Broken_Hippo

I am the childless aunt. I'm in my late 40s, never desired children, so that won't change.

That said, I met my spouse in my early 30s. Was worth switching countries for and that was 13 years ago. We met playing the same silly text-based MMORPG some years ago. I have never been very social, but not being social doesn't mean that you won't meet people in non-traditional ways.

I'm in my late 40s, which meant that childhood didn't have internet and folks didn't start getting it in their homes more commonly til my late teens.

That doesn't mean distractions weren't there, and those distractions are still around if I live with other people. Growing up, a lot of distractions were parents and siblings. Exciting things on television with lots of noise that I'd notice. Libraries were brutal - quiet places where I would notice people shuffling papers, turning pages, and going about their activities in "silence". I was always better off when folks would just leave me alone to do stuff with lots of background noise so I wouldn't notice stuff - or just being alone. Staying up late gave me that.

It doesn't take modern life or a boring place to be free from distractions.

You don't have to do a lot of repetitive, boring exercises to learn piano. Once you learn how to hold your hands a little, read music, and learn where the notes are, you can simply try songs you like, and switch songs when you please. On other instruments, you might not need to read music (I've met many guitarists and drummers that cannot read music, nor do they use printed music to play - and blind folks can play instruments too)

Art is similar. You can look up skills as necessary to try to make the piece you want. Adult art learners often just start with the type of art they want to make.

In both cases, the finished piece might not be the quality you want, but in neither case are you necessarily doing repetitive stuff to learn (playing scales over and over or sketching the same bits over and over). You can retry a piece or move on - the skills will still carry over.

None of these reflect homework in school. Now, I know I graduated school decades ago, but math homework was repetitive with seemingly no real-world application and absolutely no help if I needed it. I took a math course online some years later and it was much better: Instant feedback if I got the problem wrong and instant help to walk through the problem if I needed it - then a different but similar problem was given for the homework. This was actual practice in ways traditional homework wasn't. Homework in the traditional sense isn't practice - they are all miniature tests that affect your grade.

I didn't have to practice writing - I just did the papers assigned and rushed through them. You can grade papers for other subjects on prose and grammar instead of just doing it for language courses. You don't have to read classics to read better if you just read a variety of things you are interested in. You'll read plenty of boring things for other subjects and get that sort of practice.

With most of this stuff, having actual homework isn't necessary as long as students are given time for practice. Practice is what makes you good at something, not homework, and practice can take many forms.

How, exactly, are they working more? How many low-paying jobs offer overtime, if they are full time at all? Any clue how many jobs won't let you work a part-time job or won't work around another job? Can't exactly work for Uber if you can't afford a decent enough car. And this is assuming you have older children that don't need childcare.

The fact is that they aren't working extra, not for a job anyway. The extra work comes in the time making dried beans instead of buying canned, in repairing stuff poorly, in shopping around for a doctor that takes the state health insurance or an affordable option if you have none at all, in taking busses (if they are available), and other unpaid things. Your child will be lucky to afford the activities that gets them a 'good' education, especially if they have to work.

To be fair, "Bac'n Bits" have been made of soy for decades - IIRC, they have always been. That's not them being cheap - they were designed that way. You just didn't realize. A lot of brands are similar - not all are vegetarian or vegan, but many are.

Some of the organizations mentioned have never welcomed me - the first hurdle to some of these is simply being female. Freemasons only accept men IIRC. Knights of Columbus? Catholic. Oddfellows acceptance really depends on the individual lodge, despite what the literature says. These organizations aren't always in smaller areas either, so you aren't joining if you are in a small town an hour's drive from the nearest meeting place.

It might not be a written metric, but do you actually believe that someone isn't being evaluated partially based on how many times they've had to talk to them about issues?

I highly doubt it. If this is the reason your manager knows who you are, you are absolutely going to be judged on it. It doesn't really matter what the policy says.

And the nurses absolutely feel like they are being punished for it. Just like having to consistently remind HR that your "absence problem" is due to covered FMLA leave - they know who you are because they've had to talk to you about absenteeism. In a call center of 500 people, it isn't likely they remember that you had issues because of their faulty systems.

This just isn't true and really glosses over the downsides of the US healthcare system.

Employer health plans are only good as long as you pay - if they are good. Lots aren't and they require you to pay so much upfront. Waiting time for specialists and surgeries depend on the area you live in: Not common to wait months for a specialist in the US. You won't get seen if you can't pay for the doctor upfront and medicines are expensive.

