I got an 8 day migraine after the second COVID shot. Nothing with the first and never anything from the flu shot. Nothing from COVID booster after that but this year I got the flu & COVID booster together, never doing that again, 4 day migraine.

Well I am progressive as fuck politically and somewhat crunchy lifestyle -wise. Garden, ferment things, have made bread exclusively from sourdough for about 15 years now, really enjoy fermented foods like kimchi and pickles and sauerkraut.

The other fermenter in our family is the literal racist uncle, he makes incredible homemade foods, raised me a turkey for Thanksgiving one year, even.

Both of us came to it from a culinary background, not a political one, a way to get good food. I don’t think it maps well, but there is certainly a subset of crunchy lifestyle people who started out progressive and were coopted by the right wing.

Well hopefully the world will figure this out, or population On a small scale it’s so obvious that soil needs to be managed for a healthy garden or small farm. Big farms just throw down fertilizer (which was a world changing improvement to agriculture) and don’t do enough to keep the soil alive and healthy. The headline “poor soil forces fertilizer use” is sort of backwards as it’s the industrial farming that’s sucked the life out of the soil.

All insurance. I have paid enough to homeowners to buy another house, with no claims. Health insurance we’ve had maybe 5 years where we got out more than we paid in, maybe. Could certainly have bought a dozen cars with what I’ve paid car insurance, net of what they have paid to or for me.

All these you can only win by losing but all are worse for being for-profit rather than just risk pooling.

Health insurance I explain to people as: we are paying in taxes for the most expensive groups (old, poor, sick) plus paying for the work insurance premiums, plus paying most of the cost of seeing a doctor for anything except the annual wellness visit. It would be cheaper to cover everyone with the national plan. But everything we pay, is paying someone else’s salary, right? All those people want it to stay like this.

No. A priest, sure. They should only offer religious marriage to those who conform to the religion, whatever it is.

State licensing of the relationship, if offered at all, needs to be offered without discrimination. That is separation of church and state. An official of the state must officiate according to the law, not their own personal beliefs.

Anytime we get a duck I spend a long time skinning it and rendering the fat, because holy crap it is so good, and the de-fatted duck meat is easier to work with anyway. I do also render lard if we have pig, and other than that keep butter, olive oil and avocado oil on hand. Not really for health, any of that, it’s to have good food but I do think less processed is likely healthier.

Chicken fat, schmaltz, is good for cooking too - put 4 salted, skin on, bone in chicken thighs in a cold iron skillet skin side down, turn on the stove and let them cook until the skin is brown, flip and finish, remove, then into the hot pan chopped greens, saute them in the chicken fat with a little white wine, so good.

Beef tallow is not delicious, though. It just doesn’t taste good.

That sucks. If you want an adoptive mom, I have lots of kids, what’s one more?

Also this 53% number is fucking with me. I know so many white women and only one (70 years old) would vote for trump.

What are you on about? Why should people who don’t want kids be forced to forgo sex?

If someone anticipates birth control being outlawed, stockpiling it is a reasonable response.

I would recommend an IUD though.

Not sure. For me, I have a large family, and do yoga classes in person, work at the office, not from home, go to get coffee always at the same place so see the same people, and have need for more alone time than I ever get, so it hasn’t been an issue yet. Transportation would help a lot here. I used to see old people at aerobics classes downtown when I did those, so group exercise I do think is valuable.

Not to get political but not sure what will happen now with the large family, as Florida gets ever more backwards the kids may get more distributed in other places. We have a house I love in a neighborhood I love, in a blue-leaning city, and don’t want to abandon it. They are second generation but instead of the progress I saw during my adulthood and their childhood, but as they reached adulthood now the pendulum is swinging back.

Having seen my mom, and now the mom of my ex, devolve into dangerous drivers, I will trust my kids on this. If they say I am not driving well, I will not drive. Luckily everything is nearby, I haven’t needed to drive much since we moved close to my work.

Walking distance to hospital, doctor, restaurants, dentist, bank is online, driving has become a convenience not a need, thankfully.

