Most cars come equipped with a sim card these days and there’s lots of news about how car companies are sending data about your driving habits to insurance providers. So um… Yeah.

I decided during COVID to try to work on my health in whatever way I could get to stick. And I think flossing was my most successful endeavor. I did 2 things that really helped me ease into the habit: 1) I bought a water pik 2) I thought about what it is that keeps me from flossing and I let those things go. So I started off just using the water pik. I did that for about a year and sometimes I would forget, but I’d just hop back on it next time. Just doing this alone helped me to physically feel the difference in my mouth and after a bit, I didn’t like how it felt if I forgot. After about a year I started using floss and this brings me to the things I needed to let go. I needed to learn how to use floss properly, but growing up poor, I would often get in trouble for using too much of something including floss. But some of my teeth are tight and I need a longer piece to get enough leverage. I also don’t like being wasteful and didn’t like using longer pieces especially since it’s plastic waste. I decided to let all of those things go and just use big ass pieces of floss so I could learn how to do it properly. This helped a ton and over time as I got better, I used the water pik less and less and now primarily use floss every night. And now that I’ve learned how, I can use smaller pieces and also have switched to a more environmentally friendly floss. I would say this process took me about 2 years, but I don’t have issues at the dentist anymore like bleeding gums or metal tools jabbing at me. It’s made a big difference and helped me to look at other problems in a similar light: what’s stopping me from doing this and how can I remove those barriers?

There’s plenty Id really like to watch on Apple TV. In fact, I watched Severance using my parents account while they had it temporarily. But now that I’ve tried it, I know that there’s no point in me getting it because they make it as hard as possible to watch anything if you don’t have specific devices. Literally all the other streaming services make it stupid easy to watch what you want using any device. But Apple still has a decades old stick up their ass about proprietary bullshit and they want you to get an iPhone for the simplest experience. I have loads of different devices and I ended up using an old MacBook with chrome to cast the browser to my TV. And that was really annoying and I’m not about to pay for that experience. You want my money? Make it easy. It’s that simple.

While that is true, there are 2 things to unpack here: 1. Typically housing is zoned in different locations to businesses so this has no correlation. 2. This map is so big that none of those stores are actually in Chicago. They are all in the suburbs and it would literally take you 1.5 - 3 hours to get from the southern most one to the northern most one. They’re all a lot farther apart than you may realize.

I just want a picture of a got dang hotdog!

I dream of a day when the locker scene from Starship Troopers becomes reality and men and women who fight alongside one another can share a locker room without complication. Or like… Maybe world piece would be cool too and people wouldn’t have to fight at all?

It’s ok to eat them if you cook them. Maybe make yourself some delicious caramelized onions!

That’ll be $9,999

Can we start with the rich?

My first ever car was a 1997 Saturn S. And I don’t think it was a bad car overall, but when I bought it, the thing was very old and had been driven by an old lady who smoked in the car. It was all I could afford at the time, and the price was right for obvious reasons. So we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and the smell never quite fully came out. We did a pretty good job, but on hot summer days you could still smell it. It also needed quite a bit of work that we ended up doing and it ended up being the first car I ever rebuilt the engine on.

As for worst car I’ve ever had the pleasure to drive, for a while I was borrowing my mother in law’s Ford Flex. It didn’t have any issues but it really was the worst car to drive. It had absolutely no turning radius. The seats were very large for no reason and were very uncomfortable. The visibility out of the front windshield was trash at night and made me think I was having vision issues. There were so many sounds for everything that you couldn’t discern which sound was for which thing and this made them all useless. The accelerator was so unresponsive, I had to program my brain to floor it ahead of when I needed to speed up so the timing would be right. The infotainment system was complete trash, but really all of them were back then. Loads of other small annoyances that I could go on and on about, but I’ll finish with how the car also just looks awful and I was always embarrassed to drive it. I hope I never have to drive one again.

My father in law was very loyal to the Jeep brand for many decades. He would buy a new Jeep every 3-4 years. His most recent purchase to all of our surprise was a Ford pickup. My last car was also a Jeep and I just bought a Prius. The quality really has tanked and the features people liked have slowly slipped away.

Maybe if their products hadn’t gotten consistently shittier over the years, they’d still have the loyalty they used to to keep up with demand. My dad still has his 91" Jeep rust and all. I still have a 2007 Grand Cherokee Laredo that lasted well over 300,000 miles. My father in law basically gets a new Jeep every 3-4 years. Skip to today and my dad has a Tesla, I have a Prius, and my father in law has a Ford pickup. We all saw the quality decline and the features we loved seemed to slowly disappear as well. I really don’t know what they thought would happen when their cars became nothing more special than any other SUV out there.

Oh shit! That’s a thing? Is it just cardamom steeped in hot water or is it more of a spice/tea blend like black tea and cardamom?

This made me laugh an unreasonable amount. I needed this after everything. Thank you.

The first thing I thought to myself when I woke up on Wednesday and found out was “I hope they get exactly what they voted for”.

This may seem basic, but I think some people really need it. I have a hard time remembering things like birthdays and such. So I make sure to add people’s birthdays into their contact info on my phone. Then it will show up on my calendar as a different color and I can see it coming up and actively try to be on top of it instead of it passing and feeling guilty for forgetting. Maybe you don’t care about everyone’s birthday in your life, but I at least try to add my friends and family so I can reach out to them or try to remember to send a gift to little ones that are far away, etc.

I’m genuinely worried about contraception in general. It’s one of the tick boxes for Project 2025. And I don’t know if that will mean prescription contraception or all of it. Luckily there have been some recent breakthroughs in male contraception that you can buy even if they aren’t marketed as contraception for legal reasons. I’m not normally one to fuck with healthcare that hasn’t been tested and approved, but people will get desperate.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

I mean… Why would anybody choose to eat at either of those places when there are loads of better alternatives? At least here in Illinois, you’re tripping on pizza and chicken places. You can choose between awesome local spots or chains if that’s what you want. So why would anyone want this garbage? If any of you out there only have a KFC or a Pizza Hut as your only pizza/chicken option… I’m very sorry.

As much as it was sad to see a lot of restaurants die during COVID, there were an awful lot of sushi abomination restaurants out there that I think we’re all better off without. I actually had to stop eating sushi for a few years because we would try to order sushi and it would just be disgusting. You’d get either 1 of 2 scenarios - it was some very gimmicky sushi that you’d never eat more than once, or it was gross because the quality just wasn’t up to par during lockdown. And sushi is unfortunately one of those foods that’s very unforgiving and if you have even 1 bad experience, you won’t be going back to that establishment. So I can see why a lot of them closed.