I've been having a lot of nightmares lately. Not just the waking nightmare of watching the conspiracy theorists slowing taking over the public political discourse, but actual nightmare dreams. The worst involved me rescuing Tessie, who'd been kidnapped and taken to New York City's Chinatown with a ridiculous and scary Big Trouble in Little China plot. Other events included me being sexually assaulted and having to to kill one of my torturers (a scene reminiscent of the murder of Lysa Arryn in Game of Thrones. Altogether, a dream I really wish I'd not recalled on waking.

What I want to dream of is being curled up in front of a fire with the woman I love, watching The Princess Bride with a bottle of wine, but that's so far been denied me, even in my dreams.

I've also been wanting to return the favour of all the gifts people have been getting for me (big thanks to the kind soul who sent me socks!), and so I created a

Ah yes. Andrew Emory Tate, described by the mainstream media as a "controversial influencer", by which they mean "the fount of all misogyny everywhere", by a certain subset of terminally online people as the Messiah, and by sensible people (i.e. me) as a pathetic grifter who inherited a lot of wealth and multiplied it by running various scams online and selling his pseudo high roller lifestyle as proof that this works. However, that's not the topic that this writeup is

For all the phrase sounds like something from the Rural South, the expression actually comes from  Early American New England. It  refers to how swine used to be raised by simply turning them out into a large  (hopefully) enclosed area, and letting them “root” for their food opportunistically, instead of feeding them, whether this food consisted of small game, insects, acorns, wild spinach (“pigweed”) or, their favorite food of all, nitrogen-rich sweet clover. (Which is what a pig is