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Ok, Sam - you got me! I am a paid subscriber of both your major platforms and thought I could just be a casual observer of your writing in this space. But I was wrong!

After reading this uproarious piece I hit the subscribe button so fast I surprised even myself!

I have no story of embarrassment that even remotely compares, but if this piece is even a small hint of whats to come, I've already underpaid!

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A. This scene needs to be included in the eventual Sam Harris biopic

B. Please petition Seth Green to play you

C. Getting your audience to self-report dirt on themselves is a brilliant insurance policy

D. I'm either too dumb or too starstruck to not take the bait:

Oregon, sometime during the pandemic. To keep my sanity I regularly play the "get lost" game, driving for hours into the countryside without GPS, guided only by curiosity.

On one of these drives I end up by Triangle Lake, which boasts a popular natural water slide. I have nothing with me. No inner tube. No swim trunks. Nothing.

The place is crawling in young, fit, and attractive students from the U of O. The women go down the stone slide in small groups on their inner tubes, squealing with excitement. The men, however, forego the tubes and simply ride down the slippery rock face on their butts.

As an out-of-shape, pale, 30-something I'm already feeling self-conscious. But what the hell, let's embrace the moment. If they can do it, so can I.

I strip down to my boxers. I wade into the water, and try my best to not notice the gaggle of bikini clad coeds sunbathing on the cliff next to me. I slide down the waterfall, nearly careening into a rock face; it's exhilarating and I giggle with delight before landing in a deep pool at the bottom.

Despite how dumb I look —wet boxers pasted to my nether regions— I have to do it again.

Before my second run, one of the young ladies says "if you go out more toward the middle you won't hit that rock wall." Seems like good advice. I walk out further this time.

In the very center, hidden from sight, is a huge pothole. I hit this booby trap, with all of my weight crashing down on my left hip. A feeling like the grip of a vice seizes my entire left leg. I shout in pain. I'm stuck in the hole. I can feel the whole group of beautiful, young, injury-free students looking at me. Stoically, I pry myself out of the hole and silently finish the descent, leg on fire.

In the pool at the bottom, I find that my left leg is not only immobilized (and therefore useless) it's also dead weight that is pulling me down. Too deep to stand, I have to swim, but I can't.

I start to panic.

There is a real danger here, and yet, I am SO embarrassed that I cannot bring myself to cry out for help. I have to make it out, while also somehow not looking like I'm freaking out. Which I am.

Miraculously, I manage to doggy paddle over to the nearest rock. On my belly I slither with a surprising quickness out of the water. I commando crawl until I am just out of sight of the young crowd above, and then summarily collapse in pain and exhaustion.

A few minutes go by, I've rolled over. The only thing hurting more than my leg is my pride. How excruciatingly old I must look to all those young, beautiful people. Jesus Christ, just kill me now.

I hear a burst of excitement followed by a splash. Oh no. Please god no.

The entire girls varsity track team, plus all of their tall handsome boyfriends, are standing over my bedraggled, incapacitated, wet noodle of a body.

"Sir, are you okay?" one of them asked.

For fuck's sake, I just got... sirred.

Half-dead, half-naked, and fully mortified, I quickly covered my face and practically shout "I'M GOOD THANKS."

Right then any illusion that these people were in any way my peers evaporated.

Eventually, I hobbled out of there, once again passing the entirety of the sunbathing crowd. One of the young women called out a cheerful "hope you feel better!" To which I could only raise a silent, gaze-avoidant, thanks-for-rubbing-it-in coded, thumbs up.

I cried on the way home, put some frozen peas on my aching leg, and then fell asleep on the couch.

Unceremoniously, I had crashed, hip-first, into middle-age.

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Good god, has it really come to this 😂

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Well written, sir! Oh my goodness. Since I left the military, I die a little inside every time I get ma'am'd. Loved your comment/story.

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I haven’t been sirred since, but it’s only a matter of time 🫠

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Your first move is to stay out of the South. They sir and ma'am everyone- and they think it's nice! Your second is to avoid water slides.

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Wise choice, Rosemary!

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I had diarrhea while taking a mid-day nap in an upscale hotel, with my girlfriend also in bed with me. It ruined the mattress, and had me almost in tears with shame. When I got up the courage to inform the concierge of the situation, he recoiled backward and said, "Whoa, you really just hit me with that!" The hotel were short-staffed that day, so we had just put in a special request for fresh towels. We didn't realize we would soon need a fresh mattress.

