angmarsbane

I believe there is an age-out age for being an au-pair, 26 I think, so it isn't possible to make a career out of it.

Rural medical specialists are compensated very well. In my experience the bigger obstacle to getting those roles filled is more social, for example, unless you are already married the dating pool in a rural area is a consideration for new doctors, or if you are married and your spouse has a career moving to a rural area may require them to give up that career which they may not be willing to do. Cities better support dual-career households b/c they have a density of industries. Also - after 10+ years of school a lot of new doctors want to live it up a bit in a place with things to do and see.

I do think a lot of young people who grew up in suburbs mistakenly believe they need a house before they can have a kid, however, for those who have wrapped their heads around having a baby in an apartment space and cost is STILL a limiting factor. A 2nd bedroom is a significant cost increase, and you're competing with a huge market of people (young families, WFH ppl with home office, roommate setups etc). Also, once you outgrow that 2nd bedroom with kid #2 you have to move. We don't build 3-5 family bedroom apartments or condos or town-homes near job centers.

Having children can also provide a poor woman with status and a title within society. She isn't just a nobody, she is a Mom, and there is some respect that can come with that.

I asked recently in the new mom's forum at my office what prevented them from having more children. Many women expressed that they would have loved to have 3-4 children instead of 1-2 but that the limiting factor was time. To have 3-4 children they would have needed to start in mid-late 20s but they and their partners could not get financially, professionally established in order to start a family at that age. Others said that the time-related logistics of multiple kids with two working parents aren't manageable beyond two. Daycare, school, extra-curriculars none of those schedules align well with working hours.

This onslaught of birth rate articles laying the blame at women's feet drives me up a wall. Many of my female peers have frozen their eggs to preserve their ability to have children to the best of their abilities or have undergone fertility evaluations proactively, other female friends in their 30s/40s have pursued the single-mom-by-choice route once they had the financial security to do so. I do not see my male peers pursuing sperm testing / freezing or pursuing single-fatherhood-by-choice. Of my married friends with kids, if there is a second kid it has been because the wife advocated for it. All that said, I don't blame men either the husbands that were talked into the second kid were all concerned about their ability to pay for school / daycare and/or to afford another bedroom even with the help of their working wives / breadwinner wives. For men talked into their first kid, their hesitation was that after undergraduate and masters they felt they'd barely had time to financially establish themselves or live their own lives.

I wish fully remote was something you could earn once you've spent X amount of years at a company. After 3 years, or 5 years, you know how the company works, you know the culture, you have an internal network etc. I think at that point, depending on your role you're more equipped to effectively manage fully remote work. Fully remote is so helpful for families who have to navigate daycare drop-off/pick-up times that don't align with work + commute hours. Gaining the ability to work fully remote after X amount of years with a company could help retain mid-level seniority in that phase of life.

In my household we're back to watching TV shows from the 2000s, 4-8 seasons some of them 23 episodes. It's also kind of fun watching these characters are story plots adapt to mobile phones, blogs, and social media.

I married into a family who basically only plays AOE properties. The parents in their 70s have played since the first version and now play AOE2 3-5 hour games every Sunday after family zoom with their son and his wife. Their two daughters are more devoted to AOM (Mythology) but can play AOE2 very well.

I recently took my car to the dealership to get my A/C fixed. On the drive home, I discovered that they'd somehow screwed up my blinkers when they were fixing their A/C. When I called the next day to explain the problem, confirm they knew it was their issue to fix at no cost and to schedule a time to come in I got an AI Assistant. An AI Assistant that has not been trained to expect an issue to be their fault and who kept trying to direct me book on their site or to book a new appointment to get the problem fixed at my cost through her.

The dealership's decision to hand things over to AI, and to choose to focus that AI on only booking appointments instead of fixing problems is a proverbial F U to me. It's the dealership shifting more work on to me. It's disrespectful and wasteful of my time. By the time I managed to get to a human I was angry and distrustful.

I read an interview once with an American woman who moved to Italy with her Italian husband. They lived in the same apartment building as her in-laws and in the morning her son would walk down to Nonna's for breakfast.

I love the idea of family living within walking distance but in their own domiciles, like townhomes or apartments or condos in the same building. This is another great argument for mixed zoning. A 55+ condo building in the same neighborhood with single family homes for large families and smaller townhomes/apartments for families that are just getting started.

This is IF you can find a 3 or 4 bedroom apartment in an American city. The job centers mostly build studios, 1 and 2 bedrooms if they build anything at all.

They also usually don't want to leave their established doctors. This is actually one of the reasons why we need mixed-housing options within neighborhoods so that elderly people can downsize into more manageable one and two bedroom apartments, condos, or duplexes etc without having to leave the neighborhood. Downsize into housing stock without stairs, without a large yard to upkeep, downsize into something smaller that would be more affordable to adapt for someone aging in place.

Dedicated bus lanes that are physically separated from car traffic specifically, like the BRT system in Mexico City.

What I find interesting is that people have a negative relationship with buses but not with trolley cars, like the old SF trolley cars where you could almost hang off them. If we injected some fun or joy into busses like trolley cars would that improve people's relationships or perspective of them too?