I notice driving has gotten a whole lot more dangerous lately as nearly every car you glance into, the driver is texting. This is not just my imagination.

In the past two months, I’ve had more than a dozen near-crashes all due to people visibly texting — people drifting into my lane, running red lights, pulling out while still texting, and so many more.

Anyone caught texting while in motion should receive a fine of 10% of their yearly income for first offense. Second offense should be having car impounded and license revoked for a year. Third offense should be all driving privileges revoked forever.

If your family’s surname is Bull, you probably shouldn’t name your daughter Tara.

Likewise, if it’s Dover, you shouldn’t name your son Ben. If Lee, first name Brock would also be a bad idea.

Though all of those would be funny — to anyone sans those names, that is.

Two MMA Fighters Wryly Debunk The Effectiveness Of Some Women’s Self-Defense Techniques.

Agreed, most self-defense techniques taught to women are pure garbage and will you not help you when you need it the most. But the video is also kind of unfair — against an untrained, opportunistic attacker, nearly any self-defense is better than nothing. And that is most of the attackers you will encounter. Also, just having the confidence that you will defend yourself deters attackers from even initiating contact — something they don’t consider.

There are some good tips in the video, though. Here’s my advice to women (and anyone): take Krav Maga classes. Real ones. Not the “cool” ones. Don’t fight unless you absolutely have to. If you have to fight, brutally go for the eyes, testicles, ears, nose, sternum and solar plexus with the best weapon you have available (even if it’s your teeth). But know this: against a determined attacker, if you weigh 120 pounds and he weighs 180, unless you are a world class fighter, you are probably going to lose. Expect this. If you do win, run away as soon as your opponent is disabled enough where they can’t follow.

This is great.

What kind of goofus was filming that, though? Can’t see her left hand half the time, or her face. But damn, that is some playing right there. I know, I am probably supposed to hate her because especially in the first piece she’s using techniques from like 38 different cultures there, but fortunately most liberal types who watch this won’t recognize any of it so will just think it sounds like weird guitar.

Fuck ’em. She’s indeed great.

The first 10 on today’s playlist:

How to Enable Gmail’s New Offline Mode.

Hey, cool! Offline mode!

Oh, wait, I’ve had that available since 1986 when I got my first email address. That’s because I use a non-shit desktop client that allows me to do productive things whenever I want to. I know that many people — including friends of mine — find Gmail useful and even good. But all I see are its huge limitations. This removes one limitation, so that’s something I guess.

But still, I had “offline mode” for 32 years before Google thought anyone needed it.

Huh, someone like me.

because yeah, i can’t STAND plain water – it tastes like the inside of my mouth. it tastes like spit. imagine drinking a glass of ice cold spit. ugh.

When I tell people that I’ve not really drank plain water in many years, they are shocked. But here’s the thing: water, even water that has been filtered, tastes like spit mixed with garbage to me. I’m a mild supertaster, so I can taste the container, and what used to be in the container. And water always tastes like something — something bad.

I cannot drink plain water, and never will if there is anything else at all available. I once went nearly two days without drinking anything in the army because there was just water. And water tastes frickin’ foul.

When I wash and dry my partner’s clothes, sometimes I think, Oh, damn, I really shrunk that one!

But no — she just has a small frame though she’s less than two inches shorter than me. Unconsciously, I’m using my body as a reference and am thinking how I’d never fit into that shirt because it looks tiny to me.

So, no shrunken clothes. Just normal ones that if I attempted to wear them would look utterly ridiculous if I could get them on at all. But they look great on her.

Black Panther is good. Not great, but good. A little too much reliance on tropes. However, all the Xhosa spoken was really fun to hear. I know comparatively little about languages spoken in Africa, but Xhosa is both tonal (two tones) and has 18 click sounds. Also, its inventory of consonants and vowel sounds is extremely large, and the language has 15 genders.

In other words, Xhosa is an extremely complex and expressive language that you don’t often hear spoken. It was great to hear it and see it on screen, and was my favorite part of the movie.

If anyone of you thinks that stabbing someone is an appropriate response to having your skirt lifted up then you've been lured into victimhood overkill. A slap in the face, yes. A knee in the balls, sure. The guy was innapropriate but stabbing someone? Come on now.

— Nostradummarse (@nostradummarse) May 6, 2018

If someone put their hand down my pants (male or female) without my consent, I’d stab them, so this seems like a fine response to me.

Don’t want to get stabbed, don’t assault people. Yeah?

Everyone uses money and almost no one knows how it works.

One can be a billionaire and have zero cash. I have no idea (nor do I care) if Trump is a billionaire or not, but that tweet above is just not how money nor net worth works.

For instance, at one point Elon Musk was a billionaire on paper but had his entire fortune tied up in various companies — his own money at risk, in other words. He was a billionaire many times over but didn’t have enough free cash to buy damn lunch. This is a completely possible thing. In my own life I’ve had loads of money on paper — all of it tied up in accounts for various reasons I could not touch without huge penalties so I had to borrow money even though on paper, I was (relatively) wealthy.

It matters not, in other words, how much cash is in your bank account as to how much “money” (and remember, various forms of money is fungible, it’s just some are not very liquid) you have.

I realize that most Twitterers and Tumblrites have little experience with not scraping by, but you can definitely have an assload of money and no free cash flow. Happens all the time.