I don’t think the original idea was to avoid ever washing them. You’d just buy them big and wash them yourself every so often, and the color hardly mattered at all. They would have held up better to hand washing and line drying anyway.

But yeah, preserving the exact fit and look of raw denim is where this idea of never washing jeans came from. It’s not my look or an area where I put a lot of my energy, but I get it, the process and the extra maintenance of some things can be worth it. I have fountain pens for god’s sake, LOL. That said, if you aren’t willing to trust the gentle cycle with Woolite three times a year, maybe raw denim is not for you, because I will die on the hill that never washing your pants is gross.

So when Levi’s first started selling denim work pants forever ago, they came “raw” meaning they’ve never been stretched or pre-washed. Much later, raw denim became some sort of fashion statement, and because the pants were specifically not made with any concern for color stability or shape retention, they can look and feel very different after washing, especially in residential equipment.

The issue is that in turning obsolete work pant technology into a fetishized aesthetic, some people give up all perspective and wear disgusting dirty clothes. I am all for indulging a little anachronism and inconvenience for personal preference, even making it a hobby, but you gotta wash your fuckin’ pants sometimes. That goes double if they’re not actually raw denim and could undoubtedly hold up longer because the cloth had been processed, and/or they are already much less resistant to dirt and farts.

Okay, I’m sensitive to the fact that both Unilever and Levi’s want to sell more product, and that 24 hours is not some magic number for everything, but for fuck’s sake people, wash your goddamn pants sometimes. I personally will wear unstained, unsmelly pants for three or four days, but for special stuff, sure, you can go longer. The “never” or “once a year” thing is just yucky though.

Denim is not magic, and neither are you. Your legs have skin cells and sweat glands and your jeans cover your asshole. You never fart with your pants on? Ever? For months on end? Then there’s the environment. You sit on things, walk alongside busy roads, etc. You know, LIFE.

Never washing your pants simply because you like the particular shade of slightly unstable dye they came with is nasty and a very weird, bullheaded flex.

Yeah, of all the Tudor neologisms that didn’t really stick, ‘counterblaste’ is one of the more regrettable ones.

To be fair, James VI/I was a deeply, deeply weird dude, but he was ahead of the curve on second-hand smoke.

Definitely before they knew, but not before some suspected.

Try Love is Blind Habibi. They do it in Dubai, and the juxtaposition of a mostly American style dating show with international Muslim culture, all in a country that wants to politically have its cake and eat it too, it’s a trip. Plus the one couple seems nice.

Yeah, I can’t quite explain it, but it works for me, despite being sloppily plotted, historically absurd, and with a supposed lead who’s the weakest performer on the show and little more than narrative connective tissue. Jay is fun though, and I was fond of Utkarsh Ambudkar dating back the The Mindy Project.

All of those people think they’re not going to fall down, and then they do, with great pneumatic gusto. It’s literal caveman humor, and I’m there for it as long as it’s not trying to be anything more.

Sometimes people win the buzzer thing and then pass. Why do they pass?!?!?!?!? The survey writing is so lazy and weird that there’s always 2-3 reasonable answers and then a bunch of noise from the deeply disturbed or stupid “people” who supposedly provided the responses. Stealing almost never works because the garbage at the bottom of the list is completely unpredictable, and if you go first you get however many answers you uncover plus three more of your own idiotic notions.

We often leave it on as noise now, skip to the end of most of the competitions, and routinely ask each other “who the hell is that?” on the final show where they all come back, but my wife and I have been watching US Big Brother since something like Season 3 or 4. At this point, the formulas are clear and they mostly just re-theme the existing competitions. It does seem like they may have retired “The Racist One” as one of the casting mandates; even the MAGA-coded blonde girl who almost won this past season managed not to say anything to get herself kicked out, though this season ended before the election results made racism okay again.

For shows that I enjoy unironically but can’t in good conscience recommend to anyone, my current favorite is the US remake of Ghosts. I am like a moth to flame when it comes to stupid high-concept stuff, but I bail if I don’t like it. Despite the very sitcommy gags and plots, I find the cast charming and the out-of-time twist on the usual banter is fun. But yeah, it’s still very much a zinger-based sitcom full of stock characters in some form of historical cosplay.

