Not all lapses in judgment are created equal. Cutting someone off in traffic isn't the same magnitude of having made a poor decision as walking up to and punching someone.

If I'm in a relationship and I check out a person of the opposite sex in front of my s/o, it's an entirely different order of one-minute-mistake than it is to have an accidental one-night stand after a night of drinking with my buds.

In one case, it's entirely reasonable if the relationship has to end as a result. I'm not drawing direct-direct parallels to death here, but I am trying to point out certain lapses create much more significant consequences than others, even if they are equally accidental.

I had the best dream last night. I was at a multi-state state fair. So was Orlando Bloom, and while Orlando was in the middle of winning some very weird aerial ropes-artist competition, he swung down onto the ground for a second and told me he thought I was cute. Then I ran into some nice middle-aged ladies and gents and we had a conversation about the difference in archaic cocktails, specifically syllabubs and flips.

Yes, those words came up in my dream. No, I have not recently watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

It was the kind of dream that is so good you try to fall asleep again when you wake up from it, just in case you can slip back in. Spoiler: this morning I couldn't manage that trick.

Alas, Orlando. Next time.

can we be rude to spammers?

I can come up with exactly one scenario in which spoons' question (how to spell this word) could possibly be anything more than a thought experiment, and to that I say: man, i bet it sucks to be the guy being paid $.01/word to type up the subtitles for TV.

that guy is the only guy, probably ever in the history of the world, likely to find this question not only relevant - but pressing.

poor guy probably has to type so fast to make decent $ off subtitling he just threw some letters down and didn't even look back or give a fug

If you are trying to spell the word so that you can use that spelling to convey the word - i.e., if you are trying to write dialog and one of your characters wants to say "us-[-...]" -- then I think it's important to try to echo the spelling/presentation of "usual." Otherwise it's going to be hard for readers to quickly understand that you're trying to convey a shortened, slang version of an extant word.

But if you are just trying to spell it for funzies, because after all how would you spell it, then I lean strongly towards a spelling that begins with a Y. I haven't settled on the rest of the spelling yet - I am thinking of rhymes, a la thenewgreen - but definitely, that Y gives you the right starting sound more succinctly and legibly than a multi-vowel mashup does.

Other partial rhymes besides luge: bourgeois (first syllable) , cooze, hues/huge (still only partial), lose, mews/muse, puget - as in sound (first syllable), rouge, stooge, yous/youse,

Although rouge and stooge sound the closest I'd think "youge" would look really confusing on paper...It doesn't tie back to "usual" clearly and out of context, I know I'd try to pronounce the g as a hard sound not a soft one. "Youghe?"

However you wanna spell it, it looks fucking terrible written down.

I like the approach you took - think of other words that sound like the one in question and see how they are spelled.

I tried reading it twice and then the third time I actually read it.

It helped that my brother was in rehab at the time and we (the fam) visited him for an "intensive weekend" (or whatever) which included an Al-Anon meeting or two. That experience going on in my life really dovetailed with large parts of the book, and I know I found the book more personally interesting as a result -- plus, relatable -- eh, you get what I'm saying.

In all honesty I don't think having a guidebook to a book is going to do anything but make it harder to plug into the actual book/experience of reading. It adds another layer of complexity and insists that The Book In Question is Deep and Must Be Explained - that it is Significant and Important and if you don't "get it," you should get it. Whatever it is, which is something vast and literary that spawns from glowing book reviews written by navel-gazers deep within the academy.

I would say if you are going to (try to) read Infinite Jest, don't approach it as a thing to be understood. Approach it like any other casual messy (just rather long) story. When you are done reading you will probably have a lot of unanswered questions that maybe could be resolved with a second read-through, but with well over 1000 pages, who's got that sort of time? So just look it up on wikipedia and find out what answers you want to know about the text, because lots of intellectual and academically "literate" people have analyzed and re-read the book to death and done all of that work making sense of it -- let their work work for you.

you're not an english professor you're a reader. infinite jest is just like any other book. if you can't get into it, put it down, shrug and walk away. infinite jest is on par with 50 shades of gray in that way imho. if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work for you and that's more on the book than it is on your intellect or ability to appreciate it or whatever. and if it doesn't work for you why slog through 1000 pages just because a lot of other people including a bunch of english-literature-mastubatory-canonical-library-dwllers who aren't paid very well but do enjoy agonizing over details say it is Brilliant.

