How much do you think the average American flies?

Less than half of us get on a plane in any given year, so most of us aren’t impacted one bit by long lines at airports because we just weren’t going to go to the airport anyway.

And if we do, most of us are only flying a couple of times a year. A couple extra hours at the airport a couple times a year isn’t that big of a deal.

Especially since odds are that you already planned to arrive early because there’s always the potential for all kinds of hold-ups and delays at the airport anyway.

It’s something like 10-15% of the population who account for something like 2/3 of all airline passengers. They’re the only ones this is really “hurting” (and even then I’d still say it’s more of an inconvenience than causing any actual hurt)

And conveniently, it’s also about 15% of the population who are immigrants, and every last one of them should consider themselves to be in real danger of having their lives uprooted or even ended by ice. They are actually being hurt.

So no, fuck that.

I really only need 1 HDMI port on my TV- to connect my AV receiver to, everything else gets plugged into that receiver, it’s got about 8 HDMI ports.

Right now there’s 3 consoles, a pc, and a Chromecast hooked up to it, so I have ports to spare, and I haven’t had to use anything on my tv since I initially set it up and set the input to HDMI 1

It’s not necessarily feasible for everyone, it does take up a little more space in your entertainment center that not everyone has, but I also think it’s 100% worth it to at least have a decent set of speakers hooked up to your TV if you can find the space and budget to do so.

I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they’re calling about

And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma’am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I’m trying to talk to them.

If I can get their name, I use that instead and it’s more effective, but that’s not always a given.

Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn’t work, and more likely they’re going to just hang up on me.

And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.

Their name or sir/ma’am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying “you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention”

And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like “dude” obviously won’t cut it.

And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn’t clear on the phone because they’re in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.

Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they’ll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don’t enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.

But I’d really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven’t really found a good option for it yet.

I usually find some excuse to stop by my parents’ once or twice a month. Often dropping the dog off for them to watch her.

We’ll hang around the house, chit chat, maybe have dinner.

We’ll go out to get dinner or something for birthdays, do holiday dinners and such. Occasionally go help each other move furniture or what have you.

A few times a year we get together with my sister and/or her husband to do something, and usually invite each other to our parties and such.

I don’t really see or talk to my extended family much beyond getting invited to weddings and such and seeing them at family holiday gatherings. I’m fine with that.

My wife goes to visit her mom a couple times a month, often she’s helping her with chores, sometimes her mom comes to our house to hang out.

Her dad lives a little further away, we probably see him about twice a year, usually spending a night on two at his place. We usually go out to get dinner, sometimes go into the city to see a show or do something else, hang around his place and watch movies.

I almost never see her brother or his wife, we have some wonky schedules that often don’t align. When I make it to her family holiday things, it’s usually them, her mom, and her grandmother. We mostly watch stuff on tv, sometimes play uno, and eat dinner.

My wife likes to listen to podcasts.

And often I find that the podcasts she listens to are about things that I’d followed closely in the news weeks, months, sometimes years before (we just have some different interests, she’s actually probably the bigger news junkie than I am)

But so I’ve taken to calling her podcasts “late news” because she’s getting that news later than I did.

Arguably that would fall under the banner of “emotional intelligence”

Yeah but the materials you have to work with are a little limited. At least around me, Walmart doesn’t carry much in the way of stuff like lumber, pipe, or other building materials, and there’s gonna be some gaps in the tools available, I don’t think most Walmarts carry welders around me, and even if they do you certainly wouldn’t be able to get the gases you need for MIG/TIG welding there, and you might want that if you, for example, need to repair those steel shutters.

And most Walmarts around me actually don’t carry guns.

And you can’t grow too much food on a parking lot, you can try to work with containers and potting soil of course, but odds are a school is gonna have more land you can easily convert to a food plot or maybe even the plumbing parts to get some kind of hydroponics system going.

“Secure” as in “fortify it against zombies and potentially other threats”

Or as in “I can get to it and lay some sort of claim to it”

Because if it’s the former, we probably need to put some restrictions on the scenario. That’s really the hard part of this and we’re just assuming we can do it, and your best bet is probably to secure as big of an area as possible. A city, a country, a whole hemisphere, or hell, the entire world or the solar system if we’re being really silly.