I moved from the US (Indiana) to Norway. I've never had an issue seeing a doctor or dentist if I'm sick or in pain since I've been here. I can plan routine things in advance, but I don't need to plan months in advance. I'm just not getting in the same day because they save those times for folks that are sick and need seen sooner. I'll never have a bill if I'm hospitalized. Doctors tend to offer less invasive treatments first - they would have tried to avoid a knee replacement. And if the wait was long (which again, really isn't different from the states, depending on where you are and if you have money enough), the safety net helps out. Reduced work hours and paid time off work and stuff like that. The emergency room sends folks home with medicine instead of expecting you to go to the pharmacy afterwards! ER waiting times aren't longer and honestly, I can call ahead and suffer at home instead of in a waiting room if it isn't actually an emergency, but need urgent care. My partner was seen immediately when he cut off part of his finger, I was seen immediately when I had severe pain, but you'll wait longer for an uncomplicated broken bone and things like that.

And this is all relying on the public system - People can get shorter waiting times if they use the private system.

I clearly said I buy for two and would go more often if I shopped for more. Many, many people with families do this.

I'm in Norway. Vehicles are expensive, children (regardless of age) are used to going outside and going to the stores. It is a common situation in larger cities. Heck, elementary children are often enough at the store unsupervised. I'm not sure why you think a 20-30 minute car ride plus at least an hour at the store is worse than a 20 minute round trip to the store with a 10-15 minute store break is bad, even if it is a few times a week. And even that can be avoided by just spending a little time on your way home from work.

not who you were asking, but I walk to the store and carry my groceries home. Usually, twice a week or something. It's great. 10 minute walk each way, approximately, and never more than I can easily carry. I buy for two people. I'd go more often if I shopped for more. I do occasionally visit other stores - once or twice a month - because they have different selection of goods. To be fair, I'm still carrying the stuff because I walk or use a bus for most of my transportation needs.

It means my fridge can be smaller because I don't need to keep as much in there. It means it is really easy to shop whatever is on sale - I have two grocery stores near me. I rarely have vegetables that go bad because I can just buy the stuff I need. I can just stop on the way home from work if I'm working the day shift.

I did this for a while when I lived in the states, too, in a small town. I had a similar experience, but it was far less convenient and really only doable because I was in such a small town and lived alone.

In college, I worked as a lab assistant for a professor studying them. I spent a lot of time counting microscopic young, scraping adults off of traps, measuring and weighing them before cracking them open to scoop out their insides and weighing them.

These little fellows are, in general, small. I guess they can get 50mm (2in), but most aren't that large and they have thin shells.

Further, I'd be somewhat afraid that creating products from them would spread the invasive species even further. The professor I worked for studied them because of their invasiveness - the lakes he set traps on were obviously spread by people. They spread easily by the water in boats - microscopic young means people don't know they spread them.

Your first link talks about occupational use. Most folks aren't going to have that sort of exposure. A lot of things are definitely a hazard when you work with them often, but doesn't carry over into the general population whose exposure is very low.

Your second link speaks of animal studies, using 34mg/kg of body weight in very young animals (rats) between 6 and 21 days old. Animal studies are valuable, but it doesn't mean you carry the same risk of rats. I'm not sure most folks are going to get that much exposure while walking along trails - for me, personally, it would take 1870mg of repeated exposure. I understand that it would take less exposure for children, but an average newborn is around 3kg and the newborns aren't walking along trails - and in most circumstances, neither are their parents. Especially the mother, who just recently gave birth.

It isn't that I'm saying that pesticide exposure is always healthy or anything, but the type of study and the doses are important to give perspective.

Yeah, kinda.

I moved from Indiana to Norway - Trondheim, which is about in the middle of the length of Norway. During the summer, I can read outside at night even though the sun technically goes down for about 4 hours in June. It never gets darker than twilight. A few clouds means you might just have sunset all night. The sun does get surprisingly hot and very warming if we happen to have a sunny day. Jacket in the shade, short sleeves in the sun even though it is 18C/65F.

The reason for this is that the sun is at a low angle, so it hits more of your body than it does when the sun is overhead - like you'd get in Australia. This also means that while you need some sunscreen during the day - from about 10 to 5 - it doesn't burn as much. It is less intense in that way - but it just feels different.

During December, days are 4 hours of very weak light.

For what benefit? Graduating medical school with an average of $250k of debt?

Unpaid time off and possible job loss if you have medical issues that require you to be off work? They still worry about health insurance and things like that. Poor work/life balance, no promise of using vacation time, especially weeks at a time? The worry of lawsuits? Little to no job security?

Money isn't everything. Money can't really buy the quality of life that legal protections can - it is harder to lose legal protections.