Dear Dr. Boli: I’ve never smoked cigarettes, and in fact I’ve never held a pack of cigarettes in my hand, so forgive me if this seems like a stupid question. A lot of the people I work with smoke, and when they go out on their smoke breaks, they have a ritual: the first thing they do when they take out a pack of cigarettes is bang it repeatedly as hard as they can. Why are they doing that? What do they hope to accomplish? Is tobacco activated by percussion? —Sincerely, A Non-Smoker Who Feels Left Out.

Dear Sir or Madam: Cigarettes, as you are doubtless aware, take years off the average smoker’s life; moreover, they make a drawn-out and unpleasant demise far more likely. If that were not enough, they cost absurd amounts of money that the average working smoker can ill afford. They banish their users to the outer darkness away from polite society. The stench of stale tobacco makes the smokers’ own families avoid them. Most of those smokers you see have tried to quit smoking multiple times, but the cigarettes have always got the better of them in the end. And all this goes to enrich a small number of obscenely wealthy executives who thrive on the misery of hundreds of millions, and who lie, cheat, and bully to keep their trade in vice profitable. Considering all those known facts, it is not surprising that cigarette smokers give way to violence against the only part of the whole sordid business that is momentarily in their control: namely, the single pack of cigarettes they are holding right now. They know that the cigarettes will win seconds later; but for the moment, at least, they can have the symbolic satisfaction of giving the tobacco industry a good spanking.

Found on the Web site of the Pittsburgh New Church, a Swedenborgian congregation:

Clearly the Swedenborgians are only the vanguard of what will become the dominant trend in theology as our century progresses. The Anglicans will soon have an Archchatbot of Canterbury. The Vatican will adopt the new technology within a few years, and the next pope will have a name like code-pius-0013. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be replaced by a large language model, and no one will notice.

Thus progress marches forward in religion as in other human endeavors, and at last we begin to see the true meaning of the quotation from Swedenborg engraved over the entrance to the New Church in Pittsburgh: “Nunc licet intrare in arcana fidei”—“Now we may enter into the hidden things of the faith.”

Dear Dr. Boli: There’s an Episcopal church and an Anglican church in my neighborhood. What’s the difference? —Sincerely, A Curious Presbyterian.

Dear Sir or Madam: The difference is easy to explain. The Episcopal church is a member of the Anglican Communion, whereas the Anglican church is not. To be more precise, then, as long as you go no further than your specific question, the difference is easy to explain.

Everyone is familiar with the cookie-consent notice mandated by European Union law, but the wording in different instances of the notice varies. Often, for example, a site will tell you that its cookies share data with “selected third parties.” What does “selected” mean? The English-language version of an Italian site gives us a window into the selection process by counting the third parties.

Selected 765 third parties and us use cookies or similar technologies for functional reasons and, with your consent, for other purposes as specified in the cookie policy.

With regard to advertising, selected third parties and us may use precise geolocation data and actively scan device characteristics for identification purposes in order to store and/or access information on a device and process personal data such as your usage data, for the following purposes: personalized ads and content, ads and content evaluation, audience observations, and product development.

So the next time you visit one of these sites and see the cookie notice, spare a thought and say a prayer for the poor underpaid marketers who are tasked with selecting the third parties with whom your data will be shared. We can assume that 765 is a typical number, so those marketers have a lot of selecting to do.

The cookie-consent box came up, by the way, when we were looking at the terms of service, where we are required to affirm that we have “carefully and fully read the information regarding the processing of personal data and consented to the processing of personal data,” &c. Including the linked documents that we are also required to have read and agreed to, we had more than 20,620 words to read carefully and fully. We say “more than” because one of the linked documents was a long “Code of Ethics” presented in a PDF that fell into the hands of an overzealous graphic designer, and it would have been a slog to copy and count the disconnected segments of text. We would be willing to say, daring anyone to contradict us, that every single person who uses that site is a perjurer.

Language is overrated as a means of communication.

Most problems can be solved by food.

If food cannot solve a problem, it is probably not a problem to begin with.

“Food” is a broader category than commonly supposed.

Portable objects that do not fall into the category of “food” may at least be regarded as food substitutes.

Eat it first, and then figure out what it was.

Most people accept me for who I am, because I am not going to be anybody other than a dog.

Anyone who dislikes me can be brought around to my side by a program of intensive licking.

I can be patient indefinitely as long as I get what I want right now.

The Department of Public Works in Dormont Borough has asked us to inform motorists that the block of Dell Avenue in Dormont between Mervin Avenue and McFarland Road is closed for excavation of a badly needed hole. All traffic must turn left at Mervin Avenue, which is a one-way street. Mervin Avenue then terminates at Raleigh Avenue, which is a one-way street, where all traffic must turn left. Raleigh Avenue passes the Dormont Junction subway station and terminates at Park Boulevard, which is a one-way street, where all traffic must turn left. Park Boulevard will take motorists back to Dell Avenue, where they have two choices: they may turn left and repeat the circuit, or they may turn right and go back where they came from and think about that for a while. They may not continue on Park Boulevard, as the block of Park Boulevard between Dell Avenue and Annapolis Avenue is closed for excavation of a badly needed hole.

