importantly, Divergent League Baseball Now Has A Podcast
The 1993 Divergent League Baseball season is in full swing, and this season is just too big to be confined to Twitch streams and blog posts.
That’s right- all things must in this vile land, Divergent League has expanded to include a podcast. Divergent League Update is a brisk dive into the standings, stats, and surprises of the league hosted by me. Episodes probably won’t be more than 5 minutes long.
New episodes come out on Fridays and you can subscribe via any of your fav podcast services or apps like so:
or regular ‘ol RSS Feed
Episode 1 is available to listen to on the website. Subscribers to my Patreon will get higher quality versions. So far we’ve seen a couple of surprises in the season, with the CPU-controlled Orioles having a crazy good start for one, and Steve Finley leading the league in home runs. I hope you’ll subscribe and listen.
This Saturday 1/23: RetroStrange Movie Night #17
This weekend is RetroStrange Movie Night but it is also our dear friend Sandra’s birthday. Noah and I decided to mash these two things up, and turned the programming decisions for this weekend’s show over to the birthday girl.
She didn’t disappoint! As a result we’re going to do something a little different than our usual and screen some fairy tales from the public domain, probably some cartoons in there too. Just keepin it real low-key. It’s been a long 4 years, you know? Drop by the Discord and say hi.
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Boundless affection to tetris, mrsugarmuffin, smashjax666, urstarstuff, katanma and d_hock, onbase85, freshpoetic, and seamuscalder for subscribing to the Twitch channel this month. You are shining beacons of decency in a time of asshattery.
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Phil’s Good Links
Welcome to flavor country. The exit to flavor country is thru the gift shop.
Old houses used to have these holes marked “razor blades” for people to dispose of their used blades… but the hole didn’t go anywhere. So you have these walls just full of ancient razors. How metal.
A recent study showed that Universal Basic Income does not affect worker productivity. n=900 here. Hold onto this one for your next argument with an American libertarian.
Why is West Virginia outpacing the nation in vaccine distribution? One reason: They didn’t sign the exclusive contract with Walgreens and CVS that all other 49 states did.
The folks who hacked SolarWinds, remember that?, are taking responsibility for another massive hack of a US cybersecurity firm. This time it’s Malwarebytes. Cyber is so hot right now.
Japanese music manufacturer KORG is re-issuing a version of its first analogue synth as model number 700FS and it is gorgeous
Speaking of Japan, Twin Peaks was really popular there. Some kind soul put the complete 4-part Japanese commercial series for Georgia coffee on Twitter
Keeping on the nostalgia tip, here’s How the Trapper Keeper Took the ’80s by Storm — Then Suddenly Disappeared
Game Maker, the software used to create recent indie hits like Undertale, Hyperlight Drifter, Heat Signature and Katana Zero is now the property of Opera, the web browser company you forgot existed
If you need a brain cleanse, I suggest this 21-minute compilation of KISS’ Paul Stanley revving up the crowd. It doesn’t get more 70s.
My birthday is February 1st
I know this because the calendar reminds me. A couple of you are extremely sweet and asked me what I wanted for my birthday since we can’t meet up and go out carousing as usual. Here are some suggestions:
I have an Amazon wishlist
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No matter what you do don’t do, thank you for being here, and thank you for reading. I’ll see you next week.
— Phil