Not just Alabama. Punish the Murdochs. Boycott the Murdoch empire (Fox News, the NY post etc) it’s Rupert Murdoch who has enabled this and it is likely one of the junior Murdoch’s who can end it (not Lachlan, he is an asshole). Boycott fox and fox advertisers for long enough, they will cave and that carries all of…

Exactly! As an American now living in Australia (and a citizen). Voting is exponentially easier here. And super low tech. Piece of paper, pencil, crappy cardboard booth , write numbers in each of the boxes, fold paper stick on cardboard box. Leave and buy democracy sausage/baked goods from parents group outside.

It looks like a distributors mistake if so* - the same image is being used by a number of different news outlets in different countries. That’s not a good look for Getty.

And some of those protections leak globally, which is good. I had a moment about 15 years ago where I thought that if the EU applied a tax based on carbon consumption of the good traveling to market it would have a fairly significant effect on the environment (a positive one). It was mostly about carbon consumption…

The things you learn! I read the book before I saw the original parent trap and was under the impression there was a subgenre of kids meeting family at summer camps books.  (I read a lot of books about camps as a child) but found a copy recently that had a *now a movie* type sticker on it.

The movies are actually based on a book from the 1930s, set in Austria -Liselotte by Erich Kastner.  Once you realise that, it makes a bit more sense.  Oddly, in the book the mother has not so much money, the summer camp thing is a stretch.  She also figures it out much faster.

Can speak from personal experience on this- I worked in japan (teaching English for Nova) and when out branch was expanded they put all of the “classrooms” upstairs. (We had been a ground floor branch). The only way up was a flight of stairs, with no handrail. New stairs, not old. One of our students was a young guy…

Can speak from personal experience on this- I worked in japan (teaching English for Nova) and when out branch was expanded they put all of the “classrooms” upstairs. (We had been a ground floor branch). The only way up was a flight of stairs, with no handrail. New stairs, not old. One of our students was a young guy…

Living the experience now. My city has had a housing shortage/expensive housing for a number of years and the solution initially was to build lots of apartment building near the centre of the city. These aren’t actually what many residents wanted, so they are not always full. There has been a more recent push to…

So much this! I think that because it is (sometimes) the first time the person has been confronted with the issue they proceed as if it is the first time for the other person and engage in the initial brainstorm phase of problem solving. No, that phase is long over and the coping mechanisms have been established.

Oh yes- I remember thinking what’s that? The first time I read a newspaper article about an aga. Very small subset, I might know someone with an Aga, but I have never seen one in person.

There is! There are whole complexes in the southwest that date from that time. They aren’t at the centre of town anymore due to environmental changes, but they do exist. I think a large part of the myth that there isn’t anything like that in the US is because the people who wrote the core texts were based on the…

Your last line! I am American and English, although educated in the US system. I know about Henry etc because I am history geek, but I still don’t know the detail of earl vs viscount (on slightly stronger ground with dukes, because they tended to be royal sibs initially). But my husband (who is Australian) reads…

All jokes aside, this Is an opportunity to do some good data matching/analysis. My heart rate (as tracked by Fitbit) has a massive drop just before my period starts. If I could get it to sync with my period tracker/fertility app that would be very useful as I could then actually predict my period (my cycle is…

Oh ha! You have just reminded me of my awful roommate in Japan (I had no choice, company housing). She refused to believe for several minutes that the two black teachers in the office where she worked (English teaching company) were not a couple, even stating “two African Americans in japan, of course they are in a…

The comment I was replying to did effectively say that. I think that if many of the parents who give their children up for adoption were provided with adequate support (monetary but also social and community support) they would be in a place to be able to keep the child/ren. For those that genuinely can’t/don’t want…

So is telling infertile people to “just adopt”. Generally adoption occurs because the bio parents are not available/cannot parent. That’s not a good thing.

Exactly. I support open adoption, but it is still a lot of work. What put it in perspective for me was an adoptive family noting that in order for them to have their happy ending (a child) someone else had to have an unhappy ending.

Not an equivalency. A stolen child is a better solution? - ultimately an adoption means that someone else’s family is broken. Yes there are sometimes good reasons why adoption is good for the child, but essentially an adoption requires someone else has a broken life/family. As someone who has gone through fertility…

Oh. Well, everyone has their blind spots. If you have never had the link pointed out you might not know? I was shocked to learn “victuals” and “vittles” are pronounced the same, I always judged hard on the second spelling. The older I get the more I realise that people are very incurious in general, and that can be…