exasperation

Use context clues. It's about sounds, so it's obviously sax.

I had an engineering professor in freshman year give exams expecting the class average to be 50% of the available points, and just graded on a curve based on how many standard deviations we were from the mean. So a 50 was generally good enough for a B. It was not a statistics class, but I think I learned more about statistics from that class than any other.

The plot of Austin Powers revolves around thawing a man who has been frozen for 30 years, from 1967 to 1997. Only 2 years to go before we reach 30 years from that movie's release.

Colin Farrell in Phone Booth perfectly captured that early 2000's feeling of where we were, technologically.

1998's You've Got Mail does, too.

I went to look up our soft drink sizes.

McDonald's large is 30 fl oz (890 ml). The Super Size, discontinued in the mid 2000's, was 42 fl oz (1240 ml).

The 7-Eleven Big Gulp is also 30 fl oz, but it's not the largest size offered. The Super Big Gulp is 40 fl oz (1180 ml), and the Double Gulp is 50 fl oz (1480 ml), down from its original size of 64 fl oz (1900 ml).

There are bigger sizes, like the 7-Eleven "Team Gulp," an entire US gallon (128 oz, 3.8 liters), but it's marketed as being for multiple people to share.

It's none of my business

Isn't it, though? I'm in my 40's and still rely on my family for advice, and to continue to grow and develop as a person. I have a lot to learn, and I think other people's thoughts and experiences are helpful for getting through things.

18-25 in 2025 means 13-20 when COVID happened.

We're going to see the long term effects of people in that micro generation losing much of what the high school social scene represented, that low stakes junior league of forming new relationships, where meeting is easy, with lots of natural opportunities for free interaction, and making new connections is normal. Learning to flirt in that environment is a stepping stone towards being able to navigate the adult world, where people don't have your schedule planned out for you, and you won't naturally see the same people 100+ days out of the year, and have 50+ chances to shoot your shot when you're ready.

And yes, sure, the loss of third places and changing social dynamics and gender roles and the economy play a role, too, for pretty much everyone under 40. But it's worth pointing out that this specific age cohort has special challenges on top of the issues that everyone else is living, too.

I mean, that's entirely possible, based on the one account we have from the showrunner

I'm going off of the text of the books themselves getting bogged down with new characters and storylines, and the publication history:

• A Game of Thrones (1996)
• A Clash of Kings (1998)
• A Storm of Swords (2000)
• A Feast for Crows (2005)
• A Dance with Dragons (2011)

The current year is 2025. GRRM is 77 years old. There are supposed to be two books left. They're never going to be published.

Dan and Dave ruined the original series by rushing it

My point is that there's no way forward without abruptly pruning several storylines. Thus, the story is basically impossible to finish in a satisfying way, and this is all we're gonna get from him.

They cut out a character to save money and air time, and George thinks that will make the plot fall apart later.

Counterpoint: GRRM has written himself into a corner and can't actually finish his own story where he originally envisioned it.

it’s still calories in calories out

Yeah, but it's hard to count calories in:

• Plenty of foods are inconsistent. One apple might have twice the sugar of another.
• Some nutrients have a calorie count but aren't necessarily metabolized in the same way between people. One example is lactose intolerance, and whether and how to count those sugars. Another is resistant starch or certain oligosaccharides, which can be metabolized by most people's microbiomes but not be used directly by human guts. The precise pathways determine just how calories end up entering the human bloodstream, versus some portion of the calories absorbed and used by microbes, still bound up in chemical bonds as it leaves the body, etc.

And it's hard to count calories out:

• Resting metabolic rate varies based on circumstance, and can change in the same individual based on lifestyle, hormones, etc. Any CICO calculator ends up just trying to infer baseline metabolic rate from rough models of how a certain height/weight/age/gender combination tends to work, but still requires tweaking from watching days or weeks of strictly counting calories and measuring the calories burned from exercise.
• Thermogenic effect of food makes for a certain amount of energy expenditure from simply trying to digest food.
• An individual's own exercise form can determine just how efficiently they can move, or how many calories they're burning from a specific activity.
• Some forms of exercise can increase energy expenditure during recovery.

And all this misses the biggest weakness of trying to use CICO alone as the framework for managing weight: how we feel ends up driving a lot of our behaviors, including whether we'll stick with our diet or exercise plans. Junk food, alcohol, and even non-food drugs like caffeine or nicotine affect our appetites and our exercise fatigue, and do have a real world effect on whether we will actually do what it takes to manage the calories in or out.

For each person who is measuring their calories wrong, there are probably 10 people who just won't stick with a plan. A good fitness plan accounts for this, and works in ways to keep a person on track. And that might look different for different people: forbidding certain foods, encouraging certain foods, meal timing or intermittent fasting, certain sleep habits, hydration levels, managing what foods are easily available on hand, etc.

The anus may have evolved from a hole originally used to release sperm

But whose sperm are we talking about here?

Ok, that's funny. I'd go on a date with you.