For me, a lot of it has to do with how it’s presented in schools

Pi, for example. One day my teachers just kind of dumped this magical 3.14… number on me without any real explanation. Just basically “use this number to do stuff with circles,” no real explanation on what pi actually is on anything, just “remember this”

Years later I found a gif of a circle sort of unraveling that showed how the circumference is π × the diameter of the circle

And sure, mathematically, the formula tells you that, but actually seeing that animated out made a hell of a lot more sense to me.

Now I got most of my basic math education before those gifs were so readily available, and smart boards were just becoming a thing when I was in high school, so it would have been a little hard to show that to a bunch of elementary or middle school students without having us huddle around a desktop.

But that’s something that could have been illustrated pretty well with a couple circles of different sizes (cardboard cut-outs, printed on paper, different jar lids, etc,) a piece of string, and a ruler.

And the same goes for a whole lot of different math things.

In the interest of battery life and redundancy, I think it might make sense to have 3 devices.

Ereader with an e ink display for reading, a lot of these can last days or weeks on a charge easily

An mp3 player for music. I don’t know what the current state of mp3 players is, I suspect a lot of no-name imported garbage, but over a decade ago I know my iPod used to go days or weeks on a charge with pretty heavy usage. Probably look for whatever has the least bells and whistles you can find- no touch screen, physical controls, etc. if you’re up for a bit of tinkering I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty active scene for people modding old iPods with better batteries, more storage, etc. that would probably be a great option.

A tablet or smartphone for movies, or possibly a laptop (I’m not an apple guy, but I’ve heard MacBooks have pretty insane battery life these days.) Keep all the wifi/cellular/Bluetooth/gps, etc. turned off, keep it on power save mode, disable anything you can that you don’t need to watch movies. Unfortunately if such a thing as a dedicated video-only tablet exists, I couldn’t find it with a quick search. If such a thing can be found, I’d probably recommend that.

A dedicated device that does one job well will usually be more efficient at that thing than a multipurpose device like a tablet, smartphone, or computer that needs to be able to do it all. An mp3 player only needs to be able to play music, it doesn’t need to be running a full-on OS that’s capable of sending emails, making phone calls, playing games, etc.

Also that way if one of those things does die on you, you still have the other 2.

I saw in one of your other comments your concern about a tablet having a bigger screen would be a bigger drain on battery life. That’s true to an extent, bigger screens draw more power, but since the whole device is bigger they can compensate with a bigger battery. I haven’t exactly done an exhaustive survey of tablet battery life and don’t care to look into it, but in my (fairly limited) experience, they usually pretty much at least break even or surpass phones in battery life. I have a cheap tablet that I really only use for reading it lives in my bag, usually in my car, often forgotten about for days or occasionally weeks at a time, and doesn’t exactly get heavy usage, but it usually can go at least a few days without a change, even with WiFi and Bluetooth left on. If I’m not using it at all, it can sometimes go a couple weeks just sitting idle. It’s usually good for at least a couple hours of streaming HD video, with WiFi turned off and 720p video on internal storage I imagine it’s good for at least a couple movies.

WiFi and cellular data are pretty big power drains too. I know when I check my battery usage on my phone that probably accounts for about ⅓ or so of it. Having those turned off can go a long way. Jailbreaking/rooting your phone to disable unnecessary services probably wouldn’t hurt, but that’s probably a drop in the bucket compared to just keeping your device offline.

I don’t really like brand favouritism, but if you’re able to find a Toyota in your price range, as far as I’m concerned it’s pretty hard to go wrong with them. I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of anyone I’ve ever known who’s had a Toyota who had anything really bad to say about them, even with the few years of Tacomas that had major rust issues around the early 2000s, everyone I know who had one felt that Toyota did a pretty solid job of doing right by them.

