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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Well I am on the other side of this, I feel so fat even though objectively not overweight at all (BMI of 22, and pretty lean) because I was underweight a long time so in a relative sense I feel fat. I also feel better than I ever did when underweight, physically, and my bone mass is a little better (which is supposed to be impossible to achieve at my age) and that pisses me off, I want my healthiest weight to be the size I like better.

    I don’t think it’s good for you to enable them in losing weight, no. Unless you are 100% sure they are not falling into disordered eating. It’s their body, you can’t control that but it’s fine not to support or help them with it.

    As someone prone to eating disorders - the suggestion to work out is solid. I find it much better to focus on athletic goals and just let form follow function. It’s good to be able to feel good about what my body can do.







  • Famous is different from working. I have known plenty of artists who just hustle and make a living - singing telegrams, weddings, bar gigs, teaching, they make enough to get by. They are working musicians.

    Then there are all those bands who plug on, famous but not wildly so, I think they are making enough to live on just their band earnings.

    Then a very few who get rich. Mostly those are kids of connected people, not always but often.

    It’s the same with any entertainment industry, right? Average earnings on onlyfans is something like $3 a month.

    And there is just So Much Talent in the world, and people have limited entertainment budgets.



  • I think people who think the past was better are all white men, and it’s because they didn’t have to think about other people. They want to go back to ignorance.

    He literally says that to you? The 1950s? Have you asked him specifically why? My mom had a great time in the 1950s and no way would she ever have wanted the world to go backwards to that time. She recognized, as she became older, how bad things were for her mom, for black kids (her school was segregated), for so many people.

    The only reason I can imagine wanting to go to the past, is to try to make this future better, but I know better than to fuck with the timeline and can’t imagine I’d be able to do anything about it anyway.




  • English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English is harder than, say English to Spanish or Arabic because the sounds are so very different - I am sure I simply can’t hear some of the different sounds in tonal languages, and had a friend who moved here from Taiwan when she was so young she learned better in English than Taiwanese but still she could not hear the difference between ear and year.

    I don’t think it’s impossible but do think it’s unusual. My dad was bilingual English and Spanish and I wish my parents had done the “one speaks English one speaks Spanish” language immersion but we only spoke English at home.


  • My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.

    To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it’s about an hour walk to either of those.

    The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.



  • I looked at my paycheck (US) vs. one of our Swedish colleagues when I was doing our payroll, and yes, the tax was about 45%, my federal withholding is much less but once you add in the deductions for 401k (unsecured pension scheme) and health insurance (that doesn’t cover anything except annual wellness until we pay in 8,000 USD) and social security (the fed pension being paid now to old people, and their healthcare) my deductions also leave about 55% of my pay for net pay.

    The part I object to most in terms of cost here is the healthcare - my deductions may mirror the Swede but I don’t think they also have to cover the first 8k of cost out of pocket.

    (Edit - it was Sweden not Denmark)


  • I don’t mind really, just wish it was used for more things that helped society. And it needs to be a little more progressive, though it is the most progressive of the taxes we have here.

    My ex MIL, who literally used WIC and welfare when she was a single mom, and leveraged that into a nursing degree, rails against welfare now and doesn’t want her taxes going to that, doesn’t want to pay. Not even in a pull the ladder up after herself way, she just refuses to admit she benefited from it.





  • My homemade sourdough costs more than store bread, but not more than fancy sourdough bakery bread. I can’t buy flour wholesale, don’t make that much bread. But when it’s good it’s better than any bakery bread I’ve had. So, better, probably not cheaper.

    Home cooked meals vs. restaurants does save money.

    Gardening - most things work out cheaper than buying, though as I am a salaried worker I am not allocating labor cost.

    If it were to be compared to doing 1.5x pay overtime, then working more would make more money than we could save by doing cooking and gardening, it would always work out better to spend that time at work. But then the health impact of doing all that work and always eating out would have to be factored in.