The Walking Dead continues to be startlingly well-written.

At the beginning of the latest episode, Carol is dressed like a housewife and making a casserole — disguised as the person she used to be.

At the end of the episode, Carol ends up “disguised” to deceive a nihilistic group of dead-enders into believing that she is one of them, but her disguise in this case is truly her actual self.

Such a good show. So deft in its symbolism, and so true to its characters.

Here’s how Carol ends up in the last and truly excellent lead-out scene of the episode.

Lonely gunslinger going from the chaos to the unknown. The iconography couldn’t be more clear though you don’t really see that until the very moment it’s needed and where it truly works, as it’s all done so very well in the context of the episode.

Also in the last few scenes of the episode the casserole Carol had started 55 minutes before is done and gets taken out of the oven.

It had been baking while she killed roughly a dozen people who had been trying (and succeeding in) invading the community and murdering many of her friends.

The episode would’ve been amazing sans casserole. But with the casserole, it’s just pure genius.

Why do people do so much on smartphones?

I have one. I fucking hate it. If I didn’t need it I’d never use it.

And it’s not a low-end, either — it’s an iPhone 6. I have it because having one is required for work, but if I could I’d throw the damn thing in the trash in a skinny minute.

Reading on a smart phone is miserable (though better since the screens have become high-res). Actually achieving anything on one like booking an arline ticket or sending an email is a nightmare. It’s hilarious watching people struggle to do things on a smartphone that I can do literally 100 times faster on a desktop PC.

But that is one thing I like about smartphones — as long as desktop PCs exist and people continue to forget how to use a real computer and associated keyboard, my comparative advantage in the workplace goes way up.

Smartphones aren’t inherently bad. People who use them aren’t wrong for doing so, either. But they are a bit inexplicable to me because they tend to make all experiences worse.

I don’t get bored easily so that’s part of it. I can deal with 10 minutes of doing nothing because I’m always consolidating or attempting to generate ideas.

Other people? I’ve seen little evidence of this. Perhaps in that sense the smartphone is needed.