Yes, I don’t see a calm transition in the cards.

I’ve read a lot of modern fiction set in the 1930s. The authors almost always have a character who can’t leave Europe because they are caring for an elderly parent.

If the United States goes down, you’ll have a corporate oligarchy with the most powerful military in world history.

Just saying.

I am sure that none of the agents will feel humiliated and decide to share information with the media.

Have you tried going to the meetings?

Everyone in the rooms knows about drunk dreams.

The NYC office of the FBI, the nation’s largest, is working 24/7 redacting the Epstien files.

Thanks, but I didn’t invent that one.

We tried vagina shaped skyscrapers but they just didn’t work.

And don’t get me started on the vagina shaped swords…

Why do you think it was a guy?

Three addictive writers who will further ruin your life.

Tanith Lee. “Kill The Dead” and “Night’s Master.” She basically created the whole weird fantasy genre. Neil Gaiman stole most of his best ideas from her.

Alan Furst. “Dark Voyage” and “Night Soldiers.” Spy stories set in the late 1930’s to mid 1940s. One great thing about him is his characters. The young Bulgarian fisherman is nothing like the Dutch sea captain.

Donald Westlake/Richard Stark. “The Hot Rock” and “The Hunter.” Harlan Ellison called Westlake the best American writer.

Slow Horses has entered the chat…

I tried one book in the series and noped out in the first chapter because the narrator was annoyingly snarky.

The TV series is just so much better.

Another example is “The Godfather” which features a long subplot about one of Sonny’s girlfriends and her enormous lady parts.

Socializing is going to be tough. Most people want to get together on the weekends.

When I worked 6 am to 2 pm I had to get up early, but I had afternoons free. If I had to work on a holiday or weekend I could still be off in time to hang out with people. Pushing back a holiday meal to 3 pm isn’t hard on the family. If the people you know like late hours, 12 pm to 8 pm or 2 pm to 10 pm works well. You can stay out until 2 am and still get enough sleep.

“bed” looks like a bed.

Again, we can blame Nixon and Reagan.

One of the things that corporations learned from the Oil Crisis is that the top executives could keep drawing a big salary even if the plants were off shore. Reagan enshrined the idea that as long as there was some guy in a suit pulling the strings, everything was fine and dandy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Air_Force_Exercise_Plans

There are other links online to all the exercises.

I started doing these when I was about 25. I’d never done any workouts before and I got great results pretty quickly.

Tradition plays a huge part in it.

Why do so many women’s dresses zip up the back? Because servants used to be a thing. Same reason women’s shirts button differently than men’s; someone else was supposed to be dressing the lady.

Even fifty years ago in New York a man could be arrested for wearing something the police considered “women’s clothes.” and NYC was considered a loose town with easy morals

I just said punching. Worth it.

iirc, Niven once said he had to do so many Ringworld sequels because those meddling kids kept noticing problems with the science. In the first sequel he added ramjets to the edges to help with stability.

I signed an NDA.

A million things go into choosing a career. What’s good about this book is that it gives you a range of options based on the particular skills you already have.

A good paramedic would probably get bored doing the same routine every day, but they’d still be good at the producrt demonstrator job.

The book summarizes your skills and points to jobs that use them.

A Product Demonstrator and a Paramedic both need dexterity, good people skills and imagination.

The skills are the same, the jobs are completely different.