Crosswords:
Thursday: 13:42
Friday: 24:58 (1 Google)

Unpopular opinion: I don't mind TV ads (or whatever you call hulu. Streaming services need a universal acronym. (SS would be a bad choice)).

I wouldn't mind if they were a little less frequent, or shorter in duration, but I don't mind that they exist. They allow me to process things and retain information. When I'm binge-watching on Netflix, a lot can fade into the background and bleed together. I got through the latest season of Jessica Jones precisely because I didn't try and watch the whole thing in one weekend, and rarely watched two episodes back-to-back. Technically, I watched Season 2 of Stranger Things, but I can't tell you a single thing about it. I need to go back and do it slowly.

It's a little more ok if it's something I've seen before, like Law & Order or Lost or West Wing, but that's because I've seen those shows 3+ times so I don't need to focus as much to pick up the story (Lost, in particular, was really good at timing its breaks on tiny cliffhangers, pretty much forcing you to watch ads when it was on TV, and it's impressively easy to watch 6 episodes in a row like a zombie when streaming). So anyway, I bring this up because I've been binge-watching ER on hulu for the past month or two (it's a long series). I watch a few shows on hulu, but mostly new stuff, like the latest X-Files or Simpsons. They have ads, but like I said, I don't mind. However, every single ad break is a "Sorry, we're unable to load a message from our sponsors" and it tries to shame you into turning off your ad blocker. Here's the thing. AdBlock IS disabled on hulu. It was messing with functionality, and it wasn't really blocking ads effectively. I'd rather have a lame ad than 1-2 minutes of dead air in any case most of the time. The dead space seems to last infinitely longer, even if ER ads would tend to not be geared towards me (it's Chick TV). Although, they have should me profiled. I'm linked through facebook, so I expect they have my basic info, and I was pretty careful when cultivating my ad preferences when they were doing that. I get video game and movie trailers when I watch X-Files, which is exactly what I want. When I watch SVU (also Chick TV), I get Sephora.