When I was nursing my first kid I squirted some milk out into a cup because the guys I lived with wanted to taste it, and it didn’t seem like a shockingly odd request. Also squirted it across the room into my ex’s mouth, like why not have fun with it while you can?

Would NOT have wanted my ex nursing like a baby though. No. Not wrong or anything just a turn off.

I always drive manual but my husband likes automatic. My kids learned on his car but my penultimate daughter drives mine to school now. I dunno, shifting seems easy to learn once you know how to drive in general - I learned it because everyone else was drunk one night so I had to drive home, when I was a teenager, and the drunk kid’s car was manual.

ETA: I let the school kids use the car and got myself an e-bike because their commute loop is much longer than mine. I have an enjoyable ride in to work. But tell them to baby the car because it may be my last gas-powered car and I will miss the stick shift. Have not had an automatic transmission car for 30 years now.

That’s a pretty healthy weight for that height. I agree you don’t want to lose though. And need energy for a physical job. Eat eat eat!

Anecdotally I have found the exact opposite to be true for my body. I got a job that required a short walk and stairs to get to and even that made a difference in how much I had to eat. Started jazzercise after my last kid and was confused because I thought I’d lost like 5 lb but I was having to buy new clothes because mine didn’t fit - I had dropped 25lb, and gotten underweight just from doing aerobic dance while my kids were in swim class a few times a week.

When I cannot work out, even if I control my diet I will gain, still inside a healthy weight but definitely gain.

It’s always activity that makes the difference for me.

House. But not in the suburbs. I’ve shared houses with lots of roommates, both rented and owned (well, with a mortgage) houses, in town not on the outskirts.

If the choice is apartment in the city or house in the suburbs, then apartment is the only choice because I don’t want to commute, want a lot of stuff around me not just miles of houses.

Here the increases are capped at 3% per year if you live in the house. I lived in a shitty house we bought for 35k in the 1990s crash, and property taxes when we sold it in the breakup 20 years later were still under 1k a year, though insurance was crazy high. With husband we had to buy a much more expensive house, there are no shitty ones for sale anymore, all are snatched by corps to flip and rent. So now it’s high but in 20 years maybe it will seem low again. Especially if the market crashes and it’s re-assessed more reasonably.

It’s just inflation, I do think someone owning a home costs the city in roads, trash, transit, other services, Is not crazy to tax on property ownership.

This is sort of what I saw in California - where I’m from, Hispanic people were “the white people”, and people descended from Africans were “the black people” and I wasn’t aware of any sort of prejudice against Asians, they got lumped under the big umbrella of “white” . But when I was in California it was more like black and white guys considered themselves Americans, all one thing, and discriminated against Mexicans and Asians.

It’s all made up, to keep people divided. Not to say there are no historical reasons reverberating still - institutional wealth comes from the past and slavery, so descendents of slaves have legitimate grievance- but the categories/rules of in groups and out groups and who is discriminated against are not the same all over the US.

This looks great, but I’m so confused by cooking sweet onions, they lose too much flavor because they are so mild. A white or yellow onion is sweeter when cooked, much better caramelization than a sweet onion. Love the idea of deglazing with orange liqueur and wine.

For every one making millions, there are millions making near nothing.

People at the top of every industry DO make that much. Think about the UHC guy, you don’t think he was pulling that much?

Inequality is baked in.

So much gin in general. I guess that’s the trend right now.

Whiskey and cold water is very good!

I think the paper plane & variations was my cocktail of 2024, but I also made a deal with a coworker that I would try to like wine if he would try more foods (I like food, didn’t like wine, he is so picky he went to Singapore and ate chicken nuggets, but likes wines) so 2024 I also found I do like some wines.

I got some crazy genius IQ score when I was a kid because I was very good at taking tests and read a lot, good with language. Just happened to be good at what they were testing.

If you like to do programming, create things, are curious and interested in things, you ARE NOT STUPID. Not everyone’s intelligence runs to language or something tested by those tests. They are not really tests of potential, and the only reason my mom got us tested, the only reason I got two of my kids tested, was to get us into the better classes in school because they will only do it as an accommodation for a learning difference in.the public schools here. My other kids went to schools that promoted them based on their performance in class, which makes so much more sense.

Now - my friend had a legit genius boyfriend and he was a raging asshole, I think because he had nobody who thought like him, he was alienated. But the problem was that he was an asshole, not that he was a genius. So as long as your partner is nice and you can talk to each other, there is no problem, don’t borrow trouble and don’t think of yourself as stupid.

What makes a protest illegal?

The second time I made a starter it “took”. Just regular unbleached all purpose flour and water. From there it was smooth sailing, it’s a lot easier than yeasted bread for me. Main things that help:

Always refresh the starter at least twice before making bread with it (so if you want to bake Saturday, refresh Friday morning then make the big starter on Friday night with some of that refreshed starter.)

Refrigerate the dough after it’s shaped. Untill it’s cold or even overnight. This does two things. Makes it possible to do the scoring, and cold dough into a hot closed cast iron pot will create steam that helps it rise.

Which leads to - bake it in a closed hot heavy pot. Commercial ovens can do things home ovens can’t. I do all sorts of baking with the starter but for “the sourdough” as the kids call it, the one that comes out like a $12 Artisan Loaf, baking it enclosed by the hot pan is the trick. I tip the cold dough out onto parchment, score it then use the parchment to carefully move it into the hot pot.

There is a sourdough community on Lemmy, they are a nice group and I’m sure would have more tips but those are mine.

On the other hand, our formerly quasi-municipal energy company is now owned by a Canadian conglomerate. I’d not mind unwinding that.

Like it or not, we are all connected across North America.

I bake fancy sourdough, grow vegetables, do landscaping (but not mowing) make great cocktails for people, ferment foods and drinks. Occasionally draw things for decorations.

On the other hand, we pay someone to mow, and also to clean the house every other week.

Ah the b’root! We have a heavy vertical axe that is shaped just like that and it is awkward to use but does something no other hand tool seems to be able to do. Stab stab stab and pry. The weight of it does help.

I had the original and now the 5. My kid got the same (5) and the battery was swelling. But the process to get a new one was smooth as silk, I had bought the insurance because that kid is hard on phones (they bought the phone but I am covering the insurance).

What was funny to me was we said “the battery is slowly exploding” and they said “mail it back in the packaging the new one arrives in” which was just a cardboard box. That can’t possibly be safe!

Universal diffuser for hotel hair dryer.

Normal is a range, not a point. Normal people still have anxieties and pains, there’s just a range that is considered normal anxiety, normal blues, everyone gets injured, sick, sad, or anxious some of the time. If you can still live your life most of the time it’s just considered normal and healthy.

I am pretty sure it would be abnormal to be able to feel amazing every day of your life, no matter what was going on.

And nobody wants to answer the phone, that’s a bad measure. But I do wake up feeling physically ok to good most every day, and get enough sleep, exercise, and family emotional and household support to do alright mentally most all the time too. Now at least. It’s not always been that way.

So I guess I’d define healthy as being ABLE to be physically and mentally healthy when the right outward conditions exist. If you have a good relationship, enough time for sleep and exercise and sex, a nutritious and enjoyable diet. Not that you can be healthy no matter what’s going on in your life, that’s a ridiculous standard.

My bulking food was always Triscuits and hummus. A lot of calories in a small package and not really unhealthy. Walnuts are also good for you and calorie dense.