When I was in my early twenties, a girl I had a crush on but who was dating my friend came up behind me and scritched my head. I’m married to a different woman now and have a kid, but I still wonder about that interaction. I can relate.

For me, the impaction was only mitigated after leaving the peroxide in for an extended period.

I did have a pool-related impaction one other time before I started using q-tips regularly. I went to the doctor for that and they pushed it out using some kind of manual water pump. It worked and the obstruction came out of my ear, but until that happened it felt like earwax (and water) were going to come out of my nose. I don’t know if that’s normal, but it was unpleasant.

One last mostly unrelated (and entirely unprompted) aside: my first encounter (that I remember, at least) with q-tips was right when I was a boy approaching puberty. My mother cleaned my ears with wet q-tips and I complained of the unpleasant feeling. She told me “if you don’t keep your ears clean, no girl will ever stick her tongue down your ear!” At the time it sounded nice just to have any contact with a girl, but now that I’m an adult I have to avoid wondering about that sentence that my mother said to me.

Oh, I don’t disagree regarding regular use being a pain. I used 3 q-tips after every shower (one per ear for the various crevasses, then the opposite ends of a shared one to - as you say - scoop from the main canal). For at least two reasons I wouldn’t want to use peroxide that way every day.

However, twice in my life I’ve gotten my ears clogged to the point that q-tips just made it worse. In both of those cases, peroxide worked miracles.

I saw the comment I believe you’re referencing.

I repeated it to everyone in my life who would be even remotely receptive and they all loved it.

Hopefully the original commenter is proud.

I second this question.

Thanks for the edification!

This is the second time tonight I’m posting this exact comment (after this sentence):

This statement is upsetting.

There’s mostly just one way to find out.

What is the other type?

This statement is upsetting.

Have you tried hydrogen peroxide?

The last time I left a bowl on my porch, literally the first group that came took all the candy and threw the bowl into my lawn. It disincentivized from doing so again.

Can’t comment on the work / tools part, but while not perfect, gaming on Linux is excellent now. The only Windows system on my network is my wife’s work computer and that’s been the case for years.

The teacher’s argument was that if you took seven pencils away from five pencils, you’d have negative two pencils, but negative pencils aren’t a thing.

You could try making the same argument to your bank, replacing “pencils” with your local currency.

Let me know how it goes!

Works well for cans, though, in my experience.

For a while I had a fiber SFP that was amazing at opening cans, too.

If this were the entire question, I’d be confused. Another comment suggested starting from 0 and going into negatives, but my initial response would be “starting from what?” expecting to start at 100 or 77 or something.

However, an elementary school teacher told me that negative numbers don’t exist, so that might be related …

I used to have a Linux laptop at work. I was even allowed to install my chosen distro. Then the IT department said “we don’t really know Puppet or how to manage Linux, but we know JAMF, so you’re all getting Macs now.”

My job satisfaction has gone down since then. However, in more positive news, they did end up giving away the old Linux laptops to the employees when they moved office.

Jim Jefferies has an entire routine on this, but I don’t really want that in my search history.

Is this what happens when Nine Inch Nails loses their nail budget?