Reminds me of my brother, who happens to be a universal donor and gives blood when the whim strikes him.

Meanwhile he gets a text asking for a blood donation more or less every week.

I had to yell at Red Cross once. I was getting calls maybe 2-3x a week to go donate blood in areas almost 200 miles away. It was obscene. The caller never could seem to understand why I wouldn't rush down there.

Oh I can imagine it happening. I'm currently working in Pearl Harbor and find myself hoping that I'll be on-base if the balloon goes up, thus avoiding any post-apocalyptic survival bullshit in a brilliant flash.

Can we set the benchmark against the average age of our lawmakers? As they age into a gerontocracy, so too do we age into our midlife crises being 'youthful indiscretions'

Depends on how much money you have

Frankly a wild take. Por qué no los dos?

I don't see there being anything about "being a decent human being" that precludes that person from also being a good doctor. Yes, "Should we excuse someone's reprehensible behavior simply for some measure of good they also do?" is an argument to be had, but there is no doubt a line there somewhere.

They may or may not be pining for the fjords!

Still, an easy footgun to stumble into if you weren't mindful when setting up your spreadsheet

> It's too bad so many people think they're just mics and amplifiers. Modern hearing aids do a lot of signal processing.

This is what I'm still trying to convince my dad of, after he found the pair he was fitted with ~20 years ago absolutely useless. He found that they simply made everything louder which did nothing to help him pick out what he wanted to hear.

But he's always been picky about his soundscapes, wanting the TV muted during ad breaks etc etc.

> But he's always been picky about his soundscapes, wanting the TV muted during ad breaks etc etc.

I'm with him on this one. Commercials always end up being louder than the rest of the content, and are just.. annoying.

I thought I had hearing loss. I don't. I have Audio Processing Disorder. When I found out about APD and read its symptom list, I cried. It's me, all over. Between that and ADHD I now understand how my brain processes (or doesn't process) sound properly and why even a well intentioned (but clueless) audiologist told me I had "selective hearing".

> he found the pair he was fitted with ~20 years ago absolutely useless

IKUK but that's like having bad vision so you put on a pair of your glasses from 20 years ago, still having bad vision, and deciding glasses just don't work well. Hearing and vision change over time. And that's assuming those were good hearing aids 20 years ago compared to what is available today.

I hope your dad ends up taking a chance.

I loved that DARTH FREAKIN VADER was the General in my campy game FMV cutscenes.

> And downloadable software is less common these days.

Unfortunately. I'd rather run things locally on hardware I nominally control, without being subject to connectivity or bandwidth issues.

> Btw, I will check your PNW and raise you the Green Mountains in VT and White Mountains in NH during the fall.

I've long been unimpressed with the ancient and eroded 'mountains' of the East when set against the tall and imposing Mountains of the West. The Rockies and Cascades just hit different.

Ditto. I visited the Smokey Mountains this summer and even at 7k ft, covered in trees they kinda just feel like rolling hills compared to even a 4K ft rocky jagged peak in the west. They’re pretty but underwhelming to a westerner.