If Boston is the armpit of the Commonwealth, Worcester is the butthole.

You forgot to mention that the movie you’re watching is “The Land Before Time”

Oh I know this game. I’ve always thought it would be funny to use raw onions in the place of apples in caramel apples and pass them out on Halloween.

CMD ` (backtick) will switch between application windows, if that’s what was frustrating you.

I’m not particularly good at any one thing. I have a PhD, but not in a subject that’s “practical” in the post apocalypse. I’m physically fit enough, but I’m not a paragon of strength or agility. Relatedly, I’m in my mid30s, so not old, but not spry either. I’m handy enough to fix things with instruction and some light jury-rigging, but I’m hardly a Macguyver-type. I’ve never fired a gun before, but I can probably learn to use one.

Assuming I’m not killed instantaneously, or shortly thereafter, I’m an extra set of hands or an additional mouth to feed, depending on your perspective. Charitably, I’m analytically-minded and useful enough in the field, low to middle management type; less charitably, I’m an NPC type that happens to have some amusing dialog.

In a movie or tv show following a group in the post apocalypse, I think I’d be like the 4th to die; dignified enough to have established a minor story arch, but certainly not enough to be a main character. Also not so unimportant that I’m killed off screen (or worse yet, ret-conned).

I think I agree with you in general. My point is more that we tend to forget that wild animals are among us everywhere and we really do need to take care to be aware of that, but maybe I didn’t communicate that well.

Im not discounting the comment OP’s observation, but I think it’s also important to consider the inevitability of an outbreak like this in light of invasive species, non-species, and not-so-genetically diverse farm animals.

What’s often missed by the lay-folks is that there’s plenty of wildlife that is capable of contracting and transmitting these diseases. Sure, many zoos have intense quarantine protocols, but if zoo animals have any overlap with local wildlife, they are potentially exposed to disease. Many zoos (at least that I can think of) do not keep out local wildlife—be it pigeons, house sparrows, or squirrels.

Bags of chickens from a local, shitty farmer trying to get rid of sick birds? Possible, if a little conspiratorial. Ubiquitous wild animals interacting with zoo animals and livestock? Probably a little more likely (at least to me).

Source: me, I’m a biologist, albeit not a disease ecologist.

I’ve always thought sky burials are pretty cool, but as a person living in North America who has no plans to move to Tibet or take up Buddhism, that’s completely impractical. Next best thing might be for my to be placed on a body farm.

I forget which one, but one of the Between the buried and me albums has an instrumental release. Honestly, all of their albums I recommend regardless because the musicianship is excellent.

Scale the summit is more along the lines of prog metal but purely instrumental (I think).

Protest the hero is prog metal that has a near minimal amount of death growl (still some).

Animals as leaders which has been mentioned by several people.

Exivious is decent, I’m like 90percent sure they’re instrumental.

There’s a Japanese band called té, which is way more prog rock but you might like that.

Death, despite being one of the progenitors of death metal, is less intense on the death metal growl vocals. To me, early death metal in general is a bit different sounding than modern death metal. Regardless, Death has a pure instrumental song called Voice of the soul which is part acoustic. It’s probably one of the most acoustically beautiful songs written in the genre.

Worst party ever.

By this definition, Xolo wouldn’t fit because the x in Xolo is somewhere between sh- and ch-. It’s a Nahuatl word and many (if not all) Xs are sh-/ch-.

Sorry for being pedantic.

I definitely recommend going to the Butter Museum in Cork which is essentially a Kerrygold museum.

I haven’t set an alarm for work in like 10+ years—i mostly trained my body to wake up around 6am. I say mostly because I do have the occasional hiccup and oversleep and I do set an alarm for important stuff (e.g., flights in the morning).

I’ve had the xperia 5iv for a little over a year now and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s still not a small phone, but I think it’s among the smaller phones.

I also quite like the expandable storage and headphone jack.

If the sellers were truly serious about marketing these, they would’ve stuck a single hotdog in the package peaking out of the top of the pants.

One problem I used to have was using the wrong email address to send work-related stuff. Now, work stuff lives in outlook and my personal stuff lives in whatever non-outlook email client doesn’t suck.

This is not to say outlook is great—i fucking hate it.