I don't know if you know this, but skincare has become a rather large thing lately. I knew it, because fashion bloggers that I like have all started to post incessantly about skincare. There's lots of articles about feminism and aging and its relation to skincare, the size of the industry and the recent explosion and whether or not it's all bullshit. (Seriously, to have your mind blown, check the link I hid until "to" above.)

If you'll recall, I personally posted a query upon turning 40 a few months ago, and as a result, started using a daily sunscreen. I also think that the main reason I look older is that my features are getting blockier and drifting gradually up my face, and a skincare regimen ain't going to help that. Did I mention I'm a flounder?

On different sorts of skincare: for my first tattoo session, I started off without any drugs, and then took two ibuprofen after about 30 minutes. It took the edge off but it was still very intense. That session lasted about 3 1/2 hours. At the end of it, I was a wreck. It took a big physical toll (and also I hadn't prepared in terms of having food on hand. I hadn't realized that I'd be so zapped.)

For my second session, I took four ibuprofen ahead of time. This time I felt absolutely zilch on the pain scale. I could have fallen asleep. It was a fucking breeze. This session was two hours long. On the one hand, it feels a bit inauthentic to be drugged to the gills and coast through a tattoo. On the other hand, who cares. I have probably 3-5 more sessions to go.

I know very little about housing policy, so I mostly keep my mouth shut, so I was glad to see Drum, who knows more than I do, say this:

This is not Econ 101, not by a mile. Just as building more highways attracts more cars and ultimately does nothing for traffic, building more housing attracts more people. We could make housing less expensive in Los Angeles--just as we could reduce traffic by building highways 40 lanes across--but the amount of new housing it would take to make a sizeable dent in prices is truly vast.

It's always seemed obvious that the very expensive, desirable places could easily swallow literally millions more people without making a dent in housing costs, which would just make life worse in those places. The post is worth a read for his suggestions, which sound sensible. But I guess that's axiomatic. Also, I thought Chait was a liberal with a "college kids are ruining the world" hobbyhorse, but I guess he's just our Mickey Kaus, but not as funny.