This makes no sense — no one has suggested that companies should provide bonuses to the employees of other companies who happen to provide services to them. People are suggesting that company profits should be shared with the employees who actually do the work that earns those profits, instead of just with investors and c-suite execs. And despite the fact that I am retired and do not get any raises or bonuses, I do tip all service workers extremely well. And back when I was living in Los Angeles and working 80 hrs/wk I paid my cleaning lady double what she asked for because she did an awesome job and I thought $10/hr was way too low even back then (late 90s).

DS's university (semi-selective, ranked in the 40s, accepts ~50%) requires the Common App essay. In his case the essay didn't matter for admission (recruited athlete), but he was hoping for an academic scholarship to top up the athletic scholarship. Although he met the minimum stats to be considered for the highest level scholarship, there were plenty of students with equal or better stats that weren't selected, so I think his essay did help him stand out. (He wrote about being a severely dyslexic kid who struggled to learn to read and write, but developed a passion for ancient languages and ended up learning Greek & Latin and then self-teaching Old Norse and Turkish, and how he became fascinated with the structure of language and the science of linguistics.)

I have a vitamin subscription that has been listed as OOS for over a week, but I just got the "delayed" notice because today was the scheduled delivery day.

I didn't write an essay for undergrad, and I only vaguely remember the Statement of Purpose I wrote for grad school, but I think did generally follow the interests I outlined in the SOP. DS's undergrad essay was about why he was interested in linguistics and why he chose that university for their top linguistics program, and he did graduate with that degree. His SOP for grad school was quite ambitious but unfortunately the department has not provided what they promised so he has been quite disappointed and just wants to finish the MA and leave, he is no longer interested in staying for a PhD.

Sending hugs and positive thoughts for the best possible outcome for you and your family.

Seems he is a musician who asked his fans to vote for his name: "A social media plea from Arkells’s lead singer Max Kerman, to have his name emboldened on one of 10 city of Hamilton snowplows, worked. An entry based on the Hamilton musician’s name garnered the most votes in a campaign by the transportation operations and maintenance team to pick monickers for its first annual “Name The Plow” initiative."

The first time I saw David Bradley and Timothy Spall they were playing really creepy characters in the 1998 BBC version of Our Mutual Friend, and their performances blew me away. They're probably best known for the Harry Potter movies (Bradley as Filch and Spall as Wormtail), but their performances really stand out to me in everything I've ever seen them in. David Thewlis is another actor who simultaneously disappears into a role and totally stands out. And Judy Dench is a goddess — the other day I was watching this little clip of her on the Graham Norton show; Graham joked that Dench is a "Shakespeare jukebox" and asked her to recite a little something. She's just sitting there on the couch on a talk show laughing and joking around, and then suddenly she's reciting a sonnet off the top of her head that had the audience dead silent and me in tears.

It's legal for tourists and is served in bars, restaurants, and hotels that cater to tourists. I assume that's where they'd be using the glacier ice. It's also possible to get a special license that allows you to purchase bottles of alcohol from designated providers.

We all got the Novavax booster. My kids have a ton of exposure and are not especially cautious — no masking, no distancing, and frequently in crowded, enclosed spaces, including college classrooms (both kids), a full-time job (DD), bars & restaurants (both kids), daily team practice (DS), and multiple competitions with thousands of people from all over the US plus many flights, airports, hotels, and taxis (DS). None of us have caught covid, although we all know lots of people who have.

What is the rest of this story???

I had zero help from anyone (including my then-DH), even after a C-section. DS was an extremely anxious, clingy, colicky baby who nursed pretty much around the clock and insisted on being held 24/7, so I got very very little sleep. My MIL lived 3 hours away and was a crazy alcoholic who recommended putting vodka in a baby bottle to make DS stop crying (because it worked so well for her 2 boys!), and my own family lived on another continent and we were estranged anyway. Also, we were living in an old, drafty, fixer-upper farmhouse in the middle of nowhere that I was slowly renovating myself. That was a pretty tough period of my life! If/when DD has kids, I will do anything and everything I can to make her life easier, and will provide whatever help she wants for as long as she wants it.