I don't think I would call that story a "royal" flush, but there was some flushing involved.

Anyway, I think the real distinction we might make between a situation that is merely "embarassing" vs full-on "humiliating", is whether what it says about us has implications for the future.

An embarrassing moment is something that we know people won't continuously judge us for. Whereas a humiliating moment is something that will likely reverberate into the foreseeable future, often because it implies something about our self or personality that isn't likely to change.

You said that pride is, at most, only good for children. But I think pride is actually just our sense of confidence that we are accepted by our community. So there is nothing wrong or illogical with feeling "proud" as an adult - as long as you are correct in your assessment of what your community thinks of you. But if your sense of pride is out of sync with your actual standing in the community, that is when you are likely to get accused of being a blowhard.

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Recently listened to a podcast about Trump’s mental health (Shrinking Trump, highly recommended) where a psychologist suggested that the opposite of shame is not pride, but dignity. I think that goes for embarrassment actually.

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Thanks for the recommendation Ania, I will check out that podcast!

Words can take on different meanings, depending on who is saying them, and in which context, so it can be hard to pin down one definition for everyone all the time. Oftentimes, you just have to roll with whatever definitions are best understood by whoever you happen to be talking to.

That's actually what I did with the word "humiliate" in my original comment, since Sam's usage isn't quite how I would have used it on my own. And defining "dignity" as the opposite of "shame" also doesn't seem intuitive to me. Relative to how people usually use those words, it seems like the psychologists from the podcast must essentially be redefining either "shame" or "dignity". But again, if I were in mid-conversation with them, I'd likely just roll with their terms.

But for me, it seems like "pride" and "shame" are usually understood to be opposites, and so we should try to use them and define them as such. And whereas it seems like people usually refer to "pride" and "shame" as "feelings", it seems like "dignity" is not so much spoken of as a "feeling", so much as a way of treating someone.

If you treat someone with "dignity" or "respect", then it's a sign that you are accepting them in to your community - which in turn might make them feel proud. But the pride is the feeling, not the dignity.

To "dignify" something is to prop it up. And the opposite of that would be to push something down, for which we might use the words "humble" or "humiliate". And if we take actions to "humble" or "humiliate" someone, we might expect them to feel "ashamed" - e.g. the opposite of "proud".

So that seems like the clearest way to think of it for me. "Pride" and "shame" describe the "feelings" of being accepted or rejected by your community. And "dignity" and "humiliation" are ways that we can treat people in order to make them feel accepted or rejected. And then, "embarrassed" perhaps describes the state of anyone who has experienced any relatively short-term shame.

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I see what you mean but then I think that “shame” is actually something that our community does to us. Another psychologist I listened to once actually said that “shame” is not an innate feeling that we are born with, it can only be learned from others, after they shame us for certain behaviours (often usefully of course, eg that’s it’s not acceptable for grown ups to walk around naked in public).

But I also think it gets so ingrained in us. For me, shame is my darkest place, what leads me to despair and the biggest challenges in my life, makes me hate myself and want to die sometimes. So from that point of view the opposite would be acceptance.

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I think the way that I'd put it is that our community teaches us *when* to feel shame - by demonstrating paths towards acceptance or rejection, via rewards and punishments.

But the actual feeling of shame itself cannot be taught, no more than our community can teach us to perceive the color blue, or the sensation of hunger. Rather, we are hard-wired to seek community approval (for our survival's sake), and to feel bad and scared when we don't have it. And all our community has to do is teach us (via rewards and punishments) when we don't have their approval. And when we feel bad for that reason, we call it "shame".

It's interesting that you mention "despair" though, because if we zoom out a little bit, I think we can probably recognize "pride" and "shame" as existing under the broader umbrella emotions of "confidence" and "despair" - which we can basically see as representing the endpoints on a continuum of hope and fear.

When we perceive that our community has rejected us, we feel scared and worried for our future, which makes us feel bad, and we call it "shame". And if it gets to the point when we lose hope, we call it "despair".

And if we perceive that our community accepts us, that gives us hope and confidence for our future. And when we feel "confident", in the context of receiving our community's approval, we call that "pride".

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Love this take, thanks for your thoughtful words.

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Thanks for the interesting conversation!

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I think the opposite of shame is not pride but acceptance.

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Thanks for sharing. I had a similar experience and I blush just thinking about it!

