I've not bought anything from Amazon for close to 3 years when I was handed a gift card out of the blue. It took me no less than three hours to shop for 5 pretty standard items because on every page I clicked, my screen was entirely filled with ridiculously trashy products, annoyingly unrelated products, upselling BS and useless AI-generated reviews. And then I had to uncheck the fucking subscriptions they snuck in. How does anyone bear with this, I wonder?

♫ It's true that all the men you knew were dealers who said they were through

being dealers every time you gave them shelter

I know that kind of man, it's hard to hold the hand of anyone

who's reaching for the sky just to surrender ♪

(originally by Leonard Cohen, of course)

I have a feeling that a few steps are missing between trololo and Monty Python... right? guys? Geez, I'm getting old.

It's all in a day's work for... bicycle repair man. <snort>

Credit: Sidney Harris

• Don't be afraid of loneliness; don't be afraid of too many people around; don't be afraid of sharing your life with an SO you think you don't really know. As you age, these phases tend to blunt and blend together, like the seasons. The only thing you really have, in the end, is yourself.
• Adult life is a lot more about compromising than fighting. Don't make other people's life shitty on purpose, neither allow them to make yours shitty.
• Get your regular medical check-outs.
• Leave a place if you positively can't stand it any longer, and start from scratch. It'll be okay.

That 1935 piece surely seems prophetic. For example this part:

Development of the anti-scientific and anti-cultural campaign, cutting down of education

For the last five or so years, I've been noticing a surge of anti-intellectualism. People are not any longer ashamed to publicly dismiss "smart alecks" and "know-it-alls".

First they came for the nudes, and I did not speak out. Because I was not nude.

he Beak Too Big For He Gotdamn Head

And maybe also familiarize themselves with the story of Ossietzky. For 6 years, he, Tucholsky and other authors tore the - then slowly rising - Nazi party a new one every week in their magazine. They found them part threatening, part hilarious, certainly completely unable to govern.
Well, the Nazis did eventually rise to power; Tucholsky had seen the writing on the wall and had gotten out of Germany, urging Ossietzky to do the same. He refused, was soon taken into custody and tortured. Arguably, at this point in time, this sort of blatant Nazi terror was still considered despicable. To lend him visibility and get him out of internment, an unprecedented campaign to award him the Nobel Peace Prize was started - and succeeded in 1936, the year of the Summer Olympics in Berlin. Alas, it was too late; he died after receiving it, still in custody.
(EDIT: in hindsight) Hitler's reaction was entirely predictable: He barred any German from accepting a Nobel Prize ever again.