Also, they don’t increase the risk of requiring a c-section.

That must have been hard to do, but it shows a lot of compassion on your part. Even creeps are human, and everyone deserves some dignity and kindness in death.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the millennials start to die off in forty years or so, death, like proposals, weddings, births, and parenthood, also becomes an opportunity for performance *shudder*.

I know that album. It’s lovely, but the title has always made me wince (I’m merely involuntarily childless). How awful it must have been for you right then. I’m so sorry.

I think the point is—who really wants to slip into eternal oblivion with some random sitcom rerun nattering on in the background?

Jesus, that’s horrifying. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe no one working there could take a minute to realize how completely that contradicted the mission of a hospice and shut that damn thing down.

It may not make you a misogynist, but it probably makes you annoying as hell (and not much fun at parties, either). It might help to ask, “Are you familiar with x?” and waiting for an answer before launching into a lengthy, unsolicited explanation of x.

Yesterday, someone posted a lecture (with links and all) in response to a throwaway comment I’d made...and a few minutes later, he’d deleted it and changed it to something much less pedantic and more conversational, which I very much appreciated. That’s the kind of “stop and think” behavior we need to see more…

But does it really matter? Nitpicking at grammatical errors is generally recognized as an attempt to derail a conversation and undermine a commenter’s authority. I refrain from pointing them out unless the commenter is ranting illiterately about the willful linguistic ignorance of certain other people who shouldn’t…

I was going to say Irish culture, but the actual informational content of such a conversation would likely be much lower (and decreasing with every round of pints) and would likely terminate in violence and lifelong grudges.

The problem may not be that the person’s opinion is invalid or even uninformed. Mansplaining is more about tone and context than about validity. The “unpopular opinion” may be truly irrelevant or may already have been used a hundred times or more to try to derail conversations on similar topics, or the commenter may…

username checks out ;-)

Condescension, expertly wielded and never abused, can be a powerful weapon against mansplaining.

I suspect it’s probably more complicated than that. If I’d been single in my twenties or thirties I’d probably never have hooked up with a guy from a seriously wealthy family, let alone an older, wealthier man, even if he measured up to me intellectually and culturally, largely because of the power differential (oh,…

Yeah, my sister, like most nurses, is probably impervious at this point.

That’s great, but way above and beyond what I would do, as a sister. I mean, as his babysitter/surrogate mother I changed my baby brother’s diaper until he was potty-trained and sometimes even helped him aim into the toilet on certain occasions until he was about five or so, but even if he were gay, NO WAY am I…

They are, sure, but most of the time they’re just a pain, begging me to review (for free) some restaurant where I just had dinner. Google Now has always been kind of useless to me because the event notifiers are all for pop-culture-type things in which I have absolutely no interest. Good to know I might actually be…

Huh. Interesting. Has Nighthawks fallen that far out of American cultural consciousness that we need to be reminded of it?

Oh, come on. I don’t want to have to listen to a whole podcast full of jabber to find out how to do this. So here’s how to do it for Android users using Google Now:

You’re not a terrible person or a loser, but you are kind of wasting your time and emotional resources, and you’re not doing her (or her spouse, assuming he’s not a jerk) any favors. If she’s interested in you, someone who’s a lot more available and just as worthwhile likely will be, too.