My current car is an '07 4runner. I bought it used with around 150k miles on it about 5 years ago, I now at just over 200k miles. and except for the usual shit like brakes that are expected to wear down every few years, the only major thing I’ve had to deal with was replacing the alternator. It does have a small exhaust leak that throws a code for the catalytic converter every so often (it’s on for maybe a couple weeks every few months or so) that I’m not particularly concerned about. I’m fairly confident that with not much beyond regular upkeep this car could make it to 300k+ pretty easily.

My wife is driving a Prius that’s a few years newer (2012 I think) she’s had it for a few years now, only thing she’s needed is new tires so far.

Growing up my mom had an '89 Corolla, and there’s a damn good chance it’s still on the road. At some point we sold it to my uncle who later sold it to a cousin, and after that we lost track of it, but around that time (circa 2010-ish) it was still going just fine, even after having a pretty large tree fall on it and all of the usual wear and tear you’d expect on a 20+ year old car.

Outside of my family’s favoritism for Toyotas, I also have a hard time thinking of people who have anything bad to say about Honda’s. I’ve also never heard anyone complain about their Subaru, I have less personal experience with Subarus overall, I’ve never driven one, but my overall impression of every one I’ve ever ridden in has been positive, and Subaru owners sing their praises.

Most people I’ve known with Kias and Hyundais have also spoken highly about them…

Overall, my general advice is buy from any of the major Asian car brands unless you need a larger pickup truck (¾ ton or bigger,) then pretty much your only options are pretty much American trucks. For ½ ton or smaller trucks, I’d personally stick to Asian brands still, with the possible exception of the Ford Maverick.

As far as specific models, my personal recommendations are

Subaru in pretty much any market segment they inhabit. Smaller sporty cars are dumb regardless of brand, but if that’s your thing, go Subaru.

Sedans/hatchbacks- Toyota Corolla or Prius, Honda Accord or civic.

Compact suvs/crossovers- Toyota RAV4, Honda CRV, Kia sportage, Hyundai Tucson. Wrangler if you actually intend to go off roading, Suzuki samurai if you’re going off roading and not in the US.

Mid-sized SUV: Toyota 4runner (I’ve dialed in that a midsized SUV is the right sized car for me personally at this point in my life, not going to go into all of the reasoning for that, but having driven a few different brands and models I am personally confident in saying that it is the be-all end-all of mid sized SUVs for me, if Isuzu ever makes a comeback in the passenger vehicle segment and resurrects the trooper I may be open to reevaluating that because I loved my trooper, but they’re all 20+ years old now)

Full-sized SUVs: do not recommend. If you can find one of the old school jeep wagoneers maybe do that for the cool factor, but if you’re contemplating a full sized SUV what you really want is a minivan, or maybe a Ford flex. They’re not “cool,” but trust me, minivans are the shit.

Minivans- they’re all pretty good, never met a minivan I didn’t like.

Small pick-up trucks- Ford Maverick, or if you need/want a “real” truck get a Tacoma or Frontier, or go for old rangers/Mazda B series or a t100 if you’re ok with an old truck, or replace all of those recommendations with a Toyota Hilux if you’re not in the US/Canada

½ ton pickup- Toyota tundra

Bigger than ½ ton- you don’t need this unless you are regularly towing a heavy trailer or live and work on a farm, or do major construction business with your personal vehicle, or something to that effect. If that applies to you, take your pick of any of the big 3 American brands, I like Fords, but honestly I view this as the same as picking your favorite color, it’s what you like personally, don’t let anyone else yuck your yum.

Personally, and I’m not saying this applies to everyone by a longshot, what car you need/want is fairly personal, but if I had carte blanche to go out and buy any newish car I could find to replace my current vehicle I’d be looking at

Toyota 4runner or Tacoma Subaru Crosstrek or Outback
Ford Maverick

But I’m an outdoorsy, DIY-minded person, who goes “off-road” occasionally (I don’t go off roading for its own sake, but my life sometimes tak me driving onto a beach, or down some shitty dirt paths, over fields, etc.) has to commute in the snow, often has to pick up bulky lumber and such, and occasionally how small trailers.

