Agree, it definitely rocks!

You’re in a situation you don’t deserve, but you are trying not to make it worse for your mom. I think you rock! I wish you all the best

I don’t want to get too deep into your business but just to understand better what you’re trying to communicate… Please tell me if I get this right: there’s current (not past) drama in your family and you think that not acknowledging father’s day at all would feed into that drama (maybe your dad’s reaction would be “see, you’re all against me” and he’d play the victim or something like that) . On the other hand you also don’t want to pretend everything is right with your father. So you want something to communicate “I don’t want to be against you, but I certainly am not on your side either; I just want to be left alone and talk to you the strictly necessary amount of times”. Is that it?

If that’s the case, yes, the standard-est, humorless “happy father’s day” card you can find, with nothing but your signature in it should convey that message pretty well. If you can’t find anything, just a white one with a handwritten “happy father’s day, [your name]” would do.

The medical field is ripe for some intrusive ads to boost revenues! Possibilities are endless:

Ad-supported hearing aids (“this conversation will resume after a quick message from our sponsors!”)

Pacemakers - want to watch an ad for 100 more free heartbeats?

Surgery - this will leave a visible scar, but how about we make the cut look like the Amazon logo ?

Implants - click the nipple and watch an ad to re-inflate the left breast for 10 more days

Nah, micro is the superior option! 😜

To be fair it was the NSFW tag that gave me the idea. I went “why would this have an NSFW tag? … Ooooh!”

Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others

Ah thanks for the context, I didn’t know! But doesn’t my point essentially stills stand?

As more people work from home and more Flatiron-like buildings struggle to find businesses looking for offices, developers might find “ex prestigious office to luxury apartments” a more appealing conversion than “ex Walmart to affordable housing”.

Also, my understanding of the housing crisis is that people can’t find an affordable place to live close enough to where they work. In my country there are plenty of small towns that used to be very pretty places to live, that have very affordable housing and that are turning into ghost towns because all the jobs are concentrated in a few big cities.

If you take away the offices, less people are going to need to live in New York, San Francisco or London. Plenty of people might still choose to, of course, but there should be less competition to rent the last bed space in a filthy apartment at ludicrous prices. Or to buy a small flat in a converted former office.

I like how this is finally acknowledging WFH as something that is here to stay but I’m not sure I understand the connection with the housing crisis. From the article:

New York’s famous Flatiron Building will soon be converted from empty offices into luxury residences

Luxury apartments in premium locations is the first thing I would think of too if I were a developer, but their target buyers don’t sound like the sort of people who currently suffer from the housing crisis. But maybe I’m wrong and there will also be developers converting less prestigious office space into affordable housing…

The other thing I don’t get is this: I don’t know Manhattan but I did work in some (I assume) similar business hubs in the middle of overpriced cities and I wonder: are many people going to want to live in expensive converted office spaces if they don’t work near there any longer? I mean if they were given the chance to WFH from anywhere would they still choose Manhattan? Honest question and maybe the answer is yes, because of the restaurants, culture, good schools or whatever… I would personally make different life choices if I could work completely remote, though.

This does seem to be the correct reason, at least statistically speaking!

serious answer: it depends on your definition of “worse”. There’s some study linking smelling farts (and specifically the component that makes them rank) to health benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jul/14/silent-not-deadly-how-farts-cure-diseases

there’s an old joke about this:

man goes to doctor saying “I keep farting, doc; my farts aren’t smelly and luckily they are also silent but I am worried because I fart all day long. Even now, as I was talking to you, I kept farting the whole time”.

“I see”, says the doctor. “I will prescribe you this pill, to be taken twice a day for a week”.

“And will that help with the farting?”

“No, but it should help you with your sense of smell. Then come to see me after one week and we’ll try to fix your hearing”

John the Baptist is considered a prophet also in Islam, so local variations of the name John are not so infrequent in Muslim countries, at least according to Wikipedia, see Yahya.

Hahaha I was like that boy too.

Girl:does he have interests? Is he passionate about something? Do I see ourselves spending quality time together?

Boy: I’m on a date, my shirt is clean, I have mints for my breath, I have gone for the romantic walk in the park, this time I’ve done it all perfectly! I’ll get at least a kiss for sure!

I agree with this, OP. After some time has passed, it’s also pretty likely that the other person has just moved on anyway and that they also would want to avoid the awkwardness of that diacussion

Ah yes it’s that pre-emptive awkwardness of nearing the end of a date, knowing that (although nothing in particular went spectacularly wrong) you don’t really want to have more and trying to signal this to the other person.

I’ve been on the receiving end of that too and now, many years later and away from the dating game, I can retroactively see it and accept it for what it was but man, it would have stung back then to hear it in plain and simple words. Being ghosted seemed like a better option to me too in retrospect. Kudos to you for being mature enough to handle that conversation!

haha, could be! Basically the Chinese version of “why u hitting yourself?”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said publishing the map was “a routine practice in China’s exercise of sovereignty in accordance with the law.” Wang added: “We hope relevant sides can stay objective and calm, and refrain from overinterpreting the issue.”

I don’t know if a lot of context is lost in translation from Chinese or if China’s diplomatic language is just that weird… An “exercise in sovereignty” that is not to be overinterpreted? Is this saying that they are just putting this out for their internal public but shouldn’t be taken seriously outside of China?

Sausage fingers + laggy phone. Sometimes I accidentally upvote or downvote while trying to scroll down. I remove the downvote when I realize but I’m pretty sure I must have left some around

Toilet break