I ran into a litter of wild turkey chicks a few months ago and it was such a contrast to how little ducklings group together and line up to follow mom. The turkey chicks scatter every which way instead.

I still remember the pneumonic for “pool” in Spanish that a high school classmate came up with: La Piscina — Piss in a pool.

I’m sure the office has just as much fresh air circulating as the stables -_-

That’s ridiculous and invasive they turned the mask thing into a tribunal on your private habits outside of work.

See, now you have something useful to leave for the next generation

I consume both those things frequently, I’ll have to try it! I switched to freshly grinding my nutmeg earlier this year and will take any excuse to try it in different things.

Bay leaves in savory dishes

Nutmeg on/in sweet things

Or badly designed ones with a combo of yield and stop signs that effectively prevent the people with the stop sign from ever proceeding

My mom taught me to never trust a turn signal (or lack of one)

Fancy pickles are always such a disappointment to my taste buds. I do appreciate a fancy cheese occasionally.

I’ll give that a try next time! I’ve sort of made progress on a similar technique for social anxiety (stop, breathe, tell myself no one is spending serious thought on judging me).

I have definitely improved on the ‘saying no’ tactic you mentioned or the similar ‘remove yourself from the scenario’ one. Luckily my workplace gives me relatively broad control over my time as long as I’m meeting deadlines and such so it’s more a problem I run into with family or friends. I prefer to run errands and even go on day trips alone and have to fight my preferences to lead a normal social life/be a reasonably active member of my community (which I do value, at least theoretically).

I did regular meditation for a year and a half or so (now more intermittent) but never mastered the kind you can do with your eyes open. I do enjoy a walking meditation though.

a slight caricature of a real photo

They paid for the CEO to have an expensive townhouse downtown even though they only visited the area like 2 weeks total per year and lived on the opposite coast.

What about the almost wet feeling material (microfiber?) they make a lot of throw blankets out of?

This is only sort of related but I was talking to someone about the Medieval ‘dark ages’ and it led to us wondering what the ancient greek ‘dark age’ (proceeding plato et al) was like because it seems odd that civilization with such complex ideas about ethics and metaphysics and geometry sprang out of a dark age.

After digging in it turns out historians no longer really refer to it as a dark age (rather, they split this period into the ‘postpalatial bronze age’ and the ‘prehistoric iron age.’). The reason we considered it a ‘dark age’ in the past is because they didn’t really have writing, but historians realized this was because there was a strong oral tradition in that region at the time where ideas were passed through song/poetry etc. so the presumption that it was a dark age by historians in the past was mainly because historians had a bias towards literacy/writing. The oral tradition obviously doesn’t leave a written archeological record so it makes sense that historians privilege societies that had writing just because we can know more about their ideas, but it’s doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the past if we pretend complexity only comes with literacy.

Which number is “there are no girls on the internet?”

lol try the silverware at the dollar store sometime! Or the frying pan

Right on. That’s admirable you’re also making a priority to donate. I’ve also switched to purchasing as many of my groceries as possible from a local farm coop or road stalls so hopefully less of my money makes it to shitty people.