I have 5 wood cutting boards in various shapes and sizes: a tiny one I use if I just need to slice a tomato or apple or something, a large rectangular one I use if I'm cutting up a watermelon or chopping lots of veg, two others I mostly use for homemade bread (long skinny one for long loaves and a round one for round loaves), and the 5th is an oddly shaped one that was cut from a solid slab of beautiful olive wood that I use more as a serving board. The other four are acacia and also have really nice wood grain, and they all live on the counter leaning against the wall so they're also decorative. I just wash and dry the cutting surface after use and lean them back against the wall, and once in a while I oil them. (I don't eat meat, so I don't keep separate boards for different foods.)

DS (grad student) has lived in Columbus without a car for several years. He can easily walk to 90% of the places he needs to go, and for the remaining 10% he either uses Uber/Lyft, rides with a friend, or takes the bus. If the weather is crummy and he doesn't feel like walking, he can order most things (including groceries) from Amazon Prime with next-day delivery. That's pretty common among his friends, because when you add up the cost of registration, insurance, maintenance, gas, and the (very expensive!) parking permits (not to mention the cost of a car payment), it's generally more convenient and cost effective for young people to just use Uber a few times a month if they need to go somewhere beyond walking distance. I lived without a car for several years as a grad student in Los Angeles; I just walked or took the bus or occasionally caught a ride with a friend. In theory I could get by without a car where I live now, as I live within a mile of a grocery store, pharmacy, doctor's office (including urgent care), and a little further from the dentist and a few other stores, and there is a decent bus system here. I don't even drive that much (my 2019 Subaru only has about 3000 miles on it), but I like the convenience of being able to do a big shop at Costco or fill the car with plants from the nursery, or whatever, without having to bum a ride from someone or get an Uber (with a driver who doesn't mind getting dirt in his car, lol). One thing I really miss about Europe is how easy it is to get around by train and tram.

I really wish the FDA would require manufacturers to actually do these studies, or at least require them to update expiration dates when such data exists. That study showed both of those drugs retain full potency for more than 15 years!

As that chart shows, there was a huge difference between Norway and Sweden in excess deaths in 2020 and early 2021, when Norway took a much stricter approach to covid. And then that big spike in Norway's excess deaths in late 2021/early 2022 occurs after Norway dropped all covid restrictions. They had a higher death rate from Omicron than Sweden did, but at that point neither had any mitigation measures in place. Norway had a large drop in deaths from non-covid respiratory infections in 2020 and 2021, and then an increase in deaths from the usual illnesses that old people die of, like heart disease and cancer (e.g. 22% higher than normal deaths from cardio-vascular disease in 2022). One of the articles that was pushing the Sweden-was-right narrative said that since excess deaths worked out about the same in the long run, Norway just "postponed deaths" rather than preventing them. But isn't that entirely the point of medical care for the elderly??? Do doctors tell anyone over 65 "There's a treatment available that can likely extend your life by 2-3 years, but you're old and you're going to die anyway, so you might as well die now"? My stepmother had cancer treatment in her 80s and enjoyed another four years of life, during which she got to meet two more great-grandchildren. Those years were most definitely worth it to her. One article stated that Norway spent more money on the pandemic than Sweden did, so were those extra years of life really worth the extra millions that Norway spent? That gets closer to what the real issue is, but it's also a bit deceptive, because Norway and Sweden also took very different economic approaches, with Norway opting for upfront payments to businesses and workers, while Sweden's approach involved more things like deferring taxes. And in the end, "GDP dropped by approximately the same amount in 2020 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and had recovered to pre-pandemic levels by the second quarter of 2021." (source) So what it basically comes down to is: "Is it worth letting a bunch of mostly old people die a few years early so that others are not inconvenienced by the measures taken to protect them?" Of course, the people who happily answer yes to that question generally assume they are not part of the group that gets sacrificed. And Americans who point to what they see as the "success" of the Swedish approach ignore the fact that a much higher percentage of the US population is at risk through obesity, diabetes, CVD, etc., and are far less willing than Swedes to take voluntary measures. Sweden and other Nordic countries were also in a far better position to move work and education online with existing systems, while the US scrambled to throw things together and ended up with a huge dysfunctional mess. And Sweden has a very different healthcare system — they never had totally overwhelmed hospitals and refrigerated trucks full of dead bodies, which the US had even with restrictions. Sweden and the US are just not remotely comparable, and anyone who thinks that telling Americans to just "do the right thing" voluntarily would have worked as well here as in Sweden is just delusional. The valuable lessons we can learn from Sweden and apply to future pandemics aren't about "letting it rip," they're about universal healthcare, universal access to high speed internet, an education system that can easily transition to online as needed, job flexibility to work from home, and a population that actually cares about the common good instead of only caring about themselves. Without those things, letting it rip in the US would have left us looking more like Peru than Sweden.

