First we got Link's Awakening, a Zelda game with some Mario stuff thrown in, and then we were supposed to get this, a Mario game with Zelda aspects. I wonder if they were trying to combine the two somehow.

I make Special K bars for get-togethers every once in awhile, and I sometimes get people who ask me if they're healthy. I always tell them that nothing in them is even the slightest bit healthy except the Special K itself, and even that's debatable.

I mean, most of them probably became judges specifically to gain the power to choose who needs to follow what laws - as well as the profitable position that puts them in for rich criminals who don't want to go to jail.

That's exactly my point. Different people have different needs, so while OP is right that there should be phones for themselves and yourself that address the fact that a significant portion of the population drop their phones regularly, my own needs follow a different hierarchy that benefits from a separate set of features.

The fact that phones are all kinda just the same, with any changes made to one model frequently rippling through to other models from other manufacturers in time, is an issue. The customization to phones shouldn't only apply to external features like cases and dongles.

Yeah, I could see it being an issue for some less-common type of indicator, but everyone who drives knows what a blinker looks like. Nobody would mistake it for anything other than the right hand turn signal.

Hell, I wouldn't even notice the shape of the light; all you need to notice while driving is the presence of a flashing light on the right side of the vehicle - if you're looking intently enough to notice the shape of the light, you're not paying enough attention to everything else on the road.

Correct. That's why I talked about finding niche communities to help find and parse through options. For example, I didn't just buy an expensive vacuum, I found a few vacuum enthusiast forums and looked through several threads discussing the best products for my budget price.

All the more reason to never treat them as inevitable. It's not a bad thing to both accept that we'll never fully overcome them, but to try our hardest anyway - that's what keeps them to a minimum. If we were to stop trying to avoid them, the scientific process would degrade even more.

Yeah, just measure the thickness of the side of the table and you can pretty easily make or get clips that fit snugly and attach to drink holders, lap desks, card holders, dice trays, and more! Probably get some felt pads or something so they don't scratch the nice finish.

I passed this view every week or so on my walk to Reading Terminal Market while I was in grad school. Good times.

Huh, you're right. I don't think I've ever seen a piece of mail without it - I just figured it was necessary.

I go through a bag in about 3 months. 6 for the sugar.

Sorry, this will be a bit long-winded. My dream job was to be a genetic counselor. I loved learning about genetics, and people told me I would make a good therapist, so I thought it was a great fit. I got good grades throughout undergrad and grad school, and got decent reviews from my rounds through several hospitals before graduation - the only note was that I wasn't great at building rapport, which is the first part of the session where you make basic small talk with the patient to try to get them to open up to you. All in all, I was confident I'd be fine. At my first job, though, things were a lot more complicated; my workload was way higher than anything I had to deal with during grad school, my supervisor had no idea what my job was actually for, and my rapport building skill ended up being worse than I thought.

Genetic counseling generally consists of talking with patients to get their feelings about whatever genetic condition is potentially affecting them and/or their family, then helping them process those feelings, and ultimately determine if genetic testing is right for them. When it's handled correctly it drastically helps patient outlook and confidence moving forward with their diagnostic odyssey, but it's not often handled correctly in practice. Doctors mostly want to just tell a patient they needed genetic testing, which is mostly what happened in the past couple of decades, since genetic counseling is a relatively new field. But now the hospital requires a genetic counseling visit before a genetic test can be ordered. So, the doctors will tell the patient they were ordering them a test, but that they had one other appointment they needed to attend before it could go through. This caused 2 major issues:

• First, it confused the patients. They often thought they were just there for a blood draw, and were unprepared for a counseling session, which further exacerbated my rapport building issue; I'm a great counselor, but if I can't get the patient to actually open up and start talking to me about their worries, everything falls apart, causing the patient to leave annoyed and feeling like I wasted their time. This happened often enough to make me feel worthless, and like I was causing undue stress for people during an already difficult time in their life.
• Second, it annoyed the doctors, who felt like I was nothing more than an extra step clogging up their workflow. This was more damaging than it seems at face value, because hospitals have an unspoken hierarchy; doctors are the moneymakers for the hospital, so when they're annoyed, the higher-ups are very motivated to address that. As a genetic counselor, whose sessions are complimentary and not billable, I was at the bottom of that hierarchy, so my needs barely mattered. Pair that with the fact that my supervisor had no idea what my role was, and wasn't willing to learn, I had multiple meetings that essentially told me I need to get genetic testing for all patients, which specifically goes against patient autonomy, which is one of the great pillars that genetic counselors are meant to uphold.

Ultimately, I immediately felt burnt out, disrespected, unhelpful, and unwanted. I spoke to many classmates from graduate school, thinking maybe it was just my specific hospital that had these problems, but they all reported the same scenario. Most of them decided to stick it out, but I left. And now, many of them are struggling with mental health issues as a result of trying to preserver in these harsh working conditions. I have a lot of respect for them being able to continue providing this essential service for their patients, but I'm happy I left.