If we’re going with the latter, where we find a building or property of some kind and call “dibs” and the rest of it is up to us

I think a tech school is a pretty good bet, at least thinking of my local tech schools.

They have some fully stocked workshops with pretty much any tools and materials you could need- carpentry, plumbing, automotive, electrical, etc.

Maybe some kind of medical program, so probably a decent amount of meds and first aid equipment, in addition to whatever is in the nurse’s office.

A culinary program, so you have a well equipped kitchen and probably a decent amount of food on-hand.

Maybe it even has some sort of agricultural program with some farming equipment, maybe even some ready-to-go planted crops and possibly livestock.

Most schools are fairly secure with limited entrances and locking doors often they have backup generators and maybe even solar these days (odds are any school with a decent electrical program at least has a few solar panels kicking around somewhere) and you have the tools and maybe the materials there to further fortify it as needed.

And it probably has some pretty beefy fire suppression systems since you have teenagers playing with welders and industrial stoves/ovens.

Some college campuses might be as good or better for the same reasons, with the added benefits of there probably being some purpose-made living quarters, but they’re usually less compact, which has its plusses and minuses, more land to grow crops and such but harder to secure.

And if the apocalypse hits while school is in session, you have a bunch of young, hopefully reasonably-healthy people already on-hand to do some of the hard work if like me you’re not quite as spry as you used to be.

No photos, because it didn’t turn out the prettiest, but it was, I think, a good proof of concept

I ended up going with a chuck roast for 2 reasons

1. It was cheaper and I didn’t want to risk the fillet I have on an experiment

2. I was worried about how well it would hold up to the curing process. Sitting in the brine for a few days does cause some breakdown of the connective tissues and I was worried about the meat just kind of disintegrating if I used something as tender as fillet. I think that was the right call, the chuck came out nicely. If I do it again I may try something else, because the chuck roast was more of a big flat rectangle and it was a little awkward to wrap. I’ve seen Chuck “mock tenders” once or twice that are more of a cylindrical shape that would probably be a good choice, they just weren’t readily available when I went shopping.

I wrapped some cabbage between the duxelles and the pastry, that seemed to work pretty well. The bottom did end up a little soggy, but that’s something I’ve often struggled with when doing a wellington.

Cured the meat like I normally would for a corned beef, not going to share the recipe because I’ll be honest, a lot of cured meat recipes out there seem like they’re based on a lot of guesswork, and I don’t want anyone poisoning themselves with nitrites based on my advice. Do some research if you want to try that, or just use store bought corned beef.

Seared the beef on all sides the day before.

For the duxelles I just put a bunch of mushrooms, some shallots, and garlic through my food processor, and cooked it down for as long as my attention span would allow. I’m pretty sure there was enough moisture there that I could have kept it going on high heat almost all day without worrying too much about it burning (at least with my stove which admittedly isn’t great)

I also added some carrots to the duxelles, not sure that really added anything particularly interesting to the flavor profile. Didn’t hurt, but I’d probably skip that in the future.

Deglazed with some Jameson. Lit it on fire, I’ll be honest, I think flambeing your duxelles is mostly for the cook’s entertainment.

Lightly blanched some cabbage leaves.

Wrapped it all up, gave it an egg wash and threw it in the oven.

Kept the seasoning on all of that pretty light figured the corned beef had plenty of salt and spices in it.

And for the sauce, I sauted up some more shallots and garlic, added some Guinness and beef stock, a few dashes of Worcestershire, some good grainy mustard and some brined green peppercorns, and a healthisplash of Jameson, and reduced it down, finished it with some heavy cream.

I like the idea of adding some black pudding to or instead of the duxelles, I feel like that would go a little better and fit the theme more, but that’s hard to source around me. Maybe I’ll make an effort to track it down if I decide to do it again.

Probably need to tweak the spices and such I used for the corned beef a bit, I feel like I didn’t quite hit the flavor profile I was looking for.

Overall I consider it a success, just a few things I want to tweak for the next time.

YMMV depending on where exactly you go, but the place I usually go to has a trans employee who usually works the front desk and sometimes bartends

And one band that performs there pretty regularly has a trans singer. Most of the bands and such they book there keep their clothes on, she was the exception.

