It’s actually bad for kids’ feet to wear shoes all the time. (Also for adult feet, but especially for kids’ growing feet.) If she loves wearing them, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be an obligation. You can get long term problems if the muscles don’t build up enough.

How did it get in? Is there a hole you can plug? I’ve seen lots of mice, and I had a problem with a bat at one point. One building I lived in sometimes had rats - there were holes in the walls they could get through. The owner put out poison and it worked.

Observation, I think. A Pattern Language quotes Lord Weymouth (1973), who thought the world should have a world government made up of regions of 5-15 million, each with one vote. They also cite the French economist Jean-Francois Gravier (1965), who wrote about European regions. They talk about how in a small country…

A Pattern Language says that the ideal size of a country is 2-10 million people (I’ve also seen 1 million as an upper limit for a participatory democracy), which would make California too big all by itself. The US is way too big if you want a democracy that answers to regular folks rather than rich folks. Immediate…

I had a classmate from Jordan a long time ago that said that in his country, you were either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, so he was stuck being Christian even though he wasn’t really anything. (I’ve been told the same thing about Indonesia, too, but with more choices.)

My parents had separate beds. I think it dates back to marrying for money and/or not having birth control. Or something.

He’s a businessman, not a politician. I don’t think he’s rushing because he thinks he has limited time. I think he thinks he’s just being business-like, making decisions, getting things done. Like he has no idea what the difference between a businessman and a politician is.

Some ideas I’ve come across in the last few years.

I’m actually not in the US. I’m a disabled white woman in Canada. I’ve spent close to 2 decades in really bad poverty while on disability, and only now actually have enough to be able to eat properly as well as not live in a slum.

Some of us think protesting peacefully is step 1. The next step is coming up with a better way of doing things - if you do invent a better solution people will often adopt it. And getting together in protests can inspire people to think of what’s next. Black Bloc does not offer better alternatives, and not everyone…

The Standing Rock tribal government just asked demonstrators to leave and shut down their camp, partly because of concern that it would turn Trump against them, partly because of concerns about spring flooding.

I don’t wear makeup, so I have no idea. I watched one of NikkiTutorial’s videos (the power of makeup) and some others done in response, and some of dope2111's makeovers (the one where her mother does her makeup was interesting). That’s pretty much all I’ve seen.

I don’t think we’re going back to cultural isolationism, not with the internet. And while the US may be headed in a more isolationist direction right now, I suspect it’s still way better than it was a few generations ago. I don’t mind degrowth, but I really don’t want to lose the internet. We need it to keep our…

I realize trade is important, but I think it has an upside-down U shaped distribution, in that some is good, but more isn’t necessarily better. Why would we need to trade with China? What do they have that we can’t produce ourselves? Minerals of some sort? IMO, trade within a region is way more important than trade…

Are the landlocked states really that badly off? That’s something that needs repair right now, if that’s the case. And having more local control over economies would help with that. In Canada it isn’t the landlocked provinces that are poor, it’s the North. If anything, Alberta is the richest province, and even without…

Not more understated. But I think there were fewer layers of products to put on back then. I’ve seen a few recent tutorials and good Goddess, it’s ridiculous how many products they use these days. (I am not a makeup wearer, but I think all we had back then was concealer, foundation, blush, eye shadow, lipstick. Hair…

I’m white/disabled. I have no idea what it’s like to be a visible minority, but I do know what it’s like to not trust the majority. We had two black speakers (at least one lesbian), a Muslim, a trans woman, and an Indigenous woman speaking as part of our protest. We also had the Raging Grannies, to cover the age…

You don’t have to be attached to distrust to feel it, and it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about all aspects of the march. It can be hard to keep on showing up to support others when it’s never your turn. (Writing as a disabled woman.)

They can try, but they are a school for kids her age, so that’s their model. I don’t think they can argue that a school that cannot accommodate a disabled student is a business model in and of itself. In a different situation they could argue that they teach kids, so cannot admit adults as students. Adult students…

I don’t think it’s as terrifying as ecological collapse, and we need strong local economies to survive that. Russia has already gone bankrupt once trying to be a superpower - I’m not worried about them that much. I’m more worried about governments in large countries catering to big business rather than investing in…