I am feeling this weird quasi-gratitude when I see a commercial for something like a car or a food item

You weren't kidding, that's 80's as hell. That sax opening!

What makes the old ones bad, and what would make a good streetcar?

Castle Rat's name does similar things to be but I love their sound so much

Yes, unused gift cards are a pretty significant source of pure profit to the company.

Very true. I was born in 97 and turned 18 in 2015, so Trump v. Clinton was my first presidential election to vote. As an edgy teen back then I went and voted for Gary Johnson...

I look forward to watching it when I return from work today!

Some people just want to consoooooom

components of the words such as which tense, which kind of noun, what is the root, etc. and then we look it up in the translation dictionary together.
We usually get our students reading at the newspaper level within 9 months of full time study (6 hours a day plus homework). (2/2)

As a second language instructor, I like to give my students passages appropriate to their level with new vocab underlined (or highlight them if it's a listening passage) and then they can guess the meaning from context. If that fails, I ask them to identify (1/2)

I wonder if the centralization of media played a part in that.
Even 20 years ago there were still plenty of independent news reporters in print media, locally broadcast TV, radio, etc.
You could find a multitude of various "official" voices and opinions being broadcasted.