Dishonorable Devin Dreeshen.

I looked at my paycheck (US) vs. one of our Swedish colleagues when I was doing our payroll, and yes, the tax was about 45%, my federal withholding is much less but once you add in the deductions for 401k (unsecured pension scheme) and health insurance (that doesn’t cover anything except annual wellness until we pay in 8,000 USD) and social security (the fed pension being paid now to old people, and their healthcare) my deductions also leave about 55% of my pay for net pay.

The part I object to most in terms of cost here is the healthcare - my deductions may mirror the Swede but I don’t think they also have to cover the first 8k of cost out of pocket.

(Edit - it was Sweden not Denmark)

I don’t mind really, just wish it was used for more things that helped society. And it needs to be a little more progressive, though it is the most progressive of the taxes we have here.

My ex MIL, who literally used WIC and welfare when she was a single mom, and leveraged that into a nursing degree, rails against welfare now and doesn’t want her taxes going to that, doesn’t want to pay. Not even in a pull the ladder up after herself way, she just refuses to admit she benefited from it.

My kids call me Mom, step kids call me by my first name.

Oh and sometimes mama, in Spanish.

How? Flour here is up to about $7 for a 5lb bag (2.2kg) and I make 2 loaves with 1kg flour, I’m at $1.50 per loaf flour only, not counting the flour that went into the starter, or electricity or time, or other ingredients (brioche uses eggs & milk, pan de mie lots of butter, sandwich bread I usually use whole wheat and some oats and milk, a little butter or olive oil, focaccia lots of olive oil, stuff like that) . I don’t even use packaged yeast and figure my cost is likely $3-4 per loaf.

My homemade sourdough costs more than store bread, but not more than fancy sourdough bakery bread. I can’t buy flour wholesale, don’t make that much bread. But when it’s good it’s better than any bakery bread I’ve had. So, better, probably not cheaper.

Home cooked meals vs. restaurants does save money.

Gardening - most things work out cheaper than buying, though as I am a salaried worker I am not allocating labor cost.

If it were to be compared to doing 1.5x pay overtime, then working more would make more money than we could save by doing cooking and gardening, it would always work out better to spend that time at work. But then the health impact of doing all that work and always eating out would have to be factored in.

Local community radio, monthly.

A little towards anything I read or listen to, not often but as I can I do.

Towards disasters if work is doing a fundraiser, we have a charity arm and I know where the money is going as I work in accounting.

Directly to people, again as I can. This is the biggest $ category probably. If I have cash I will give it, don’t think about trying to sort out who “deserves” it, that’s not something I can or will do. Will pick up an extra meal occasionally if there is a homeless person around. And have given space in my house occasionally, though at least once did not when I really should have, there is an occasion I regret not offering that to someones I know - I think it would have helped them get back on their feet much faster but I was worried for my safety (from my ex not the people who needed).

I don’t consider myself generous in light of what I have, but still digging out from being poor myself.

They are not corporeal so why would they care what your body looks like? To them it is just some envelope holding you, right? Your soul I don’t think would have race, or sex, those are embodied things, skin tone being the most superficial of all.

In theory maybe 10 years in either direction (I’m old) but in practice I’ve only had long term relationships with guys within a couple years of my age.

Lovers between times, for whatever reason I always ended up with younger guys, that seemed to be the people into me, but still never more than 10 years difference.

When I was your age? One or two years at most. Absolutely not anyone much older or younger, no.

I don’t understand this either, but if you don’t like plain water, there are ways to make it taste different. Squeezed lemon in water is delicious, fizzy water is nice, there’s always Crystal Light, lol.

I love so many drinks but if I could only have one, iced water is it. It’s the best drink of all and goes with every food.

The circumstances.

If it wasn’t a situation where it was a recurring character trait thing, but one time, unusual circumstances, quickly disclosed, STD tested before we did it again, and if we’d been together a long time first.

