A lot of businesses are purposely running permanent skeleton crews right now. They know customers will blame “kids these days” or “no one wants to work anymore” or the government instead of the establishment so they can get away with it.

Was it a shirt for the establishment or just a random one? One thing I didn’t really know until I picked up some PT work at places like that is that the employer only provides 1 shirt, the employee ls have to buy extras if they want, or if the first one is ruined but they are often expensive! Usually it’s around equal in cost to 2-3 hours of work. Since they are proprietary shirts there is No option for thrifting or clearance shopping. It just doesn’t make financial sense for the employee to buy many extras or stop wearing one if it gets ratty. The businesses could provide more shirts, or offer them less expensively but choose not to do so. That might also explain why the don’t cover the shorts, if the employee didn’t provide an array of sizes. Obviously none of of that applies if they were wearing cheap WalMart Shirts.

I don’t stop at them if there are no lights flashing but I always glance in both directions as I approach.

I agree with this. Its similar to many other topics that corporations have managed to get us to look at individual citizens as the problem and not look at the corporations. I can shake my finger at SKL for having 2 houses because I know her and she can see my finger waging. I have no connections to XYZ Corp that owns 1500 houses in each of 10 major cities I may not know about that corporation at all. So SKL gets the stank eye for daring to own a second home, while XYZ Corp gets a tax break while our attention is diverted. The problem is always the corporations, not individuals. If we limited individuals to 1 home and 1 only 1 home at a time, we would do nothing for the housing crisis, because the issue is builders and megacorps. Same with climate change, food waste, carbon footprints etc.

I would be surprised big you explained that to me in conversation but more because it’s unusual than to be negative.

That's a really good explanation. I told a friend once it was like a group choose-your-own adventure book but with dice to add a random element to it.

Isn’t that a Dutch braid instead of a French braid? Maybe you’re just trying the wrong nationalities braid. Maybe your hands are Dutch?

I have trouble peopling as well.

I don't think it's families causing most of the waste. Farmers mow under crops that won't sell for enough and throw out food that is "ugly", supermarkets over buy and toss stuff, restaurants, catering, etc. I know I was at a Jimmy John's and watched them throw away several trays of bread that looked fine but had risen funny. I'm sure it was edible but it wasn't up to standard. Then cities make it illegal for them to give it away or for people to take the already thrown away food out of the dumpster. I'm sure some of the fresh stuff from farms gets composted or fed to animals, but that's not the same as feeding hungry people. And who knows with mega corp farms.

It wasn't a factor for us but its a conversation I've had a dozen times sitting on park benches with moms listening to them talk through trying to decide to go for the next one or not, or if they should go ahead and get the mini van after the first one or two in case they decide that three or four is what they want they'll already have the car. Almost everyone says that stopping at three or four is partly to avoid needing the next size up in car, almost no one wants to drive the 12 passenger vans.

I'm not saying safety laws are a bad thing, just that an unintended consequence is that car size is a factor for families in choosing family size. Mini vans and crossovers are more expensive than little 4 seater cars. Some people choose to stop at 2 kids to avoid needing a mini van and some people choose to stop at 4 or 5 in order to stay in a minivan and not need to upgrade to a larger van or bus.

The issue with food and with people starving is that that is a distribution choice. We have plenty of food in this country and in the world overall, we waste more than enough food to cover every hungry person, estimates are up to 1/3 of ALL food is wasted. We could have half as many children starting tomorrow and some of them would still be hungry because we (royal we, we as a world population) are choosing that. We do NOT have a production problem with food, we have a distribution problem, a policy problem and a waste problem. Here in the US it is increasingly illegal to feed hungry people, some stores and restaurants will call the police on people getting food from the dumpster. https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/is-there-global-food-shortage-whats-causing-hunger-famine-rising-food-costs-around-world/ Why We Don’t Have a Global Food Shortage There is no global food shortage because we produce more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. We produce so much food globally yet one–third of it – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), all that wasted food is enough to feed 1.26 billion people: almost twice the number of undernourished people across the globe. https://concernusa.org/news/opinion-ending-world-hunger-political-choice/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-united-states-can-end-hunger-and-food-insecurity-for-millions-of-people/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/texas-volunteers-fined-feeding-homeless-heat https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/12/08/nicest-guys-ever-arrested-while-dumpster-diving-to-feed-the-homeless/

