Kinda like H2S, I guess. You can sense its putrid smell it in the range of 0.47 ppb to 100 ppm, then your olfactory nerve becomes paralyzed. Just when you think the gas is gone, there’s a 50% chance of you dying at 800 ppm. Years ago, I read about a “mysterious deaths” case in which H2S was the main suspect because of this stealthy property.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I don’t think they carved up only Ukraine in that phone call. At least all of Europe, possibly the entire world.

• Your former school teachers die. At this point, I think the majority of mine is gone.
• Your gum recedes, and there’s nothing you can do about it except to stop smoking. On a larger scale, your circulation gets worse because your erythrocytes become less elastic, for reasons still unknown. Add to this the most damaging impact of UV light and our atmosphere’s oxygen - an objectively very aggressive chemical - and you start shriveling, just withering away from the outside. Molecular bonds are simply getting broken faster than they get repaired. Your insides last a bit longer, but their days are numbered, too.
• On the plus side, you’ll get to learn new words for body parts you didn’t even know you had.

Ain’t it brutal? They say if you haven’t started balding at age 40, you probably never will, but I’ve known several people with a full head of lush hair at 40, and in their early fifties, it’s all gone to hell.

awk-ward

That’s the way. I have three phones, the two non-work phones are 1. for friends and family, 2. for everybody else. On top of that, one of these is actually a dumb phone. Can’t stand the distractions.

The Zhuangzi has a chapter called “Mastering Life.”
Then again, I’ve been reading the whole book back to front dozens of times. It completely changed me, but for it all to sink it, it took a while.

Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first
I think she wants some water
To put out the blowtorch

Strange, something on my scalp keeps itching, wasn’t there a minute ago.

Agreed. At some point in your life, time becomes the biggest luxury, so I very much prefer spending a couple of extra bucks on higher quality stuff to the hassle of returning cheaply made junk.

taco, buffalo, birddog and Jesus

That’s horrible. Don’t taint my memory of a movie I loved with Muskolini’s likeness.

Yeah baby yeah.

Quick then Zuck, ban radical ideas like Open Source even harder from Facebook if you want to stay on Don’s good side.

Who just knocked?

To play devil’s advocate, I think that the US is extraordinarily stable. So far, two halves of the population pitted against each other in a defective democracy, what a fantastic situation for any ruler. Plus, people have been mollified enough with, in global comparison, very high wages as to not resort to armed resistance.
If that system collapses, a non-democratic oligarchy might have its day. But doesn’t that simply mean replacing an, on its surface, voluntary participation in the reproduction of capital with a completely compulsory one? That, and overt persecution of minorities.
Sure, it will suck for almost everybody, and the new rulers might just close the borders to let no-one escape. And there will be blood, at home and abroad. But the system itself, perverted as it may seem, can survive this way for generations, if not centuries. Indentured servitude, anyone?

For a maybe more optimistic view of the future, though, here’s what Thucydides wrote in “The Peloponnesian War”:

But this was merely their political cry; most of them being driven by private ambition into the line of conduct so surely fatal to oligarchies that arise out of democracies. For all at once pretend to be not only equals but each the chief and master of his fellows; while under a democracy a disappointed candidate accepts his defeat more easily, because he has not the humiliation of being beaten by his equals. But what most clearly encouraged the malcontents was the power of Alcibiades at Samos, and their own disbelief in the stability of the oligarchy…

The waiting room. I hate when they make you wait in the room. 'Cause it says “Waiting Room.” There’s no chance of not waiting. 'Cause they call it the waiting room, they’re gonna use it. They’ve got it. It’s all set up for you to wait.

• Famous quote from the Fediverse’s favorite frenemy entertainer, I guess.

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Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

(Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

It is really some of his better work, and that’s saying something since u/lukmly013 has never created a single meme that is compromised, shameful, made for simply pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular due to his Wagnerian treatment of subjects. I read a quote somewhere where, ironically, he once said he considers his prose and poetry writings as having more enduring value than his memes.