This is only tangentially related to your story, but you reminded me of an old maths teacher who had a PhD in maths and once upon a time, had applied to work at an accounting firm. As part of the interview, he was told that he would have to sit a numeracy assessment. He responded “you do know I have a PhD in maths, right?”. They sympathised with his point but told him that everyone had to sit the test, as a matter of course.

So my maths teacher goes and sits their silly test, and he scores so well that they accuse him of cheating! I can only assume that this debacle broke him in some way, because it wasn’t long after this that he started teaching. It’s a particular kind of weirdo who has a PhD in a subject and decides to teach teenagers. He was probably one of the best teachers I ever had (I wonder if I can find contact information for him to tell him that)

I agree. I learned a lot of bioinformatics stuff from the ground up, because I was learning python at the time, and found it super useful as practice. Years later, I discovered https://rosalind.info/ and cursed the fact that I hadn’t had access to that when I was learning.

“I became sexually active at 26 after folks from the kink community noticed my nerdy vibe, and they schooled me in some basic human interaction.”

Solidarity fist bump. My own experience was somewhat different, but there is the common ground of learning communication skills on a lag, and learning from a niche community of lovely weirdos

During COVID, I had a mental breakdown when I finished a university exam (which had been at home, on my computer) and was desperate to be anywhere but at my desk, sitting at my computer. However, I was also desperate to decompress with my friends, but they were in my computer.

When the UK switched to using plastic for the denominations of money that come as notes (£5, £10, £20, £50), people who use cocaine found that the new, plastic notes had a tendency to cut or scratch their nose. Because the £5 notes were the first ones to be switched to plastic, and they have Winston Churchill on them, apparently this phenomenon was termed “being Winstoned”. E.g. “careful with that, you don’t want to be Winstoned”.

I have no other point to make, I just think that this is hilarious.

Do it.

At least the crippling depression isn’t mixed up with the wire. A functional organisation system isn’t a substitute for a will to live, but an inability to find the right tools would certainly not help

Edit: I am also extremely fine, and I am wishing us both all the best on that front; I hope that some day, you are able to be better than fine.

These guys are as bad as the terrorist group Palestine Action (sarcasm, directed at the fact that the proscribing of Palestine Action as a terrorist group happened in the same vote as this group; if an MP had wanted to vote to outlaw RIM but not Palestine Action, it would have been impossible to do so)

I appreciate that your title makes it clear that this is an old article. Certainly it’s still relevant, but going into the article with knowledge of its age calibrates my mindset

I’m not saying that leeks are onions (though they are alliums, i.e. of the same family). To me, whilst they do taste quite different to onions, there is still a flavour that I would describe as onion-y

Related: Daniel Gritzer of Serious Eats explored different ways to mince garlic, finding that some methods significantly increased garlic’s pungency/strength (and also that long cooking methods negate much of this difference)

I’m curious about how far your onion dislike goes. For example, I recently cooked lohiketto, a Finnish salmon soup. It feels like a rare meal that doesn’t use onions (it’s basically leek, carrot, potatoes, cream, salmon and dill), but the leek sort of fills the role that onions usually would, albeit more delicately.

The most fucked up thing is that Grok does seem to have guardrails — except they’re geared towards preventing it from being “too woke”

This is not the kind of person that the meme is poking at, but my late best friend was one of the best people I have known, and I talk shit about him all the time. It feels like being honest about his depth and complexity is a part of how I honour him; I’m firmly of the belief that if you have to lie about something in order to love it, then your love is shallow and false.

It’s unclear, because the relevant official bodies insist that things are fine

Damn, I didn’t know this, thanks for sharing. I am not American, and I was pretty young when Hurricane Katrina happened, so context like this is new to me. More reasons to hate Bush

My friend was like that. He had a lot of friends who were girls, and the way that he handled that was by putting us all in the “friend” box (he was bi, so he did the same for guys, but given that most guys are straight, that wasn’t as necessary). It was a great method until he ended up hooking up with his best friend — it was a surprise to no-one but him. He walked around looking shellshocked for a week.

All the Finns I know are delightfully weird.

Hooking up with one of the staff? Yikes

I don’t deny that you may have dodged a bullet, but I feel like the staff of a psych ward hooking up with patients is hella fucked up. Even if both people are adults, I think consent in that context is pretty dubious.

I am enjoying saying “Log back in to continue your Oral B brushing experience” in my best “customer-service/salesperson ad lady” voice. Like the kind of tone that’s so soullessly saccharine that it gives AI vibes