Wow… I feel like “substance over form” contradicts a core sovcit belief: That there are specific magic phrases and processes that must be executed precisely to be valid. The systems in place intentionally hide, obscuring, and otherwise make it as difficult as possible for the sovcit to perform the rituals correctly. But if they do, they will “win”.

Of course, leave it to a sovcit to find another contradictory concept to shove into the rest of their contradictory beliefs.

Hello, 30-years-ago me. My sister and I had a similar age gap. We had an amazing relationship/friendship throughout our childhood and it was really hard when she left for college. The good news is that we still have an amazing relationship and she is still the best sister I could ever ask for.

It’s a funny thing that when we are young, everything feels so permanent when in reality, your life is changing incredibly quickly. When you get hit by something like this, it’s uncomfortable as fuck to see that reality. Change is hard, but it also leads to and comes along with growth… and growth is good.

I don’t say this to be dismissive of what you are going through, only to say that change happens. It is a part of life that we learn to deal with because it can’t be avoided. What is happening in your life probably hurts. It’s probably scary. The uncertainty sucks. All those feelings are valid.

She will be farther away. You will see her less. She is going to be incredibly busy at times. But she is also there for you and you two will still have each other and have time together.

Of course, I have no guarantees — your life isn’t mine. But for me, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed (it’s easy to imagine the worst). Just like it was awesome having an older sister as your friend while at home, it’s really awesome to have an older sister in college to talk to and visit get to experience bits of that life with.

Close up

The OPCA document is fabulous. It drips with disdain for all of these wonky sovcit arguments while thoroughly dismantling them.

Wow. I just want to say thank you for such a thoughtful, informed, detailed response. You are an amazing person!

On this train of thought…

OP, if you don’t make it clear that you want to date her, then make sure you accept the ambiguity of the situation and that she might have no idea that you want to date her (romantically). It can feel like your interest is obvious if you ask her to hang out one-on-one. But she may not immediately see that and could accept, assuming that you are strictly going as friends.

It’s totally ok to ask her to hang out, just don’t build up the situation to be more than it is. If she says yes, you’ll have to play it by ear. Maybe she’ll consider it a date. Maybe she’ll consider it a strictly-platonic hangout. Or maybe somewhere in between.

Edit: and if it goes well —even if it just ends up being a platonic hang out—I’d lean toward specifying “date” when you ask her to go out again.

Or use a scale.

Elevated blood pressure is a common alcohol withdrawal symptom, but it looks like 9 days may be a long time for this symptom to last. As you’ve already seen from others, talking to a dr is probably a good idea at this point (if you have the means to do so).

People use words in different ways. You will find varying definitions of propaganda. Some people will call any information produced by a government propaganda. Some people will only call that information propaganda if it appears to have a notable bias. Some will only call the info propaganda if it contains outright lies.

You seem to want to define propaganda as any information produced by a government designed to pursuance people of something. Most people are not going to be against that kind of information (or at least not strongly against it). I’m pretty sure most people that say they are against propaganda view propaganda as information that is misleading or an outright lie.

The problem here seems to be that you have taken the stance that propaganda simply means “persuasion”.

Yeah, the whole kids and inheritance thing is a really big sticking point. I saw your other comment about this being based on a discussion your family has had. The thing is, that even if your family was discussing jobs on the surface, if the people they are picking from are other family members (or at least people they actually know), their decisions are weighed by all their other knowledge and feelings about those people.

I can see you’re trying to figure out how much value people put on each of these particular career cicurmastances in isolation but kids and inheritance is just a terrible framing for that for the above reasons. As a framing exercise, I think the question would have needed to be framed in a way that puts the reader in a much more distant position. This could be something like:

An eccentric billionaire gives you the following list of people and tells you to choose one person from the list for him to give a million dollars to. The billionaire says you must make your decision based solely on the list. Who do you choose and why did you make that choice?

Still maybe not a great framing, but it helps alleviate some of the rejection of the premise.

Even accepting the premise that this inheritance is indivisible, their jobs are far from the most important factor.

The company promised at least 0.5% daily returns and people believed that? It doesn’t even seem like they described in any depth how they were generating those fantastical returns. The article says that investors lost 1.3b USD. I Sure, there are a lot of suckers out there but… 1.3b worth? ?? This shouldn’t shock me, I know.

(Edit: Corrected currency)

I think this is helpful context from the actual report (linked at the top of the WaPo article):

In 2022, half as many (47%) of adolescent girls and young women acquired HIV as in 2010. Even with this decline, we are not on track to meet our 2030 target to end new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women.