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Thanks TJC, not that I wish the experience on anyone else, but all the same, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

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Jun 15
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Hey Sujeshs, thanks for the interesting comment!

Yes, I agree that pride does often coincide with a feeling of agency, and I think you are right that Sam's argument against free will is why pride doesn't make sense to him. I've grappled with that myself, as I share Sam's sentiments about free will.

But I think it makes sense to regard pride and shame as useful emotions in the same way that it makes sense to punish criminals for crimes they've committed - even if they had no free will with respect to their crime. That is, we don't punish criminals because they "deserve" it, but simply because they've proven themselves to be problematic, and because society wants to protect itself from the criminal, regardless of whether they "deserve" punishment or not.

In the same way, I think we can feel proud or ashamed, not because we are the ultimate authors of our actions (which I don't believe we are), or because we "deserve" to feel those emotions, but simply because our actions are good predictors of how we might behave - and what we might accomplish - in the future. And we can expect our community to use those predictors in deciding whether to accept or reject us. And our awareness of our community's judgement in that regard is what causes us to feel proud or ashamed or embarrassed.

So insofar as most people tend to believe themselves as having agency with respect to their prideful or shameful actions, I do agree that that narrative is incoherent. But the underlying feeling itself of pride or shame still makes sense. We just need to avoid rationalizing those emotions in the wrong way.

In other words: it's not the feeling of pride itself that's incoherent, but rather just some of the narratives we use to explain the feeling.

But as long as we avoid the narrative of "having personal agency", and instead stick to the narrative of "recognizing our community standing", then I think we can feel free to feel proud - while wtill maintaining a totally coherent worldview.

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Ahh, Sam. This is very generous.

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I got dealt a royal flush once.

When I was 22 I travelled alone for the first time. I was in Colombia, on the north coast and I was staying in a backpacker hostel. This was about the coolest thing I had ever done, and I was nowhere near cool enough to be there. Some people from the hostel recommended a local nightclub, they said it was cool, so one night I went to check it out.

It was a 5 story building and every room was absolutely packed. Colombians are beautiful people, and this nightclub was where all the best looking ones hung out. On one of the floors there was a pool table, finally I had found something I was comfortable with. I grew up in English pubs playing pool, so I walked over and popped my money on the table to play the winner.

I bought a drink and watched this slender, handsome Colombian guy dispatch challenger after challenger until finally it was my turn. I played and won, and we shook hands and he asked if I’d like another game. I agreed and we played several more games with the results ended up close to even. I didn’t speak Spanish, he didn’t speak English, but over the course of the next few hours we got properly drunk and were fast friends.

He introduced me to his girlfriend, who stood out even in that illustrious company and motioned whether I would like to go the rooftop of the club with them. I of course agreed. This is it, I am cool.

Up on the roof we all sit down on a sofa, and the guy pulls out a bag of cocaine and a drinking straw from the bar. My friends back home are never going to believe this. I am on cloud nine. He hands me both objects. But of course, I have never done cocaine. I have never seen cocaine. They are both looking at me fairly eagerly and intently. They are both so beautiful. They are both so cool. After what seems like an eternity, I place one end of the straw in my nose, and the other end in the bag and sniff.

Not much happens at first, I definitely didn’t feel anything make the long journey up the straw. Now their faces are different, no longer eager, more disapproving. That kind of scrunched up look associated with the Mean Girls movie. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but I am no longer cool. I am now painfully aware that I have made a mistake and that I do not belong. I never belonged. I kind of awkwardly laugh. But the straw is still in my nose, and as I laugh a huge plume of white powder erupts into the air. It’s happening in slow motion, the once expectant faces have turned to pure mortification, pure horror as the fallout kisses their divine features like a narcotic snow globe.

They are too polite to say anything. The girlfriend takes the straw and the bag from me and dips one end of the straw into the remnants, she takes a small amount of the powder onto the straw’s lip, holds one nostril closed and delicately sniffs the end of the straw.

I smile and nod a little, then basically run away.

I’m 36 now. It still hurts.

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I love your writing! What a delight to read! Love, Tom

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😂

You’re in 2nd place.

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for the good of the community, this is my humble contribution:

In 1986, Saul Kripke and Elizabeth Anscombe gave a talk at Smith College. I was a sophomore Philosophy and Logic major at Smith, and these were celebrities in my pantheon.

In the cozy salon-style seminar room, I sat at their feet and tried/pretended to understand what they were saying. Afterwards there was tea and conversation, with one of my dear professors thoughtfully and generously facilitating the small group of students with our esteemed guests.

