I'm trying to not look at the news much but the whole Rudy Giuliani story is hard to ignore. Basically, the affronts for which he seems likely to face some disbarment have to do with filing a flood of "frivolous" lawsuits. And what was frivolous about them is that they charged massive voter fraud without offering any real evidence. It was kind of like "The official vote count for this state should be overturned and Trump should be declared the winner because some of us have suspicions!" Read this for more.
We are edging closer and closer to Comic-Con. Some people online seem very upset that there won't be a lot of movie stars there promoting their upcoming releases and some of them seem to blame the convention for that. I assume those folks will remain upset but I feel pretty confident that most attendees won't notice much difference.
And I continue to have no idea what will happen with the Writers Guild Strike or when it will or won't happen.
This article in The New York Times has aroused much arguing among professional magicians. Basically, it states that the magic community, which once treated faux-psychic Uri Geller as a charlatan, has now embraced the guy. According to the article, magicians still think he's a charlatan but now they kinda admire him for being such a good charlatan. The sheer reaction to the piece suggests that the embrace is not as widespread as the reporter claims. The professional magicians I know have always kind of regarded the guy as someone who got very rich and famous duping people with the kind of magic most of them could do when they were thirteen — and probably do it better.
Lastly for now: On this blog, we sometimes discuss annoying spam calls. Kevin Drum read this article in the L.A. Times about an operation that scammed both major candidates for the presidency in 2016. Drum notes that the scammers made more than 275 million robocalls and took in close to $4 million smackers. From this, Drum calculates that "a single robocall nets one-hundredth of a dollar" — otherwise known as a penny. That's still more than they deserve and it makes you wonder what the spam calls from live human beings are grossing.