Monthly Archives: October 2026

Search has lost the plot

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Just now, Mrs Heathen was heading out to pick something up at a specific local Ace Hardware.

Here in Raleigh, one company — Westlake — has bought up several Ace Hardware stores, and we weren’t sure which it was. I put “Westlake Ace Hardware” into Apple Maps, and got a fire hose of results that were 99% utterly useless — even with quotes, the results absolutely ignored my specific search string and just gave me back everything in Raleigh that included “Ace Hardware” in the name.

This is bullshit.

it’s endemic in search across the board, not just with Apple. You have no doubt noticed that if you search Amazon for something specific, it will give you a bunch of OTHER SHIT every time, as though you didn’t know what you wanted.

That is bullshit, too. But at Amazon, I understand WHY they’re choosing to be shitheads. With Apple Maps, it’s less clear.

Nothing in a Mike Flanagan show is accidental

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We’re watching the new adaptation of Carrie. If you aren’t, you’re missing out. It’s just shockingly good, but then again given that Mike Flanagan is the showrunner, we ought not be surprised. His resume is pretty much devoid of misses, and he’s zeroed in on something with King that nobody else is really touching.

Anyway, he’s a careful producer. You quickly get to the idea that nothing is accidental, and so a close reading of the text is useful.

Last night, we watched episodes 4 and 5. And in one scene, I saw something odd:

IMG 2576

That’s a goddamn novelty hamburger phone. My brain lurched when I recognized it, because Carrie is not a period piece. What in the world would a teenager in 2026 be doing with a novelty telephone?

And then I wondered, “geez, when did I last even SEE a hamburger phone?” It was on the tip of my tongue enough that I paused the show for a moment to remember. Then it hit me. “Oh, right! In THIS movie!”

Elliot page juno burger phone

That’s Eliot Page in Juno, a now nearly 20 year old film about the titular character’s teen pregnancy. (It’s great; watch it — it also has Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Batement, Alison Janney, and J. K. Simmons).

For a moment I did that thing where you relax, because you managed to remember something, and I was about to move on when it hit me:

Mike Flanagan, you clever motherfucker. In the scene above, the character Sue in Carrie is very worried about being pregnant — i.e., the same situation that Juno was in back in 2007 talking on HER hamburger phone.

I see you, Flanagan.