And I think this says a lot, because she was up on stage performing for a couple hours, I probably walked right by her about six times before I noticed that she had a penis, and the only reason I did was because the rest of the band fucked off for a few minutes to get a drink or something and she stayed up on stage singing for a while and I finally realized that the deep voice that had been singing was coming from her

So you really quickly stop taking notice of people’s genitals there. That’s all that I’ve personally noticed but there very well might have been tons more and I just didn’t notice. Definitely no shortage of other LGBQ folks around there though.

Also nude beaches

This particular resort is, luckily, close enough to me that I could go there for a day trip, or maybe even an afternoon or evening if I were so-inclined. It’s a bit out of the way but I’ve definitely driven further for worse reasons

Something to consider is that a lot of bath houses and such are gender-separated. For some, that may make it more comfortable, but for others I feel like it may not quite get them to confront all of their anxieties.

It may be easier for some people to ease into it from something like that (also to that end a lot of, but not all, nudist resorts and beaches are clothing-optional except for certain times/places/activities, so you can ease into it at your own pace,) but when possible I think it’s worth trying to rip the bandaid off all at once.

I never really had any major body image issues, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of things I would like to change about how I look, and I’m certainly no sex symbol by a long shot, but I’ve always been pretty comfortable in my own skin.

But what little problem I did have pretty much evaporated when I decided to try out a nudist resort.

I think if you spend a day walking around naked people, you pretty quickly get some perspective. Most of the people at a nudist resort aren’t exactly the kind of people you particularly want to see naked.

Fat, skinny, stretch marks, scars, weird lumps and bumps, piercings, tattoos, pale, tan (though certain there are more heavily-tanned people that average,) dicks, balls, tits, and asses of all shapes, sizes, and configurations, little kids, people who look like they’re old enough to remember when dirt was invented (though some of that might just be all the sun-exposure,) it’s all out there on display.

And none of it matters a bit. They’re just bodies, we all have them, and they’re all a little weird, and I think experiencing something like that in-person really drives it home in a way that just thinking and talking about it can’t really do justice.

I kind of ended up there on a whim. The year before I first went to one, I did our city’s naked bike ride with a couple friends (also a very body-positive experience, but understandably the crowd skews a bit younger and fitter because bike ride) and had a blast riding around in our underwear with them.

The next year we couldn’t make it because of our schedules, but in searching for other things to do we stumbled onto something happening at this resort that sounded fun, so we went for it, and enjoyed it. We’ve talked a couple other people into joining us and they’ve also had a great time once they get over the initial shock of being naked around other naked people.

Also what really sold me on it was when we first arrived, I got there a bit before my friends. It was one of those hot, humid days where the moment you step outside you’re immediately drenched in sweat and your clothes start sticking to you.

I had kind of figured I’d set my tent up first then take my clothes off so that I’d have somewhere to put them, but after barely getting my tent unpacked I was already drenched in sweat and feeling gross, and the lightbulb went off in my head "just take your clothes off dumbass) and so I did. I was dressed pretty appropriately for the weather, but even still that made a world of difference, so by the time my friends showed up I was already sold and walked over to greet them naked, which I think also helped to put them at ease with the situation.

911 dispatch, yeah, kind of important.

Wish I could do it for just fire and EMS, and not police, but that’s the way the system works, and the most interesting calls I get are for police I suppose.

In a more ideal world where people don’t have to work just to survive and make ends meet, I probably would still do it, just not on a full-time schedule. It’s one of those things that needs to get done but that absolutely not everyone is cut out for, so I think it’s important for those of us who can hack it to step up to the plate to do it.

As far as whether I’m proud of what I do, well I’m proud that I get to help people, I’m proud of the skills I have that allow me to do it well, but otherwise it’s just a job, I don’t brag about what I do (although I do have a ton of interesting stories from it that I like to share)

And since it is a full time gig and I have tons of things I’d rather be doing, I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to retire someday and never having to go into the office again.

Apparently being fascist these days.

2007 Toyota 4runner

It’s a fine compromise vehicle for me.

