Long story. But basically I took a few of my friend’s friends out on rented snowmobiles at night and we all shared a bottle of jägermeister. My friend was a 30 year old mother of two with a husband in jail for violating a restraining order she had on him. Her two friend had recently had a threesome with her. (I chose not to have sex with her months before despite her throwing herself at my 18 yo self). This resulted in them getting into an argument, and I decided we should all leave. On the way back, mistakes were made (the two stopped suddenly in the middle of the trail to argue and I overcorrected to avoid them) and she fell off and hit her head. The two dicks sped off leaving me alone in the woods with an unconscious woman, who’s brain resorted to animalistic screams and flailing arms, holding her head/neck at an angle so she didn’t stop breathing. Some time later we were found, then the cops and paramedics arrived. I was sober by then, so didn’t go to jail. But she got life flighted half a state away and spent a month in the hospital.

I sort of changed my life after this. I don’t really think of this as the moment it all changed. Rather it is other events (finding a belief in God and wanting to become a better person as a result) that precipitated those changes. But truth be told, I probably would have continued to go downhill if not for this incident. Typing that all out made me realize just how messed up my life was back then.

A very long time ago I was a stupid young man. I got a little drunk and ended up putting my friend into a coma for a week (on snowmobiles). That was the last drop I ever drank. It’s been over 25 years, but I will never forget how invincible I felt, and how foolish that feeling feels every time I think back on it. Don’t mess around with this shit. Like ever.

I got called to Minnesota to serve two years as an LDS missionary back in 2000. I absolutely loved the place. But my first day was I was stationed in Brainerd MN, and my apartment was on the edge of a frozen lake. I took a picture of it, and colored in the old brick BBQ to look like a wood chipper with feet sticking out of the top, and a large red stain across the ice, and sent it to my sister. That picture sat in her cubicle for years after that. I can’t think of that scene without thinking of it.

Who the hell thought that anyone wouldn’t download a pirated house? How out of touch do they need to be?!

The Taxer-in-Cheif can be a moron at the same time that corporations rape our wallets without either of them excusing the other.

Prices are set by graphing a demand schedule and the supply. You graph how many sales you will get at each price point (sales go up as price goes down). Then you graph how many a company will produce at each price point (the more it costs, the less they will be willing to make/risk). The point where those two graphs intersect is the equilibrium. Which is the best price to charge. Taxes shift the cost, increase the price where they intersect.

Digital is weird. Iirc, the risk is more in pirating. The more copies that exist, or the easier they are to access, the more pirated content will be out there. Don’t forget to include shareholder profits in cost, and the cost of other parts of the business (like a beloved endeavor that doesn’t turn a profit, Costco hot dogs for example).

I’m not an economist and welcome any better explanations or corrections to this. It’s been a while since I took that class. But I love the topic.

Sneezing/snot production. Sure, it can feel amazing. But the sudden urgency to stop everything I’m doing and focus on my nose or risk a disgusting eruption of green mucus all over my face in a public setting is something I could do without.

Also, I’m waiting for someone with medical knowledge to come in here and mention Prions or something else silently devastating to the body.

I work on-call. Any hour day or night. I frequently go back to sleep after getting called. I have like fifty alarms on my phone.

Iirc that was the back page of a MAD Magazine. They used to publish tons of fake magazine covers like this so you could flip the last page around and make it look like a real magazine.