The controversy should be that there aren't more challenges to the regime

The day called for gloves

Walking down the street the other day I walked past a person coming in the opposite direction who was wearing an identical jacket to mine. That is not to say he and I were sharing a jacket, but merely that the brand and style of jacket were the same.

At first I thought "wow, what a novelty, the same jacket", but then I realized that I live in a medium sized city in the US northeast and it was in the middle of winter and the jacket I was wearing was not particularly rare or interesting or fashionable. It's a simple black and grey winter jacket made by a well-known clothing maker, and is quite practical.

I'd like to think that he went through the same exact thought process, but for all I know he didn't even notice the encounter, which I guess is sort of the point here.

Maybe we can form a committee

In public bathroom settings, there are sometimes a large enough quantity of unoccupied toilets that a person entering the area is given the privilege of selecting which one to use.

Obviously in a high traffic scenario where all units are occupied, you form a line, wait for someone to leave, and the person at the front of the line will then take the just-abandoned unit for themselves. However, in a low traffic scenario where there is only one person waiting and not all units are occupied, I believe that if a person happens to emerge from one of the units just as the newly arrived person is entering the area to make their decision, that the new person will specifically avoid choosing the just-departed unit.

The exercises will commence at dawn

I am uncomfortable with the phrase "how do you take your coffee?" and I'm not sure exactly why.

I have no problem with coffee. I have no problem with the polite offering of coffee. There's something about using the word "take" to describe how the potential coffee drinker is going to consume the coffee that I don't quite care for. It makes the coffee sound like a drug (which maybe it is?!) or something.

What the questioner is really getting at is "what things should I add to this coffee?" They want to know if you'd like sugar or some other sweetener. They also want to know if you'd like milk or some variety of milk.

When they use the word "take" to describe your coffee routine, they are basically calling you a junkie.

The contents of the cups didn't really matter

As a young impressionable child in the early 90s I was taught about global warming and how everything was horrible and it was all our fault. A strong component of this education was about the damage done to the environment from the release of HFCs from styrofoam cups. This message was beat in so thoroughly, and was phrased in a way such that the teacher would have the students believe that tearing apart one styrofoam cup would have irrevocable damage on the environment.

I think the lesson here was well-intended, but probably needed some toning down. Even to 4th graders it's patently obvious that tearing apart one styrofoam cup isn't actually dangerous, so it becomes easy to dismiss the rest of what might have been good advice and education on the environment.

It even works underwater

Here's a fun game to play in your head to make conversation more lively without anyone around aware of what you're doing -- take the innocent things people say, and pretend they meant to imply some sort of innuendo or euphemism in their statements, and analyze exactly what it could have been.

Then, in your own inner monologue, use a sleazy voice to say "yeah you do" back to whatever the innuendo you are pretending exists was.