I think it’s systemic for sure; but also true that the only thing you can directly control is your own choices, so maybe this is a sort of hopeful take?

But like, what sort of choices are gonna lead you out of poverty, if you land there? I got out with school and then job, but does that even work anymore? Crime, maybe but that would take so much intelligence to pull off it is usually the realm of the already rich. I know a guy whose sister did topless dancing and was so good at saving the money she bought a house with it, and went to school after that, but that seems a one-in-a-million story.

I do think individual choices can send you TO poverty, but can’t really see how they can get you out, it’s more luck than choice.

That one doesn’t help them, though. I just mean the dogs are all scratching up everyone’s floors, but then they declaw the cats? I can get a couch cheaper than getting the floors refinished. And puppies CHEW stuff too. Our dogs have done more damage than our cats.

We would never consider it because we had kids and dogs and the cats needed their claws. But yes it should be banned. We don’t declaw dogs.

I wish we’d trained them to sit still to have them trimmed, as now the kids are grown and dogs not puppies either, but it’s no big deal. Just don’t get expensive furniture.

Sure, but we also drank in parking lots because there was nothing to do, had guys physically grabbing at us instead of just yelling stuff, got bullied in school more, and the violent crime rate was something like 10x what it is now. Oh, and our friends were dying of AIDS as well. And the bay was polluted, and downtown was so dead we could walk around it like a ghost town.

I will never understand nostalgia. There are good things and bad things about every time. But even with the fuckers trying to pull us backwards now, there has been progress.

No. Boobs are luck or money. Ass is work, dedication, commitment.

I just hope we don’t slide into another Prohibition, honestly. Between people who don’t drink because health, and the social conservatives who want a fundamentalist theocracy, we are squeezed.

For me, it’s money - I finally have a good job AND a husband with a good job, and over time have accumulated a collection of booze to use for cocktails. And if we want to go out for a drink it won’t bankrupt us. I practice moderation, one drink 3-4 times a week but never more than one, plus two months off each year, and really like that much drinking, feel good physically.

Weed is like that for me, I can’t find the high at all, just feel stupid and tired and annoyed. It is so unpleasant. Tried a few times over the years and nope.

This would then apply to all religions, correct?

She is so messed up. Religious marriage is separate from state licensing of relationships. Religion can discriminate away, but the state serves all its people.

She can’t argue she was acting on behalf of the state, and literally says it was based on her personal beliefs how can she then argue she has no personal liability?

I think that firing her would have been the better answer though, if she won’t do the job then fire her and hire someone without a conflict.

Yeah, no. I don’t want to divorce but this would force my hand. We were two separate -for-legal-purposes-households living in the same house before, can be again.

Those who disregard history will be doomed to repeat it.

By that standard, I ought not be able to use the card to buy booze (might give it to a minor or use for a Molotov Cocktail) a gun (obviously could use for crime) , and probably a million other things they let people buy with cards.

Not just couples. I was aghast to learn that my fellow parents at work track the location of their teenage kids. All of them, except me. What the fuck? If I want to know where they are I text and ask.

What’s more - half of them also have it turned on in the other direction.

This is crazy to me. I want my kids to grow into adults and I’m not going to surveil them all the time. I think a kid of teen age has some reasonable expectation of privacy. We are close, I have a good relationship with my kids but not THAT close, I don’t need to know if you stopped at Wawa on your way home.

Humboldt Fog is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted, and it’s from the U.S. Cabot Cheddar I would compare favorably to other cheddars, we have some good cheeses here.

Parmesan though? I would just buy less & still get the reggiano. Sometimes I just stand by the display and smell it, it is so good.

He is having a bad hair day.

Could be, sure. But also might not. That’s not really something we can know now, but I think we can know that a pyramid scheme is unsustainable. The price of less polluting renewable energy is falling fast, for one thing. I personally don’t think the big population is all bad, so many people means more good people too. So much technological progress.

I get this, but we can’t have an infinitely expanding population, at some point it will have to stabilize, and there has to be the glut of old people at the beginning of that. People are aging more slowly than in the past, at least, even if living longer more of those years are good and can be productive.

I don’t get this. Not even high school girls find high school boys attractive. How could a grown woman? And what’s with the language, the word is raped or sexually abused/assaulted, 16 year old here is assumed unable to consent to sex with any adult.