That's a really frustrating article, because so many critical details have been left out. He admits that Sweden's covid death rate was higher than Norway's, without mentioning that it was actually more than double Norway's (and nearly double Denmark's), and then says that the total excess death rates were the same for both countries, as if that proves Sweden's so-called "no lockdown" policy (which in itself is kind of deceptive) was the superior approach. But he doesn't provide any information at all about the causes of non-covid excess deaths in either country — what caused the "excess deaths" among Norwegians who didn't die of covid? What were their ages and what year did they die? What other causes of death went down as well as up, and how did those parameters change over the course of the last 4 years? If Sweden killed off a higher percentage of their elderly in 2020, then you'd expect that deaths from illnesses that normally kill old people would go down in subsequent years, because there were fewer people left to die of those. Protecting the elderly from covid also tends to protect them from flu, RSV, and other contagious diseases — did rates of those also go down in Norway in 2020, which would be expected to lead to an increase in elderly deaths in 2021-2023? There's no question that Sweden's approach led to higher covid death rates compared to other Scandinavian countries, and trying to disguise that by averaging together four years of total deaths from all causes, in a way that implies they all "even out" in the end — while failing to disclose who was dying, when, and of what — seems purposely deceptive. I suspect that if you drill down into details here, it would become apparent that the conclusion is less "lockdowns don't work" and more "you can avoid lockdowns if you're willing to shorten the lives of a lot of old people by 2-3 years." I wonder if the families of all the people who died in Swedish nursing homes in 2020, who might otherwise have lived for a few more years, think that was a worthwhile trade-off? Especially since it turned out that this sacrifice had no real economic benefit — in the end, Sweden was no better off economically than Norway. Also, as KSera mentioned, portraying the Swedish response as if it was a no lockdown, no holds barred free-for-all really distorts the situation there. For example, although they kept elementary schools open, they did close secondary schools and colleges, and many people voluntarily stayed home, masked, distanced, etc. But I have no doubt that articles like this will end up all over social media as proof that the Great Barrington supporters were right all along and this would have worked just as well in the US, without any acknowledgment of the VAST differences in culture, demographics, overall population health, rates of masking and vaccination, etc.

On an individual basis people may think that false "expiration dates" are no big deal — acetaminophen is cheap so who cares if people are tossing a Costco-sized jar that's still 3/4 full and buying a new one every 2 years? But on a population level, not only does the cost add up, but that's also a ton of extra plastic and a lot of wasted (and potentially dangerous) medication added to landfills and wastewater. And when you think about the billions of dollars spent by federal, state, and local governments on stockpiling medications for emergencies, that's an insane amount of taxpayer money getting flushed down the toilet for no reason other than maximizing profits of pharmaceutical companies. That's why the government set up the Shelf Life Extension Program to test products in the Strategic National Stockpile — and what they found is that the vast majority of meds were good for an average of 5.5 years (and some for as long as 20 years) past the manufacturer's arbitrarily chosen "expiration" date. Just as examples, doxycycline and ciproflaxin, which have manufacturer's expiration dates of 2 and 3 years, respectively, were actually found to be fully potent for at least 7 and 13 years. SLEP has saved the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars, but unfortunately it doesn't apply to state and local stockpiles, which are not allowed to use meds beyond the fake "expiration" dates that manufacturers put on them. It's ridiculous.

