Supply and demand, along with historic sexism.

• teaching (up to high school) has historically been predominantly women. And yes women used to be paid much less. That gap has narrowed a lot but “women’s work” still tends to pay less
• there are hundreds of thousands of teachers. There are huge numbers. There’s always another
• while it takes a lot to be a good teacher, it’s not so much to “teach”

So I think we have a history of low pay, the vast number militants against that changing, and to appearance anyone can be a “teacher”

Don’t get me wrong my family has significant history in the field and deep respect for the importance and to the huge impact a good teacher can make on someone’s future. But when my kid wanted to teach, after saying I would be so proud as would the vast array of ancestors, I added that you need to be aware of poor pay. To translate to video game, it’s doing life in hard mode

A more believable story might be blackmail/extortion. Why kill the source of income?

Have you ever watched the news? We have many highly publicized examples of rich people being addicted to drugs.

For fiction, I like the approach they took on the tv show House. Maybe not rich but certainly privileged enough to get away with an addiction that would have ruined anyone else’s life.

But maybe a good approach to your story is to imagine an unusual dealer:: a wealthy person is not visiting the neighborhood crack house. For example Michael Jackson’s addiction was fed by an actual doctor authorized to write prescriptions so his drugs were “legal”

IANAL obviously, but a game beta seems like the perfect legitimate use case for an nda. It’s time limited, very specific, you have legitimately volunteered.

NDAs are all different but ask yourself

• is this nda limited to a specific time period or is it indefinite?
• is it very specific to what it covers or generic enough that it say, prevents you from working? -was it a legitimate choice or mandated but an unequal power such as your employer?

If you have any such questions, you should definitely consult a lawyer before assuming

It’s meant to be scary. I really think a lot of ndas are abused exactly because they are scary. The problem is they are expensive and uncertain.

Their validity is by state and enforcement is through the courts. Is a specific nda enforceable in your state? Is the other party likely to enforce it legally? Can you afford to defend yourself?

Don’t get me wrong,there are also many legit and enforceable ndas, which makes things complicated

More like,print lots of money to give to defense companies and enrich themselves so they can gaslight the rest of us by claiming the numbers are good, the economy is great

I still find it hard to believe it could happen, and certainly dont want to be proven wrong. Probably helps that I wouldn’t be eligible.

So the average person is out of shape, overweight, and knows nothing about the military or how to use weapons. Army boot camp may be only 10 weeks, but you have a very unready population and war has gotten much more complicated than it used to be. I find it hard to believe even the war-mongering fools currently running the us, would get us into something big enough and long-running enough for a draft to make a worthwhile difference.

Look at Iran. They might have started a never-ending war, but the approach is to sit back and bomb it. That won’t lead to a draft

Stepping back a bit, what about Iraq? That’s a bigger question since I don’t think we have the readiness to do that again, and it did require a ton of people. But they never instituted a draft, and the buildup was far too quick for one to be useful. … although that was also an international presence and the current regime is making sure that will never happen again

Then we get to Putin. Look at everything he’s gone through to avoid a draft, despite getting his country bogged down starting an absolutely brutal war resulting in hundreds of thousands of Russians killed or maimed. We all make the agent krasnov jokes, but there’s far more in common from one tyrant to another than any of us like

As someone who used to live in places with very limited places to park, that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. Some do have driveways and there are side streets. It’s not the end of the world to have to park around the corner. (Assuming the side streets are less crowded than downtown Boston)

You don’t have to be religious to support people who are, just like you don’t have to cycle to support people who do. Both are community needs

I was actually going to jump on their side: that area is still very car centric and you need to be able to handle that while taking steps toward safe cycling and walkability. …… then the video was showing a mostly empty street where many of the houses had driveways, so no. They can suck it up and park in their driveway or around the corner like the rest of us

Or heck, that street is really wide. We have narrower streets with both a protected bike lane and parking

The church should have accomodations though, even if it means closing part of the bike lane sundays

It’s survival on the plains. You didn’t loose the race, you got eaten by a lion

Yeah, I stopped buying anything Welch’s for just this reason. Actually I’m not sure I ever started. When I bought juice, I always looked for some that had juice. Now that juice has entered a new phase of enshittication, it’s just not worth it, even for special occasions

I’ve been wondering that too. There are always co-workers but none I really connect to. Lots of parents but now that kids are grown there’s nothing in common.

Now I’ve really gotten into cooking but my kids are in college and I have no one to cook for. I have a smoker that can ditn30+ pounds of meat or 6 racks of ribs. Who’s hungry?

The is healthcare system is clearly a disaster but …. Since those drugs are not approved treatment for a health issue you have (your diabetes is under control), they have. Bit of an excuse. The real reason of course is that most of the population is overweight so they can’t afford to pay for everyone who needs it.

Can I suggest other strategies that may help you lose weight?

When I was planning to have kids I successfully lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for a decade! For me the key factors were doing it with my wife so we kept each other on track and food tracking. We joined weight watchers but it was the food tracking that made the difference for me and there’s many ways to do that. Even when you think you’re doing well you probably consume a lot more calories than you think, and it adds up. Food tracking can highlight this, identify where to make more effort. On the other side of things, losing weight requires following good habits over time: food tracking also helps you stay on track over time but this is also where peer pressure from someone else can really help.

Of course I’ve gained it all back now that my kids are in college but I did pretty well for their entire childhood, which was my motivation. I currently may have better nutritional habits than I did back then but I’m clearly way off in portion size and calories consumed

Maybe not as much as you think, but they’d have to reorganize for sure. Every tiny village could have a walkable center if they wanted to, so even in rural areas, you might have a decent part of the population living where cars are less necessary

On the other hand, Yosemite is an example where I believe they banned cars

Effing Pennsylvania is a state to avoid then. I don’t know whether they’ve changed anything but I did that a few years back and they said they weren’t allowed to sell me more than two sixpacks. While I don’t actually drink much, beer stores well for weeks to months and I had found a brewery I liked but haven’t been to since

There is no plausible situation where over 50% of people willingly decide to: … 2) live in a suburb or rural area

I’ve seen urbanism streamers claim that even in the US, we’re above 70% living in urban and suburban areas dense enough that transit makes sense. It is possible we could make transit useful for most of the population. We won’t. But we could

NL’s national rail company became essentially non-operational

Don’t forget the Internet and ability for some of us to work from home, which is a relatively recent change. If I depended on rail service and there was an outage, it would be no big deal since I can work from home

Highly depend on where you live. In the US especially, we had a lot of post-wwii growth designed around cars so a lot of places make anything else a challenge.

Cars may represent freedom and self determination, but can seem awfully limiting in a city with good walkability and transit, even in the US. When I lived in Boston, it was so much more freeing to walk out my front door and have the entire city accessible. More than that, since Acela and the airport were also accessible.

I never gave up my car though, between things like shopping and visiting people outside the city. But now that we have options like delivery, ride share, e-bikes, and hourly car rentals, those would be much easier.

But now I live in a suburb, and even here I walk a lot more than typical Americans. The key is older towns built out before cars. I live in the first ring of single family houses less than a mile from the town center. We have a “Main Street” shopping and restaurant area, a common, and train station. There’s also a trail Along the River and a rail trail through town that are easily accessible. Over pandemic my family started a tradition where every weekend we walked down to our favorite Pakistani restaurant, grabbed takeout, and ate dinner on benches on the town common.