I don’t know how much “childhood” anyone is supposed to get. I think different people get different amounts.

If you got to 17 without experiencing severe trauma, you’re pretty lucky. There are plenty of people who didn’t need COVID to screw up their youth.

last years of uni, then who knows maybe i’ll have to start working

Maybe? Hell, you still seem pretty damn lucky if you can say maybe.

I graduated decades before college, and there was absolutely no question that I had to get a job and start working. My daughter graduated college in January, and within a month she was working and responsible for her life.

So, that’s the prick’s point of view: You got 17 years. Be grateful for that and move on. Do what you need to do to get over it. You’re an adult. Be one.

No the only thing that stands between me and child molestation is my morality, but that also stands between me and money and power.

Can you spare a few million?

There’s a restaurant in Reading, PA with a men’s room that has a sink, two urinals, and a toilet. No stalls. One room.

There was a lock on the door, but it left me wondering about the kind of friends who would feel comfortable coming in with you to use the urinal while you’re taking a shit.

I didn’t see the woman’s bathroom, but apparently a few others did because the lock on that door didn’t work.

Make it a fee based on vehicle mass and miles driven, have it apply to all vehicles and eliminate the gas tax.

My dad was notoriously cheap when it came to hiring contractors. Many, many years ago, when he built a building for his office, the results were ridiculous. Everything worked, but it was clear no one knew what they were doing.

The plumbing for the sinks in the bathroom was roughed in with the hot water on the right, and the cold water on the left, and then the pipes crossed each other under the sink to align with the correct valves.

When you stood at one end of the hallway, and looked to the other end, you could see that the walls, although parallel, twisted from one end to the other about 30 degrees.

I tend to go with the more expensive contractors, and I usually get screwed.

Part of my problem is people in the US don’t know how to work on old houses. We just redid our powder room. When I insisted on plaster instead of drywall, my contractor had to find an older guy who still knew how to do it.

The plasterer did a great job, but then the painters screwed up. The plaster wasn’t ready, they used the wrong paint, and after it dried the paint just fell off the walls.

Our contractor had to find a painter who knew how to work with plaster. Once he did, it was fine.

I’m not entirely happy with how they did the tile work. They did a sloppy, lazy job, which is probably what they’re used to doing. However, that wasn’t bad enough to keep fighting over.

Still, it looks nice:

I’ve heard that hamsters will play dead so effectively, that they will convince their owners that they actually are dead.

So, assuming that’s true, some hamsters die horribly in a small box underground.

We’ve got two guinea pigs, and in my opinion, they aren’t that hard to keep alive.

My daughter’s guinea pig just died, but he was an older fellow. He went with her to college and got her all the way through to a few months past graduation.

As George Carlin said, “You’re supposed to know it in the pet shop. It’s going to end badly. You’re purchasing a small tragedy.”

https://youtu.be/ktp-Zsm25dU?t=140s

My house is a ~130-year-old brick Victorian that was picked up and moved about 40 years ago. There’s no sense even suggesting any part of it should be square. However, the closet I mentioned was very obviously always that way.

With all it’s gone through, nearly all the repairs we’ve needed have been related to modern changes. The only failure we’ve had from the original structure was when the wooden dowels that a radiator was hanging from finally gave out after a hundred years and dropped the radiator on the kitchen floor.

The DIY’ers who owned my house before me were very confident in their ability and proud of their accomplishments*.

They shouldn’t have been. Inside corner trim cut at a 45° with the gap filled with wood filler. Chair rail molding installed in the dining room with up to a quarter inch gap between the molding and the wall.

Of course, I’ve had hardly any better luck hiring professionals. It seems like no one has any logic anymore.

To a certain degree, some screwups add to the character of the house. A closet door frame noticeably out of square becomes quaint when the finish carpenters match the odd angles perfectly when cutting the trim.

* Neighbors who live next door told us about the previous owners bragging about the work they did.

Must be what a pepper feels like when the first nuke drops.

Everyone starved to death.

as if anyone with such power would practice child molestation.

It’s starting to seem that way to me.

Checked with my wife who is an optometrist, and she said cornea.

Edit:

She added, “cornea has more nerve endings”

Edit 2:

She also added that the inside of your eyelid is a mucus membrane, so soap is no more irritating to it than it would be to the inside of your mouth.

Worse. He thinks he’s the equivalent to Samuel L. Jackson!

I’ve always read that suicide is usually an impulse decision, and if you can block the attempt, many people won’t try again.

https://www.npr.org/2008/07/08/92319314/in-suicide-prevention-its-method-not-madness

When my wife and I were first married, my dad would ask us when we were going to have kids every time he visited.

At first we would tell him we didn’t know. Then after hearing the question a few dozen times, we started saying we decided not to have any kids.

For context, I’m the youngest in my family and he already had three granddaughters from my older brother and sister. My wife is the youngest in her family and her parents had no grandchildren (her oldest brother was killed by a drunk driver, and the other brother was a dickhead and his first wife was too smart to have kids with him). I know it was absolutely torturing her parents to hear us say we weren’t having kids.

We did have kids (three), but we did it on our schedule.

You might decide to have kids someday. You might not.

In your situation, I’d make up a story to explain why there were no kids that would embarrass them into never asking again. Or…if you can pull it off…just start crying and run off.

You’re talking about a world in which a scratch can kill you. Are you asking because you’re writing a novel and you want to get the details right, or are you asking because you think you have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving a total collapse of civilization?

If you’re writing a novel, the place to do your research is a library. You might need to go to a large library in a big city to have access to everything you need.

If you are intent on actually planning for the collapse of civilization, the best chance for survival is to do everything in your power to prevent the collapse. Because if civilization collapses, the people who need to read about what to do in the library are already fucked.

39+ years here. I think after another 21 years, I can be sure.

I’m imagining this kid going on and on taking to ChatGPT about doing drugs. ChatGPT saying you shouldn’t do that over and over, until finally just giving up and saying, “You know what? Yeah. You should do drugs. Do all the drugs, and leave me alone.”