My wife and I keep our heat pretty low, usually 60°F, which is usually pretty damn chilly for indoors

But when you step in from single digits outside, 60° feels downright toasty.

We have a heated mattress pad, keeps all of the heat inside the blankets

This is a big oversimplification, but the bacteria that causes tetanus basically lives in the dirt. If dirt can get to it, it can have tetanus on it. And I don’t know many dogs that are above picking things up with their mouth from the ground.

There’s of course the old myth that it’s caused by rust, rust really has nothing to do with it, it just happens that if you leave something made of iron/steel outside, it tends to rust and also get dirty.

The bacteria also lives in the digestive systems of a lot of animals, so if something might have pooped on it, there’s another way for you to be exposed to tetanus, and again a lot of dogs are willing, even eager, to eat poop.And of course there’s no shortage of people and sources that are happy to tell you that basically everything in the world has a bit of poop on it in some form or another.

Also, remember that part about tetanus living in animals’ digestive systems? I hope so, it was only one paragraph ago. That includes humans, there’s a pretty good chance you have tetanus already living in your gut. In your digestive tract it’s not an issue, maybe even beneficial (we still have a lot to learn about our gut microbiomes) it’s only really an issue if it makes its way into your bloodstream/lymphatic system, which it normally can’t do except through a wound.

And deep puncture wounds, like from a dirty needle, rusty nail, or dog’s canine tooth, are kind of the ideal place for tetanus to do its thing, like most bacteria it likes things warm and moist, and your body checks those boxes nicely, and it likes a low-oxygen environment and there’s not a whole lot of airflow at the bottom of a puncture wound.

Doesn’t even need to be single shot

I’m sure that theoretically you could be so surprised by the recoil that you’d somehow cycle the bolt and pull the trigger to fire a second shot, but trying to imagine how that could actually happen only conjures up some pretty wild Rube Goldberg scenarios for me.

So I guess if it’s your first time shooting, don’t do it with any kind of repeating firearm in a room full of mouse traps, ball bearings, umbrellas, boxing gloves, etc.

It’s an extreme outlier, but you guys did just have a very well-publicized mass shooting there barely over a month ago (fuck man, it feels so much longer than that)

And to boot, a random civilian struggled with and took a gun from one of the attackers.

You probably won’t find yourself in that kind of situation, and I certainly hope you never do. But these kinds of things can happen anywhere. I’m quite certain that Ahmed el-Ahmed didn’t have “hold a gun” on his to-do list that day, but nonetheless it happened, however briefly.

And if you ever do find yourself in that kind of situation, it’s best to know how not to hurt yourself or others with that gun you’ve unexpectedly come into possession of.

I don’t have a specific video recommendation handy, but I’m sure if you punch “how to safely clear a [pistol/revolver/rifle/shotgun]” into YouTube you’ll get 10,000 good results.

As a general overview though (and bear in mind that there’s countless models of firearms out there, so there’s bound to be some outliers that don’t quite fit into this.)

Step 0. Make sure you are keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction and your finger off the trigger at all times.

Step 1. If there’s a removable magazine, remove it.

Step 2. Pull back the slide/cocking handle/bolt/pump/lever, if there’s a round in the chamber, this should eject it. There’s an important reason to do this after removing the magazine, because releasing that mechanism will load the next round from the magazine there is one in there.

Step 3. Repeat that at least 1 more time to make extra sure that another round didn’t get loaded. Keep going until no round ejects. For some guns where the magazine isn’t removable, like some pump action shotguns, it can sometimes be quicker or more convenient to do that repeatedly than to remove the rounds manually.

Step 4. Lock open the action of the firearm and visually confirm that there is no round in the chamber and nothing in the magazine well.

Step 1R. (if you are clearing a Revolver.) Release the cylinder

Step 2R. Press the ejector rod to eject the rounds.

Step 3R. Visually confirm that all of the rounds have ejected.

Gonna start referring to my extended family as being “negatively charged” then

I don’t really cross dress, but I have a pair of heels kicking around for a Halloween costume (Monty Python Lumberjack) and I occasionally trot that costume back out.

I basically went to payless (back when that existed, I guess the modern equivalent in probably mystery Amazon brand shoes) and found a pair that more-or-less fit. Staff was actually pretty helpful, apparently around October a lot of guys wandered into payless looking for heels for a Halloween costume. They pointed me right to where the biggest heels could be found.

I think getting a cheap pair was the right move, because they pretty quickly stretched out to better accommodate my feet. I have fairly wide feet even by male standards, and actually found them to be reasonably comfortable all things considered after they broke in (which didn’t take long, those shoes definitely weren’t designed for the stresses of a 200-whatever pound man moshing in them at a Halloween concert)

The harder part was trying to find a bra that even remotely fit my frame.

I drove a Nazi out of a bar that way a few weeks back

My friend works security there and sent me a pic of a guy wearing a shirt with SS lightning bolts on it

Manager wouldn’t let him kick the guy out because he wasn’t otherwise causing an issue, and I wasn’t available to go help cause a scene to give him an excuse, but I was able to queue up every anti-fascist song I could find on there and he up and left within an hour

I consider those touchtunes credits to be money well-spent

I work in 911 dispatch, so I frequently have to go back and relisten to calls I’ve taken to see if I heard something correctly

It was very weird at first hearing my own voice played back at me so much, but it’s something you get used to after a while

But even after 7 years on the job, if I think about it my voice on the recording never sounds quite right to me.

It does freeze well, so that’s a good option. Normally I do that, but in this case i actually pulled the shoulder out of my freezer trying to free up some space in there so I kind of didn’t want to fill it right back up.

