My six year old is currently in love with axolotls after discovering them in Minecraft. Now they have an axolotl balloon and costume and a little squishy one and probably some other things I can’t remember.

Being six, they are also often given to lamentations and mood swings.

You have accurately represented my kid in two panels - well done!

Bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.

When I started at my current job, every new hire was given the choice of a MacBook or Linux laptop. I only encountered one person who chose the former and he only chose that because he thought it’d be funny to use Windows on a MacBook in his professional environment. (We were allowed to do pretty much whatever with our laptops so long as we could fulfill our work duties. My then manager replaced Ubuntu, with which we were provided, with Arch on his laptop.)

Two or so years later, the IT department said that they didn’t really know how to maintain security compliance on Linux, but they did know JAMF. Thus, they took away our customizable Linux laptops and foisted MacBooks on all of us. I’m pretty sure even the Windows guy lost that, but he was an exec so it probably took longer.

I still remember when they announced that this would happen. They said it without a timeline in the company-wide group chat and someone I respected previously and respected more afterwards said “so when are you taking away our good laptops?”

Isn’t that an Irish anthem?

One of the classics.

The most generous interpretation I can find is that jellyfish are interested in the mittens.

Personally, I’m just wary of one or more people.

I thought this was going to be a rickroll or similar. Pleased (sort of) to discover otherwise.

Indeed, that was as it was described in the book. Apologies for not elaborating.

I remember an Iron Man novel that suggested Tony had poor hearing because he played heavy metal in his helmet while flying from place to place.

I used to work in a call center with a very long spiel for answering the phone. I never used it when someone called me, but one time I had a dream that my phone was ringing at work. I woke up (sort of), picked up my cell phone, and recited the script … Only to finally open my eyes and see I was talking to no one but my befuddled dog.

Yeah, I’ve been on the same page.

Fortunately I haven’t been in a formal classroom setting in years.

My theory (or perhaps more accurately, hope) was that they were parked nearby, say at a local grocery store; from there they sent this text, then left the parking lot, honked, and parked once again at their nearby home before sending the final text.

And that from the father of economics.

My third grade teacher told me that negative numbers aren’t real.

Reflecting back on it thirty years later, it’s clear what she meant, but the poorly communicated statement and arguments she made were very upsetting to me, someone who at the time was very proud of having just learned the concept.

In the moment, I had the same reaction as you. Shortly thereafter, my mom - who was not at all a fan of that teacher - took my brother and me out of public school and we started homeschool.

That’s a fair assessment.

My ortho has recently requested that I have some imaging done on my back, but anticipates a surgery to fuse my vertebrae will be needed. After that, from what I’ve been told, I’ll primarily have to conquer psychological barriers.

As a kid, I once heard the theory that aliens are actually time travelers fucking with people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD6nxu8cNIA

I respect that, but I broke my ankle and it never healed properly. Apparently I subsequently injured my back (I have a severely bulging disk; not sure whether this is the result of my body or something I did). I’m not saying I’m not lazy - I am - but in this case my complaint is not the result of laziness.

That said, you basically paraphrased BoJack Horseman, and I approve of that.

My back just stopped me from walking down one stair (and I barely made it back from trying) and here you are calling ~4 miles a “short run.”

I don’t begrudge you that, it’s good that your body is capable, but jeez it’s hard not to be envious.