Since the last time we took a glance at the spam folder in our comment system, 25,689 messages have accumulated there. We apologize to those faithful readers who have taken the trouble to leave us words of encouragement and wisdom, many of them in Russian, and we hope that bringing some of them to the front page will be some atonement for our neglect.

A reader whose name carries so many diacritical marks that we were afraid it might break the more simpleminded browsers writes:

You’re so awesome! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So great to find someone with some original thoughts on this topic. Really.. thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the internet, someone with a little originality!

Fortunately, originality is all over the Internet these days. For example, with slight variations of wording, this original comment appears hundreds of times in our spam folder.

A reader by the poetic and euphonious name of “Top 5 Crypto Casinos with Massive Bonuses” writes:

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Are new net users even aware that there is such a thing as blogging? Everyone tells Dr. Boli that blogs are so 2007.

A reader whose name appears to refer to certain quasi-legal derivatives of Cannabis sativa was kind enough to let us know that we have been of assistance in furthering his education.

Wow! At last I got a blog from where I can really obtain helpful facts concerning my study and knowledge.

The author of the Encyclopedia of Misinformation is always at your service.

A correspondent with a Vietnamese name writes:

I hope it works every day without interruptionLoading…

Apparently it does not.

“Louisville Personal Injury Attorney” remarks:

An interesting discussion is worth comment. I think that you should publish more on this subject, it may not be a taboo subject but usually people don’t discuss these issues. To the next! Cheers!!

Interestingly enough, this comment was left at the last roundup of correspondence from the spam folder. Perhaps there is a reason why people don’t usually discuss these issues.

A reader who seems to be looking for a romantic partner, to judge by the “handle” by which she identifies herself, writes:

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Dr. Boli agrees that you needs to spend a while learning more or understanding more, but he is not sure how reading his Magazine will aid you in your mission.

Finally, another diacritic-rich correspondent gives us what is apparently intended as advice:

Asking questions are genuinely fastidious thing if youare not understanding anything completely, but this article presents fastidious understanding yet.

If there is one piece of advice Dr. Boli could give this correspondent, it is that fastidiousness is often the enemy of understanding. Get your hands dirty and learn something new.

Thank you for using our handy Spam Call and Text Reporting Process to report receiving a spam call or text.

1. Please write the number from which the call or text originated on a 3×5 index card.

2. Add your name, address, Social Security number, and valid email address to the bottom of the card.

3. In the upper right-hand corner of the card, write your mother’s maiden name.

4. On the back of the card, write your credit-card information, including card number, expiration date, name exactly as it appears on the card, and CVV.

5. Fold the card in half lengthwise.

6. On each of the folded halves, fold down one corner toward the outside of the fold, so that the two folded corners are opposite each other.

7. Fold each folded half down, so that the outer section projects at a 90° angle from the middle of the folded card.

8. From an upstairs window, launch the paper airplane you have created in the direction of Seattle, Washington, USA.

9. Did you honestly think we were going to do something about spam calls or texts? Because, really, that’s just adorable.

If the Supreme Court has closed off the constitutional argument against forced exposure to television and other media in public places (our thanks to “von Hindenberg” for pointing out the case), then where shall we turn?

It seems to Dr. Boli that, in our current legal and intellectual climate, there is a way forward for the media-sensitive.

First, we must recognize that there is such a thing as media sensitivity. Some people cannot concentrate on a task if there is a television flashing moving images or a loudspeaker droning drivel; no matter how much they dislike the programming, they find their attention monopolized by the thing that is, after all, specifically designed to attract their attention. Such people may be described as media-sensitive: they have a reaction to media in the same way that people sensitive to urishiol have a reaction to poison ivy. This media sensitivity is a disability: it prevents them from functioning normally in situations where their attention is required to be elsewhere. If, for example, you find it impossible to fill out a form in your doctor’s waiting room because a television is begging you to watch an exciting baking contest, then you suffer from media sensitivity that prevents you from succeeding with tasks that are straightforward for the apparently normal people around you who can ignore the television in the room.

Once we have forced the recognition that media sensitivity is a disability, then our next step is simply to demand the enforcement of the laws that already protect people with disabilities. The media-sensitive must be granted reasonable accommodation. And, as we have found in many other contexts, making the world more accessible to people with disabilities has the unintended side effect of making it more accessible to everyone else as well.

Dr. Boli does not pretend that the struggle will be easy. He predicts that the average office with public-facing television screens would resist pushing the off button much more vigorously than it would resist spending a hundred thousand dollars for a wheelchair ramp. But victories are won by the patient and persistent; and, in the words of an old Danish proverb, “No one ever yet won the day by snoring.” The time to begin the struggle is now.