When I offer people persimmon cookies they look at me strangely, but if they try one. . .

Was one of the perks of working in the public library in high school—I got all the new releases before release day.

Sausage and goat cheese crepes.

🤣 same. OTOH my future M-i-L decided I was the one for her daughter when I was 18 because she invited me to a nice dinner and I showed up 10 minutes later in a suit. Only took me nine more years to convince her daughter.

Also we no longer do turkey for Thanksgiving. I don't hate turkey--it's just a lot of work and expense for an acceptable result.

My wife kinda laughs at me for getting viscerally angry when I see couples on a date and it’s clear the woman has put a lot of work into her appearance and the guy is wearing cargo shorts and a ball cap. I have never, not once, seen a couple the other way around.

It long predated both South Park and BofM. In many ways it’s a straight line from early hostility based on the introduction of a new “blasphemous” gospel. A surprising number of evangelicals also seem to believe polygamy is still practiced and no amount of fact checking gets through.

Being a non-Mormon from a Mormon family living most of my life around a lot of evangelical Protestants—whoo boy. It never occurred to people I might be offended.

True story—got stuck in Chicago for over 9 hours a few months ago with multiple gate/concourse changes. To pack light I only had my business meeting clothes and shoes—my feet were wrecked. Sneakers and joggers from now on.

Oof. The one I always remember was able to catch signs of economic wellbeing and hardship (and therefore useful for, you know, COIN) that were totally invisible to joes on patrol, but our division culture was strictly how many guys did you kill or capture today?

Caught the tail end of the Gulf War as a 2LT. An ARCOM, a Kuwaiti Liberation Medal and a combat patch were quite the status symbols for such a lowly creature 😂

And also some units were extremely resistant to listening to them, even when they were good. I was really shocked how hostile some folks in my division in Baghdad were to what I saw as a useful report on local economic conditions.

Joyce Carol Oates really had his number.

I did mine last time and 💯 agree with your assessment. Miserable time and I did a horrible job.

One story I haven't seen much on--a lot of established processes were eliminated last spring and then the promised streamlined replacement processes have never materialized. USG has some major functions that are just 🤷‍♂️

Yeah. When he told me I had to go take a minute alone. It was a good reminder that sometimes we were the good guys--not always easy to remember in Iraq.