The way the skip intro works on Prime for me is:

"It’s been a looooong road… getting from there to here…

…f the heaaaaaaaaaaaaaart!"

So one way or another, I’m getting some faith of the heart.

There’s another part to this, and the renowned surgeon makes it a bad metaphor.

It’s more like: “You have a choice for your surgery. On one hand, we have a trained surgeon, on the other hand is a circus clown.”

“What are the surgeon’s credentials and record?”

“Well… they have a reasonably good record in other kinds of surgery, but and they’ve shadowed a surgeon who has done your surgery before. I won’t lie to you and say their record is perfect, though, and some of the practices and techniques they use draw serious criticism from various world health organizations.”

“And the clown?”

“They have more experience with these surgeries, but the vast majority of the people who underwent these surgeries have died. In fact, he shows flagrant disregard for even the most basic and accepted sanitary standards in the medical community.”

“But some people did live, right? So he can’t be all bad.”

“Occasionally he was part of a surgical team, and in those cases the rest of the team managed to keep the patient alive. And again, your other option is a trained surgeon.”

“But a shitty surgeon with no experience.”

“A questionable surgeon with limited experience. Or a clown who kills those he commits surgery on more often than not.”

“I can’t believe these are my only two options. When you said I had a choice, I thought it was a real choice, but it sounds like you’re just trying to force your surgeon on me. I think I’ll wait until another round of surgeons is available.”

“You will probably die before the next round of surgeons is available.”

“Honestly, I don’t trust your judgement over what’s best for me. I’m sitting this one out.”

Undecided doesn’t always mean who you vote for, sometimes it means whether you vote.

Still dumb not to vote, though.

The corruption of those courtesy cards. For which he got retaliated against. And that he brought a lawsuit over, which brings the corruption to light.

I’d say that’s fighting corruption from the inside.

I imagine Sales™ would not manage to clear that bar, and Pulaski would have no idea either way (unless maybe she were thoroughly briefed).

But he was a LCDR in Starfleet, on board the most prestigious ship in the fleet, and clearly had the respect of the crew he worked with. She had to completely ignore all of that to display the prejudice she showed. I think it’s perfectly correct to take issue with it.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is that distracting you?”

I think you’re missing the point. Bringing in difficult to obtain weapons as part of the conversation muddies the conversation about controlling the currently ubiquitous weapons being used.

As an analogy, let’s say someone blows something up and hurts people, using dynamite or homemade explosive using gun powder:

“Anyone who has access to the dynamite and RPGs and C-4 should be held responsible for what’s done with it!”

“Wait, there was an RPG or C4? I’m pretty sure outside the military it’s pretty difficult to get ahold of either of those. They’re already heavily regulated.”

“What difference does it make? They’re explosives used to blow things up and kill people.”

“Right, but, again, those are heavily regulated, while what happened was with dynamite, which is not.”

“OH! So it’s OKAY since the dynamite is not as regulated!”

“No, it’s just a different conversation about RPGs and C4.”

“Only if you have an agenda!”

Vs.

“Anyone who purchases dynamite should be responsible for what happens to it, unless they can show they’ve properly secured it and didn’t give access to it to someone they shouldn’t.”

“Agreed, dynamite and gunpowder explosives are common and not as regulated as they should be.”

Also, telling a depressed person their answer is to exercise is like telling a homeless person that they just need to get a job. The not having a home prevents the getting a job. If they had the ability to find a job, they wouldn’t be homeless (except obviously the people who don’t make enough from their job to support themselves, but that’s a whole different issue that shouldn’t exist).

So even if someone does have the time, getting the depression under control may be necessary before the exercise seems like a reasonable possibility.

you can take a day or some time off to support your local business

Now who’s being entitled?

I bought a laptop backpack a loooooooong time ago, and still use it constantly. It’s been through 3 laptops, and I’m not the type to upgrade until it is absolutely necessary.

We all mourn the passing of the Head of Reason.

I just started playing Magic the Gathering, and my Command Deck I just bought came before my box, sleeves, or dice.

I thought there was going to be a game last night at my local bar, and I was about to recreate this comic (except with the cardboard box it came in instead of a sock).

Me at my house:

Daughter: “I don’t know where my phone is”

Me: I don’t say it.

Daughter: “DAD, I can’t find my phone!”

Me: I still don’t say it.

Daughter: Daaaaaad, do you know where my phone is?!"

Me: deep breath

He has a bunch of random songs about random stuff. One of my other favorites is “I don’t work here” and it’s all about people assuming he works where he’s at (grocery store, lifeguard post…) and it gets more and more absurd as the song goes on.

I’d recommend his YouTube channel, most of his stuff is pretty good.

Tom Cardy - Active Perception Check

It gets stuck in my head a lot and I end up just putting it on.

Also maybe Skrillex - Bangarang

Because my go-to thing is when I’m in the kitchen with my wife and daughter I’ll yell “ALEXA! PLAY BANGARANG!” And everyone groans. And then we listen to EDM for as long as it takes for them to leave me to work in the kitchen alone.

Look, I completely agree with the general sentiment, but if you conflate the current illegal theft of agreed-upon and earned wages with what workers deserve to be paid, it doesn’t help the latter argument, it just confuses the former.

This type of thing is “defund the police” all over again, where the intention is to transfer funds from the police to social services specialized in situations the police shouldn’t be handling in the first place, and then got conflated with the idea of abolishing police. And while the former would have, it seemed, broad support (even among a lot of police who felt ill-equipped and trained to deal with every kind of emergency), the latter immediately turned off a significant portion of people, and conflating the two hurt the entire movement.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a serious focus on wages increasing with profitability, I’m saying don’t use the terminology of a separate problem that needs to be fixed and could have broad support right now.

All of that absolutely tracks for what I would expect of him. And honestly, I could imagine a number of people having similar reactions.

I feel the disconnect here is I can’t imagine someone going out of their way to tell the story unasked. Like, I feel even amongst the people who would do it they wouldn’t talk about it? And of those they wouldn’t talk about it in an interview, unprompted. That’s the truly baffling part, to me.

How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy.

I watched the first one on a ferry, and just hearing the title made me think it was going to be some nonsense. And then it was amazing.

Then they announced a second, and I was thinking what do they expect to do with this and then they gave something intensely heartwarming and heart wrenching. I found it better and deeper than the first.

And then the third. I don’t think it was as clean as the other two, but it closed it off so beautifully I was bawling at the end. Absolutely perfect.

I suppose. I’m far more likely to die in a helicopter crash. Never been shot at, nor have just about anybody I’ve worked with. The only people who have gone to a war zone in the past couple decades were people who specifically requested it.

Though I have worked with a few who survived helicopter crashes (five, between two crashes), so definitely not without its dangers. That’s the specific job I chose, though. Plenty of jobs in the Coast Guard with paper cuts or oven-related burns as the most danger they’ll experience.

So… I’m not shilling for the military, but…

Coast guard gets 30 days of leave, 3 months of paternity leave, and unlimited sick days.

Just saying.

Edit: to be clear, US Coast Guard.

I was going to be dropping my son off at daycare before work (something I usually didn’t do), and my normal routine was to stop at Wawa for breakfast. I stopped, got out, grabbed my breakfast, got back in, and only then remembered that he was in the back. He had been VERY uncharacteristically quiet prior, and I was tired, and I just… forgot he was in the back.

It caused absolutely no harm (I was only in the Wawa for 5-10 min), but it was a very sobering moment. I can definitely understand how it happens.