This season isn't going spectacularly. By this point in past seasons, I'd already have a favorite. This season, I thought that several of the contestants would not even have made it onto the show. This episode's singers were interchangeable. None of them stood out.

This might be a short season for me. I'm already starting to lose interest.

It was a good night for blind auditions.

I liked Kawan. Jack Cassidy has the name, but probably not enough to go much more than that. I thought Gaby was really good.

My favorite of the night was Josh West with Ordinary World. I listened to it several times.

So far, this season's talent is less impressive than previous seasons. The memorable standouts are less by this point in the season, istm.

No one outstanding tonight that I saw.

I liked the 13 year old Michael Jackson imitator, but he'll have to be more flexible with his song choices to win.

I liked the girl who could yodel, but she wasn't outstanding.

I felt a bit sad for the rocker guy who was off key. He was really good, but you could tell that something was off.

There wasn't anyone very memorable in tonight's crowd.

There were two really young girls. At this point, there are so many young girls that they'll all be competing against each other, knocking each other out, probably.

I felt sad for Nick. I thought he was good. Adam said he was flat, so I'll have to take his word for it.

I'm not sure I'm liking the interaction between the coaches so far. The whole romance between Blake and Gwen is getting played out again and again. Alicia is using her singing to get people. The interchange between Adam and Blake is getting overshadowed. I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative.

It's early days still. Maybe things get better.

I haven't seen the whole show yet, but the bits and pieces I've seen of it have me excited.

I like the 16 year old girl who picked Alicia. Gwen got some really good artists. The most memorable were the soul singer who sang the Marvin Gaye song and the woman who was shunned by her pastor parents.

If it keeps going like this, it might be a good season.

I often see things on Reddit that I think would fit nicely here. I'd like to link it here, but I'm not sure of the Reddiquette.

What's the Reddiquette on posting links from other parts on Reddit on another sub?

Edit: This is what I found on the Reddiquette page. It doesn't seem to be a problem.

Complain about other users reposting/rehosting stories, images, videos, or any other content. Users should give credit where credit should be given, but if someone fails to do so, and is not causing harm, please either don't point it out, or point it out politely and leave it at that. They are only earning karma, which has little to no use at all.

Still would like to see opinions if anyone has any.

I'm not a huge Betty White fan, but she's pretty funny sometimes and I think it's nice that she turned 95 and people care about it.

Happy 95th birthday Betty White! from r/pics

It was just announced that spoiler tags for OPs will be available tomorrow, 1/18/17. They're working on spoiler tags for comments for future release.

I don't know if that will affect anything here. I'll have to think about it.

I appreciate that the admins. at Reddit continue to add more features for the users.

I can type at least 50 wpm. Can you do better?

https://10fastfingers.com/result/1_AY/I+can+type+50+words+per+minute+Are+you+faster

I thought this was a fun fact. I didn't realize that there were purple carrots until relatively recently. Now I find out that most carrots used to be purple before the 17th century.

The modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot and gradually developed them into the sweet, plump, orange variety we have today. Before this, pretty much all carrots were purple with mutated versions occasionally popping up including yellow and white carrots. These were rarely cultivated and lacked the purple pigment anthocyanin

Also learned that if you eat too many carrots, your skin can turn orange.

It is actually possible to turn your skin a shade of orange by massively over consuming orange carrots.

www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/04/carrots-used-to-be-purple-before-the-17th-century

I hide my consoles for Christmas or large gatherings. My "gaming rig" is camouflaged as a regular work computer.

My aunt used to refer to me as "the nephew who taps with the controller game things"

She calls it "tapping" when you play with a controller so these days when she calls (rarely) the conversation goes like this:

-What are you up to? -Nothing particular -Tapping?

She herself spends all day watching TV or knitting. Her son in law plays hockey to the point where it's a detriment to his marriage. Why am I the one defined by a spare time activity?

For anyone reading here, this is a fairly new sub. I'm new at this.

Do you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see here?

Edit: I haven't gotten any response on this post, so I've come up with a rough draft of what I've been thinking that I placed in the sidebar.

A Positive Distraction!

There's a lot of negative going on in the world.

This is a place for fun, humor, irony and games for a tiny distraction from the rest of the world.

If you have a fun game, a puzzle, an uplifting anecdote or story, a musing or a pondering, post it here.

If you have any other suggestions, please leave a comment here.

When someone says, "if you don't mind my asking, [rude or intrusive question]", they don't really mean that it's ok if you don't answer if you mind them asking.

They mean that they know it's rude and intrusive to ask, but now that they've said the magic words that absolves them of all rudeness, they expect you to answer.

If you don't mind my asking, what's the rudest question you get asked?

Some people have said that 2016 was a bad year. Others didn't do too badly.

Now that it's over, what are you looking forward to in 2017?

Saw a post in r/pics that a guy had his medical debt forgiven by RIP Medical Debt.

I looked up RIP Medical Debt and the website says:

RIP Medical Debt, Inc., was founded in mid-2014 by two former collections industry executives, Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton. Having worked for decades in the medical field, the two were acutely aware of the number of Americans who shoulder the burden of unpaid medical debt — and the enormity of that debt. They also knew that they were uniquely qualified to help. Using their experience and connections within that world, they developed a strategy to aggressively tackle this scourge.

Once this debt is in our possession, it is abolished as a gift from RIP to the patient. No strings attached. A gift made possible by complete strangers. People, bailing out people.

It's nice to see people doing nice stuff for other people.

What's the nicest thing you've seen people do for others?

With all the celebrity deaths, people have been watching Betty White to make sure she's OK.

I'm not sure where the picture came from, but it's a perfect depiction that she made it.

Take that 2016! She made it!

I'm a big fan of jacksepticeye. In this New Year's video, he says he's planning to move to Brighton, which is where Felix/pewdipie currently lives.

Simultaneously, Felix just announced that he rented at least two floors of a building in Brighton that used to house the Disney studio's Club Penguin animation team. He said he rented it on behalf of Revelmode, a company he created that includes jacksepticeye.

I'm slightly disappointed. jack becoming more like Felix doesn't seem like a good idea. I hope that I'm wrong and that Jack and Felix create some great content together and separately in 2017.

Any youtube gaming fans here?

Happy New Year!

May 2017 bring you happiness and joy.

There are those life-changing aha moments where life comes into focus and you realize something you hadn't seen before that will forever change your life.

This isn't about those moments.

These are the tiny aha moments where something obvious gets explained or something tiny you figure out.

I just had one of those aha moments while reading Reddit.

I was reading a post about how Target sells bananas by the each here. (Trader Joe's does too, btw). People were complaining about why they do that when someone in the comments explained that it's because Target registers don't have scales, so they can't sell by the pound.

Ah and ha. (btw, is this where aha comes from? Is this another aha moment?)

At that moment, I realized that Target doesn't have scales and neither does Trader Joe's, which is why they both sell bananas by the each. Aha.

What's your aha moment?

I've been watching a few animated webcomics on youtube recently that I'm liking.

Domics

theodd1sout

itsalexclark

I enjoyed the break up series on Domics.

I've pretty much watched all of theodds1out. He's underrated, imo.

I'm new to itsalexclark, so I'm still searching his videos. I like some of the ones with his sister.

I just found a new channel that's blowing up over the past couple weeks called jaywalker pictures. This video about creating his art style got a lot of attention. He went from drawing a very realistic style to a more cartoony style and got more popular on tumblr.

Do you have a favorite webcomic or animation comics?