My wife who doesn’t usually have any of those needs would probably be looking at a newer Prius, or maybe a Hyundai Kona if she decided she wanted something bigger.

And in an ideal world, I’d probably have a maverick or 4runner for my various outdoorsy and DIY pursuits, and whatever the smallest cheapest DIY hybrid or electric car I can find is for my daily commuting as long as it has 4 wheels, a/c, and a radio, pretty much anything out there would be just fine for me. But I can only count on having 2 parking spaces.

Honestly at 5k in this economy, you’re probably scraping the bottom of the barrel of anything that can be considered a “good” car, and you’re probably going to just end up with whatever is available near you in your price range with relatively low miles. Go asian if you can’t but don’t expect anything amazing to present itself.

Every once in a while, as an out of shape guy in my 30s, I think about buying myself a pair of heelys.

Was never a skater, never really had much interest in them as a kid, but something about the idea of rolling around in Costco while I do my grocery shopping appeals to me.

Jawn

It’s Philadelphian, it’s a general purpose noun and can be used for any person, place, or thing.

Go birds!

I’ve had a fake account for going on 2 decades at this point, for a long time it coexisted with my regular account before I deleted that.

I have no idea how it hasn’t been flagged as fake yet.

I’ve changed the name on it and all of my information a couple of times, I have like 2 pictures, both just stolen from Google image searches for things like “dude” and “guy with computer”

For a little while I used it for some memes and shitposting and occasionally tagged it from my main account.

At one point I unfriended just about everyone I actually know and added a bunch of randos from around the world.

For the last 10+ years I don’t think I’ve actually used it to post, like, comment, or follow anything. Nowadays I just use it to log in and see what various pages I want to follow are posting.

At this point I think I’m mostly coasting on the account age being old enough that they assume I must be a real person. It probably also helps that the account has never really done anything offensive to warrant anyone actually looking into it.

Few more ingredients but my carnitas have always been a crowd pleaser

• Pork shoulder
• Coke
• Orange juice
• Chicken stock
• Canned Chipotles in adobo
• Onions
• Garlic
• Spices - I mix it up a bit, but salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne, and oregano will usually get you there. Packet or two of taco seasoning would probably do the trick as well

I tend to eyeball everything, but usually about a 12oz can of coke, oj and stock until it looks right, one onion chopped up, however many cloves of garlic I feel like peeling and chopping

If the pork shoulder fits I do it in a pressure cooker on high about 2 hours, if it doesn’t I do it significantly longer in a slow cooker

When it’s falling apart, pull the bones out, shred (I like to use a mixer)

Then like you, crisp it up under the broiler, and maybe mix in some of the cooking liquid

It of course depends on your students, but I’m just gonna chime in that I read 1984 in 9th grade, so I would have been 14 years old, only a year older than your students. It was admittedly an honors English class, but depending on their skill and maturity I don’t think that you necessarily need to avoid it as an option. Maybe not as a take-home book for them to read on their own, but maybe as one to read in class to sort of guide them through and challenge them a bit.

I don’t know much about “kids these days,” it’s been 20+ years since I was their age, and probably around 10 years since I reread 1984, but nothing in my memory sticks out as something I would have been too bothered by as an older middle schooler and honestly probably pretty tame compared to some of what we were watching and reading on our own time (if I recall, the original Saw movie came out around the same time and I remember seeing it)

Again, you certainly know your students better than we do, but I assume that “dystopian literature” isn’t a required course but some kind of elective, and your students are signing up for it and probably wanting to experience some darker and more adult themes, otherwise they probably would have chosen a different class.

If you intend to continue living in America for now, DO NOT LEAVE THE COUNTRY if it can be at all avoided. Not into Canada, not Mexico, not to any other country, not by land, sea, or air. If you can, stay at least 100 miles away from any border.

