It has a “real definition” IN DANISH. Since exactly none of the people I know speak Danish to me, I’m not worried by what words they use might possibly mean in Danish. Similarly, “chair” means “flesh” in French, but when someone offers to get me a chair, and we’re both speaking English, I’m generally confident that…

He was fine with the people who asked that their child not be given any assignments using dice and/or playing cards. He had plenty of alternate stuff drawn up for that (or things like the 1-6 they could draw. He had similar slips with the numbers 1-13 and letters A-D, for the playing-card exercises). But when they…

I went to a university that, at the time, was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. There was a class that, every single time it was taught, took a field trip downtown to one of the local gay bars, watched a drag show, and had a Q&A session afterward with the performers. It wasn’t an upper-division class…

My dad only had to deal with the parents who wanted their kids to be able to opt out of the whole chapter on probability and statistics because gambling was sinful. (He gave them things to do that didn’t involve dice—mainly drawing a number 1-6 from a bag, which you might recognize is basically like rolling dice—but…

I’m just amazed that kids from a background like that were allowed to apply to Duke. I vaguely knew a lot of people like that, both in the South and in the Midwest, and they were mainly pushed to go to Bible colleges, if anything. (I went to a conservative Christian high school, and later went back there to teach. In…

One of the other problems with trigger warnings is that while there is a short list of incredibly common triggers, triggers can also be very specific to an individual’s traumatic experience, and then there’s no good way to warn for it.

When I was young, I was taught to think, “Will this cause unnecessary hurt to other people?” before I did things. It doesn’t matter what others think of me, but it *does* matter to me that I treat other people with respect.

Blazing Saddles.

Yes, because the only reason people stay in the city is that they have prioritized it. Or maybe they DON’T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO MOVE. If we were to leave the city, we would have to come up with another set of rental deposits (because you know landlords never return them if they can get away with it). We would have to…

Dude, I’m not Canadian. I didn’t elect anybody in Canada. (And I couldn’t have elected Rob Ford, even if I were a Canadian citizen, because weirdly enough, in mayoral elections, they only let people living in that city vote.)

I saw so many people getting so angry about that (I used to spend a lot of time in that Starbucks, working, because my office was shared with people who did not understand, “Please stop talking to me; I need to work,” and I tend to procrastinate if I work from home). I mean, I tried to use a Starbucks card once, got…

....you do know that Toronto isn’t the capital of Canada, right?

I’m not touching the rest of that.

Because skin cancer exists.

Ketchup is clearly important to you (though not important enough that you can spend $1 for it). Might I suggest bringing your own, just in case this ever happens to you? Your loved ones would hate to lose you when you die of a rage-induced stroke due to lack of ketchup.

No, RtW is the right thing here. In RtW states, labor conditions are generally shitty (I know I talk about living in Montreal elsewhere here, but I spent 40+ years in the US), because there’s such a weak union presence that employers can pretty much do whatever they want.

Or cops like this one:

I live in Montreal, and that is NOT how the cops behave in the lower-income, non-touristy parts of town. (I mean, some of them do. But the last time we went to get groceries, the cops were playing “harass the homeless,” which is their favorite game around here.) It’s still better than in the larger US cities I’ve…

Those are the ones in other retail stores, though, I think—like in Barnes & Noble, or Target. They’re also the ones where you can’t use Starbucks gift cards and stuff (I hated that, because when I was in grad school, I spent a lot of time in the Starbucks in the B&N not far from my apartment. And family kept sending…

I’m curious. I live in a city. I do not have either a balcony or a yard, and my apartment gets very little natural light. How would you propose that I grow enough food for two adult humans?

Okay, I really did not scroll far enough, and everyone else pointed out the oyster thing. Sorry.