Everything feels like it happens so fast now and yet I have nearly no free time despite all this convenience. I did things one at a time and had to make an effort to do things like shop or go to the bank or pay bills or whatever. I cannot believe how many books I read and all the time I spent in the local library just browsing the stacks of all sorts of random shit; it was not routinely pared down to popular books, but had all sorts of odds and ends. I deliberately listened to music by putting a tape in the machine, and it was active listening. Radio was creative and beautiful. The local bar I spent time at was home to all sorts of burgeoning local bands. Food was not “small plates” at trendy bistros, but was sizeable satisfactory portions of ordinary food. A trip to the mall was an adventure, and my mall even had a library branch in it. You went to fish fry dinners at the Royal Canadian Legion on Fridays. One restaurant we used to go to we had to write our order down on a pad inside the kitchen, and the cook would come and slap your food in front of you. If you phoned someone and they weren’t home, you just phoned later on.

Nothing felt shitty and overly marketed and ads just existed and weren’t tailored to you. Television sitcoms lasted 26 seasons and you had to wait until next week to see the next one.

Even social media was better before Facebook, it felt organic and you made friends for life. Even early Twitter felt like this constant humorous conversation even if you didn’t agree with someone. Nobody was routinely crucified for misstepping in public (not that they shouldn’t sometimes). Things were definitely more generic but didn’t feel fake and marketed and inauthentic. Google was better and actually found things and didn’t just spit out a few results and then start adding unrelated things.

I’m not trying to sing the ballad of the boomer in B Minor; I appreciate convenience. I am tired of seeing bloated companies turn everything into shit. I want art and music and local watering holes to flourish. I want food to be good and satisfying. I don’t want every episode dropped at once. I just want things to slow down.

So my advice is slow down. Do one thing at a time. Go places and do one thing. Go to old restaurants. Go read paper books at the library. Go listen to a band at a bar. Do things. Don’t reduce it all to your phone. This is my goal for the new year is to do things.

They’re morons, and they’re just conservatives who want to smoke weed. Whatever your opinion of size of government, you have to have some central systems to run a society.

Bunch of ugly bugs. This photo smells like gas station boner pills.

Oh, this drug company is absolutely not like that at all. They are super ethical and invest every dollar of their profits into research. The dinner was to present a new treatment which has become super standard for the clinic, which involved one of our doctors presenting, I promise it was not like that at all. They are truly generous to us. There are not many treatments for this disease and this is one of the best. It was purely educational.

I worked with a doctor whose in-laws were Saudi royalty. He didn’t need to work at all he was so wealthy.

I heard about him doing an incredibly greedy thing that blew my mind one day; he showed up at a dinner that a drug company was hosting for another adjacent program he had nothing to do with and did not practice in at all. He didn’t even tell them he was coming, they had to find him a seat, and then he sat down, ordered not one but TWO whole lobsters, and when they came he asked for them to be wrapped to go, and he left. Even acknowledging drug companies have large budgets for these kinds of things, to come to an event that has nothing to do with you and do that is insanely rude when you don’t want for a thing in the world.

I know someone else who is very wealthy, and he’s pretty generous and passionate about creating things, he’s far from perfect, but truly wants to make good things and runs a business that gives him zero profit, so the contrast was pretty stark. The doctor also stiffed his professional college for a very large membership bill.

Servants is the better word for it. This is the English version of the carol, and it’s probably meant to refer to a royal couple, and this would be their servants. The Swiss and French version of the carol mostly talk about animals and food instead, with one exception in the Swiss version mentioning 12 churches with 12 altars with 12 priests.

I’m glad!

I always say that if people like Peterson can’t deal with someone’s pronouns, they can misgender me if it makes them feel better, I don’t give a shit what you call me.

In his younger years it was sort of like a souffle

If there was one thing on Reddit that was educational, it was Foreign Body Friday on the radiology subreddit.

clap clap.

My nurse friend had some dude in the ER a few months ago who stuck his wedding ring on his penis and couldn’t get it off for what are obvious reasons to anybody but this guy. When this kind of thing happens the fire department has to come cut it off, so not only do you get a firefighter touching your junk and seeing the dumb thing you did, but also now your dick is a useless noodle, and you may spend the rest of your life reflecting on how easy the Internet makes acquiring safe items for such activities, and yet you chose a tiny gold band.

Mulder!

I am meticulously polite and helpful. It’s who I am, and I won’t stop because the people who deserve to be treated like I treat people really are worth it.

People who treat you like shit don’t deserve shit.

Absolutely.

As an aside, a great deal of CSAM is shared through Facebook, they’ve been asked by CSAM survivors to stop this and they said no. The advocacy survivor group Phoenix 11 submitted six formal questions in the US Congress to old Zuckface fuckface about it, as he deployed end to end encryption which makes this possible, which he dodged like the lying fuck he is. Zuck would sell it himself if it made him a whole dollar and nobody should forget that.

It’s true. He also keeps licorice in there for a snack.

I loved this. Bring it back. I had a pair of shorts with this pattern.

None needed!

The casino here still allowed smoking long after it was banned everywhere else. You could also smoke at the Royal Canadian Legion after the fish fry was over.