If I’m being practical, ideally I’d like to have 2 vehicles

First would some little electric thing, it only needs room to carry me, the wife and the dog or some groceries. It only needs to max out at about 50mph and have maybe 100 miles of range, heat, ac, and a Bluetooth connection to stream music and gps directions from my phone. I do not need any other bells or whistles, and that will pretty much cover all of my chores, commuting, etc. for a week on one charge.

And small 4wd pickup truck, with long bed, single or extended cab (don’t need a full crew cab) something like the old rangers/Tacoma/etc (the current Gen is too big) for camping, picking up lumber, commuting in the snow (with some weight in the bed) etc. preferably as some sort of plug-in hybrid. Can’t imagine ever needing or wanting a towing capacity over 5000lbs.

Ignoring practicality, I’d really like to have a big ol’ Cadillac. Not too picky on the specifics, but it should be a full-sized sedan, or maybe a convertible, from no later than the early 90s, it should be black or maybe red, and I want whitewall tires.

I also have a special soft spot for Land Rover defenders, and old broncos (or k5 blazers, international scouts, etc.)

I also think the Subaru Brat was really damn cool

Would love to have a VW microbus (I think the new EV thing is also really cool)

Getting more into the realm of the ridiculous, '64 Aston Martin DB5, a DeLorean, any batmobile, the ecto-1, a Jurassic Park jeep, the bluesmobile, or Mad Max’s pursuit special

It’s a bit complicated

With no further qualification, dogs. I’ve had dogs for most of my life and home just doesn’t feel homey without a dog to me.

But my wife and I have a bit of a thing for frogs, they’re sort of our unofficial mascot.

I also thought narwhals were cool long before reddit had them baconing at midnight. I think they were kind of when I realized that kids can be smarter than/know things that grownups don’t. I don’t remember what exactly the context was, but I remember once bringing them up, my mom didn’t believe they were real, so I marched my way upstairs to grab the book I read about them in to show her.

I also always liked Coatimundis (Coatis) because they were probably the weirdest animal the fairly small zoo I grew up near had.

And if I had to pick sort of a “spirit animal” for myself, it’s probably a raccoon.

I don’t know if this particular iteration of this is good, but I can see at least the start of a good idea here

I don’t know exactly what’s in their wing rub, but I’ll bet it’s probably along the lines of salt, pepper, chili powder of some kind (probably cayenne,) garlic & onion powder

Coffee has a fairly similar flavor profile to dark chocolate

Chocolate and chili peppers is a pretty classic combination, think along the lines of a Mexican hot chocolate

And salt also goes well with chocolate, and a tiny pinch of salt is a common hack to cut the bitterness of coffee.

The garlic/onion powder and any other herbs/spices in there are kind of the oddballs, they’re definitely going to pull things more towards the savory end of the spectrum, but things like coffee-rubbed steaks are a thing, and sweet & savory combinations are a thing, so I’m not immediately horrified by that concept.

Again, don’t know if this particular version is good, but I think someone somewhere out there could probably make a good version of this idea.

I had the odd sip of my dad’s beer, little bit of wine with dinner here or there, some champagne at new Year’s or weddings, etc. but nothing that could seriously be called “drinking”

I had a shot of some fruity flavored vodka with my girlfriend when I was about 18/19 because she wanted to have a drink with me, and that was pretty much my experience with alcohol until just before I turned 21. Didn’t really feel much need to rush things.

When I turned 21 I was actually going to be away on an almost 2 week canoe trip during my birthday. I went to my friend’s beach house shortly before I left for that for a couple days. We got ourselves a case of corona a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black label, and some cigars and sat out on the deck having a couple drinks, nothing too wild.

Then after I got back I went out to a bar with a couple coworkers after work. Again, pretty low-key, wouldn’t be until a month or two later for me to really get properly drunk camping out at a music festival.

I think it’s probably safe to assume that it’s a spider on the inside too

A lot of Asian markets, at least around me, carry kind of a lot of spam and spam-like products (often called something like “luncheon meat”)

I think a lot of it has to do with the US military having a big presence in Asia during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. and still having sizable bases in Japan and Korea. They brought spam with them and it made its way into the local diet from there.

It’s big in a lot of Pacific islands for basically that same reason.