Dusting cloths: tear old cotton flannel sheets into squares. You can do this to sheets in your own rag-bag, or buy sheets at the charity shop. Old towels work well, too. They can be washed and re-used for quite a while. Old cotton knits work fine, if you don’t mind waving your dingy old tightie-whities and sweat stained tees around.
Anything soft and slightly fuzzy, and if the cloth alone doesn’t do the trick all you have to do is get it damp with plain water.
No, correlation does not mean there is a relationship. That’s the whole point behind “correlation does not equal causation.”
Read some of the ludicrous correlations people trot out to illustrate it. Two things occurring at the same time do not have to be related.
And no, I couldn’t use that meaningless population statistic to make the argument that oligarchs (lower case “o”) are destroying everyone else’s ability to have a family. Arguments require data, not correlations.
people who live longer take longer to pass on their house to their children; the older generation have also used housing as an investment vehicle and/or purchased second/holiday homes; and the elderly are typically the most likely to object to new housing developments, blocking their construction.
I don’t know anyone who inherited a house.
I don’t know anyone whose parents own more than one house.
I personally have objected to a large condo building that was planned on an unstable hillside with only a steep alley for access - cuz that shit was stupid in so many ways and a disaster waiting to happen.
Where is this huge population of wealthy old people who own multiple houses, and where are all these young people who are inheriting houses?
Just maybe we should be getting pissed at job insecurity, ruinous healthcare being used to chain workers, and falling wages for the source of wealth inequality…. Pretty hard to buy a house when your boss makes 500x what you do. (He’s making all that delicious money off you).
Aunts and Uncles (genetic or not) are of huge benefit to children. maybe you don’t have kids. But if your best friend has a kid and you become Uncle Meow for that kid, you’ve just increased the security and stability of that kid’s life. You now are another adult in their life who can protect that kid from social and financial disasters.
Maybe the way to look at it is “we all have fewer kids, and invest ourselves in the welfare of the kids around us.”
That makes it better, but I don’t want his normal cold, either. We all have a few masks lying around and tucked into pockets here and there these days. If one feels a cold coming on, toss a mask over your pie hole in public!
From the other side… If you are a woman with cancer, you quickly discover that everything is aimed at breast cancer patients. Women’s support group? Sorry, only for breast cancer patients. Women’s retreat weekend? Breast cancer patients only. Class on how to stay beautiful while you hair is falling out? For breast cancer patients.
The loss of a (limited usefulness) boob is seen as far more devastating and worthy of care and support than the loss of a lung, lobe of liver, bone, rectum, patch of skin, eye, etc.
And every damn thing - cards, flyers, books, pamphlets, posters - for women with any cancer is pink.
Yesterday while grocery shopping two men walked by as I was contemplating bread choices. One of them was saying, “yeah, it’s ok, I’ve got the sore throat but I don’t have the rest of the Covid symptoms yet.”
At that moment I really wished both he and I (and everyone else in the store) were wearing masks.
Perfect teeth tracks with the sense that everything must be eternally perfect and sterile and flawless. Not just people parts, but objects as well. Read reviews of people furious that the Apple Watch they bought developed tiny scratches after a year and Apple refused to replace it for free. Or the people pissed that their white shirt was stained after they spilled wine on it and demanding a refund, or that their 2 year old fleece sweater has pilled so something must be wrong with it so throw it away.
And yet these same people are struggling with the anguished desire to be unique and special. A crooked tooth is unique. A cleverly embroidered shirt hiding a stain is special. De-pilling a sweater takes work, but now you invested your time into your object and increased its value to you.
Is it a money thing? Only poor people have flaws? Only poor people own objects that show signs of wear or age?
There are several options on the west coast and southwest that won’t worsen your SAD. Yes, cost of living is high… but that’s because they are good places to live. You may not be able to afford a nice big house like you’d find in Minnesota, but you’d have a trade-off in weather and surroundings.
This reminds me of an article about journalism and the internet, from ages ago. A class was asked how they would research for a topic (it was some recent political event, I don’t remember). The class confidently answered “the internet.” The professor struggled to get them to understand that wasn’t enough. Yes, there is all kinds of stuff about this event on the internet, but how did it get there?. And more importantly, what is missing?
Sure, all the sexy AI stuff gives us goosebumps and sounds great. But how did it get there, and what is missing? Someone somewhere has to do the actual original work first, or it’s just making collages from the same library over and over and over again.
I wish I could find a piece I saw once, I think you would like it. It was a woman in a Pacific Northwest rainforest, dressed in vaguely sci-fi Salish clothing, on a path with subtle down-lights. There was a scene in the background of solar-punk techishness. I can’t remember all the details (which is why I’m having no luck finding it). It might have been on Reddit.
Hopefully someone will see this and remember it and be able to find the art for you!
I don’t understand how it is more ethical to create an embryo from a stem cell than to create one from a sperm and egg. Both are viable, neither is a person. How are they different?
(Keeping the stem cell version in vitro past the the age when it would need to implant isn’t really a solution/distinction because we can do the same thing with a sperm-and-egg version.)
Pictures and home movies from the 1970s are shocking. People were so much leaner then than now. And going further back, the silent movie actor “Fatty Arbuckle” was considered so fat it was his nickname, yet he wouldn’t look at all extraordinary today.
Seems like it’s the snacking culture, so much snacking “3 meals and 3 snacks” is normal. It didn’t used to be.
You can buy card stock that has local wildflower seeds embedded in it. The idea is when the person is done with the card, they plant the whole thing so the card decomposes and the seeds sprout.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fathead
In common North American usage “fat head” and “big head” imply hubris or pride, as well.