I have brainworms named Jadzia and Ezri

One day a woman in her fifties came in. She looked at the pretty amphora displays and the sample cups before she turned to me. “What would go well with steak?”

“Oh, some of the fruit vinegars would be a nice finisher,” I said, talking out my ass. Like, I’d eat that but whether it’s conventionally accepted to douse a steak in mango vinegar is up for debate.

“I’ve been a vegetarian for forty years, but my doctor suggested I might need more red meat. So I thought I’d get a steak tonight and I don’t know much about preparing it.”

I stared at this woman. This fully adult human woman. Who had just spoken to a doctor. And I said, “Do not buy a steak tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“You’ve been a vegetarian for forty years?”

“Yes?”

“Then your body has no idea how to process meat. You will get so sick.” It was pure luck that I knew this. I had a few hardcore vegetarian friends who had been exposed to meat at potluck dishes and told me about the ensuing horrors as their gentle veggie gut biome was overrun with flesh. And how consequently their toilet overfloweth.

“Really?!”

“Yes,” I said, emphatically. “If you want to try to incorporate meat I would start with a tiny portion of fish, and slowly work your way up, but your insides will not know what to do with steak.”

“Wow! I’m so glad I mentioned that to you.”

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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So the gas station by my work has a sign in the window saying there's no midgrade or premium gas right now, only 87/regular.

MY FIRST THOUGHT: fuck. It's Iran. I read that article about oil shortages. It begins. Fuck.

MY SECOND THOUGHT: remember when there wasn't actually a toilet paper shortage, but people created one by deciding there was one? What if people have bought extra because of Iran, and their delivery schedule just hasn't caught up?

MY RESPONSE: I asked the clerk what was up.

THE TRUTH: they've got a leak and the easiest way to deal with the problem was to shut off premium until the repair people can come. They'll be back up and running in a day or two.

You're gonna notice the real answer isn't very exciting. They need to do a bit of maintenance, big deal. But can you imagine the panic I could have started by reporting my initial reaction as fact?

Oh, yeah. Social media sensationalizes everything to try to generate moral outrage, since outrage tends to push people to give more clicks, comments, shares, and engagement, when the reality to most things is pretty boring.

I remember this one meme ten years ago, how this one city asked residents to dim their Christmas lights.

One click-baity title made it seem like they did to "be respectful to other religions that don't celebrate Christmas," and the article got millions of views and cycled through so many "War on Christmas!" pundits.

The real reason turned out to be all those Christmas lights being on 24/7 (plus people being inside more often with the lights and heat on, since it was winter) was a bit of a strain on the city's power grid, and they just asked residents to turn off their outdoor Christmas lights when they went to sleep at night, same was when they turned off their indoor lights when they went to bed.

The real reason was incredibly mundane, boring, and reasonable, but that didn't get as much engagement as a fictious "attack on your religious freedoms!"