If you’ve done a whole shoulder on a rotisserie I feel like you’ll appreciate this idea too- I’ve been to a couple parties and done it once myself where we roasted a whole lamb over a fire. I don’t have any pictures handy but look up “lamb al asador” to get an idea of what the setup looked like. If nothing else it’s a hell of a centerpiece to have for a party.

Just as a heads-up, unless you’re cooking for a lot of people or really like leftovers, you may want to look for a smaller cut than a whole shoulder because it is a lot of meat. After feeding my party guests (it wasn’t a huge party, but) and sending most of them home with leftovers, I still had enough left over to have it for lunch every day for the next week.

Yeah, I will admit I dropped the ball on that recently for my new years party. I bought a big thing of pre-sliced deli provolone to keep it simple because I was keeping things low-effort, and it did the job but I really wanted something sharper with it.

Even with some lackluster cheese though people still raved about it.

It was basically a whole day of cooking on paper, but there was maybe about 15 minutes of actual hands-on cooking and prep time, the rest was just letting the pork do its thing in the crock pot while I did other stuff, like panic-cleaning my house before company arrived.

I’m a Philly guy, everyone knows the cheesesteak, and almost anywhere outside of Philly you’re bound to get something that doesn’t really resemble an authentic cheesesteak. People have a lot of weird ideas about what the default toppings, cheese, types of bread, cuts of meat, etc. are supposed to be.

But a Philly style roast pork/pork italiano is a thing of beauty. It’s actually a little wild to me that it hasn’t caught on with the Instagram recipe crowd because it’s the kind of thing that’s actually pretty well-suited to just throwing stuff in a crock pot or pressure cooker.

Basically just a pork shoulder, the usual Italian spices and seasonings- rosemary, oregano, garlic, maybe some fennel seed, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper (usually pretty heavy on the rosemary)

Ideally give it a quick sear, but that’s sort of optional

Throw it in your crockpot with some cooking liquid, I normally do chicken stock, sometimes wine if I’m feeling fancy, maybe some canned tomatoes, perhaps some sliced or chopped onions

Or do it in an oven, I’m not your supervisor.

And cook until done. Some places slice it, others shred it. Do whatever you like.

Serve on a roll (if you’ve seen Philadelphians arguing over cheesesteaks before, this is basically the same debate you’ve seen before, the roll is important, it needs to be sturdy enough to hold up to a massive pile of meat dripping with jus and grease, but not so hard that you have to worry about it cracking in half or have a hard time taking a bite out of it, long or round rolls are both acceptable)

With some roasted hot peppers (usually long hots) and some sauteed broccoli rabe (or sometimes spinach) and provolone cheese

Not standing and walking in front of a car is basically cop 101. “Routine” vehicle stops are one of the most potentially dangerous things cops do, there’s all of the unknowns of who is actually in the car and how they’re going to react, what can happen if they try to flee, dangers from passing traffic, etc.

So they always approach your car very carefully and absolutely do not walk in front of it if it can be avoided.

De got dragged by a car he tried to break into to arrest someone less than a year ago, if that didn’t teach them I don’t think anything will.

2-2-3 rotation, 12 hours shifts, 3PM-3AM

So I’m on 2, off 2, on 3 (so work Monday and Tuesday, off Wednesday and Thursday, the work again Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)

Then the next week it flips, so I only work Wednesday and Thursday and I’m off the rest of the week

I think it’s just about the greatest work schedule in the world, only bummer is that our PTO is based off of 8 hour shifts since most of the other employees work that and they didn’t make any special exemption for us. It mostly pretty much averages out since we work less days overall, but it would be nice to have that work out exactly.

So what I’m hearing is that this moron didn’t learn his lesson about fucking around with vehicles after he got hurt just a few months ago.

Going against the grain here a little, I don’t like required reading in schools.

I really loved reading growing up, always had a book (sometimes more than one) that I was reading, read well above my grade level, chose books that challenged myself, etc.

My high school really pushed reading, lots of classes assigned books for us to read, I think even some of the math classes had novels they were supposed to read. For our homeroom period once a week we had to do mandatory SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) where we had to be reading something, we couldn’t do homework or go see our teachers for help, or anything of the sort, we had to be seated at our desks reading silently. I often was juggling 2 or 3 assigned books along with my other school work, activities, and hobbies, which didn’t really leave me much time for the books that I chose to read for myself.

And the pacing was terrible, we’d often spend weeks on a book, analyzing it to death, doing packets of worksheets, writing reports, doing that accursed “popcorn reading” in class, etc. for books that I could have read in a matter of days if not hours.

I think we spent nearly a month on Of Mice and Men, it’s only around 100 pages, it can be read in an afternoon.

The whole experience really killed my love of reading. I resented a lot of the books I was made to read, and now almost 2 decades later I’ve never quite been able to get back into the same kind of reading habit I used to have.

I’ve made an effort since then to go back and reread some of those assigned books I hated back in school, and the wild thing is that, overall, they were really good books, strong stories, well-written, solid lessons to teach, different points of view to consider, etc. I totally understand why they were assigned reading.

But when I first read them I was just going through the motions, I just wanted to get the damn books out of the way so that I could read what I wanted to read.

And I think the key is to make kids want to seek out those books. Don’t assign them 1984 (for example,) make them want to go out and read 1984 for themselves.

I don’t know what the best way to do that is, but it’s not just telling them to read those books. If anything, it might be telling them not to read them. I can only speak for myself, but I know that personally seeing a display on “banned books” at a book store or library always made me way more interested in those books than any amount of recommendations from friends or reviews online or any other form of marketing.

Harmony remotes, IMO, were actually pretty good.

But sadly they killed them off just before I got a home theater setup that I’m actually pretty happy with.