“What was your impression of the talk?” I was asked.

And -omg I can hardly bear to type this - I said, “It reminded me of that Roald Dahl book, My Uncle Oswald.”

I had just read it that weekend and somehow thought this was a smart and relevant thing to say?!?

So of course, someone politely commented that they hadn’t read that one, and asked what it was about. I had to explain that it was a novel about a woman who went around stealing the sperm of great men.

i remain mortified for so many reasons.

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Ahhhh this brings me so much joy! Along with an uncanny sense of deja vu, almost like it happened to me in a parallel universe or something...I feel your pain!! Roald Dahl though - so many of his Tales of the Unexpected swim in these grimly funny waters, thanks for the reminder

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So far I think you’re winning the game! (Still laughing!)

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I wish I could edit my typos/autocorrect issues, but i stand by this as my most acutely mortifying adult experience.

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Digital examination sounds like smartwatch but is better left behind. It turns out it's rather useless: (German)

https://medical-tribune.ch/news/medizinische-onkologie/10141503/wackelt-die-digitale-rektale-untersuchung-beim-prostatakarzinom/?t&utm_source=perplexity

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I shat myself on a school trip to Venezuela. I'd practically signed my own death warrant the evening prior by consuming copious amounts of, what I can only surmise in retrospect to have been, dangerously undercooked fish.

To paint a fuller picture, the pooing of myself occurred only after a short but excruciating boat trip during which the increasing difficulty I had in holding myself all but announced my predicament to those on board. This included a girl I had been heavily flirting with throughout the trip.

Upon disembarking, I immediately ran to the public toilets I'd clocked before leaving the mainland, which was in full view of the boat and all my fellow passengers. No words can tell of my utter despondency when I encountered a locked door.

The most privacy I was able to scramble in the next 20 seconds was a short alley connecting two bustling streets. My sphincter surrendered just as my "best" friend came into view.

The netting of my swim shorts caught much of what ensued, which made for a pungent 20-minute waddle back to the hotel with said friend laughing all the while, even as he cringed at the smell.

When we got back, I discovered that the water wasn't working, forcing me to petition my other friends for wet wipes through a crack in the bathroom door. (The news had spread by this point, as had the contents of my swim shorts.)

If you hold a royal flush, I at least have a full house, right?

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In high school, I was messaged on Facebook by a girl claiming to know me at some point in my past. As an insecure and lonely teenager I was happy to get the attention, and we exchanged numbers. We began texting over the following weeks. She asked me personal questions, and while I do not recall the exact depth of my responses, I certainly (and naively) put something of my intimate feelings on the line. She recommended that we meet up at a basketball game of my high school's team. When I asked where she was, she sent me a picture of myself from just feet away. It was then that I realized a classmate of mine had been this "girl" the entire time, and more than a few other students were in on the catfish (a term I learned about only later), sneering at me as I tried to save face and maintain some seblance of composure.

With the added insecurity of being a teenager, the intentional deception, and the unwitting revealing of personal life details in what I thought was a potential date, I think my situation may give yours a run for your money!

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I think that was a very mean trick to play on you John. :(

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Yes. Mean spirited joke.

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I find it difficult to predict or understand such meanness. It would be so helpful if a person's physical appearance matched their true nature.

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A fantasy ending: "I kept tabs on that cat-fishing practical joker over the years. I'm pleased to say he changed his ways. In fact, he went on to accomplish impressive scholarly pursuits, spanning philosophy to neuroscience. His name, is Sam Harris."

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I gotta say Sam, from an embarrassing story perspective, your kerplunk underwhelmed me. Yes, it's embarrassing, but think about what actually could happen in a prostate exam: sudden loud farts...rogue dingleberries...an involuntary ass spasm that seizes the probing digit, or, god forbid, a stubborn boner. You got off easy.

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That story alone was worth the $100 annual subscription!

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Oh Sam, I laughed out loud so many times reading this, there's actually tears at the corners of my eyes! 🤣🤣🤣 Indeed, it was very generous of you to share this. 🤝😁💛🌷

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Menstrual malfunction wearing white pants at a podium in front of students while lecturing about self-control. Buried myself under a blanket for a month.

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Oh, so many cards to play! So many!

But the one that occurs to me first concerns, like your story, a medical exam. Only, in this case it as a cat that was being examined on a first visit to the vet for a checkup.

