Right. Considering that we are all likely First World folks, any letter from anyone could be attacked for being inconsiderate of those less fortunate. It’s a boring, pointless exercise.

My daughter loves interesting NPC’s - she adores the fact that she can pause her quest for a moment and have a proper chat with some rando. And I stumbled into a pretty cool mini-quest thanks to one of the INPC’s.

I did manage to get it going, but found it a choppy experience:

I despise this movie, even though I could relate to it. The skating, the booze-n-weed lifestyle, the wandering around looking for something a bit more interesting. And sure, there were a couple of bad actors on the fringes of our group, but on the whole we were decent kids. We’re solid grownups, and even the bad…

Here’s my bs theory. The stuff is simply too potent to be enjoyable by most folks. There’s no more dipping your toes in, by passing a spliff of skunk. It’s all rocket fuel.

I go to all kinds of amazing places for work. And even if I am overwhelmed by how cool and beautiful it was to be there, I usually say, “I mean, it was cool to be in Singapore, but mostly I just worked. Felt like I spent more time on the plane than anywhere else, that is to say, it’s a very long flight.”

You’re right - that there are some number of individuals who might experience some discomfort from any particular ingredient, whether naturally occurring or concocted in a lab, is a reasonable outcome. It was wrong of me to question any individual claim.

Could you say you had some sort of Rum Cake? Like a whole box of rum cakes?

Actually it was an article about a very recent study by the Mayo Clinic.

This is way way up on the list of why we’re in the state we’re in. Probably number one.

That excessive intake of sugar is a cause of obesity and t2 diabetes is right up there with “water is wet”. Did you make a typo? Are you being sarcastic? Because, seriously...

in the same way that alcohol alone doesnt cause alcoholism.

No worries. I’m just all adamant when it comes to this anti-science food hysteria, and also I’m having a baby with an anti-science food hysteric. So there’s that. So I tend to backlash, but we all have to do what works for us.

I don’t think aspartame is even giving you gastric distress. If you’re a diet coke fan, it’s probably the caffeine. Seriously, the trace amounts of aspartame do literally nothing to the body, according to a billion double-blind studies.

Do what works for you, without a doubt, but for other readers of your post, know that the NE Journal of Medicine did a study that disproved a connection between aspartame and headaches.

As long as Food Boob doesn’t get anyone to outlaw diet soda, I’m good. Her zombie army loves saying “even regular soda is better than that toxic concoction”. Sure, Several teaspoons of a substance known to cause obesity and diabetes is much safer than trace amounts of a substance known to cause no harm.

Yup - exactly my daughter’s middle school tales. Any boy who shows up gets a speaking part, and tons of talented girls are in the choir, or left out altogether.

I saw this same thing written in some article not long ago. It’s fallout from US macho culture. Getting into acting, dancing etc as a boy is seen as “half queer”. But fewer hangups about that in UK/Aus. I see it first hand as my 14 yo daughter is hugely into performing arts. And it’s 80+% girls, and most of that small…

Unlikely that a typical street criminal’s parents said, “maybe you should perform crimes.” but if you could go back in time, ala Scrooge, you’d see lots of parental neglect, mixed messages, bad modeling, possibly even physical/verbal abuse.

There are very few Bad Seeds out there - think “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. Most shitheads in the world were warped into shithead-itude by their 18th birthday, through family abuse/neglect.