Literally never met a liberal in my life who mentioned this. They may say ‘happy holidays,’ but they aren’t the ones having annual emotional breakdowns about it on cable news every December. It honestly must be a 100:1 ratio of how often conservatives complain about this topic to liberals.

Dear god?!? insecure? I can’t have that, what will people think?

Something on Amazon I’ve noticed is that it is all/mostly these sorts of items you get gouged on too. If it’s something you can randomly pick up in a grocery store, it’s usually 2-10x as much, but if you want a USB cooling fan, fountain pen ink, a banjo stand, and a spaghetti attachment for an apple peeler you are…

Excellent idea. This has the added benefit of not sounding odd to the ear the first time you hear it. I’m a huge fan of making language more compassionate and welcoming, but a lot of usages that are designed to be inclusive can sound a little shoehorned at first, which tends to bring out the greys.

Meh, I wouldn’t call them humble brags. I have a vast preference for a trip where you do a lot of things, but that’s not impressive, it’s just a taste. You can’t really humble brag about liking something more. Might as well humble brag about your favorite color.

I have yet to turn on a TV in a hotel room on vacation, with the exception of a few minutes of local TV in countries where I haven’t had the chance to use the local language in a while and it’s fun to see the state of things and brush up.

This could be really helpful for people visualizing metric if they are used to standard units, or the other way around, but the whole ‘it’s as big as 9 African elephants,’ or ‘14 Mounts Everest high.’ thing is a pet peeve of mine. That’s just saying, ‘it’s very big, much like this other very big thing.’ I don’t have…

Someone start the timer on the Trump GIF. 

I get the idea for a business trip or a goodwill trip with extended family where distraction might be a necessity, but the idea of chilling out watching tv when I have traveled far enough to need a hotel room/Airbnb for a vacation is completely foreign to me. Is this a thing people do? Go on vacation to see what…

Yeah, I’m back doing masters work with 17 and 18 year-olds all day and there needs to be some law along the lines of Godwin’s Law that the only things we can be absolutely certain are over and done with in teen culture are the things we adults think are a part of teen culture. It’s all very Socratic; 50 or so hours on…

As others have said, it seems the moral here is ‘don’t make explosives,’ not ‘don’t have a gender reveal party.’

As written by an adult. 

Most of my thoughts are discussed a million times elsewhere, so I’ll keep it brief.

I took a quick count and just for the unread books on the bookshelf I can reach from my desk, at my rate of about two books a week, it would take me almost a year to get through them.

Bonus points for having these ready and backed up regularly. Buy something expensive, take a picture. Do work on the house, take a picture. Those files can save you thousands when working with insurance companies in the event of something more sudden like a fire or the recent Iowa derecho that destroyed half the state…

Headlamp, 20 bucks at REI. I was recently without power for 11 days and it was a game changer.

Lamy is great, no doubt, but if you are wanting to try quality fountain pens on the cheap may I recommend the pilot metropolitan? I have both, and in my opinion it is every bit the Lamy’s equal and can often be had in a wide variety of colors and nib sizes on amazon for $10 - $15.

Lamy is great, no doubt, but if you are wanting to try quality fountain pens on the cheap may I recommend the pilot…

Beth just discussed how the 6% thing is manipulative nonsense.

Honestly, even if that were what it said, which it isn’t but you’ve already had that explained to you 40 times, ‘nobody knows,’ would still be helpful because it would be nice to know if some or any of the myths about when to get your flu shot are true.

Good info.