That doesn’t sound like anything like a problem. We had a similar discussion on a local winter biking group, and there were some people who had issues from washing their face three or more times a day, exfoliating regularly, and such. Yikes!

Hope the hyaluronic acid helps!

Bigger picture, what’s your current facial skin care routine? If it includes a lot of cleansing, exfoliating, hot water, strong soap, multiple daily washings, et cetera, dial that all wa-a-a-ay back. All of those things strip away the natural oils quite effectively, which leads to that red, inflamed look in the cold. The best way to keep your skin moisturized is to keep the moisture it naturally has from escaping, and that’s 10 times more important in cold, dry climates.

Be sure to drink enough water, too. It’s deceptive, you lose a lot of water through breath in cold, dry air, so you can be dehydrated even without sweating.

Indeed, and I realized in the process of writing that comment that the famous graphs showing the growth of productivity vs. the growth of real wages explain a whole lot more about people’s experiences than the consensus generational divisions.

I think I used to hear that, too, but I searched when writing the comment and found the consensus is now 1981. But then, people I know who were born in 1979 have so much more in common with elder Millennials than Generation X people born in the 1960’s. That’s why I’m skeptical of the whole generations concept. I mean, without looking up her birth date, is Kamala Harris a Boomer, or GenX?

It’s explained on his Wikipedia page. He was an Army captain in the Kosovo War, when a NATO commander (Wesley Clark, who later ran for President) ordered his unit to secure Pristina Airport, which Russian troops had already occupied. Blunt refused to engage them, long enough for the British general get involved to countermand the order, on the grounds that he didn’t want his men to start WW3.

For some reason that reminds me of how the first member of the Wampanoag tribe to greet the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, named Samoset, spoke to them in English. Then he came back later with another tribe member, Squanto, who also spoke English.

James Blunt possibly prevented the start of World War 3. (But became best known for the song You’re Beautiful. Reality is weird.)

That sounds like the story in the Oliver Sacks book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. There was also a story in there about a man who taught himself to see just fine, even though his eyes didn’t work at all. His brain just made educated guesses.

Along those same lines, we’re all blind literally around half the time we’re awake. Our optic processing system can’t keep up with the input as our eyes flit from thing to thing, so we don’t see anything while they move. And they’re moving constantly, even if we’re not aware of it, because only the fovea in the center of the retina has a high enough density of receptors to see details, and also because of sensory fatigue from prolonged static stimulus. In short, we have a tiny field of detailed vision that’s not even working much of the time. That field of vision that feels like a 4K video feed into the mind is a complete lie.

Like the way our subjective experience feels like a continuous, integrated mind fully in control of itself, but in reality, consciousness dips out a couple of times every minute while the brain attends to sensory input.

Even weirder, the conscious mind might not even exist, except as an illusory, emergent phenomenon of sensory experience and memory. There isn’t a place in the brain where it ‘lives’, no part that’s only ever active when we’re conscious.

A couple of factors: Back in olden times, before Douglas Coupland applied the Generation X moniker in 1991, they used to talk about the Baby Bust generation. The Baby Boom was when all of the GIs got back from the war and all started getting jiggy at the same time. Then, the birth rate dropped significantly. In my elementary school, we had combined grades 2/3, and grades 4/5, because there weren’t enough kids enrolled for full classrooms otherwise.

Also, the Baby Boom generation is defined as 1946 to 1964, which is 19 years, compared to the 16 years of what we call Generation X now, from 1965 to 1980.

Granted, is not a huge difference—71 million Boomers and 73 million Millennials vs. 64 million Gen X—but there’s fewer of us. But also, the name and the generational categories are pretty recent developments. When Coupland’s book came out, I was too young to be Gen X, the people he was writing about were adults out into world. I wasn’t part of the classic Gen X disaffected-slacker culture, and its touchstones don’t really resonate with me. It wasn’t until years later that the definition of Generation X definitively included me. That’s why you’ll often see a lot of younger Gen X identify with the Xennial label, because we have a lot more in common with “elder Millennials,” which makes the whole cohort less cohesive.

It’s almost like the generational cutoff years are arbitrary, and that society changes continuously, and not in discrete jumps. It’s almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980, and the real division is between the people who came of age before they pulled up the ladders to prosperity behind themselves (Boomers and older Gen X) and the people who came of age after (Xennials, Millennials, and so on). Nevermind, sorry, that’s just some anti-capitalist hogwash. /s

That’s why I’m thankful somebody did it before I moved in! The chimney, on the other hand, didn’t have a cap, so it leaked when the rain fell vertically. The re-lining and new cap was pretty expensive, too.

Somebody installed a sump pump fairly recently. There’s plenty of evidence that the basement used to be partially finished, but it was probably all ripped out due to water damage. It’s dry now, thanks to the pump.

That feeling of dread when the anecdote begins with a specific date…

Speaking of real, the USA is not a law of nature. It’s only been around for a short time, historically, and it took a bloody civil war to keep it going this long. The warning that we have to vote for the correct color every time, or the country falls apart, is wrong. Voting for the correct color and the country still falls apart is possible if that color can’t make the fundamental changes needed.

Not just obesity, but also the loneliness epidemic, since mental health is boosted as much by the weak relationships of the people that one sees regularly, day-to-day, whose name one might not even know, as it is by close, intimate relationships. (And even the latter are suffering the loss of social contact.)

The Cannibal Sandwich, which doesn’t actually use human flesh, but is also not a sandwich. Anyway, you take a slice of rye cocktail bread, spread on some raw, ground beef, then top it with some sliced onion, salt, and pepper. You can’t get it ready-made, because nobody likes e. coli or salmonella poisoning. In fact, you have to make special arrangements to get the beef ground by a butcher in a clean grinder, and pretty much eat it the same day.

I feel that “another thing coming” has mobster vibes, and a comeuppance is a deserved punishment.

Yeah, that’s what I’ve always figured, since the implied threat of violence/retribution seems like a very American attitude.

That one always gets me. The phrase means that the person is wrong about something, and circumstances will compel them to reconsider their position or opinion. The word “think” refers to a cognitive process, such as reconsidering their position or opinion. As for the alternative, what’s the “thing” that’s coming? Their latest Amazon order is out for delivery?

Do you have some suggestions for a novice sharpener on how to get started?