What is purple and commutes?

The avoidance of the puddle would be precisely the kind of superb detail that, say, Tolstoy might flourish; War and Peace has an execution scene very close in spirit to Orwell’s essay, and it may well be that Orwell basically cribbed the detail from Tolstoy. In War and Peace, Pierre witnesses a man being executed by the French, and notices that, just before death, the man adjusts the blindfold at the back of his head, because it is uncomfortably tight. The avoidance of the puddle, the fiddling with the blindfold—these are what might be called irrelevant or superfluous details. They are not explicable; in fiction, they exist to denote precisely the inexplicable. This is one of the “effects” of realism, of “realistic” style. 

But Orwell’s essay, assuming it records an actual occurrence, shows us that such fictional effects are not merely conventionally irrelevant, or formally arbitrary, but have something to tell us about the irrelevance of reality itself (…) There was no logical reason for the condemned man to avoid the puddle. It was pure remembered habit. Life, then, will always contain an inevitable surplus, a margin of the gratuitous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impressions, more memories, more habits, more words, more happiness, more unhappiness. 

Zuko’s like no, yeah, I totally get it, and just makes her one of his advisors. At first it’s just so she has a good excuse to stay but after the first meeting Toph storms out shouting about how EVERYONE was lying why would you even need to lie about what kind of tea you want??

Zuko: I mean they’re politicians…..but also who, and when, and in what way

They make a subtle Morse code system so Toph can warn him when someone is lying to him without tipping anyone off that she can sense lies.

it's probably also a "it's always been done like this" kind of situation, but basically us pharmacies have a stronger financial incentive to dispense exact pill quantities. insurance companies often have strict quantity limits for what they will cover that can vary from prescription to prescription.

in europe for example prescriptions typically also specify a certain quantity, but because reimbursement works differently (and drug prices are often more regulated) they don't mind handing out factory sealed boxes with larger quantities. if your prescription says "take this dose 1x daily for 7 days" and the smallest package size available is 20 pills, the pharmacy will often be reimbursed for the price of that 20 pack regardless of how many pills you actually take.

in the us, if you need 7 pills, your insurance will only cover those 7 pills. if the pharmacy handed you a 20 pack they'd be giving away 13 pills for free. so in order to maximize their profits, pharmacies buy meds in bulk and repackage custom quantities into those orange bottles. it's simply the most profitable way of doing things.

A lot of us were raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families.