The wild part is what’s cut off in the bottom section.

However, "Much of what he championed—patient advocacy, increased access to dental care, and advertising—has come to pass in the U.S.

So I guess, possibly not as bad as the opening line makes him sound, and perhaps even an improvement over the standards of the time

Some other choice sections.

The band attracted large crowds and hid the moans and cries of patients who were given whiskey or a cocaine solution that he called “hydrocaine” to numb the pain.[2] He charged 50 cents for each extraction and promised that if it hurt, he would pay the patient $5.

he Historical Dental Museum at the Temple University School of Dentistry has a display dedicated to Parker, with his necklace of 357 teeth and a large wooden bucket filled to the brim with teeth that he had personally pulled. The bucket of teeth sat by his feet as he lectured the crowds on the importance of dental hygiene.

Almost sounds like the guy may have been maligned by his fellow dentists for calling them out on their BS.

Free Software Foundation

At least in that case, we could look forward to one of them saying something dumb like, “The moon is fake, it’s not like I could actually go there.” NASA leadership could launch a mission to send them to the moon to prove it real and just go, “Oops, we missed. Darn thing moved on us.”

Even better, after all of this, highly influential members of the Democratic Party, like Nancy Pelosi, have the gall to give interviews and respond to voters and other elected officials criticizing the campaign by saying the the campaign was perfect. There is no real desire amongst the Democratic leadership to do anything more than this.

Not trying to be facetious, but you just kind of do it. I think it might be something that you just subconsciously keep track of once you really become aware of it. I remember it seeming like magic until I was maybe 15 or so, and then I had landmarks for each direction in my mental map and could figure things out in reference to them. After a bit of that, I could mostly stay oriented when traveling by land, and now it’s not an issue even when I fly somewhere. I went to England for the first time last year, and I had the cardinal directions sorted probably by the time I’d walked from the train to my hotel.

Once you’ve got it down, you just sort of do it on autopilot.

Yeah, always worth bearing in mind that the original pilgrims were such insufferably uptight Protestants, the English said, “Come on, fuck off then, you lot are miserable to have around,” in the decades leading up to Parliament starting to pass laws banning Christmas in 1644, and Oliver Cromwell taking over rule of the country a decade later. Really says something about them.

I went and saw Nabucco. Was pretty enjoyable, and I got to sit in the orchestra section with one of the cheaper tickets they release the day of the performance. Would go back for another if I could avail myself of the program again.

I had also deliberately picked one of the shorter operas they put on that season, wasn’t trying to commit to some 5 hour monstrosity straight out the gate.

I got invited to some sort of literary award ceremony at the French embassy a few years back. I, uh, severely underdressed for the occasion. I got the invite for participating in the Albertine book store’s bookclub, and for whatever reason, my brain went, “I can show up to this like I would dress for a bookclub session, it’s the same people.” Spoiler, it was not, and I really should have been at least in a button up and slacks, rather than my hoodie and jeans. As luck would have it, the gentleman who won the award, Emmanuel Dongala, was sat next to me during the speeches. I can still remember the look of “What the classless, American fuck is this guy doing?” as he took his seat next to me.

On the other hand, I went to my first opera at the NY Metropolitan Opera last year basically dressed the same way, and it was surprisingly entirely fine. Turns out, very few people want to be sat for hours in formal attire when hardly anyone can see you in the dark, anyway.

Turns out the “Please don’t vote for fascism” vibe isn’t very appealing to the country.

That was one vibe. Unfortunately, the rest of the vibe from the Democrats have been, “Well, things are actually pretty good, just look at our charts. Economy is doing great!”. I think that’s where they really failed the vibe check, telling people not that they will improve things in a major way, but that the status quo is mostly acceptable and they’ll keep things from getting worse.

Change was the order of the day, and they ran a campaign on stability instead.

Nah, “Brain-eating worm tried to eat my brain and died from it,” crazy.

It’s really tiring seeing you guys trot out the “it’s all leftist’s fault for not voting for us!” line again and again when the actions of your candidate give it away for the lie that it is. Leftists cannot simultaneously be the cause of every Democratic defeat, yet too insignificant a group to merit any consideration in party platform.

Go back to your handlers for better propaganda, this one doesn’t work on anyone with a pulse.

You could certainly say the Democrats should have been able to come up with a better outreach plan rather than running the same old plan that hasn’t penetrated into this group for the last several elections. It’s not as though the culture war nonsense and insane rightwing elements of the party are novel factors, such that the Dems can shrug their collective shoulders and say “Hey, we did our best, be we were flying blind into the unknown.”