Minor nitpick: he was Captain, not Chief.

And him trying to pass for straight was some of the funniest scenes in the show:

Guard: It just seems like you wanna be with Jamie-Lynn. I mean, you keep talking about her thigh gap.

Captain Holt: That’s my favorite part of a woman. There’s nothing more intoxicating than the clear absence of a penis.

sorry all I got is quarters

You’re also allowed to just tell lies on the internet.

Because so much depends on the income tax based on the tax year. We calculate our taxes based on our annual income. Our qualifications for government benefits (subsidized housing, food, healthcare, financial aid for universities) are keyed to our annual income, as reported on our taxes. Many programs, even for richer people, also look to income: tax credits for electric cars, specialized retirement accounts, etc.

And because lying on your taxes is a serious crime, many private banks and landlords use those annual figures as proof of income for loans, credit cards, long term leases, etc.

It just pervades how we think of money, on an annual basis.

In theory some configurations have stronger or weaker first mover advantage. This is known as white privilege.

All this is just saying that you personally put more weight on the things that are better about later adulthood than early adulthood or adolescence. And that can be your choice, but it doesn’t have to be everyone’s choice.

You acknowledge that the health and friendships piece gets harder with age but push back against the idea that it inevitably gets worse. But averaged among all people, things will tend to get worse, and some people who actually experience that deterioration will conclude (as is their right) that things were better when health and friendships were easier.

But we also make new relationships as we get older. Is life better when you have a grandparent? Or when you have a grandchild?

These aren’t symmetrical. When you are a young person who loves your grandparents, you haven’t actually mourned a loss of a grandchild you personally knew. On the flip side, when you have a grandchild you might also view that relationship through the lens of a lost relationship with a deceased grandparent. In other words, only one of those experiences is 100% good, rather than a bittersweet mix of good and sad.

Not to mention, plenty of people will never have grandchildren. To them, the mourned loss of a grandparent is the end of that road. There’s no replacement on its way.

Put it this way: if given the opportunity to wake up 10 years in the past, in your body of 10 years ago, how positive or negative would you view that? Plenty of people would vote on different sides of that, and that’s OK to have different views based on one’s own experiences.

Everything in this specific meme is literally true

There’s no contradiction or irony, it’s just how chemistry works

Yes, that’s what makes it such a humorous situation.

I interpret it to be more about the weight given to different pros and cons about different stages in life.

Some people really, really prize autonomy, and don’t get to experience that until pretty late in life. For these people, the stifling limits of adolescence, without their own money or independence from parents, can be miserable.

Some people really, really prize being free of responsibilities. To this group, sometimes adulthood comes with too many challenges and responsibilities that they find independence to be stifling.

Some care about physical health, which may correlate with younger ages.

Some love the ease of friendships in adolescence and early adulthood, and long for that dynamic when they realize that making new friends or maintaining existing friendships gets harder after 30, and even more so after 40.

Some feel very strongly about the loved ones they’ve lost since their childhood, and wish they could’ve appreciated those shared experiences more in the moment.

And we all have different experiences. I have no idea if my best years are ahead of me or behind me, but I could see an argument in either direction.

This all or nothing thinking often just turns into an excuse for doing nothing.

I can make a better world by making things better in my immediate vicinity, without dying for it. I can help one person at a time, and it might not scale to some kind of globally noticeable improvement, but it can still a difference to each of those people, and was worth whatever effort or sacrifice involved.

Yeah, I end up trying to run to the cadence of music, and so I don’t run to music.

Well you can always just put together a playlist of your preferred cadence for that particular workout. I’m usually a 180 steps per minute kind of runner, so I like 90 bpm songs.

The arm is lit up from the bottom, totally doesn’t fit the rest of the lighting in the picture.

This is such a snore-gasm.

Yeah I always thought that emojis were used most heavily by Gen Z. Millennials seem more likely to use abbreviations like “lol” and “lmao,” and Gen X seems more likely to just type “haha.” I don’t know what boomers do, send audio clips of them laughing?

That’s basically the joke in this Perry Bible Fellowship comic.

Raw garlic can overpower a dish. It’s a lot harder to do with cooked garlic, though (unless you burn it, at which point it’s not very pleasant in large quantities).

I’m just gonna eat this burrito though.

But pray tell doth the burrito qualify as a sandwich

But most people who are invested in small talk will be giving the signals they think the other person wants, making it less useful than not talking at all.

I don’t think this is true. When I engage in small talk, I don’t see it as me bending flexibly to the conversation partner’s wants. I’m testing to see if there are common overlaps that we can talk about, and talking for the sake of being entertained. If the other person turns out not to be a good conversation partner for me in that moment, I don’t think anything of just moving on. I’m not trying to please them, I’m trying to enjoy myself.

I can’t imagine I’m in the minority here.

So I had my dick out, which was the style at the time. “Dicks out for Harambe,” you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, I had my dick out, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have any zippers then, because of the tariffs. The only thing you could get were those shitty button fly pants.

Not all kids are “climb into an animal enclosure at the zoo” dumb. That’s a special kind of dumb.

Have you ever had to care for 3-year-olds? I’d argue that probably more than 80% of 3 year olds are “climb into an animal enclosure at the zoo” dumb. And honestly, for the 20% you don’t have to worry about, it’s not intelligence that keeps them out, it’s other personality traits or physical abilities.

There’s definitely room for more happy people in the mix. I try my best to inject humor and whimsy here and there, while above all else trying to stay engaged with the types of topics I’m interested in (explaining things I know, asking about things I don’t know, and generally keeping topics alive if they’re good topics I want to continue).

I generally delete my draft comments that come off as rude, before posting them, because I’m not sure this place needs more negativity.