We need to give road tests every 5 years or so, to everyone who holds a driving license. My road test was literally more than 40 years ago, how do they even know I can still drive safely?

Good thing we have lots of kids, so I as usual cancel out my husband’s vote (if he even bothers this time, R but not enthusiastic about Trump) and all the kids align with me. It may not matter here, with the influx of racist northerners, but who knows?

ETA I have at least one who was not going to vote when it was the two old guys but will vote for Harris.

I miss when my gay friends all called their partners “lovers”.

As in literally if they were introducing their boyfriend, it was never “this is my boyfriend Chris” it was “this is Chris, my lover.”

No idea if it was just a local thing but it was just so, well, lovely.

Better to leave your phone at home (or better, in the pocket of someone who lives in your house and takes the same daily path as you do) if you are doing something that’s currently illegal. Or in any situation where you are doing something legal that the cops are likely to break up.

The juror going home thing is terrifying but I don’t think the government would be after you for fulfilling your civic duty.

Florida is talking about a state windstorm pool (risk pooling, not gambling pool) like the national flood insurance. I guess that would be the compromise, but the insurance industry here really is plagued with fraud. The companies keep folding then coming back, I can only assume they are lining the pockets of the legislature with our money.

In the years I’ve owned a house (about 30) I have paid them enough that if I’d banked it instead at a reasonable rate of return I could buy another house. But have made no claims. So they are charging like every house will be knocked down once every 30 years, I guess, but again, my previous house and that whole neighborhood from 1925 is still standing.

Even making it a state plan would work better in Florida than what we currently have. They let private insurers cherry pick the less risky houses, and cover whoever is left with the state plan. Then those private for profit insurers take the premiums, pay big bonuses to themselves, dissolve the company and leave, rinse and repeat. It’s a scam.

New houses are required to be built to code for hurricane force wind here, the “post-Andrew” building code is good. Most of us don’t have new houses though, my house is from the 1940s, and the one I moved from is 100 years old this year.

We do have building code, what we don’t have is anyone willing to say no to developers. Sprawl, less land to absorb water. I see houses being built on seasonal wetlands, they fill them and raise 'em then the rest of the neighborhood floods in the rainy season. Nobody should be able to do that.

It’s the dental of home insurance.

We carry flood insurance, it’s cheap if you are not in a flood zone.

But the home insurance in Florida is mostly just a scam to suck money out of the state. Company is incorporated, funnels money from policies into the pockets of the rich, then they go bust and fail to pay claims. Then the same people start all over with a different name. While cherry picking policies and leaving the riskier for the state to insure.

If Florida would kick all the insurers out and put everyone on Citizens it would be better. I really only feel “insured” when we fall onto the state plan; and if I had a spare half million you bet I’d self insure and get an umbrella policy for liability, not keep paying those assholes for nothing.

I agree, but it is possible to prep ingredients without cooking them ahead of time, that can help. Soup is different because it’s literally better tasting reheated, portion it and freeze it! But for other foods, you can (for example ) make chicken one day and quesadillas with chicken the next day and a quick soup or stir fry with the rest of it the following day, planning like that can save both time & money.

I do work, exercise, and cook supper every day, and yeah it is sometimes exhausting, I just like to eat things that I like, so I do the cooking.

Obesity tracks with this. Maybe not the direct cause, there might be some underlying cause for both, but excess fat absolutely does increase your risk of cancer. I’m pretty sure being big in any way does - if there is more of you, more cells, more chance of mutation.

New College WAS a school where kids sort of designed their own major, did a project or thesis and defended it. The Veggie Bus that ran on used oil from McDonald’s fryers was a New College project. It was good for hyper achievers who didn’t fit into a canned curriculum. I don’t know that I’d call it “liberal” but it was progressive and challenging.

This apparently annoyed the fuck out of the governor for some reason. Maybe he just doesn’t like the idea of smart weirdos. But it’s those people who move us forward, the smart ones who don’t fit in.