Don’t count on your visa, green card, or any other documentation and paperwork you may have being sufficient to allow you back into the country. Honestly, I don’t think we’re far from you being potentially barred from returning even if you’re a naturalized citizen.

If you must leave the country for any reason, do so with the knowledge that you may not be allowed to return. Bring your important documents, extra cash, clothes, etc. make arrangements for your pets, figure out what your next move will be if you get to the US border and are denied entry, where will you go, who will you stay with, etc.

It depends on the context

If I’m just looking for a confirmation that my message was received, and the plans need to additional modification, a thumbs up is sufficient.

If I ask something like “Wanna meet up at the bar after work today?” And get a thumbs up, that’s sufficient. We know where we’re going and when, no more discussion really needed.

If I ask “you free to grab a beer this weekend?” and I get a thumbs up, that’s bullshit. When are you free to grab said beer? Where are we going for it? We have details that need to be hammered out.

For power tools- very important, if they’re the wrong color they don’t work with my batteries. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

Otherwise, not very. Color is pretty much the last thing on my mind, weird colors are kind of a bonus so my tools can be easily identified and so they’re less likely to get lost by blending in, but not a primary reason for me to buy anything.

I’m considering painting on some colored rings around the handles of some of my tools to easily identify them at a glance. Stuff that’s somewhat likely to end up in a pile of similar-looking tools when I’m working with friends. Be nice to say that my hammer is the one with a purple ring around the handle or whatever.

TL;DR

From my end of things, none of these companies are much better or worse than any other. If I had to pick one of the big names I’d say maybe ADT/Everon, but the difference is miniscule. If you can find a smaller local company, that’s probably your best bet, especially if they somehow have a local call center (most of them seem to outsource to central call centers that handle probably dozens of alarm companies)

If you’re in a rich, less-dense town where you can’t count on neighbors being around to see a break in happening to call it in, sure, go ahead and get an alarm. If you’re stuck living in the ghetto, and can somehow afford it, go for it. If you have some sort of fucked up domestic situation where your ex is stalking you or something, it’s probably worth it (but change your code and locks.) If none of that applies to you, just lock your doors and maybe put some lights on timers and motion sensors, and just have a little situational awareness and you’re probably going to be fine. Like I said above, most of the calls I get are false alarms, and of the legitimate ones, most of them get called in faster and more efficiently by the homeowner, a neighbor, an employee, or a random passerby before we ever get the call from the alarm co.

And if you do get one, make sure they’re setting it up right, make sure you’re providing them with correct information and keeping it up to date, and make sure the sensors are labeled in some sort of sensible manner. “Zone 2” means absolutely nothing to anyone.

If I ever personally get an alarm system, it will probably be for fire alarms. Currently though, I have some smart smoke detectors that will send me a notification on my phone if they go off. I think that’s pretty adequate, as long as I have cell service, I can call it in myself if I’m not home, and if I don’t have cell service, that probably means I’m out camping and so my dog is either with me or staying with my parents, everything else in my house is just stuff, and that’s what insurance is for.

I apologize, this became a long rant, too long for a single comment. This comment is mostly rant, I’m going to reply to it with sort of a TL;DR in a 2nd comment, but it’s still probably going to be kind of long, I have a lot of thoughts about alarm companies.

I work in 911 dispatch. What happens when your alarm gets activated is the alarm company receives the signal and then they call someone like me to send police/fire/EMS.

I’m pretty sure that everyone in my profession has a pretty low opinion of alarm companies. In theory the services are a fine idea. In practice, they’re kind of a shit show. I’m not too sure where the biggest issue is with them- corporate decision making, lazy installation techs, incompetent account managers, terrible phone operators (some of them like to call them dispatchers, they don’t dispatch shit) or the customers are all just idiots, but it’s probably all of the above and more.