An expiration date based on studies that literally have nothing to do with when the product actually expires is in fact "not based on actual data." From the study I linked above: "FDA regulations do not require determination of how long medications remain potent after that, allowing manufacturers to arbitrarily establish expiration dates without determining actual long-term drug stability." What manufacturers do is the equivalent of giving a bunch of high school seniors an academic proficiency test but arbitrarily stopping the test after the first few questions, which are not even HS level, and then claiming that everyone who took the test only reads at a 6th grade level. Yes, they have "data," but that data is being used in an intentionally misleading way to imply that the students cannot read beyond a 6th grade level, while hiding the fact that they purposely did not test for levels above that, yet still claiming that their results are an accurate measure of the reading levels of high school seniors.

I realize this is probably only funny to those of us who grew up in the 60s & 70s, when it seemed like every housewife in the neighborhood had a prescription for Valium "for their nerves" as well as a scrip for "diet pills" (amphetamines). I can vividly remember my mother borrowing a couple of "diet pills" from the next door neighbor whenever she got behind with housework and needed some speed to really blitz the house. (And while doctors were handing out speed and tranquilizers like M&Ms to suburban women, others were getting sentenced to years in prison for a single joint...)

This is spot on: "It is the voices of those lost to the pandemic, of those most vulnerable to the virus, past and present, of those most affected by the debilitating effects of long COVID, and of those advocating for a pandemic response based on principles of equity, that are written out of this increasingly popular, populist and revisionist picture." The fact that the supporters of the Great Barrington Declaration are still claiming they were right all along, despite irrefutable evidence that "herd immunity" is not achievable with this virus, is just insane. Not only were their proposals completely untenable (you can't "isolate the vulnerable" if half the population falls into that category!), we know for a fact that "letting it rip" with no mitigation measures and before vaccines were available would have collapsed the entire healthcare system and led to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more deaths. But apparently all you have to do when you've been proven wrong is just keep insisting you were right and those other people are lying, and millions of Americans will believe you. And now these clearly failed policies are official public health policy in Florida — a few days ago the Surgeon General sent out a letter contradicting CDC advice and allowing parents to send unvaccinated children to school in the middle of a measles outbreak.

This does not contradict what I said — manufacturers choose a completely arbitrary date, generally 1-2 years from manufacture, within which they guarantee that an ingredient remains potent, but that is not based on any studies of when the medication actually expires. There's no reason they can't test products well beyond an arbitrary year or two, but of course they'd rather have people repeatedly throwing away and replacing perfectly good meds. The US government does run those kind of studies, so we know that many meds last way longer than the date manufacturers put on them, and the study I linked in my previous post suggests that that many drugs, like hydrocodone and acetaminophen, seem to retain full potency nearly indefinitely. Telling consumers that their bottle of Tylenol "goes bad" after 2 years and needs to be thrown out is deceptive and wasteful — although certainly profitable.

The "expiration dates" on most medications are not based on any actual data — most manufacturers just slap on an expiration date of 1-2 yrs from manufacture to cover their butts, they're not doing studies to see how long the medication actually lasts. The US government regularly tests the drugs they keep in the national stockpile, and they've found that most retain full potency for years past the expiration date. There was an interesting study (here) in which scientists tested several prescription drugs that had been expired for 28 to 40 YEARS, and 12 of 14 ingredients retained full potency, including codeine, hydrocodone, pentobarbital, and acetaminophen. The two that did not were aspirin (which was basically down to zero at that point) and amphetamine, which still had about 50% potency left even after decades. So I ignore expiration dates and keep unused Rx meds in a secure place. I also keep a stock of OTC meds in the main bathroom: assorted cold & flu meds, Sambucol, melatonin, ibuprofen, generic Benadryl (which doubles as a sleep aid), Tums, Pepto, GasX, hydrocortisone & some other anti-itch stuff (DD has eczema), antibiotic ointment, gauze pads, vet wrap, and various sizes of bandages.

It always amazes me how many people think they have some inalienable right to involve themselves in another person's wedding! Seeing what my sister went through, with her mother and MIL making opposite demands over every. single. detail, plus bridesmaids all arguing for different dresses and shoes, etc., was a big reason why I literally did not tell a soul I was getting married until it was over. People are nuts!

