I was experiencing some slight hearing loss because of a noisy environment at work. The audiologist looked in my ears and said she was worried that I might have done compacted earwax and asked if I used Q-tips. I sometimes did. She told me to stop and to clean them out by putting olive oil in each one, holding it for a while then letting it run out into tissue paper. I can’t remember how much or for how long, but it definitely did the trick.

I can relate to the picture, very much, even though I don’t use Q-tips any more.

I use drummer’s ear buds now and they’re great because my hearing recovered quite a lot, the tinnitus went away entirely and I can hear what people are saying when I’m wearing them.

Because Donald J Trump is their guy. He might well win.

I’m confused. The Mrs was clearly not ovulating, so I checked out pretty much all the homies for the rest of the month, but it didn’t seem to me like any of them were either, which seems statistically unlikely. Does this mean I’m the one on heat? Do I switch from pitcher to catcher on months like these? Is that why Alex… well, Alex, you know what you did, and that’s not what we agreed, was it, and and I think you know full well I couldn’t say the safe word at that point and I think you deliberately misinterpreted me slapping your admittedly cute butt dimple.

The world tends to find that having an extraordinarily wealthy parent makes its own luck.

Exactly. Unfortunately “move fast and break things” has some disadvantages when it comes to driving in traffic.

At first I read that as an old printer from a school, and thought that was a very weird thing to want, but then I realised you meant a printer that was old school, and it all suddenly made sense to me!

You have the right to be an asshole. Mods have the right to ban you for being an asshole.

Making out that they’re nasty for having some standards of behaviour in their area is calling good bad and bad good.

(Censorship is when local or national government put you in prison for protesting or ban your book or ban your ideas. That’s when your free speech rights are being infringed.)

I know three.

In fact, come to think of it, I only know two trans women, so I know more trans men than trans women.

Well, perhaps it might be possible to catch some tummy bug from someone else, I don’t know, but you inhale the fecal particles when you flush anyway I suppose.

The lid stays down all the time (well, in between use) at our house, with the idea that you minimise the amount of fecal particles floating around your room. I know it doesn’t eliminate it, but I want to flush as much as possible of the poo and not inhale it, so I insist on the lid being closed.

I’m not claiming danger, I just don’t like the thought.

I wouldn’t put toilet paper up my nose - I don’t trust other toilet users to not touch the toilet roll and I don’t trust the room to not have fecal particles from lidless flushing on things. I don’t want tu put someone else’s poo up my nose.

I am British and I love this.

I know Trump massively overstated his wealth, but fining him $5000 is like fining me £10. He won’t even notice it’s gone at the end of the month. $5,000, 000 or prison time would be a meaningful punishment.

OK, yes, I think you’re right.

Of course, but the far right don’t care about facts, they just care about racism.

You’re right.

Oh, I thought it was the CEO’s online reputation and the fact the people are hearing more and more that their after sales service is shit, eg being charged £17000 for a new motor which is apparently the driver’s fault for driving it in the rain. In Scotland.

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/motors/couple-charged-17000-tesla-broke-27925815

Apparently the problem has been known for some time:

https://insideevs.com/news/534878/tesla-models-motor-fail-rain/

They’ll notice that they benefit from taxation so they’ll be happier with a higher tax economy and see that tax cuts hurt them more than help them.

That’s definitely also true, but republicans genuinely want everyone to hate taxation as well, so their interests very much align with the companies that want to fleece you.

Lots of countries have pay as you earn schemes where your income tax is deducted but your employer and sent to the government and you don’t have to even lift a finger, likewise the price on the item at the shop, by law, includes tax and it’s completely seamless for you. Republicans will never like such schemes because they want taxation to be hated by all so that they’ll go along with tax cuts that primarily benefit such folks.

If government was done well, people might be happy paying their taxes, and that’s the last thing republicans want.

This is great, but republicans are gonna hate it. They want everyone to hate taxes with a passion, so they make it difficult, time consuming and expensive to pay your taxes, and make government services as bad as possible so even poorer people who don’t pay much tax feel they get a bad deal out of taxation.

If ordinary people found it easy and convenient to pay taxes they might notice that they get more out of government than they put in and that rich people are bearing more of the cost than they are. If they thought that, they might support tax increases or things that horrify republicans like medicaid for all.