My work calls them knuckle busters. They suck.

I used to have really bad dentist anxiety, so my teeth got pretty bad before I finally saw someone. My dentist prescribed some kind of twilight drug before my procedures, so I could still respond to commands, but I’d have no memory of the event. I’ve had two root canals and the surgeon had me use the same drugs for both procedures. I don’t know if that’s a viable option, but I don’t think I could have done them without.

Otherwise, when you go in for your consult, be honest about your anxiety. If you don’t want to hear the details of the procedure, tell them that. They have to inform you of risks, but they don’t have to go into detail about the procedure. I brought in headphones, which helped me calm down until the drugs kicked in, though, oddly, I can remember the music I woke up to and not much else. I was so scared in the days leading up to the first procedure, but the pain relief was so great that I’m glad I did it. If nothing else, focus on that.

QAnon, apparently.

No idea what your reading level is, but here are some of the suggestions I’ve made to customers recently:

Harry Potter, if for no other reason than the cultural impact

Ender’s Game: children being taught to be elite military officers

Small Gods: satirizes religion, religious institutions, etc. If you ever want to read Discworld, this is a very good starting point

We Free Men: also Discworld, but YA-focused and about a girl who becomes a witch

Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal: author imagines what Jesus and his BFF Biff were doing for those thirty years missing not recorded in the Bible.

Kindred: a woman starts to travel back in time to the pre-Civil War South. She can’t control it and she doesn’t know why. Probably Butler’s most accessible novel.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: humanity nuked itself back to the early medieval period and this one holy order watches it rebuild. It’s hard to describe this book in a satisfactory way without just summarizing it, but it’s one of my favorites and I’ve read it multiple times

The Giver: YA dystopian novel about a very structured society and the kid who is able to see through it. The sequels aren’t too bad either

The Hobbit: much easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but full of the same heroics plus dragons, dwarves and a clever hero

The Venture Bros. had an entire episode about this and it was excellent.

I think that this is from the episode where she’s possessed by a Pah-wraith and it’s showing O’Brien that it can kill Keiko at any time.

Formerly known as QAnon Anonymous, they’re a podcast that started out covering Q-related conspiracies, but have since expanded into general conspiracies and far-right rhetoric. The hosts are also non-tankie leftists, which makes the show even more appealing to me.

She’s in Science of Identity Foundation and I believe pretty close to the leader. QAA has a two part episode about it and her.

Definitely in Michigan. It was one of the only parts of my speech that never disappeared after living in Texas for a decade.

Preacher by Garth Ennis, who also wrote The Boys.

It’s going to blow their minds when they learn about the Volga trade route or the Varangian Guard or the Viking raids on Muslim Spain or…

If you’re going to plant it, plant it in a pot first, then bury the pot up to the lip. It will stay mostly contained and you won’t see the pot unless you’re right on top of it. Mint reproduces through runners as well as by seeds and the runners are so much harder to control. If you bury the entire pot, it makes it easier for the runners to escape, which is why you want that little bit of lip above ground.

I don’t know about actively posting, but Karin something-or-other monitors social media posts about scientology. Don’t forget to say hi, in case she’s found out about Lemmy.

Hi, Karin!

They’re terrified of the mRNA vaccine. Because they’re incurious about science, they think it’s brand new, like invented just for this virus. Try telling them that the delivery mechanism has been around for awhile and scientists have been working on this vaccine since SARS and all they do is cover their ears and hum louder.

Wouldn’t that make him a monotreme?

Maybe that was Girl Hitler.

Yes… As you age…

Instead of protesting outside, we should go inside and laugh at people like this. Make them worry that the crowd is just there to humiliate them.

In the US, if you’re in jail, you have to make phone calls through whatever provider the jail uses. These are private companies and charge a lot of money to the family just to talk to their loved one. A quid pro quo is a reward or advantage in return for something. In this case, the jails receive extra money for letting certain phone companies be the only ones prisoners can use. By preventing in person visits, they are lining their pockets with even more money. It’s disgusting.

Go to your doctor or pharmacist and tell them that you aren’t sure. They’ll probably just recommend getting a booster. I got all my childhood vaccines (except chickenpox because it wasn’t required when I was a kid) and my doctor still recommended a booster just to be sure.

As an aside, you should be sure to get your tetanus booster every ten years as well.