Well, some of them do. Shingles was the most painful shot I’ve ever had in my life. It hurt the rest of the day and then some. Measles was the second most painful, but only for the duration of the shot itself and a short time after.

But I imagine the shingles shot to still be far less painful than actual shingles, from what people have told me of it, so I’d still choose the shot every time.

My father exactly. He’s Asian, so I think he feels more removed from the situation, but he worked in the US for over a decade before retiring back here. He’s still 100% pro-Trump, even though we are feeling the negative effects of his tariffs (“He has to put tariffs, he had no choice, look at their economy”), and he even admits things like Good thing I retired before Trump became president otherwise I probably couldn’t get a work visa now. My dad would vote Trump if he could vote.

Not medical advice, but a suggestion of easy things to ask your doctor to check for if you have insomnia, and inexpensive to address if they are the culprit: taking taking B12 and D supplements gave me (back?) my ability to sleep. I’ve never slept better in my life.

I know someone who flies down about once a month to help his elderly older brother and sister. (He is himself a retired senior, they are even older.) I presume he counts as 12 visitors a year, but of course, he’s just one person with family obligations.

Modern trucks are just emotional support vehicles for the egoistically challenged.

I can’t wait to find out how they will blame the woke left for this very thing they were warned about.

While I’m less hostile to the idea (actually, I kind of like it), ultimately it doesn’t make sense. Our geographic difference makes our situation very different from EU member states. Our resources and outputs are very different, our location and geography makes transport needs very different. Deals that make sense for us among the Americas would make no sense for the EU. And the EU isn’t just trade, free flow of citizens makes no sense in this context, either.

Brexit was dumb for them, but it doesn’t mean joining would be smart for us. We should be just be allies with the EU and have lots of friendly policies, yes.

To put it another way, just because you break up with a long time partner who became abusive, it doesn’t mean you should start dating the (long distance) friend who supported you through it. Sometimes you should just be friends, for the better.

As a childless adult, it’s my duty to be part of other people’s lives and support families by being a trusted adult (trusted by parents and kids) and be a good role model for others’ kids.

Why? Because we live in a society. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s adults. There are, unfortunately, a lot of terrible social influences out there, and parents can’t battle society alone. Young boys and girls need to learn and develop healthy relationships with men and women alike, beyond just their parents, in order to have something to model themselves after and to learn how to treat others with love and respect.

And this is especially so for singletons. A lot of the bad and warped ideas about “relationships” and even self-esteem comes from unhealthy views of romantic relationships. Ideas like if you’re not good enough if you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or ideas that men and women cannot “only” be friends (objectification of other sex). Ideas that men are owed relationships and sex by women (incels). Ideas that it’s better to be with a bad partner than to be single (abuse).

Parents can’t fight all of that on their own.