Yes, when collaborating with someone who was only familiar with light mode and felt disoriented by the different appearance. I wanted to scream and hiss like a vampire.

During morning rush hour (a near-standstill occasionally broken by brief periods of 10mph movement), I once saw a woman eating a bowl of soup/oatmeal/whatever while steering with her elbows.

It seemed to be a regional norm to eat breakfast in the car because a 20 mile commute generally took 1.5-3 hours and often moved slower than a walking pace, but that was the only time I'd ever seen someone eating food that required a dish and utensil.

The acronym "Laws" is a little too on the nose. I'd ask whether anyone involved in the development of these has seen the documentary film Robocop, but clearly they have and thought it was a great idea.

A pill organizer, if the original containers are too large (or too numerous) to be practical. I've only flown domestic USA, but security has never bothered me about it.

I use a portable AC - this is different from a window unit. The unit itself stands up inside your room, and it has a flexy hose that goes into a flat panel that's about 10 inches high and expandable widthwise. You lift the window a bit, put the flat panel in the open spot, then close the window so the light pressure keeps the flat panel in place. It's all on the indoors side of the screen, so it counts as being inside your house and nobody can complain.

(Assumptions: you have the typical American sliding windows, and your HOA doesn't have rules about the inside of your house like curtain color or whatever)

How do you do, fellow humans?

I’m confused. When I lived in apartments, I never built them myself. Can you explain how one builds one’s apartment?

Bus stops on the main road(s), placed so everyone has a stop within a 15-20 minute walk.

Sort of agree with others suggesting getting rid of the neighborhoods in the first place, but sharing walls is hell. When the only way to speak confidentially in your own home is to whisper, it's impossible to wfh or have a telehealth appointment (or, worse, a teletherapy appointment).

Elder Millennial here. I think I just have that "eww pedostache" reaction because, when I was young, such mustache styles were common among middle-aged men who hadn't updated their styles since the '80s. Some of those men were creepy, so the mustache style became associated with creepy old men. And of course, teenaged giggling among ourselves about "eww pedostache!" really cemented the association.

I'm pretty sure our parents had the same initial reaction when we brought aviator glasses back into fashion. We'll get over it, the cycle continues.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with mostly-male and mostly-female groups. I think it has less to do with the actual gender of the group, and more to do with: (a) the manner and extent to which group members are invested in performing their gender, (b1) whether the group embraces deviation from that performance, or (b2) whether one’s own performance of gender is similar enough to the group’s.

I’ve often described myself as “not very good at being a woman.” My weirdness and difficulty with hidden meanings has gotten me shunned by fellow women and usually bullied out of all-female groups, particularly when I was young. But as I discovered a few years ago after adopting a more active lifestyle, I get along fantastically with most women who play sports.

All-male groups were usually not much better. I still had to keep LARPing a persona, it’s just that the “cool girl” persona came easier to me. The main advantage was that mostly-male groups didn’t tend to say one thing while meaning the opposite. (For example, “stay as long as you like” actually means “you should probably go home now” and that is absolutely nonsensical to me.) But all-male groups never accepted me either, so the best case scenario meant being tolerated instead of shunned.

When it comes to work environments, it’s only been women who played the game of psychologically tormenting me until I have a breakdown and quit (although one of those was a woman boss in a mostly-male small office). So mostly-male groups have been somewhat better because I usually don’t have to waste as much brainspace on LARPing the correct persona. I still tended to be treated more as a tagalong or novelty, though, and gender isn’t a guarantee of future behavior (for example, one of my current coworkers is a man who politicks like a woman).

Unpacking

Only once they start to wear out under the big toe, otherwise I can't tell the difference.

Same. I use granulated salt from a jar near the stove while cooking, and there's a grinder on the table for when I forget.

press X to doubt

I can't forage for missing sunglasses that are right in front of my stupid fucking face. My dumbass would be bringing back half a handful of poison berries like "This is all I could find and I have no memory of picking them but they probably didn't come from the poison bush I guess."

I have similar opinions about the "iT's nOt a diSoRdEr iTs mOdErN sOciEtY" thing that's going around lately. Even if we lived in a utopia, I'd still be expected to listen when others speak, cook without burning myself or the food, speak without repeating myself, speak in a way that makes sense to others, keep appointments, read and comprehend instructions, transport myself from place to place without injury or forgetting necessary items....

I prefer old-school trance, mostly, but anything high-energy and instrumental works. I've been known to use the Mario Kart soundtrack now and then. The important part is that either there are no lyrics, or the lyrics are in a language I've never attempted to learn.

I’m mostly remote now, but on my in-office day it’s a 25mi/40km trip. (We bought the house years before I got this job, I don’t have the energy to keep a house showing-ready while working full time, and the houses near work aren’t in great shape.)

The morning commute takes about 40 minutes by car, the evening commute is more like 50-60 minutes. There’s technically bus service available, if I wanted to take 2+ hours each way, but I prefer having time to eat real food and do some exercise and mabye a hobby.

Oops that’s what I meant, thanks.

Partially correct -- cloth masks protect others, but an N95 actually protects the wearer.

According to my urogynecologist, who specifically instructed me to always point my shower wand downward when washing my nethers, spraying water can indeed push bacteria up there!

It may only be dangerous for the subset of women who have problems requiring a urogynecology specialist in the first place, IDK, but better safe than sorry.

Thanks, that's sweet of you. <3 Things are much better for me now that I'm out of that line of work, so I do my best to stand up to trashy customers on behalf of the people who can't.