I feel like I got dragged through someone else's midlife crisis, rather than getting to have my own. At the age most people probably go through a midlife crisis (mid-40s or so), I had a preschooler and a baby, so I was just starting the child-rearing years rather than nearing the end and wondering what came next. I was in my late 50s when my then-husband had a serious mental health crisis and I had to pack everything up and leave the state with a 12 yr old, a 16 yr old, and a developmentally-disabled 80 yr old (I had guardianship of ex's uncle). The two years between Ex demanding a divorce and the point at which we'd finally managed to get all of our things out and were settled into our new lives in another state, were by far the most stressful of my life, and certainly traumatic for the kids, too. But in the long run, getting away from the craziness and toxicity was definitely best for all of us. I'd spent so many years walking on eggshells, trying not to do or say anything that might trigger him, trying to protect the kids from it as much as I could, that I hadn't realized the toll it had taken on me to be in that constant state of hypervigilance. Once we were 1400 miles away, I felt like I could finally exhale for the first time in years.

I eloped too — we flew to Vegas on Friday, got married on Saturday, flew back to L.A. on Sunday night. Super easy, cheap, no stress. We worked together but no one even knew we were dating, so it was fun to show up at work Monday morning wearing wedding rings and watching everyone flip out, lol. My MIL pitched a fit though, and insisted on throwing a party in the UK several months later — she planned the whole thing and all the guests were her friends, so all we had to do was show up. My sister's first wedding cost $10K in the mid-70s, most of which ended up being paid for by the groom's very wealthy family, which caused huge drama with my mother and stepfather, and by the time the wedding happened, my sister was soooo stressed out and she looks absolutely miserable in the photos. And then they got divorced three years later, so all that drama and stress and money ($10K in 1975 = $55K today!) was a total waste. So crazy.

I love where I live now (Oregon), but if I had to relocate, I'd either move over the river to Washington (but still within the general Portland Metro area), or move back to New Mexico. Third choice would probably be Colorado, but I really appreciate the relative lack of snow in both the PNW and the desert SW. My favorite place I've ever lived was southwestern France, but neither of my kids would be willing to move there, and I wouldn't move back by myself.

I plan to give each of my kids $10K as a wedding present, and it's up to them whether they want to have a $10K wedding, or add more money from their own savings and/or their partner's family for a more expensive wedding, or have a simple inexpensive wedding and save the rest. (That is separate from helping them launch, which I will also help with as much as I can.) I'm just not willing to spend more than $10K on a one day event, and to be honest I think even that is pretty crazy. Reading that the average cost of a wedding in the US is $35K just blows my mind — that's a year's take-home pay for someone making $22/hr, or a new car, or paid-off student loans, or a down payment on a condo, etc. Whether I could pay that much for a wedding is irrelevant, because I just wouldn't.

I'm very efficient and good at planning, organization, and getting things done, and I'd say my primary skills are probably researching, analyzing, and summarizing information. I have infinite patience with little kids, and virtually none for adults, so if I had to start over and find a job tomorrow I'd probably apply to be a preschool teacher. And if that didn't work out, I'd try an animal rescue, because I've reached the age where I no longer have the filters necessary for dealing with idiot adults!

Wow, that InvisiCrepe is crazy expensive! Gold Bond makes a Crepe Corrector Body Lotion with aloe, glycerin, squalene, urea, vitamin E, an ester form of vitamin C, and various antioxidants; I think it was Dr Dray who recommended both that and the Gold Bond retinol lotion. Gold Bond also makes a Body Bright lotion with niacinamide, alpha hydroxy acids, and a stabilized version of ascorbic acid — those two together would be less than half the price, for twice as much product, with many of the same ingredients as the InvisiCrepe. I'd be inclined to give those a try before shelling out that much money for 5 oz of InvisiCrepe.