Yes. Repeat what you believe you are hearing, and ask, "Is that about right?" or "Am I understanding correctly?" or etc. "Do I understand you correctly, or is there something I'm getting wrong?"

I commented on something on Reddit and someone responded saying, "Why does everyone assume that when they disagree with someone else, the other person must not understand them correctly?" - implying that at the base, me and this other poster simply did not agree and would not.

I didn't bother responding, because reddit, but if it were here and a serious question, I would say -- because assuming there is a misunderstanding between the two of us, perhaps I can clarify on my side provides so much more room for eventual unification and agreement than You don't agree with what I am saying in this one-off comment where there is nothing of nuance or subtlety hashed out between the two of us, so therefore we must be at diametric odds and doomed to forever disagree.

"Maybe we don't understand each other" recognizes there is a disagreement, but opens the door for the possibility of discussion and understanding, if not eventual alignment -- while "Well we certainly do not agree, and I am sure I am right, so therefore you must be wrong" shuts the same door very firmly - in fact, in my opinion, it slams it.

you could get really mad about how it's impersonal and means nothing...

but that would feel rather like you were shitting in the pot to spoil it for everybody, wouldn't it?

;D

Well, depending on your employer, but the short answer is yes, you might be able to get tuition reimbursement undergrad or grad. The long answer is that it's less likely the more indie your employer is (and I suspect yours is more indie than not) -- I also feel at this point you'd probably know if otherwise, so sorry for throwing you down a rabbithole =)

Honestly the article turned political halfway through which I found disappointing

I know (at least) two people with epilepsy. It's controlled in both. One doesn't drink because of the epilepsy, one does. One has a therapy dog, one doesn't.

Honestly, I would never know either had epilepsy except I'm close enough to them and have known them long enough that it's come up in discussion; daily life for them is like daily life for anyone else, as far as I can see. I am sure there are some medications behind-the-scenes which I don't see, but I think that level of detail or information is probably not something most people who are friends with people with neurological disorders are going to have.

I don't imagine people like to talk about the conditions that make them "different from everyone else" whenever someone lets slip their label. But hey, I'm neurologically normal so who am I to know.

I do know that for one of them, it was a concern/something his girlfriend wanted to learn more about and understand fully when they started dating, in the off chance he had a seizure while they were hanging out together or something. But she did the research and they talked about it a few times (I'm kind of assuming; she's my sister, though, so it's a fair guess) and it hasn't come up in conversation between her and me for, like, months since then.

I can’t wait for the nouveau hipster fashion house who vocally decides, as a point of politics and pride and grassroots and art et al., that they not only employ/depict entirely (only) 100% human models in all their shows, advertisements, and sizing models.

I had that snark amused thought first, but then while I was typing I thought, “and we think beauty standards are high and dangerous to the general youth as they are right now? If this takes off, in 20 years kids won’t just figuratively be striving to attain impossible beauty standards, but literally as well as they compare themselves to images of people who never existed, let alone had organs in their body or minimum BMIs they needed to maintain for the barest health.” It’s a slippery slope. For an adult it’s easier to look at something and see, this was altered, or that was never a real person. For kids and adolescents I think that line becomes very blurred and some do not discern it at all.

I guess digital models would resolve for the potential scarcity in the “real” model market, since I read our obesity crisis continues to balloon worldwide without so much as a defined waistline in sight.

Easy.

Jump in.

The deep end's scary but the water's fine. After a couple irregularly-scheduled pool trips you'll forget you ever hesitated before you cannonballed.

My dream is to be able to create my ideal notebook myself (since I was making a ton of books around this time last year and so on). However....it takes a LOT of thinking about what you want to use the book for!

I honestly have 4-5 notebooks "on-going" at the moment, but they are all dedicated to different purposes. Maybe I don't have a single notebook "Ideal"... :)