Starting from the bottom, a whole lot of these places seem to use the same sort of call centers we’ve all come to know and hate from having to call tech support. Most of them have thick accents, and most of the ones who don’t seem to be borderline illiterate. Think back to grade school when the teacher would go around the room having you read a paragraph or two from a book out loud then pass it onto the next person to continue reading, it eventually would come around to the kid who probably had undiagnosed dyslexia and a fear of public speaking, and he’d struggle through it having to sound out each word syllable by syllable while you all just went ahead and read the paragraph on your own. That’s what talking to some of these operators is like. And if you deviate from their script even the tiniest bit they get totally flustered and don’t know what to say.

That’s all well and good in your high school English class when you’re reading through Romeo and Juliet, but when I’m trying to send the fire department out to see if a house is burning down or not it’s maddening when I can’t tell if the address they’re giving me is “7 main Street” so “11 maple Street” either because of their accent, they’re mumbling into the phone with a screaming baby in the background (I’m pretty sure some of them are working from home now) or they just can’t fucking read.

On my call here are the questions I’m asking.

What is the address- house number, street name, apartment/suite number if applicable, municipality (not necessarily the same thing as the town/city on the mailing address, they’re different sometimes, I’m sending your towns police, not delivering your mail)

What is the nearest cross street- to verify I have the right location, damn near every town has a Maple Street, and because I can’t necessarily count on getting the correct town from the caller, this helps me make sure I’m sending help to the right Maple Street and not the one in the next town over.

If it’s a business, and the name of the business. I’ve had alarms called in as residential alarms but the name of the resident is listed as something like “Anderson Construction LLC” so a commercial alarm under just some schmuck’s name. Or it will be the name of some property management company and not the actual business at that location.

For security alarms- is it audible or silent

The area of activation - half of them are just labeled as something like “zone 2” which is useless. I don’t know where zone 2 is, the alarm co doesn’t know, the homeowner doesn’t know, our police and fire sure don’t, so we don’t know where we need to be looking for the issue. Is it a motion sensor? A window alarm? The garage? Your guess is as good as mine. Or sometimes zone 2 is kitchen windows, bathroom door, side room motion, and basement stairs all on the same zone.

Also once in a while they’ll tell me something like it’s a security alarm but it’s coming from the smoke detector.

If it’s residential - what is the resident’s name?

Some sort of contact phone number. Ideally a premise phone number, but at least a residents cell phone, or a keyholder for the business. Some way to get ahold of someone to make sure everything is ok, see if they know why the alarm is going off, confirm if anyone is supposed to be there, figure out how to re-secure the house if they find an unlocked door, get authorization to force entry if needed, etc.

Will you notify- will you be calling the resident, an emergency contact, keyholder, etc. to let them know about this alarm

That’s a lot of ranting on my part, but it’s not much information I’m looking for. On the rare occasion they have all the information and the operator is competent, it takes me just over 1 minute to get everything I need

My entire call ideally boils down to something like:

123 MAIN ST, TOWNSVILLE NY, APT 4
X-STREET: MAPLE ST
AUD, BEDROOM MOTION
JOE SCHMO - 555-555-5555
W/N

There’s not a single one of those fields that they haven’t messed up- wrong or incomplete addresses, no x streets, no name/wrong name, wrong or no phone number, no list of emergency contacts, or the contacts are all outdated and haven’t worked at a company for 10 years. Sometimes all on the same call. I sometimes wonder how they manage to get paid for their service because I don’t know how they’re able to send their customers a bill or call them to ask for money because they don’t seem to have any of that information.

And sometimes they call the wrong jurisdiction, I’ve occasionally had to transfer alarm calls to other dispatch centers around the country.

We had one once where all the information they had was an “address” that was something like “¼ mile past the motor pool” and the zone. Literally nothing else. Somehow our supervisor managed to track that down to an Indian reservation on the other side of the country. I have no idea why it came to us, but we got that call a couple times before they were able to finally update the account information.

Some of that is lazy installation techs not setting things up properly, or customer service and account managers and such not properly verifying information. Sometimes though I think it’s customers providing them with garbage information from the get go.