With the exception of one super cheap pair of reading glasses ordered from Zenni, I've gotten all my glasses from Costco for the last 15 years or so. I don't like progressives, so I have separate glasses for distance/driving, middle distance (mostly what I wear around the house), and reading. The prices are great and I've never had a problem finding styles I liked; I've also reused frames as Prairiewind mentioned. To me, a membership would be worth it just for the glasses and gas, but I also use Costco for prescriptions, vaccinations, groceries, pantry staples, paper goods, tires, sometimes clothes, and so many other things. This may vary by location, but the produce at my Costco is by far better than anywhere else around here. I don't know how they do it, but their fresh produce lasts like twice as long as anywhere else and is always absolutely top quality, so while it may not be cheaper than elsewhere, it's better quality for an equivalent price. If you eat meat and dairy, they have really good cheeses at great prices and very high quality meats. The rotisserie chickens are only $5 and they're way bigger than the ones at other stores. (I buy them when DS is home, and I can get almost a week of meals for him out of one chicken — I strip all the meat off, throw the carcass in the instant pot to make broth, then most of the white meat goes into chicken soup, the rest of the white meat and some of the dark meat goes into burritos, and rest of the dark meat gets shredded and mixed with BBQ or Buffalo sauce for sandwiches.) They have a great selection and good prices on herbs, spices, dried fruit, nuts & seeds, EVOO and other oils, etc. They have frequent sales on Charmin, Bounty, Tide, Dawn, ziplock and trash bags, etc., so I stock up on those when they're on sale. They also have lots of name brand and own brand personal care items, and they often have good sales on those too (e.g. a twin pack of Olay Regenerist for less than the drug store price for one). Their sheets and towels are great, and a few months ago I bought some really nice king-size fleece blankets on sale for $20. A couple of years ago I bought multiple pairs of Sketchers brand women's joggers when they were on sale for $12, and they are the softest and most comfortable pants I've ever owned and are pretty much all I wear around the house. I've also bought socks and underwear there for both kids, a well as sweaters, hoodies, and a jacket for DD. I do have plenty of storage space, but most of the things I buy at Costco are pretty much the same size they sell at Target or grocery stores — like a pack of Charmin or jug of Tide is pretty much the same wherever you buy it, and the sales prices at Costco are better than the sales prices elsewhere. When I stock up on Charmin & Bounty, I just store those in the garage. I think when people think of Costco or Sam's Club they probably picture 1-gallon jars of mayo and things like that, but most things are just normal sized or maybe a little larger (like a 2-liter bottle of EVOO vs 1 liter at the grocery store) or they're in a twin pack. Some things are available by the case, like canned tomatoes and beans, and I do buy those since I use them a lot and I have the space to store a few extra cans, but I don't need 25 lbs of flour or rice, so I just don't buy those at Costco. If you want to check it out, I would go when you have lots of time to really look around the whole store and get an idea of all the things they sell, and maybe even take photos of things you want to compare prices on. Also be sure to ask for a copy of the monthly flyer, and check the sales prices. I think a lot of people probably only look at the things they would normally buy at a regular grocery store and wonder if it's worth it, but one of the cool things about Costco is they have lots of interesting things you may not see in a regular grocery store (for example, my Costco has lots of Asian foods that I'd otherwise have to go to a specialty store to find), and they also have a lot of limited-time items, so I've gotten to try lots of new things I wouldn't have tried if I just shopped at Safeway every week. There are a few things Costco doesn't carry that I get from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, but other than that I buy nearly all my groceries and household products at Costco. Costco also has absolutely stellar customer service and you can return pretty much anything for any reason — including getting your membership fee refunded if you decide it's not worth it after all. They are always rated near the top for places to work, as they pay their employees well, have great benefits, and really invest in training and promotion from within (the current CEO started as a forklift driver in a Costco warehouse 40 years ago and worked his way up!), so it's a company I'm happy to support.

If anyone is looking for a good retinol body lotion, I highly recommend this one: Gold Bond Age Renew Retinol Overnight Body & Face Lotion, With Retinol & Peptide Complex. It was recommended by Angie (Hot and Flashy) and a bunch of other people that I generally trust for skincare recommendations. I get those bumps on the back of my arms in the winter (keratosis pilaris), and after a few weeks of using this they were completely gone and it made my skin really smooth, not just hydrated. It looks pretty thick when it comes out of the tube, but it's not greasy at all and absorbs really quickly with no tackiness. I have really dry skin so in the winter I'm adding a body butter on top of this after showering, but I like that it's lightweight enough to use by itself in the summer.

I use them both around my eyes with no problem. I can even use vitamin C on my eyelids, but it's not recommended to use tretinoin on eyelids. Both absorb pretty quickly, so I've never had a problem with them getting into my eyes.

I'm super happy with it — it's totally invisible and just feels like a light-weight moisturizer (versus mineral sunscreens, which always make me feel like there's a film or coating on my skin), it doesn't bother my eyes at all, and it's really affordable. I only wish I'd found it sooner!