Are you telling me your fairytale wedding does not include doves hacking out the eyes of your stepsister or your stepmother dancing to her death in shoes of red hot iron? Boooring.

Ever heard someone say "I really put my foot in my mouth"? That's what they are trying to find out.

I'm almost of average height for a woman in my country. Even if I thought height mattered, I would have very little reason to feel insecure about it. But since men are on average taller, I still count myself as being part of the short people.

Fair. But there's no stepladder that will help you mimic my power of sitting comfortably in trains, planes and busses.

Relevant xkcd

They do things the way they want while I'm doing them the way I want. Which is clearly the superior way (though they disagree).

You're doing neither yourself nor anyone else a favour by being overly shy and reticent. You yourself will enjoy life much more when you are yourself and while not everyone will like you, the ones who don't often don't stay in your life long and it's easier to find people you vibe with if they can see you for who you are.

Granted, I very much did not take this advice as a teenager and even now I'm occasionally too shy. But looking back it was good advice and I really wish I hadn't wasted so much time and energy on not being negatively noticed by people I didn't really care about then and who haven't been in my life for years.

I read Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain at some point during the First World War centenary. I'm also roughly 100 years younger than Vera Brittain, so I was very close to her age during WW1. I knew the facts of WW1 before, but it hit me really hard to think about a whole generation of young people (of the countries involved) having their youth drowned in a war. And the pointlessness of it all. It made me really grateful for the circumstances I was lucky enough to grow up in.

Imagine running out of ideas before having named one after every kid. Now that would be awkward.

Not trying to be combative, but genuinely curious: What ways are there to remove microplastics from organisms?

That's true. I meant we stopped actively using them when building new houses. Though now that I think about it, even that is maybe not true everywhere. But at least it's something you could change once you identify the problem. Microplastics have permeated everything, they can be found in the depths of the Mariana Trench. There is no getting rid of them (as far as we know).

Remember those stupid people in the past, drinking lead-poisoned water? At least we could just stop using lead in pipes when we found out it's bad for us. Good luck finding anything to ingest without microplastics.