I meant rewarding virtue as in giving the recovering alcoholics a nice present if the drink chips are useless to them. (And it might as well also be offered to anyone who'd rather have a gift certificate than a drink.)

I rarely drink alcohol, most of it tastes awful to me -- I don't refrain from any sense of 'virtue.'

I still find the use of virtue to describe it as problematic. I don't think my sister not drinking is especially virtuous. It just means she's been able to maintain her sobriety, more or less, like a diabetic who is controlling their blood sugar levels.

While I know this was not your intent, I think framing it as a virtue trivializes addiction.

I should have put quotes around the word the first time. It was meant in an air-quotes sense.

I got back from Kitchener-Waterloo late last night thanks to weather on the east coast delaying aircraft. Air Canada kept moving me from gate to gate to gate, so I bought duty free maple fudge and Cadbury as retail therapy.

Because I woke up feeling kind of terrible, I decided to work from home today since I don't have any meetings I need to attend in person (after three and a half days of nonstop meetings). I'm also waiting for UPS to deliver a package that they claim I need to sign for. UPS still not here. I am struggling to stay awake.

I have a traffic question. It needs pictorial support. Those two red lines are left turn only lanes. The farthest left one, as you're going west, merges into the other one before you merge onto the freeway. Because people are all excited about left turns, it tends to get backed up with cars, and the main lane is much freer.

If you're in the rightmost of those two lanes and you make the left turn and your lane is empty up until the merge point, and the lane beside you is stationary until behind you (including blocking the intersection), what is the correct thing to do?

I would say you drive up to the merge point, let one car from the other lane go in front of you, then keep going.

let one car from the other lane go in front of you, then keep going

This is what I think.

Merging is one from each, right? Not FIFO. A guy yelled at me as I passed him to let the car in front of me go, and then pulled up next to me on the highway and sat on the horn for five seconds.

Anger management classes, bruh. Thank dog the meds last night worked, because if this had been yesterday morning I'd just have started crying and gone home.

Not suggesting a parade of scores, but if someone tells you to check your privilege, now you can, with a completely unflawed and peer-reviewed test: [link]

At my cousins' b'nai mitzvah a few months ago, I got carded. It was ridiculous.

Hil, how universal was the carding? I've volunteered at a beer booth for charity (Celebrate Fairfax, for DCistas out there), and we were told in training that we had to card everyone. No exceptions, no matter how old they looked, no matter how many times they'd been to the booth already. It was VA state law, and the state had people working undercover to check up on the booths. If they found any violations, the booth would get closed down, and the charity would lose the privilege of running a booth in future years. (Those beer booths are very lucrative.)

And yes, I turned away several people that were obviously of retirement age. And I carded a number of people three or more times.

All the people who looked older got drinks without being carded. Most of my cousins who are about my age were not carded. My sister was.

In my state you have to card everyone.

I once saw Menahem Pressler (world famous pianist) denied a bottle of Cabernet at the grocery store because he didn't have his ID with him. He is 90 years old.