The global sex-distribution of new HIV infections among adolescents is driven largely by sub-Saharan Africa, which carries the overwhelming global burden of HIV. In 2022, 33% of older adolescents aged 15-19 years newly infected with HIV lived outside of the region. In the Middle East and North Africa region, the number of young people living with HIV has increased by 13% since 2010. In East Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, two thirds of new adolescent infections, age 10-19 years, occur in boys. Stigma, discrimination, societal inequalities and violence sabotage the efforts of adolescents and young people to protect themselves against HIV and other health threats. Young key populations are especially vulnerable.

There seems to be one or two specific platformers that you loved and you using that(those) specific game(s) to state that PS2 3D platformers were generally great and universally better than today’s platformers. One does not follow the other.

And you are taking your personal preference for a very specific art style and using it as your justification for calling these platformers “objectively superior”. You keep telling people to “prove” you wrong but no matter how many specific examples people give you, you are very strongly objecting based on your subjective preferences. We cant prove you out of your own particular desire for a particular game.

It really isn’t hard to be considerate of your neighbors. Sure, you have the right to stomp around your house. There is a lot of asshole behavior that is within your rights.

They should not do this without checking where the bed is supported on the floor. Your method only lifts the perimeter of the bed. It is very likely that the bed also rests on the floor down the center line of the bed or at other spots within the perimeter. If they only prop up the perimeter of the bed, it is liable to collapse in the center.

Just spitballing here, but the “dream job” question might also come down to the destruction of the middle class (and the recognition thereof). 20 years ago it looked a lot more like you could make a good living working for someone else, doing something interesting. Plus there was more trust that employers would “do right” by their employees. There were pensions and quality healthcare benefits.

Now all that (and the security it brings) has dissolved. It may not be Gen Z people wanting to make it big or be a celebrity, but a desire to live comfortably and seeing that they can’t trust an employer to let them do that. If the only way you can build security for yourself is by building a big pile of money, then people are going to seek that out.

Edit: and when I say that “20 years ago” these things existed, I don’t mean that they were still functioning like they did another generation earlier, but it was way better than it is now and there was less awareness of what was happening.

Gradation, color reproduction, and gaming performance are also important factors. There are a lot of “mid tier” TVs (and even some of the “premium” TVs) that can produce really dark blacks, bright whites, and vivid colors, but…

• Gradation: Mid tier and above non-OLED TVs have local dimming and other features to improve blacks and contrast. They tend to have dark blacks and very bright whites, but their performance in between is important too. You will find that many of these tvs are hard to impossible to calibrate to get even gradation between black and white. This leads to muddy grays and “crushed” blacks and whites. Crushed blacks means that very dark gray appears black so you lose detail. Crushed whites means the same on the white end. Additionally, local dimming can lead to “halo” effects in which when there is a quick transition from black to lighter colors, the black area has a halo around it.

• Color: In my experience, the colors are often off. Youll get really vivid colors in certain tones and more muted colors in others. This can lead to a picture seeming to have a tint to it. Skin tones, which we tend to be more sensitive to, may appear greenish. These TVs will often have a “feature” to improve skin tones because manufacturers know that people notice that. This feature will try to correct green (or other tint) but tends to also influence reproduction of other colors.

• Gaming: many TVs have a “game mode” which reduces input lag to make gaming better. Input lag is the amount of time it takes for a video signal coming into the tv to be displayed on the screen. With gaming mode off, many TVs have input lag that is 70-100ms (100ms is 1/10 of a second). This amount of lag is very noticeable in any game that requires fast reactions. Gaming mode input lag tends to be great these days - often 10ms or less… but on a lot of TVs it comes with a big price: many of the TVs picture processing features get turned off. This can include local dimming, which means you end up with gray blacks and a muddy picture in gaming mode.

I purchased and returned three higher end tvs ($900 to $1200 for a 65” tv) from about 2019 to 2021 in an attempt to replace a 55” plasma TV from 2013. Despite the fact that the plasma was 1080p and had no HDR capability, the picture was way better than any LCD-based variety I looked at (note: LED, QLED, and MicroLED are all LCD tech). All of them were bad enough in one or more of the above areas for me to return them. Most notably, I game on tv and that is where the failures of these TVs really really showed. Finally, about two years ago, I dropped the $$ for an OLED (LG C2). This was a true upgrade and I am really happy with the picture and performance. Not to say there aren’t software issues, but it felt like a real upgrade.

I have a couple of Griswold cast iron skillets - an “8” and a “10”. I just looked up their particular vintage and they are both from 1930-1939, so 83 to 93 years old. Im confident that those are the oldest things I have that I use regularly and they are probably the oldest things I own.

Sorry, no answer here. I just want to say that this is a really interesting question and I hope someone is able to answer.