Also most of these companies have some sort of verification protocol where they try to reach the homeowner to confirm if help is needed and they ask for a password. I get a lot of false alarm calls where they spoke with the homeowner but they didn’t know their password, so they had to call it in. Maybe write that down and stick it in your wallet or something if you can’t remember it.

They’ll call in 3 hours later with an “update” to a previous alarm that our responders have already been out to and cleared from for 2½ hours. And sometimes they’ll call in 2 minutes later with a new request for dispatch and are shocked to learn that we already have help on the way because I literally just hung up with another operator for an alarm at the same location.

And when a sensor is malfunctioning and giving false alarms, no one ever seems to do anything about it. There are houses and businesses that we legitimately have police or fire at almost every night and sometimes multiple times a night because the alarm keeps going off for no reason and it sometimes goes on for months or years because no one can be bothered to get a tech out fix it or at least take that sensor offline.

We had one alarm we kept getting for about a year. The business it was for had been closed for years and the property vacant, even our police couldn’t track down a property owner or anything. Who the hell was paying that alarm bill? I think it only stopped when the building was demolished.

This all pretty much applies to medical alarms like life alert and such too. Missing or incorrect information across the board there. Same address verification, name and phone number, we also want medical history and access information like a hidden key or garage code. We’d rather not have to break down your grandmother’s door to help her up after she’s fallen and can’t get up if there’s a spare key hidden under a flower pot we could use instead.

And the icing on the cake, of the probably thousands of alarm calls I’ve handled in almost 6 years I’ve been here, maybe a few hundred of them have been legitimate, the rest were false alarms or accidental activations. Most of the legit ones have been fire alarms.

And of those legitimate calls, all but maybe a few dozen of them have been called in faster and more efficiently by the homeowner, employees, or random bystanders/passersby who either noticed something suspicious or heard the alarm going off and called it into us before we ever got a call from the alarm company. Hell, sometimes the alarm never even goes off until the police are there clearing the interior of a building after a break-in.

I live and work in what I’d overall consider to be a very safe area. Break-ins are almost vanishingly rare, and when they do happen it’s more likely to be some sort of a domestic thing where your ex wants to steal back the TV they bought you and remembers your alarm code or something like that than the sort of burglary you probably imagine. And when the more legitimate break-ins happen, it’s either in the super rich neighborhoods when the homeowner is out of town, or it’s in the poorer, more urban (this is the suburbs, none of it is really urban, but a couple towns come pretty close) parts of my county, where most of the people probably don’t have the extra money for an alarm system anyway. For everyone else in the middle, I think security alarms aren’t really worth it.

One small data point I’m able to offer

My family is polish, were a few generations removed from the old country, no one really speaks more than a handful of words of polish. There’s a pretty decent amount of people with polish ancestry around us in the Philly area, and one thing that kind of sticks out to me is “kielbasa”

The pronunciation around here has been sort of twisted into something like “ku-bah-see” and it’s pretty universal around these parts, not sure how widespread that is in the rest of the country.

I think “kielbasy” is the actual Polish plural for kielbasa, so I suppose that’s part of how the pronunciation got twisted.

Bonus fun fact- there is/was a Polish organized crime group active in parts of Philly that was sometimes known as the “kielbasa posse” which rhymes when pronounced that way.

I’m also pretty sure the pronunciations of “babcia” and “dziadek” (grandmother and grandfather) in my family are more than a bit off from standard polish too, though I think that comes down to more to just us trying to say polish words with an American accent.

My sister went to school in NEPA, so I’ll throw you a couple bones

Weather sure is nice today, heyna?

Wanna go grab a couple-two-tree beers?