Two things most of the scammers who push the "carnivore diet" insist on are (1) eating "nose to tail" and (2) only eating grass-fed and grass-finished meat plus wild game. Grass-fed and finished meat is very expensive and it's also harder to acquire the grass fed organ meats that are supposedly crucial to the "success" of the diet. So when it goes badly for people, they can say "Well, were you eating raw or minimally cooked liver? Were you eating heart and kidneys and pancreas and brain? No? Well that's why it didn't work." And then they can sell you supplements of freeze-fried organ meats. No human culture has ever lived on an exclusive diet of red meat, and the few groups we know of that come even close to that (like the Masai and Samburu) have evolved specific mutations that protect them from the super high levels of cholesterol that inevitably develop on that diet. If you look at contemporary hunter gatherers, as well as evidence for the true "Paleolithic diet," the evidence actually points to a diet that was low in meat and VERY high in fiber (like 100g/day or more). Most of the influencers who push the carnivore diet have not been on it very long and are also nearly all relatively young, super fit men who work out several hours a day and who can currently get away with the super high levels of LDL cholesterol that inevitably develop. There's a reason you don't see lots of healthy 70 yr olds who've been on a strict carnivore diet for 30 years. One of the originators of the carnivore diet is Paul Saladino, who wrote The Carnivore Code. Saladino is a psychiatrist with zero background in nutrition and the book is full of misinformation and outright fabrications. And to top it off, he is no longer carnivore because he started feeling really ill on the diet and having heart problems (not surprising since his cholesterol level was over 500!), although of course he still sells his books and supplements. And the guy who runs Saladino's supplement business is a total con artist who was known online as The Liver King; he claimed he got his huge bodybuilder physique purely from eating a carnivore diet with tons of raw liver, but he was outed last year for taking a huge list of steroids — like $10K worth of steroids every month. I agree with you that it's a very dangerous diet in the long term (especially if your friend is overweight and has high cholesterol to begin with), but it might be OK to use as a short-term elimination diet if she primarily focuses on (skinless) chicken and other very lean meat, and takes a really good, comprehensive multivitamin. Paul Saladino eats white rice now, as well as berries, so if she's determined to "do carnivore" you can tell her that the guy who wrote The Carnivore Code says it's fine to eat white rice and berries. Then after a couple of weeks, if she feels better she can start adding low FODMAP plants and see how it goes. Having said that, if you can persuade her to try Brooke Goldner's anti-inflammatory green smoothie program instead (starting slowly and building up to that level of fiber), I think that would be MUCH more likely to have a positive effect on her. At least Goldner is a proper doctor with a background in nutrition, she cites genuine scientific research rather than anecdotes and totally fake claims about our "ancestral diet," and she also cured her own lupus with the program.

Preschoolers are literally my favorite humans, and I really miss being around them. DD says she would like to start a family in the next 4-5 years, and I cannot wait to have a preschooler to play with and cook with and read stories to. They are amazing, wonderful, crazy little aliens and I love them so much.

I love packing cubes, and as others have said I will never go back to packing without them. I've done multiple 2-week, "carry-on only" trips to Europe with 2 kids, where we were changing hotels almost daily, and the cubes make it super easy to repack each day before leaving for the next city (just pop the packing cube "drawers" back in the suitcase "dresser"). Each person has a different color set of cubes, so they can be distributed in the most efficient way without getting things mixed up, and the compression allows you to pack a lot more in a small space.

That would have been late 60s, and we were dirt poor, so breakfast was whatever cereal was cheapest that week with milk that was half store-bought milk and half reconstituted powdered milk. Lunch would be either PBJ or just grape jelly on the cheapest white bread from the outlet store, and a thermos of KoolAid. Sometimes I'd get a small apple or a banana, but often it was just a sandwich and Koolaid. Dinner was usually some form of cheap meat (like "cube steak") overcooked to shoe leather, with either white rice or potatoes, and canned veg (usually string beans or peas). Sometimes we'd just have pancakes for dinner if my mother ran out of grocery money before the end of the month. The only local fast food place at that time was Burger Chef, and we could only eat there on our birthday.

Another vote for the InstantPot. I use it all the time for beans, brown rice, soups, chili, curries, etc. Homemade lentil soups and dals, chili and other bean dishes, rice dishes, soups, steelcut oatmeal, etc., are all cheap, healthy, filling meals, and take very little time in the IP. And you can find an InstantPot recipe online for pretty much anything you'd normally cook on the stove. I don't eat meat, but my kids do, and I can get a week's worth of meals for them out of a $5 Costco rotisserie chicken by cutting off all the meat and then using the carcass to make nearly a gallon of really good, rich broth for practically free. I keep a stasher bag in the freezer with veggie trimmings, mushroom stems, etc, and then throw those plus any past-their-prime veg in the IP with the chicken carcass and some garlic and herbs and a splash of vinegar. Set timer for 120 minutes, let cool, then strain into half-gallon canning jars. Most of the broth and the white meat goes into a huge batch of chicken soup; the dark meat gets shredded and used for burritos, added to pasta or curry, made into BBQ sandwiches, etc., and the rest of the broth gets used for homemade ramen and other noodle dishes.

People spend less on food than they did decades ago because they're eating way more ultraprocessed food, which is cheaper than fresh: "73% of the US food supply is ultra-processed, and on average ultra-processed foods are 52% cheaper than minimally-processed alternatives." (source)

That is a terrific update in every way!

