That’s true. I’ve also hitch-hiked and hosted hundreds of strangers in my house for free, so my optimism will probably get me killed one of these days.

Well, but a cab driver is also a stranger, and no one knows that you’re in that particular car. At least with Lyft & Airbnb etc there’s a digital record of exactly where you are and who you’re with.

Oh no! Well, OK, I can return to being satisfied as a poor with a stalled career.

If I had to wake up tomorrow as someone else, I would 100% choose Amal Clooney. Actually I would choose that even if I didn’t have to. Bad ass career with a luxury life.

Yeah and especially because it’s so integral to the piece. I had just his line stuck in my head yesterday.

It’s not just religion, either. It’s the whole “the world is here to validate me” mentality. My last big sleep-on-the-couch fight with my boyfriend was when he was telling me how cool it was that he accidentally offended one woman while out and as a result had a great conversation with this other woman who stood up…

Oh I feel you on that. I taught at a university in a country where the kids follow really strict fashion rules based on which group or “tribe” they consider themselves part of. They were almost like uniforms, right down to the haircuts and the type of jewelry. I had to make all of them let me take a photo of them…

I live in the Deep South these days, and as my friend advised me when I moved, “Big Hair is real”. Down here it’s all about platinum beachy waves. Which is too bad because my hair would’ve probably been really hot in the 70s, but it doesn’t hold a curl more than 20 min.

Yes but I feel like that illustrates the good hands vs bad hands crux of the issue? Whether it’s Facebook or the government, if the wrong person takes over that database I have reason to be worried.

Well, the super devout who are accepting the cow shipments believe that building the Third Temple (which they can only do after finding a red heifer) will trigger the arrival of the Messiah so... everyone involved is basically convinced that they can use the others to their advantage. It’s a bizarre alliance founded…

My favorite kiddo election statement was my 4-yr old niece, who said, “Who are you voting for, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trumpet? I’m voting for Hillary Clinton, because Donald Trumpet is mean and he lies!”

Speaking as a person who is also afraid that an emergency call won’t reach me: on either Android or iPhone, you can put the setting to Priority Only/DND but specify certain numbers that should ring no matter what. I have my boyfriend, father, mother, sister etc as priority numbers and so I can put my phone on silent…

John Oliver with Last Week Tonight is a good stopgap. He helps me in the “OK I’m not the only person who sees how insane this is” department.

We should be scared on both accounts, but the Netherlands during WWII demonstrates why being scared of the government knowing you too well isn’t being paranoid. They assembled a full proto-database of all their citizens, designed to help with administering the social safety net (medicine, housing, etc)... but when…

There are (were?) evangelicals in the US who have specifically been breeding red heifers and shipping them to Israel, because the anointment required for an observant Jewish person to enter the Temple Mount involves the ashes of a purely red heifer. The evangelicals believe that if they can trigger that re-entry, the…

Especially when your entire platform was and continues to be “JOBS!”.

My mom grew up in the Bronx and was maybe 20 at the time — she’s told me many times about how she and her friends would all wear curly blonde wigs that summer. They didn’t want to cut off their hair, because the style then was super long straight hair that would take years to grow out, but they wouldn’t be caught out…

Reminds me of a woman who said to me early in the Trump candidacy, “He just says what we’re all thinking!” and I had to explain to her that no dear, just because I’m white like you doesn’t mean I’m secretly thinking racist thoughts all the time and only stifle them to be polite.

That happened to me I think 3 or 4 times in a row when I was a teenager, and to this day (some 15 years later) I’m completely paranoid. If I need to complain about someone I’ve been known to check my phone to make sure it isn’t somehow purse dialing the person in question.

Just wall-to-wall sofas from which I watch whatever replaces Netflix in 50 years. That’s my retirement plan.