The several competing pronunciations of Wilkes-Barre

Throop (pronounced “troop”)

Philadelphia English

I root for the iggles, phils, flyers, and sixers. I eat beggles with cream cheese, and in the summer I’ll get some wooder ice. I go fishing in the crick. If I fall in I’ll dry myself off with a tal, and maybe I’ll hang it on the ratty-ator to dry afterwards. I’ll warsh the mud off my boots at the spicket outside. On vacation I’ll go down the shore. If I need cash I’ll tap mac, perhaps so I can order a cheesesteak (wiz wit) or hoagie. Maybe I’ll see if my friends want to join me, and I’ll ask them "jeet? And they’ll answer “no, jew?” And at the end of the night, after a few citywides, I’ll tell them “I’ll see youse guys later”

You can also replace most of those nouns with “jawn”

I work a weird shift, so my “morning” begins at about noon

• Alarm goes off, hit snooze a couple times
• Scroll Lemmy, news, check my messages, etc
• Shower, brush my teeth, shave my head if needed, get dressed
• Walk the dog
• Breakfast, make coffee, pack lunch, feed the dog her lunch (wife gives her breakfast at normal human wakeup times)
• If it’s a work day, I’m out the door by about 1:45, at work by about 2:15, start at 2:30

Then at the end of the day

• Leave work at 2:30, home by about 3:00AM
• Walk the dog
• Maybe eat dinner if I’m hungry
• More scrolling or some video games until about 5, sometimes as early as 4, sometimes as late as 6
• Brush teeth
• Undress
• Feel around in the dark for whatever boobytraps my wife has left in the bed for me- laptop, phone, glasses, Kindle, charging cables, etc. and put them wherever they go
• Crawl into bed, contort myself around the dog, hug the wife
• Sleep

On days I don’t work, the overall sequence of events stays mostly the same except I usually don’t usually drink coffee or pack a lunch on my days off, but the times may shift a few hours in any direction. Breakfast gets more elaborate on my days off, and I’m less likely to have a “dinner” since I probably had a big meal for lunch/my wife’s dinner instead of the usual sandwich I pack for work.

I work in 911 dispatch, and I don’t have hard stats to back it up, I’m not even really sure how it could be objectively measured, and I’m sure I have a whole lot of bias and such, but I’m pretty sure everyone I work with agrees that we just get weirder calls on full moons.

Not necessarily busier, or more severe, there’s just a certain something that’s hard to explain about a lot of our callers that seems to get a little strange on a full moon.

It’s not something we’re actively keeping track of, it’s not like we have a reminder set on our phones for the full moon, but when we have one of those nights where everything just seems to be a little off and we check the moon phase, it seems like it’s full or nearly full more often than not.

Although personally I think we see a bigger difference for a couple days after the clocks change for daylight savings time. My pet theory on that is it throws people’s medication schedules off by an hour and it takes them a few days to readjust. Plus throwing off sleep schedules, and dementia patients who sundown may be up and acting up at a time they would otherwise be asleep.

Slipknot puts on a pretty damn good show.

They’re not a band that’s in my usual listening rotation, I don’t dislike them, they’re just not my usual kind of music. When I saw them it was a situation where someone I knew ended up with extra tickets somehow and I was more interested in the other bands they were touring with

I’d say they stole the show but I think they were actually the headliner, so I don’t know who they would’ve stolen it from.

I’m admittedly a sucker for a spectacle, and let’s be real, that’s kind of slipknot’s whole schtick.

Yeah, malls in the US at least are really dying in a lot of places.

I stopped into one of the smaller ones near me a few months back, I had maybe an hour to kill before I had to meet someone for dinner and it was close by so I figured I’d walk around for a bit, and it was downright eerie.

There were probably as many vacant spaces as actual stores, and half of the occupied stores were closed at like 5:00 on a weekday. Parts of the mall actually seemed like they only had some of the lights on, half of the escalators were turned off or out of service and there were maybe a couple dozen other people walking around the mall.

There was one part of the mall with no open stores, dim lights, and I didn’t see anyone else around and for a minute it almost felt like I had noclipped into the backrooms.