Now, having said that - I don’t think infidelity comes out of nowhere, if it’s not a person who just always will cheat, there are usually problems leading to it. So it’s unlikely to work out. But I might be willing to see if it could.

I don’t think you are crazy for not wanting to drive, but don’t think it’s a good idea to quit because of the accident, either. Your dad is right, everyone does get on an accident eventually. I had a very bad one that totalled my car (someone ran a stop sign) and the trauma made me a bad driver for awhile, so watch out for that. But getting back behind the wheel, overcoming your fear and becoming a competent and comfortable driver is a life skill that will help you, even if you decide that you don’t want to have a car. The life skill of getting back in the saddle after a fall (metaphorically speaking) is an even more important life skill. But driving in particular really is helpful - I mostly bike now, but being able to drive well comes in handy at least weekly.

You are in Dallas? The main redeeming quality of Texas is the music. I wholeheartedly agree with this suggestion.

Also going out to the same places at the same time can pay off, you will make acquaintances and some may become friends. I see a group of old guys at the cafe I go to for coffee, pretty sure they are only friends because they go get breakfast at the Cuban place and ended up talking and sitting together.

I will say though, almost all my friends I met as adult came from work or from them going out with someone in my family. The medium level friends you are probably looking for. Do you not have work?

I think it’s more like government can ban what can be sold as food and make advice. They can’t really stop you from drinking bleach or eating the grass in your yard or whatever. They can only prevent you from feeding it to someone else or selling it as food.

Meat isn’t a food that could be banned in the same way as, say, Red Dye #4 or force-hydrogenated fats or high fructose corn syrup. They could make farmers cull whole herds of cows if mad cow broke out i guess, but there are wild hogs, backyard chickens and goats, it’s just not a controllable food.

Ah, I see, you want to be the pretty one in the relationship ;)

Your dad needs to get over it, I can’t imagine saying anything like that to any of my kids. Just "are you happy? Is he happy? Good, then "

I would personally be squicked out by that age gap because she’s young enough to be your kid. But I’m not you or her, it’s not my business, right? If your daughter thinks she’ll be good for you, the reverse matchmaking is funny, why not at least meet and see how you feel?

I run pretty hot usually, good sex drive, but nursing absolutely dampened that down to below zero. Plus sex is frightening after birth. Plus having kids hanging on you all the time can certainly make you long for some space with nobody touching you, and a guy asking for sex on top of that can feel like an obligation. Again - I am saying this as someone who literally has sex every day most of the time, and pregnancy made sex feel even better. Nursing killed my sex drive. YES it passes, assuming your kids are healthy, they are easier over time, and eventually even somewhat helpful. Once that babyhood was over, I’d say they were stressful in the way a second job is - it’s just more of everything.

Overall I would say kids were good for the relationship, we stayed together longer and happier because of them. My ex was helpful as a dad, wanted kids, as I did. Kids are hands down the best work I’ve done in my life, nothing else comes close. But it is stressful as fuck, yes. Especially at the start.

Obese is just a medical term. BMI is a height to weight ratio so it’s accurate in that way. It does miss as a measure of over-fat vs. overweight, but more often in the other direction (fat people with normal BMI) but it can err in the other direction sometimes, sure.

The easiest and most accurate way to tell if you are over-fat is waist to height ratio. Your waist circumference should be less than half your height. So if you are 198cm, waist needs to be less than 99cm. This is the only stat that’s been a reliable predictor for health problems from too much fat (because it’s the torso fat that’s more problematic health-wise)

The other thing to remember is that the risk curve for underweight is steep but for overweight it’s shallow - a couple extra kg has almost no extra health risk.

In my day.

No idea, you would have to ask the bank. I called that bank the “demon bank”, because the exterior walls were marble and the patterns looked like demons. Those scales still are at grocery stores here, I haven’t been in a physical bank for a long time. Here is the bank. It’s funny to me that a precognitive dream is humdrum but a scale at a bank is hanging you up. I already knew the scale was there, that was not part of the precognition.