SoftTalker

The current belief seems to be that the future is going to need a lot fewer people.

Except your dating pool is limited to Facebook users.

It can also be a strong compatiblity signal. For example a person who likes to travel and a person who likes to stay home are not going to be happy together.

What would really be good is if more couples went through premarital counseling to help them figure out if they have long-term compatibility or if they are just currently infatuated with each other. Infatuation can go on for years by the way, with the conflict only surfacing after there are kids and then divorce gets messy.

IIRC the fuel leaks on the ground were because the sheet metal was all fit rather loosely to allow for expansion in flight. At the speeds it would fly, the skin got quite hot.

Mercury vapor street lights are pretty harsh too. Sodium vapor lamps are a much more pleasant yellow-orange.

Yep. I'd never have a large battery like that in my house. Outside, a safe distance away, maybe.

Same for the IRS giving bad tax advice.

Just switch to a better insurer. Unlike health insurance, homeowners insurance is available from a huge number of providers that are all in a competitive market, and you can go with a big name like State Farm or go to an independent agent and shop the market.

Never heard of this happening. It's weird anyway because roofs are something you're expected to maintain and are pro-rated. If you have storm damage to a 20 year old roof, your insurance is only going to pay for the estimated remaining life, not the full cost of a new roof.

If the roof is beyond end-of-life they probably won't pay anything, as it's a predictable cost of owning a home not an unexpected loss which is what insurance is for. Same reason they won't pay to have a tree taken down just because it could fall and cause damage. You're supposed to maintain your property; insurance is for losses beyond normal wear and tear/maintenance expense.

Maybe different but where I live you can certainly shop the rental market and pay less if you'll accept an older building, without modern updates. You'll have a Formica countertop not a granite one. You'll have basic appliances not stainless steel. You'll have carpet and not hardwood laminate floors. You won't have a pool or exercise room or party room. Your address won't impress anyone. But you'll pay hundreds less per month in rent.

If you're shopping via Instacart that alone is a huge signal that you'll pay for convenience and you're already price-insensitive.

Go to the supermarket and put your own items in your own cart. You'll pay the same price (the one marked on the shelf) as everyone else that way.

DUI in the 1970s was just not as much a worry. The BAC limits were higher and enforcement was lax. Driving after a few drinks, as long as you weren't totally blotto, was pretty common.

High school sports, yes Friday night is the standard time I think across the USA. Has been as long as I can remember, or at least as long as schools had outdoor lighting on the fields.

Pretty much my experience. My pre-teen childhood was the 1970s. My parents had dinner parties or cocktail parties at home at least a few times a year, and so did most of their friends. We often had a sitter for the night while they went to these gatherings. Some time towards the end of the decade, and certainly in the 1980s, this pretty much stopped. I asked about it once and my mother said that hosting these gatherings was a lot of work and fewer and fewer of their guests ever reciprocated, so they just stopped hosting as well. I do think that they did it mostly out of obligation or "just the proper thing to do" and not because they particulary enjoyed it.

And if you're in the third group, but don't actually accept the invites, you will find yourself in the fourth group. People eventually stop inviting those who never show up.

The result is the only thing about exercise that I enjoy. It's the data, not the feelings. I don't like going to the gym. I don't like doing my exercises. I don't feel better afterwards (usually the opposite: I'm tired and sore). I don't compete or compare myself to anyone else. But I do like seeing that e.g. my bench press is 5 lbs better this week. That's the entire reward for me.

Yes this definitely happens. School events, or having a groups of kids who are together on a soccer team, brings a group of parents together. But in my experience they are relationships of convenience. I've never formed any friendships from this that have persisted after the kids got older, dispersed to other schools/teams or went off to college. Without that common focus (the kids) the adults realize they actually don't enjoy each other's company all that much.

Having kids gives people instant common experiences and things to talk about.

I could see it easily if it's a "catered" order e.g. specific numbers of each type of pastry, packaged carefully, etc. vs. just going down to a retail bakery and buying whatever they made that day and throwing it in a box.

> socializing itself is a skill that needs practice to improve at so it doesn't feel like as much work

So is playing basketball.

That's my theory too. When I was in college (late 1980s) the bars had dime beers. It was bottom-end lager and served in an 8 oz cup but still, going to the bars for a night could be done cheaply. Now a drink is $10 and you pay a cover charge even if there isn't a band performing.

Distill it down even further: everything online that promises any kind of reward is a scam.

And yet somehow education still doesn't seem to have enough funding, despite the lotteries raking in cash.

Hope you're including all the state governments and their lotteries in this assessment.

> accidental line cuts in Singapore result in 10-year prison sentence

I assumed it was something like that when I saw the graph for Singapore. They achieve the veneer of a perfectly clean and orderly society by punitive intolerance of anything else.

I'm on several email lists that serve communities like this. Email lists are unreasonably good for this sort of thing and it's too bad they fell out of favor.

Literally any other seller.

I try to go to manufacturers own online store if they have one. Or a local retailer. Or a specialty online seller. Or Walmart but they have third party sellers too so you have to avoid those.

If there's no payment ("consideration") there's generally no contract.

My dad liked to say that if I wasn't happy with the temperature then I could start paying the gas bill.

Even at $10/bottle, food is too expensive now for a lot of consumers to splurge on wine. I drink water with my meals almost exclusively now.

It's nothing to do with health concerns. It's the economy.