I saw the news story yesterday morning, soon after it happened, and there was an interview with a mother who said she was frustrated and upset that she couldn't find out where her son was, and then she said he was a 6th grader and I just felt sick thinking he was likely the one who was killed and she didn't know it yet when she was being interviewed. Imagine kissing your 6th grader goodbye as he leaves for school, in a "safe" little town in rural Iowa, and the next time you see him is in the morgue. The issue goes so far beyond gun control, though. We live in a culture that increasingly sees violence and revenge as understandable and even admirable behavior. The people who attacked the Capital and assaulted police on January 6 are still hailed by many as heroes and "political prisoners." We have sitting members of Congress calling for the execution of people they disagree with. We have politicians and media figures harassing, doxxing, and encouraging retaliation against judges and prosecutors and election workers, who are getting death threats in unprecedented numbers. A significant percentage of the US population lives in a media bubble that tells them all day every day that they are under attack and they should be outraged and seething with anger about it, and everything wrong with their lives is the fault of others — particularly those from other races, religions, and political parties. Give all those angry people easy access to guns, and here we are. Mass shootings may be the most visible and newsworthy manifestation of it, but many more people get shot every day just for pissing someone off in traffic, or turning around in the wrong driveway, or getting a better Christmas present. I read a news story yesterday about two guys who got into an argument in an elevator and they pulled out their guns and killed each other. It's like certain segments of society purposely opened the cultural gas valve and then handed out matches to every pissed off person who wants them. We can (and should) try to regulate who can carry matches, and what kind/how many, but unless we fight back against those who control the gas valve, not much will change.

Ladapo literally referred to covid vaccines as "the anti-Christ" on Steve Bannon's podcast yesterday: "I think it probably does have some integration at some levels with the human genome because these vaccines are honestly, they’re the anti-Christ of all products. ... You know, it’s just complete disrespect to the human genome and the importance of protecting it and preserving it. And that is our connection to God." The recent metanalysis linked upthread found that 3 or more vaccine doses reduce the risk of long covid by 69-73%, and a new study from the Netherlands indicated that the XBB booster was 70-73% effective against hospitalization and ICU admissions in people over 60 — and yet the person in charge of public health policy for the state with the highest percentage of seniors wants to deny them access to the one thing proven to significantly reduce both hospitalizations and long covid, based on a nonsensical mashup of pseudoscience and religion. There's also a new metanalysis out of France indicating an 11% increased risk of death from treating covid with hydroxychloroquine, and they estimate that HCQ may have caused an additional 12,000 deaths in the US alone. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, of the "Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance," who testified to Congress that ivermectin was a "miracle drug" and falsely claimed that the "protocol" they developed was vastly more effective than standard treatments, have now been stripped of their board certification. Their paper was retracted after the hospital where they did the trial released the actual data, showing that patients on their protocol had significantly worse outcomes than those getting standard care. Yet the FLCCC is still promoting and prescribing an ivermectin-based protocol for covid — and now they're pushing it for flu and RSV as well. These idiots are literally killing people with misinformation. It's infuriating.

Every bit of food you eat contains the DNA of that organism — and some of the food we eat even contains the DNA of rodents and other humans. Our bodies contain more bacterial DNA than human DNA, including bacterial DNA circulating in the blood of healthy humans. Adenoviruses and other DNA viruses infect humans all the time — and those are actively replicating organisms, not barely detectable traces of DNA fragments. If the mere presence of fragments of foreign DNA in the human body resulted in integration with human DNA and changes to the human genome, we wouldn't exist. The fear-mongering over remnant DNA fragments in covid vaccines is on the same level as the nonsense about magnetism and 5G, and is being pushed by the same sources.

Not gonna happen — the entire FL State Board of Medicine was appointed by DeSantis (and 8 of the 14 members were campaign donors).

I think what people are trying to tell you is that if you're convinced you can't possibly be happy without a man, you may be sending signals you're not consciously aware of. If you're finding that all the men you meet "flake" on you after a short time, they may be getting a vibe of neediness or desperation that scares them off. If you focus on being as happy and content as you can be with yourself, then you are more likely to attract the kind of guys you are interested in.

FL Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has called for a halt to the use of all mRNA vaccines in FL, claiming that they are contaminated with foreign DNA and can alter human DNA and become part of the human genome. Ladapo gained notoriety as part of the "Amerca's Frontline Doctors" group, along with Simone Gold (who served 60 days in prison for her role in the January 6 insurrection and who is currently being sued by her own organization for embezzling millions of dollars) and Stella Immanuel (who claims gynecological problems are caused by sex with demons and that most world leaders are demon clones who drink blood). He has been investigated for falsifying reports about the dangers of vaccines and lying about working with covid patients at UCLA. So of course DeSantis decided he was the most qualified person to serve as the state Surgeon General.