In theory some configurations have stronger or weaker first mover advantage. This is known as white privilege.

All this is just saying that you personally put more weight on the things that are better about later adulthood than early adulthood or adolescence. And that can be your choice, but it doesn’t have to be everyone’s choice.

You acknowledge that the health and friendships piece gets harder with age but push back against the idea that it inevitably gets worse. But averaged among all people, things will tend to get worse, and some people who actually experience that deterioration will conclude (as is their right) that things were better when health and friendships were easier.

But we also make new relationships as we get older. Is life better when you have a grandparent? Or when you have a grandchild?

These aren’t symmetrical. When you are a young person who loves your grandparents, you haven’t actually mourned a loss of a grandchild you personally knew. On the flip side, when you have a grandchild you might also view that relationship through the lens of a lost relationship with a deceased grandparent. In other words, only one of those experiences is 100% good, rather than a bittersweet mix of good and sad.

Not to mention, plenty of people will never have grandchildren. To them, the mourned loss of a grandparent is the end of that road. There’s no replacement on its way.

Put it this way: if given the opportunity to wake up 10 years in the past, in your body of 10 years ago, how positive or negative would you view that? Plenty of people would vote on different sides of that, and that’s OK to have different views based on one’s own experiences.

I interpret it to be more about the weight given to different pros and cons about different stages in life.

Some people really, really prize autonomy, and don’t get to experience that until pretty late in life. For these people, the stifling limits of adolescence, without their own money or independence from parents, can be miserable.

Some people really, really prize being free of responsibilities. To this group, sometimes adulthood comes with too many challenges and responsibilities that they find independence to be stifling.

Some care about physical health, which may correlate with younger ages.

Some love the ease of friendships in adolescence and early adulthood, and long for that dynamic when they realize that making new friends or maintaining existing friendships gets harder after 30, and even more so after 40.

Some feel very strongly about the loved ones they’ve lost since their childhood, and wish they could’ve appreciated those shared experiences more in the moment.

And we all have different experiences. I have no idea if my best years are ahead of me or behind me, but I could see an argument in either direction.

This all or nothing thinking often just turns into an excuse for doing nothing.

I can make a better world by making things better in my immediate vicinity, without dying for it. I can help one person at a time, and it might not scale to some kind of globally noticeable improvement, but it can still a difference to each of those people, and was worth whatever effort or sacrifice involved.

The arm is lit up from the bottom, totally doesn’t fit the rest of the lighting in the picture.

This is such a snore-gasm.

I’m just gonna eat this burrito though.

But pray tell doth the burrito qualify as a sandwich

But most people who are invested in small talk will be giving the signals they think the other person wants, making it less useful than not talking at all.

I don’t think this is true. When I engage in small talk, I don’t see it as me bending flexibly to the conversation partner’s wants. I’m testing to see if there are common overlaps that we can talk about, and talking for the sake of being entertained. If the other person turns out not to be a good conversation partner for me in that moment, I don’t think anything of just moving on. I’m not trying to please them, I’m trying to enjoy myself.

I can’t imagine I’m in the minority here.

Up in horsey heaven, here’s the thing
You trade your legs for angels wings
And once we’ve all said good-bye
You take a running leap and you learn to fly

every hole is a goal

ew

25-35 is a great time. I moved cities and changed careers in my late 20’s, and pivoted again in my early 30’s, and it was a good reset to build on lessons learned and undoing past mistakes, while having the youth and energy to really enjoy myself and actually choose a path I was going to have fun with.

I’m enjoying my 40’s a lot, but I look back fondly on that 25-35 period as being both fun in itself and setting me up for a good 30’s and 40’s (and possibly further).

IT’S A BEAR DANCE

It’s just that I don’t have any expectation of the girls in the picture being shocked

That’s the joke.

I’ve heard of nigging but I’ve never heard of this.

Um I hope you mean negging

“Mogging” as a term originated in the early 2000’s and went mainstream-ish in the late 2000’s when the “pickup artist” community started getting attention in places like the New York Times. The people who originated it are probably like 45-50 years old now.

Quick etymology: comes from these pseudoscientific douchebags trying to name the phenomenon where a man tries to subtly belittle another man in front of women, establishing that he’s the AMOG (alpha male of group), eventually became a verb amogging or mogging, and then various specific types of this behavior earned prefixes: heightmogging, etc.

The fact that it has this kind of staying power, 20 years later, is the surprising part.

Some daals are spicy, and could arguably be considered British?

I’m a subscriber to their monthly print copy, and a lot of the stories in the print version don’t make it to the website as quickly. I’ve got the February copy on my desk with the following headlines:

• Trump Administration Offers Free At-Home Loyalty Tests: Tool That Diagnoses Disobedience to be Mailed to U.S. Households
• U.S. Military Bans Men With Girl Names From Combat - Wars Will No Longer Be Fought By Male Shannons, Terrys, or Carmens
• Baby Saves Affair: Illicit Relationship Rekindled by Out-of-Wedlock Birth

As far as I can tell, these articles never made it online. And they are funny. Good coffee table material.

This comment is like telling Superman not to lift with his back.

In my opinion, cauliflower sucks unless it’s been roasted/fried/seared with dry high heat to the point of being brown and crispy.

If it is overcooked, the rupture of the cell walls makes that cabbage stank run out into the dish.

If it’s still raw or cooked at too low a temperature (which includes any temperature in which liquid water will exist on the surface), it’s missing the delicious browning that happens at high heat.

That means it doesn’t work as cauliflower “wings.” The breading/batter protects the cauliflower too much, and it ends up steaming itself inside. Just batter up some firm tofu instead, those are great wings.

It can work as cauliflower “steak” I guess, but that doesn’t really taste like it should fit the culinary role of a protein/main. I’m all about roasting cauliflower, and flat slices make it easy to grill or sear evenly, but that just doesn’t fit that ecological niche that a steak does.

So I generally don’t like cauliflower served with broccoli. They cook too differently to be able to actually cook them together in the same batch.

When I got married, sitting down with the caterer and choosing between dozens of flatware types, I realized that I personally like three dimensional smoothness, with round, cylindrical handles that have some heft but not too much width. I also like cylindrical tines that don’t look like it was made from a flat sheet of metal cut and bent into shape (I prefer tines that are cylindrical, not rectangular prisms).

I also like curves along where the head meets the handle, and along the head itself. No sharp corners or edges.

I dislike ornamentation on the handle itself. I like plain, smooth handles.

I chose the forks for my wedding, and then later on in life, based on what I learned about my own preferences, I bought some flatware that fits those general principles (looks like the Sambonet Hannahs, but cheaper than that very expensive line), and replaced the ones in my house. Now I basically don’t have any forks that I don’t like.