This week, another celebrity who loudly gave up on Twitter returned to Twitter.

That’s perfectly understandable. The pain of being criticized by legions of strangers is the price she’s willing to pay for the adulation of other strangers. It’s a deal she’s happy to agree to, especially when it comes on the classic intermittent reinforcement schedule that keeps gamblers addicted to making bets.

How many of those zillions of followers wish they were in this celebrity’s shoes?

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My little cousin and her family released their Painted Lady butterflies from their butterfly garden recently.

One of the butterflies alit on the three-year-old’s wrist and contentedly remained there for a few minutes, to the child’s fascination and delight.

“I’m being very gentle with him,” she said, because it was true.

She wasn’t reassuring her parents. She wasn’t being defensive. She wasn’t even boasting. She was affirming herself, saying the words her mother might have said.

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I think we need to take a moment and talk about the masterpiece that is “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians.

One of the YouTube comments said it best: “I could listen to this a million times and want to hear it two million times.”

The song represents a series of artistic choices that I bet many of us would have second guessed, should we have been lucky enough to be blessed by the muse with such a gem of a song idea in the first place.

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I recently returned to Instagram after some time away.

I generally dislike social media, but after months of pandemic life, I really missed those casual connections with friends and the glimpse into their lives afforded by the platform.

Everything was going fine — “fine” meaning that I was able to view others’ posts without going too far down the rabbit hole — when I downloaded a routine update.

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It used to be that whatever you needed, you could find it on amazon.com.

But have you noticed that is no longer the case?

I went looking a couple of weeks ago for a simple mechanical kitchen timer. And I couldn’t find a single one that was made by a reputable company and had consistently good reviews.

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