Finally, I giggle like a twelve year old with a fart machine through the opening segment of “Wipeout,” where the only question is how hilariously giant foam-covered machinery will clobber people. The only competitive point is who failed the least, and the edit of the episode doesn’t even pretend to frame that in any cohesive way, likely so they can rig it. I generally watch something else once they move to the next phase. I don’t give a single shit who “wins” and the rest of it is just a traditional physical competition game show with a few pratfalls.

IIRC for Single vs Double the difference is they will enforce the “form of a question” part. In either round, they will let you mangle the pronunciation as long as you don’t insert or omit phonemes beyond what could reasonably be the result of only having read the word.

So “Alexander Dumb-ass” would be fine, though you’d likely get some gentle chiding, or maybe even have to refilm the question (“portions of the show not affecting the outside have been edited”) afterwards, but if you were expanding NASA and left the ‘s’ off the end of “Aeronautics,” it would be wrong.

From the category COUNTRY, NON-SHITTY VERSION, I have some good ones:

• Merry Christmas from the Family, Robert Earl Keen
• The sequel, Happy Holidays Y’All
• Grateful for Christmas, Hayes Carll
• (Close enough to Christmasy) Snowin’ on Raton, Townes Van Zandt
• Arbolito, Tish Hinojosa
• Literally any traditional carol sung by Willie Nelson or Emmylou Harris
• X-Mas on the Isthmus, Terry Allen and Guy Clark
• Christmas in Washington, Steve Earle

Hmm, very possible, though I didn’t notice it the last time I was moving the print head by hand. I’ll let it sit and try again. The room also gets a bit dusty and the printer sits for a while between jobs, so I’ll make a point of cleaning the belt and rails before the next print.

Gonna have to upgrade one of these days to something enclosed and lower-maintenance, but I’m cheap with broad-ranging interests. I enjoy tinkering enough that, up to certain limits, working with less expensive “time-sink” hobby gear doesn’t bother me if it means I get to try something new.

Or rather, I’ve convinced myself that I do. :-)

My printer shares my home office with our bird (PLA printing only, and that not particularly often), and while I have an air cleaner that keeps it from being FULLY bird-dander central, dust is an issue for objects that sit. I’ll brush off the rail and belt particularly well for my next print.

Thanks. It seems like it’s fairly new, and the next print I did was similar in size and shape and with the same roll of PLA, but it has a less pronounced effect, though I can still feel it. I’ll check and see if any similar sized prints from farther back exhibit it, but I could very easily imagine something getting knocked a bit when I was last messing around with it. I had a roll of “Eco” filament that was giving me no end of trouble and eventually required a hot pull and new nozzle, and I changed out the plastic extruder for an aluminum one while I was doing stuff.

I understand that the trail divides here and one can either float the river or take the Barlow Toll Road.

Yeah, the entire thing is all about “vibes” and trying to tell a light story that makes us feel how a bunch of minor nobles and and proto-middle-class people would have felt going to a tournament or reading one of the more ribald Canterbury tales, or listening to a Chretien de Troyes romance.

To specific choices to get you there are still kind of “fluff,” but no doubt they’re reasonably well done and “sticky” in a way that can be hard to articulate. There’s a lot going on, and I don’t think it comes together well enough to be a great movie, and maybe most unfortunately, its target audience probably includes both people who will have trouble suspending disbelief long enough to sink into the silliness and enjoy it, and people who will never give it a try because of the setting, but I can’t help but stop and watch a bit when I come across it.

For repeated viewings? Probably just the old standby A Knight’s Tale. Not sure how “bad” it really is though, just a very specific type of fluff elevated by some charming performances.

For bad movies I watched once but enjoyed? Standards go WAY down. As a teenager, I saw Weekend at Bernie’s 2 with my mom in the theater and enjoyed it. Around 2015-2016 I also watched the first three installments in the “Mythica” microbudget epic fantasy series (words that generally don’t go together well, LOL) and found the earnestness (and the mercifully quick exit of creepo Kevin Sorbo in each one) made them oddly watchable, but they are by no means good and I never bothered with tracking down the last three.