use your knife

I think you’ll find that at every level. It’s certainly very prevalent anong middle-class suburbanites.

Okay, meaningless or spurious.

How do you know you haven’t?

Bullshit is meaningless talk or meaningless tasks.

Horseshit is a falsehood.

Batshit is crazy or deranged.

Dogshit is something low-quality.

April 4! But, uh, of AD 1917, so not that recently.

So you can get dinner and dessert at the same place.

No.

TBF, I don’t really try to keep most things inside anyway, so there’s only a few I need to keep the lid on.

I agree that Argentina could be improved. Maybe make it five stripes instead of three? Just add a bar of white at the top and also the bottom. The red symbol in the middle is great, but maybe we need more than one, let’s make it four in a horizontal row. Since there are more now they’ve got a be a little smaller and therefore also simpler, something recognizable but cool like a brewer’s star.

Oops, just made the Chicago flag again. Unbeatable.

• Angola 🇦🇴

• Albania 🇦🇱

• Antigua and Barbuda 🇦🇬

• Kiribati 🇰🇮

• South Africa 🇿🇦

• Portugal 🇵🇹

• Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

I agree these are good, the others were not though. I’d like to add to consideration:

• Argentina 🇦🇷

• Canada 🇨🇦

• Japan 🇯🇵

In particular, Argentina is, if not the best national flag, at least my personal favorite.

I share this blessing. I’m still confused by how exactly people are tasting how spicy their precious meal was when it’s on the way back out.

No, the working class and the lower class are both very empathic. I’m guessing you haven’t spent very much time with us.

I’ve been carfree in Chicago for two decades, I highly recommend it. I keep my license current for emergencies and the odd once-a-year rental situation, but don’t own one. It’s cheaper and safer this way.

MRW I’m on a list with the CIA and the NRA but it’s the Culinary Institute of America and the National Restaurant Association.

We’d suffocate and then be crushed.

Your first time doing taxes, go to the public library and grab the paper copy of the instructions, even if you’re submitting it electronically. Read them and highlight anything that’s confusing or important.

Laundry: Use less detergent than you think, and colder water than you think. Don’t machine-dry any wool and most synthetic fabrics.

ADHD? Look into a bullet journal for keeping track of important info. This is not a product, it’s a method, and you can do it with a 50¢ composition book. The main benefit for someone with ADHD is that it’s stupid easy to start and doesn’t break if you forget to do it for a day or a week or a month.

Buying insurance? Hiring a contractor? Know your budget and get at least three quotes before deciding.

You don’t get promoted by being good at your current job. You get promoted by asking for it, or by jumping to a different company.

Start investing now. Pick a stock or fund that’s boring but steady and buy $50 worth (or more, if you can afford it), rain or shine. Don’t stress about optimizing it; even boring investments should have a return well above inflation.

Never lend anyone money. It will destroy your relationship 90% of the time. If someone needs help and you want to help them, just give them the money. Either they’ll pay it back some other way or they’ll pay it forward, but no matter what it won’t be hanging between you.

If times are hard, don’t be afraid or ashamed to take advantage of programs or food banks. That’s what they’re there for. You’re not taking it away from someone who needs it more, most food banks have a big overflow from week to week. If you feel bad about using these programs when you’re down, well, make sure to donate or volunteer when you’re up.

Yes, when discussing pay. I said flat out “I need to be making X/week, is that realistic here?” Got that job, working it now. I don’t have time to mess around.

This is a sales job, though.

ZZT!

This is the game that got Tim Sweeney the cash he needed to develop Jill of the Jungle and then go off of that success to bring Epic (Epic Megagames at the time) into the successful company it became. But I don’t care about that because I never played Unreal or Fortnite.

ZZT came with its own editing software. Not just so you could place pieces around the board and make mazes or whatever, it contained a fairly robust scripting language you could use to make all sorts of things way beyond the scope of the original game the editor came with. Whole online communities grew up around creating and sharing these homemade games, first on BBSes and then on AoL fora and eventually on a dedicated website that’s still around. Because the game/editor were distributed as shareware, there was almost no barrier to entry, and we were all just churning with ideas about how to break the engine and push the bounds of the software, of gameplay, and if narrative convention.

It was one of the most creative and community-focused times of my life, and fostered my lifelong passion for game design, something I still do as a hobby.

spinach crêpes

I met her just before May Day in 2009. Two days later we were going steady. Three months after that, engaged. A year after we met I moved in with her and a year after she proposed we were married. Well, church married.

We were protesting for marriage equality and refused to file a marriage certificate until it was the law of the land; but we had kids before that happened and then we got busy and we didn’t actually get around to that part until the pandemic lockdowns. So ten years after we got married we turned in our marriage license.