We’d only recently acquired the animal as we’d been ‘bequeathed’ it by our younger son who had taken it into his head to travel literally to the other side of the world. He, thirty-five, had set out to meet the seventeen-year-old with whom he’d fallen deeply in love via the internet, a love he believed fully reciprocated as he was to stay as a guest of her parents. Our concerns were two-fold: how many ways could that go wrong? (Is there a number in the universe large enough?) And, what was he going to do about his equally beloved cat?

So suddenly, with minimal warning, we — including my husband who until then had often declared didn’t like cats — had found ourselves custodians of: Jareth. Yes. Jareth. Don’t even ask. (I did, it was something to do with his sister being called Lilith, which made as much sense as anything else.)

So the first embarrassment came standing at the reception desk in the vets’ surgery, having to give his name out loud, in public, to the receptionist. She was obviously both well trained and even inured to hearing the various bizarre and wildly inappropriate names people gave their pets, but the air around us seemed to shiver with the suppressed giggles of other people also waiting to be seen. Or maybe that was just us. Embarrassment is like that, is it not? You can feel deeply embarrassed about a slip that, on reflection, you realise no-one else has even noticed, let alone cares about.

But we had arrived travel-shocked after a drive of a hundred miles from our house in a tiny hamlet on a remote very northerly part of the Scottish West Coast at the nearest (yes, really) vet surgery in Inverness, facing an overnight stay and then a hundred miles to go back with a confused cat who deeply resented car travel, and had made this piteously and loudly clear every five minutes or so, all the way.

So what with the surprise of sudden cat ownership, the need to get ‘Jareth’ (who until then had been an indoor cat), checked out and fully vaccinated before we could let home loose on the wildlife of ‘Europe’s last great wilderness’ (as our area has been described) and half stunned with tiredness after that miserable drive, we weren’t perhaps in the most agile of states of mind as the vet started to check him over.

All was going well, though, and Jareth was being a perfectly docile patient, so maybe we relaxed too soon. We were chatting about him until the vet asked, ‘How old is he?’

My husband looked at me, the way seasoned husbands do when asked details about their children. I looked back at him the way seasoned wives do to indicate that under the stress of the situation they’ve momentarily lost their minds.

Neither of us had a clue what the answer was.

Eons passed.

Then I heard my husband say, with an appearance of casual aplomb, ‘I’m sorry, we’ve no idea. We’re just looking after him for our dog.’

The vet’s eyes seemed to focus suddenly on us.

I panicked. I admit it. I knew I had to save the situation from sounding ridiculous and an explanation was needed. I needed to say something, fast. Then I heard myself blurt out to my husband, ‘Silly! We haven’t got a dog.’

Yes, Aileen. That helped a lot.

I have no idea how we kept our faces straight for the rest of the examination, or how the vet did, for that matter. But as soon as we were in the car again we both corpsed with uncontrollable laughter, on and on. What a passer by made of two adults (and a cat) in a car howling with mirth, I don’t know. That, of course, just made it funnier. And all the long journey back the next day every so often one of us would make a kind of snorting noise, and the laughter would begun again.

What the cat made of it I don’t know. He didn’t say. But it comes to something when you realise that, in middle age, you are less dignified than a cat, called Jareth.

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But what happened with your son and his love life????

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Let’s just say that I didn’t get a teenage daughter-in-law after all. But my son did end up spending a couple of years in New Zealand — with a completely different girlfriend!

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Ok you win

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That story is an instant classic! Bravo for sharing.

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Scarcely does one encounter writing of such beauty. Well done, Sam. And be more careful next time.

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Goddamn man, I'll have to fold on that one, and I don't regret it either. Kudos for sharing, gave me a good laugh!

Can I make a completely off-topic suggestion though, since this Substack is in its early stages? I think it would be great if you could occasionally do an AMA (ask me anything) on here. And while I'm at it, here is another idea that has nothing to do with your post: I remember you saying at some point that you have a functionally infinite list of books you want to read. Well, I don't, and I'd really love some suggestions, both of books you have read and ones you intend to read. Perhaps you could compile a list of good ones at some point in the future? Sorry to derail the comments like this, I hope you don't mind.

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I still use Good Reads, which is a great way to find new books. If you look up a favorite book and scroll down to scan the reviews you can find readers you resonate with and go to their page to see what else they are reading. It is also a handy way to keep track of what I want to read.

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Not a bad idea. But the AMA could lead to chaos.

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