There was a column a while back that showed that most women would have liked more kids. Car size is oddly a big limiting factor, at least in my age cohort. I’ll try to dig up the studies. https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility-gap-in-america-fd205e9d1a35 ”What we can see is that, if you think comparing total fertility to intended fertility is most appropriate, then American woman have had below-intentions fertility since the early 1960s. If you think comparing to completed fertility is more fitting, then fertility intentions have been undershot since the 1980s.” https://econlife.com/2021/03/family-size/ In a paper wonderfully called “Car Seats As Contraception,” researchers link the decision to have a third child to state safety regulations. When increasingly older children have to sit in a baby seat, two parent families need to fit the kids in the back seat. Most cars accommodate two children. However, you need a pricier SUV or a minivan for three children. The result, they hypothesize, is 8,000 fewer births during 2017.

😆😆😆😆😆😆 no. ETA: we do get a paltry tax credit. The government thinks we’d all spend a monthly check on sex, drugs and rock n roll. They don’t like handing out money that isn’t incredibly tightly controlled.

I use my face moisturizer at bed time and cover it with Vaseline and my lips are fine by morning and air lasts all day. I’ll often just cover my whole face in the Vaseline after putting my moisturizer on. I think it’s called slugging now but I’ve been doing it longer than the kids have had a name for it.

You mentioned considering meds for your anxiety, it might really help your daughter to see you do that. Even if you just add in some vitamins to your routine, letting her see you take brain health or anxiety supplements might help too.

It makes sense that a higher dose would be necessary as her body weight increases. If 1 mg per lb is needed then 50 mg at 50 lbs would need to be 65 mg at 65 lbs just to stay at the same overall dosage, while staying at 50 mg at 65 lbs woukd actually be a large decrease in dosage. (Obviously those numbers are completely made up) That’s also before growth spurts and puberty hormones enter the picture in a couple of years, which will likely mean a need to increase the dosage too.

I slept with 2 until I had my first baby. Mr. Cuddles the bear sure helped prop that pregnant belly up towards the end.

Soggy teddy bear or disembodied doll head? Which is worse?

We shouldn’t have to lay bare our trauma to be treated decently or have our opinions respected. We shouldn’t have to play a game of comparing traumas and whoever has the biggest pile wins the right to have an opinion. There shouldn’t be a litmus test of “your trauma pile must be THIS tall” to have an opinion. Plenty of us have trauma piles that we just don’t feel the need to push out in front of us, here look at my pile, I get an opinion. You should have been allowed your opinion without needing to “prove” that you deserved one.

I like to play sometimes but I don’t feel like I’m very good at it, role playing isn’t my strong suit. I do like being around while other people play, it can be fun to watch. I like the lore and the stories.

You shouldn’t have to air all of that, or any of it, to be treated with basic respect or have your opinion taken seriously.

I haven’t told one person that the bear or forest they pictured were wrong 🙄, that basic recommended safety precautions were insane or unhinged, or that they were ridiculous. Pretty much every post I’ve made has been met with that sort thing.

Hunters carry guns, adding to the power differential. If I tell you to picture a tree and you think of a palm tree, are you wrong? That’s would be absurd wouldn’t it? So is telling people that the bear or a forest that first comes to their mind are wrong.

I don’t think people realize until it’s too late. Once your enrolled it’s too late really. And the schools that have live teachers actually teaching math aren’t the (relatively) inexpensive colleges a lot of people attend.