Yes.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is the first book I’ve read since Hitchhiker’s Guide that actually made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It’s about a time-travelling historian who takes a vacation to Victorian England, and nearly ends the universe while trying to return a missing cat. The book’s part of a series, but this is definitely the most fun entry.

Man, it’s annoying seeing a headline starting with “Trump, 79” that doesn’t end with “dead”.

I hadn’t eaten yet; I’d originally packed a sandwich but now I’m thinking about steak.

For me, it’s eurobeat. But specifically, eurobeat while I’m driving my car. Ideally, doing something other than rolling down the interstate, merely holding my steering wheel straight for 20 minutes on my way to work.

It’s not exclusively eurobeat, but I use this playlist whenever I find the right road for wringing out my engine a little bit. Or if I realize I’m in a rush and I need to floor it. Sometimes both.

The Mist’s film adaptation has a better ending than the original story. King himself thought so.

29 here. Kinda consider myself between generations.

I smoke tobacco, albeit very, very seldomly. About two packs a year, tops, plus a proper cigar roughly every quarter. Never vaped. Can’t do weed, because my job is federally regulated and I get drug tested too often.

I used to drink rather heavily, especially during the pandemic - I’d put away a bottle of rum or vodka over the course of nearly every weekend. I still drink sometimes, but nowhere near as much or as often. Mostly taste-testing homemade wine batches, every couple months. It’s been about a year since the last time I got pandemic-levels of drunk.

My parents were reasonable. They were a bit wary of me wanting M-rated games as a kid, although they’d at least take the content warnings into account. The only game I remember them having a problem with was a Mortal Kombat game, though that was more from my 4-year-old brother wanting them to buy it for him. They were perfectly fine with buying me Halo CE when I was 7. Oh, also, my grandmother bought me Conker’s Bad Fur Day because she thought the squirrel on the cover was cute.

It was my sister who was strict about whatever media I’d consume. When we got an Xbox for Christmas, she turned on all the parental controls in the name of “protecting” her little brothers. She thought I was “too young” to play GTA when I was 10, even though she’s barely a year older than me. This domineering of hers extended to the TV as well, at least for a day, until my dad wanted to watch King of the Hill and the screen blacked out.

If I’m lucky, it’ll be the fact that I died. And the reputation I’d have to build to get that headline is hopefully gonna be a good one.

My cockatiel is the only one in this hypothetical flock that would scream my name, when any nearby human gets into an argument.

“She got too close, so I farted.”

Zac Brown Band, “Knee Deep”

Make the tax scale into an exponential multiplier. Two companies? Double taxed. Three companies? Your taxes are now cubed. So on and so forth.

Maybe subsidiaries of larger conglomerates should be taxed this way as well, take giants like Nestle and Unilever down a few pegs.

About three weeks, while I was training to be a truck driver.

I’d gotten my CDL through a trucking company’s “apprenticeship” program, which was actually a super-predatory mill they ran to compensate for their insane turnover rate.

The final phase of this company’s program, after I’d acquired my CDL but before receiving my own truck assignment, had me driving/riding on a “trainer’s” truck for 20,000 miles, while the more-experienced trainer showed me all the ins and outs of life on the road. In theory, anyway.

In practice, I’d learned essentially everything there was to know after a couple of days. Enough to get by on my own, at least.

So my trainer suggested we run the truck as a team operation from then on, running long-distance, time-sensitive loads, forcing one of us to drive while the other slept, in order to burn through my training miles faster. The company was tracking training miles by the truck, not by the driver, apparently.

Rather than driving 400-500 miles per day, I was pushing 1000 miles per day, every day, the truck only stopping for fuel and to work with customers. Between pickups and deliveries, my trainer had this annoying habit of only visiting truck stops while I was asleep, and finding random industrial parks and highway shoulders to park on for shift changes. I never had time to take a shower.

I staved off the stink with copious amounts of baby wipes and Febreeze. I also found out later, that my trainer owned the truck we drove, and my wages were not taken out of the revenue for the loads he ran. So I was effectively free labor for him.

I don’t work for that company anymore. I’m still in trucking, but I spend weekends at my house. And I try to shower at least every other day on the road.

A thousand euros in airsoft will get you a high-quality gun or two, depending on what you’re looking for and where you’re getting it from. Generally, replica pistols and “standard” rifles tend to be cheaper than anything heavy or exotic.

And you’ll probably have plenty of cash left over, for things like safety gear, special clothing, and gun-related accessories like slings and holsters.

The most expensive gun in my collection, a replica of the pistol from Kingsman, was €430. I spent about another 100 on spare magazines, shotgun shells, and a custom holster. My next-priciest gun cost less than half that, even after acquiring similar accessories

I haven’t put any money into modifying any of my guns, since that’s an entire other can of worms I don’t feel like opening. Most guns will be perfectly playable out of the box, rarely needing more than heavier BBs or a hopup adjustment to be improved.

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BlueSky