Slow learner.

Started a new job, when I arrived on the first day they didn’t know where to put me and didn’t know what I was going to do. So they sat me in the boss’s office and told me to read a book. After a few hours, the boss showed up and immediately started on “imagine starting a new job and not wearing a plain shirt!” (My business shirt was white with widely spaced faint grey stripes). Sacked immediately. They still paid me for two weeks though.

Incurable cancer, chemo brain means I can’t concentrate and often have trouble thinking straight. Involuntarily “retired” on medical insurance. Not working wasn’t what I expected it to be.

56/M/Australia

Your dad went grey at 9!?

Quantum Leap. The original series with Scott Bakula was much better.

I’m immunocompromised and I wear a mask whenever I go out. When people challenge me, saying “COVID is over, and anyway, it’s just like a cold”, I tell them that it’s not over, it will never be over, over 100 people in our local city went to hospital just last week, and another 30 or so died from it.

I think that people know deep down that COVID really is serious, they don’t want to admit it or wear masks, and seeing people taking it seriously makes them feel threatened emotionally and philosophically.

Q: What’s brown and sticky? A: A stick

Get them all together in one place and tell them all at once, so you don’t have to go through the same story and questions over and over. As soon as you can. Just say it.

Old growth forest, with tall trees and enough space between trees to walk or sit, and the occasional clearing.

“Be excellent to each other”.

The vendors like you to buy a new phone every year so that they can get more money from you.

When they advertise that “only our latest product has smart thingy, or picture erase, or circle to search”, they’re really telling you that they are trying to find a reason for you to throw perfectly good hardware away so that you can spend more money.

If the software lasts that long, and it’s doing what you need, there’s no reason you have to buy a new phone each year.

Every time you keep your phone a bit longer instead of buying a new one, you’re reducing the waste that goes to landfill (let’s be honest, most people throw their obsolete electronics literally in the trash rather than direct them to approved recycling and disposal).

Friends, family, and lovers dying before you.

I stopped to look around and never left.

Being completely unaware of anyone else:

• Standing in doorways, using your phone or having a conversation
• Talking loudly when inappropriate, when I’m in pain at the doctors, I don’t want to hear about your roses
• leaving your shopping trolley blocking the aisle sideways in the supermarket while looking for your stuff
• driving down the middle of the road so everyone else has to pull over, when there’s plenty of room for two cars to pass
• stopping in the middle of the road without indicating, while: looking for your destination, or having a conversation, or deciding what day it is
• riding your delivery bike down the footpath at high speed weaving between pedestrians

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people”.

The New Zealand War is the biggest political scandal of our history in history with a new generation that will never forget it because it is the only one in the history books.

Is “AI” (ie, large language modeling, also known as enhanced word prediction; and with no logical reasoning ability) really so important that this infrastructure needs to be built?

For the love of the gods, let this bubble burst already!

• Excellent
• Bogus

We saw Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure when it first came out, not knowing anything about it, and it’s become a staple for us ever since.

• Inconceivable
• As you wish
• Life is Pain
• He’s only mostly dead

So many more great lines from The Princess Bride. The movie was introduced to me by some friends, and (it got complicated). I always remember the first time I saw it sitting in the living room smoking weed.

The bible. Inconsistent, unethical, and immoral.