This is ridiculous. If you’re buying something for a kid, either you know the kid well enough to have a sense that what she wants is [very specific American Girl accessory here], or you know the kid so little you opt for something generic—something either educational or so trendy any kid would want it.

CSI: Apocalypse

J.D. Robb, N.K. Jemisin, C.J. Cherryh, A.M. Homes...

Ushuaia is neat, but seriously, go to Torres del Paine. Fly into Punta Arenas, take a bus to Puerto Natales, and connect to the park via car-for-hire, tour bus, or by renting a car/bike yourself. Then just stay in the park for a few nights. Get photobombed by a vicuna, watch the stars, take 1267 photos in 3 days.…

I think the best thing to do is be proactive. You know two things at takeoff: (1) this is a long-ass flight and (2) you are trapped in the window seat. So turn to your seatmate (of any gender) and say, “Hey, if you fall asleep and I need to go to the bathroom, should I try to scoot past or would you prefer it if I…

Thanks for being a supportive person. I think your heart is in the right place.

Not quite as intense, but a guy deliberately brushed his hand over my ass in a public space about a month ago and I felt all of those feelings: anger that someone would ruin my day at the museum for no reason; a feeling of being completely alone in a crowd and the likelihood that I would be treated as a crazy person…

It’s a tough call. When I’m in the aisle, I smile and tell the people on the inner seat(s) that I’m a light sleeper and I don’t mind at all being woken up if they need to get up. I like to give people as few chances as possible to screw up. But without that conversation? I hate waking people up, I feel terrible about…

I’m hopeful. World War Z (the book) did a great job of setting up the early stages of the apocalypse, when people weren’t taking the threat seriously and were making all sorts of costly mistakes. Watching a society go from functional to complete breakdown could be fascinating if they do it right.

As a woman who gets pursued by men who won’t take no for an answer: thank you for taking no for an answer. It is frustrating and frankly alarming to let someone down with a rejection and then realize that they simply did not accept your polite/firm rejection and are coming back for more. I’m a non-confrontational…

Every single time I’ve used, “I have a boyfriend,” the guy has immediately cross-examined me.

i am dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying

Excellent choice. For me it’s Gladiator. I know the fight choreography well enough to be Maximus’s stunt double. I also mutter, “It vexes me, I’m terribly vexed” whenever I’m working on something difficult.

I don’t understand people who think bathrooms cannot be peed in / pooped in. That is the purpose of the room. It’s the place we go to put our bodily fluids directly into a water-filled bowl and then flush them through a series of pipes to a land far, far away. Bathrooms are the best thing humanity has ever invented.

Yes, the coffee poop. How the hell do people get through a whole day at the office without pooping if they drink coffee? Mine is 2 hours after the first cup, and it Will Not Be Denied.

My office stall situation is:

That is the most salient response I have seen thus far.

If you are in the same room with someone who is smoking pot, THC will show up in your drug test. I agree with you that no one should drink and drive, and no one should smoke or do any kind of drug and then get behind the wheel of a car. The problem is that our detection system for THC picks up on amounts so small that…

The only way they seem relevant to me is that the timing of her suicide seems suspicious, but there are no signs of a struggle to imply it was murder. If she was drugged, willingly or otherwise, it would explain why there are no signs that she put up a fight. Honestly, from the beginning I’ve been wondering if either…

A friend of mine is a government contractor and will leave the room the instant anyone starts smoking, for precisely that reason. She got into a major fight with her landlord a few years back because she lived in a duplex and the guys who lived on the second floor were lighting up constantly and she could smell it,…