(((Sarah)))

Green salsa in Times Square, mind. Tourist-grade green salsa.

$2 semiannually to remind his limbic system exactly how much he hates to lose/waste money. Way more psychologically impactful than losing the super millions (or whatever) draw.

My grandpa did the same thing - craps only, strict limits. My dad is much more risk-averse and also worried about his own ability to resist the temptation of increasing gambling opportunities, so on our cheap Vegas vacations (1980s-90s) he'd make himself lose an entire roll of nickels on the slots.

(Very few of my coworkers could afford to buy a home.)

Also I pitied the folks whose whole entire job consisted of repeatedly explaining to people that they can't afford their lifestyle and need to downgrade absolutely everything because we definitely won't lower their house payments so long as they're chucking an entire paycheck at Lexus every month.

I worked a temp job in prime (!) mortgage assistance (at Chase) in 2007-08, and the stuff the bankers had signed off on was completely insane. From their documents, I couldn't decide whether the strongest drugs were in auto finance, credit cards, first mortgages, or the HELOC offices.

I truly thought we'd already hit peak "the emperor's new clothes" with these people, so of course the shoe thing had to drop. I will do my best to avoid thinking about other children's folklore, lest the universe feel compelled to come up with a way to outdo the ones that are even worse.

You'd have to be like "no, Grams, Uncle John isn't drunk this time, he died six years ago". Made you long for her to switch to thinking she was still in her early sixties and therefore way younger and more awesome than all the boring old people at the nursing home.

(She died at age 93.)

My step-grandma kept forgetting her eldest son predeceased her; it was extra awkward because he was an addict and his behavior was kind of awful, so she'd say mean things about him, like he wasn't in the room on purpose (because he was busy getting high or sleeping off a bender or something).

They acknowledged he's got chronic venous insufficiency last year, and keep insisting that's all it is. Anyway, since they felt forced to admit *that*, it's likely the edema is the result of serious cardiac problems.

(It could also be "D, all of the above".)

Raising the Dead: Understanding Post-Mortem Rights of Publicity

Depends on the state.

I took a few classes at a community college in California; the marine biology instructor taught classes at Long Beach, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and I want to say Fullerton. She basically lived on the interstate freeway system.

In an ideal world, the guy who controls the nukes and the village idiot would be two separate people.

After about five minutes of being aggravated over the names (and specifically the way I can never remember which one is which) I changed my order to "I want the biggest hot chocolate you've got,
with whipped cream, please". At least until you could just order ahead in the app.

I'm reasonably confident this name follows the standard rule in German - "ei" is a long "i", and "ie" is a long "e". Remember how to pronounce it and you'll remember how to spell it.

Usually Mao shows up in the top three.

Agreed, it's a supposed body count list, though I've somehow managed to miss the Ming Dynasty discourse.

They already have two years of the current question set, so an additional decade means even with 10-year bands every respondent has moved into a different band.

(Female unmarried, female married, male unmarried, male married in a big chart; second chart for length of marriage null, <5, <10, 10+.)

Yeah, they've got 7 years of data but a bunch of their questions were introduced later than 2019. I figure ten consecutive years with the current set of questions and presenting it in age bands (5 or 10-year increments), preferably with "currently married" as a separate group, is the minimum.

Almost a third of Gen Z men agree a wife should obey her husband | King's College London 31% of Gen Z men agree that a wife should always obey her husband and one third (33%) say a husband should have the final word on important decisions, according to a new global study of 23,000 people.

The report is here, just for the record. The chart I pulled was from the PDF, not this page.

Page 5 of the PDF report. It shows the results for six questions from 2019 to 2026 in the 24 countries they've surveyed every year. The prompts are: Things would work better if more women held positions with responsibility in government and companies Women won't achieve equality with men in ... unless there are more female leaders in business and government When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in my country Men are being expected to do too much to support equality We have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men I define myself as a feminist

It looks like they only started this in 2019, and I'm guessing it's different individuals every time. I bet you can get a better sort-of answer to mellowing out with age with their data in another ten years or so (assuming they asked for birth year and *ideally* for marital status w/duration range).

Anyway seeing a gazillion marriages implode and maybe having yours implode, and then having to convince yourself it's worth trying to make it work again often includes changing your base expectations.

(My mom's third marriage lasted 32 years [he died] and my dad's 36th anniversary is in June)

Loads of Boomers also touched stoves in their 20s, or saw their dads/uncles/brother/friends do it instead - all those failed marriages are part of why divorce rates peaked in 1980. Enough people either remained single or stuck with their subsequent marriages that the rate plummeted.

This is like that post bemoaning the lack of giant TVs at Walmart, where my first response is "I literally saw the giant TVs at Walmart last week" - the playground nearest my apartment looked like this less than a month ago!

We talked about this in my very first quarter of Army ROTC, in the context of Vietnam.

(Because it was 1997 and our officers were generally speaking commissioned in the 1980s or late 1970s, Vietnam was basically *the* example for bad command decisions.)

(Close-ish in the sense that with our oil reserves and internal production the US can weather shocks better than almost anyone else, provided someone competent is in charge. It's like how my Chemistry 101 prof gave students with >70% on the final an "A", because half got under 50%.)

How The Iran War Will Change Energy Markets And Oil Prices War with Iran means the world is in for a roller coaster of energy prices, but there is almost nothing unanticipated at play.

Anyway, closing a choke point on the other side of the planet has caused my local (rural Ohio) gas prices to jump by $0.50 in less than a week, which is the textbook opposite of energy independence. I shudder to think of what my electric bill will look like in a few months.

With the Suez Canal Unblocked, the World’s Commerce Resumes Its Course Almost a week after an errant cargo ship brought a vital maritime passageway to a halt, the Suez Canal is open for business again.

When word got out that the Ever Given was finally cleared from the Suez Canal, the international oil benchmark price dropped 2.5% pretty much instantaneously - literally just off the *hope* that the oil would start flowing soon.

(It's a bit of a scroll to get there; search for "Brent crude".)

Choke point - Wikipedia

We're sort of close-ish to a rough approximation of energy independence, but global events affect energy prices specifically because we're *not* independent. Closing the Strait of Hormuz cuts off about a quarter of global oil supply, though it's not the only place where that could happen.

So there's added inefficiency if oil from a particular area is suddenly unavailable - refineries are pricing in the chance their facilities won't have oil to refine next week.

(My stepmom used to work in crude oil analysis; every tank had to be tested so the recipient knew they could process it.)