We’re eating fewer calories than previous generations but putting on weight, even accounting for exercising. I think it’s the food; filling unprocessed foods are just so hard to get, especially as this article says in food deserts, and studies on the long-term, like, decades long, effects of the cocktail of…

We are eating fewer calories than our parents and grandparents, but we’re putting on weight. Your “just eat less, silly!” take is not helpful. Dieting slows down your metabolism as your body tries to compensate. For _some_ people, you can lose some weight and hit a point where you’ve lost the weight but the…

That’s a really nice system! I hope it’s adopted more widely!

We should be agitating (I mean full-blown strikes, riots if necessary) for a 4-hour day and a 4 day week. That’s how we got an 8-hour day and a 5 day week, and we now easily have the resources and automation to reduce it further. A 4-hour day (of actual work) plus a commute leaves plenty of time for shopping, cooking,…

Starred for O’Neill’s deadpan.

Do you mean “when used correctly” at the end of the second paragraph? (Also can you ungrey me??)

That’s kind of my point, like depression caused by a specific situation (whether it’s chronic pain, bereavement, financial stress, etc) makes more “sense” to us. But some people just suffer from depression, by itself, or depression paired with other hard-to-understand illnesses/conditions like anxiety, alcoholism,…

I only started watching Parts Unknown this year, it’s on Netflix and it’s really nice to have on while I’m painting. Some of his throwaway joking lines (“their music makes me want to kill myself!”) are hard to hear now without a lump in the throat. I’m going to bawl crying at these posthumous episodes. That he loved…

My cat died before his first birthday and I was distraught, he was a rescue too and he got confident enough to explore the road and was hit by a car. But I know for his short life, he knew love and fun and warmth and safety because of me. And sometimes that’s all we can do. You gave that kitten all the best gifts she…

I went to an all-girls school in a decent-sized town, I was in several outside-of-school programs, my parents are very sociable, and so was I in my later teen years. I met boys in my (large) choir, in summer schools, brothers of my friends, sons of friends of my parents, sons of extended relatives, etc. There’s no WAY…

I was the same, but then I had the blessed opportunity to watch them with some genuine actually-from-the-Valley Valley Girls and it was AMAZING, I was really watching them watching it.

There’s a BIG difference between poking fun at or pointing out problematic aspects of the movies themselves ... and mocking the fans and mocking Stephenie Meyer who by all accounts seems to be a kind and generous person to work with and a bit of an innocent. Yeah the books aren’t literary masterpieces and they’re…

Honestly the prayer thing is the least weird thing on there (if you get past the fact that it happens right before breakfast at fucking 3 am). Lots of people take half an hour to basically meditate. Some prayers (lackadaisical Catholicish particularly) are like, “ourfatherwhoartinheav[...]deathamen”, but for lots of…

This is why the majority of Irish-Americans should be screaming at the top of their lungs about this. How can they have forgotten us and what we went through so quickly? A couple of generations and a nice car and all-you-can-eat sides, and it’s like their great-grantparents, or grandparents, or _parents_ never had a…

In Ireland we call this-but-not-that Catholics “à la carte Catholics” and the practice of such “à la carte Catholicism”. Might be a bit too Frenchy for ye though! ‘Course we don’t have the death penalty, so here we’re usually talking about people who say they’re Catholic and send their kids to Catholic school (thereby…

I mean, it makes sense. A lot of _women_ in places that have abortion access, and even in places that don’t, may not actually know how “homemade” abortions are carried out. You’re a sheltered woman but you believe in the right to choose, you decide to go with your friend to a rally, your friend goes “bring a hanger,…

This is so true. The Irish referendum to legalise abortion was won on doorsteps and around kitchen tables as women who’d kept their secrets for months or years or sometimes decades began to open up and everyone realised they knew or admired or were related to at least one woman who’d needed an abortion, and that the…

I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the worst kind of the Laundries are going to show up in other countries too and become another controversy. It’s come out in Ireland cause we’re so small and the Church was so concentrated here and everything’s unravelling now, but it was definitely Church policy, not just a few nasty…

Make sure it looks like insurance fraud!

This kind of harrowing shit is why we won’t be moving back to America. I’m Irish, my partner is American, we’ve mostly lived here (Ireland), we’re going to stay, even though the property situation in Ireland is a nightmare lol.

When I say “I don’t want to raise my kids in a place with school shootings” people tend to…