Tonight's entertainment

In the background is a space pirate potato farmer I chose over a fella with a box of chocolates as I began. (Chocolate is delicious, but two weekends in a row on different channels, and multiple reruns on the lineup each time?)

- I'm not sure I agree that the situation in this article is about nannying at this point. I'd like to agree that it's pragmatic to allow regional influence to a country with many trade ties; well developed military, nuclear, and interplanetary capacities; similarly minded - in some cases similarly powered - allies; and a motivated government with decades of patient, under-the-radar work. Allowing them that influence, however, requires constant vigilance, and the more eyes on them the better. In a news cycle where the memory of umbrellas fades quickly even without pipeline hacks and fresh explosions, I'd prefer keeping these nibbles in mind. (Entirely digressing here - nibbled eels on a movie about a Roman general from last weekend, and I've got to recheck that vocab on family members.)

- I recall an earlier observation on the development of new terms that define behavior in relation to the actual behavior that surrounds those terms. If cheugy, as defined here, is the opposite of trendy; and yet the term cheugy itself, as covered in multiple articles (pick a generation already), is a trendy topic; then on a scale of 1 to woke, how daft does one have to be to develop this sort of neologism? Then again, maybe I shouldn't ask about such distractions from those who, as it turns out, really do choose Cruella after all if the brand survives such heat.

It's important, however, to cultivate the perspective that commentary like that from the character in the previous block is as common a choice as humans. This article, for example, isn't kidding about the English translations in the text. Image in the top yellow bubble, second red banner down - the immediately recognizable terms include "you" and "family." I had to look up what ended up being a slang term for father and a what can be delicately termed a past tense for the passed.

- Ending with this bit of good fish and fishing news.