“Worker owned and non profit companies should have a free pass to be anti-consumer,” sounds like the less popular opinion to me.

My friends and family absolutely know and see what is happening. When I go to the park and walk, I often hear people talking about what is happening (from the angle of “this is insane; how are they getting away with this.” The lady that manages the corner store that I chat with sees what’s going on. The people I work with are very aware.

Most of the people I know are scared and feel powerless to do anything about it. Of course, some are more aware than others and some are more scared than others, but they are at least moderately aware.

BUT, I live in a very liberal city and the people I just talked about are people I choose to associate with. My sample is heavily skewed.

I also run into a lot of people that are pro Trump. Drive 10 miles outside the city and you start running into a lot more MAGA folks. There are also people that avoid politics and are good at sticking their heads in the sand. Somehow they manage to remain unaware. Ignorance seems to be a concerningly common American trait.

BTW, OP, there’s a good chance the “both sides” people you know are republicans but are embarrassed to admit it. They’re the quiet trumpers — the ones that chose to elect a criminal who tried to violently overthrow the government four years ago. Unlike the rabid, loud MAGA folks, they are uncomfortable talking about this stuff because they know people find their views abhorrent. They use “both sides” as a method to indirectly defend their views without having to admit to having them.

Either that or they’re willfully ignorant about what is going on around them. But I find willfully ignorance and Repubicanism go hand in hand.

The OPCA document is fabulous. It drips with disdain for all of these wonky sovcit arguments while thoroughly dismantling them.

From the article:

There are some important things to keep in mind here, like the fact that 15 of the 17 studies were case-control studies. This kind of research cannot prove cause and effect, and it often does not look at things that might have affected both the exposure and the outcome.

A number of the studies that were looked at were of low quality, which is something that the authors also highlight.

Findings were inconsistent across studies, but those of higher quality suggested that associations in unadjusted models might have been due to factors that could have influenced the results.

Soybeans and many other vegetables will pull in trace amounts of lead from the soil. There is probably some amount of lead in most/all soy products (as well as many other products).

California’s lead threshold for prop-65 warning is 0.5 µg/day. From what I gather, this is a very very low threshold.

Private citizens in California can sue and collect damages against companies selling products that should have a prop 65 warning but don’t. This has created a bit of an industry of citizens who go out, buy random products, test them for prop 65 chemicals, and if they find a violation get themselves a reward. From what I remember reading, Asian markets/producers are a very popular target.

This leads to a lot of companies putting labels on their product just to cover their asses. With such a low threshold for labeling and the fact that soybeans can contain lead, it seems to me to be smart business to always put that label on soy products because you might get a batch of soybeans that put your product over the threshold and get yourself sued. My hunch is that there is just as likely to be lead in the prop-65 labeled tofu as the non-labeled stuff and the difference comes down the to producers risk tolerance (or awareness).

Oh hell yeah. I want to see a Dendy reboot.

I did the math for the interest rate since they didn’t bother to in the article. The article says she had paid $1400/mo for 3 years and had only paid 10,000 toward principal. Assuming that’s 36 months of payments, the interest rate would be around 15.5%. The payment term would have been 10 years and total payments would end up being $168k.

Predatory lenders and financial illiteracy; a perfect match made in hell.

I typed in the url and… yeah, that was A LOT of boobs and butts.

Came back here to see that I mistyped the url. Doubling the “O” results in many boobs and butts.

Yeah, it’s kind of a fun one to play around with when it’s broken. For a slightly different workaround, you can also hold down momentarily on the playback slider, then drag. It’s the quick touch and drag (from the left) that seems to trigger it.

A feature request: add a setting to disable swipe from edge to go to the previous screen. For me, it’s a feature that I only use accidentally when trying to do a different swipe gesture.

Love the app. Thanks for all your hard work!

Are you logged in? It appears you can go to the privacy settings page and set some (not all) settings without being logged in.

Thanks. I just went and disabled it. I also found that they had “products and services notifications” turned on. I know I attempted to disable all advertising and monitoring stuff shortly after I signed up, but I can’t say for sure whether I had missed this section at that time or if they kindly turned it on for me between then and now.

Long hold on the account icon, bottom center.

A pop up will appear allowing you to pick which account you are using (you’ll only see one since you haven’t added a second yet).

Click “edit”

Click “+”

Edit: on that page “pick another server” appears to bring you to that server’s sign up page. If you’ve already created an another account, use the “log in” button, which is below “pick another server”.

Yeah, I did some searching and see that the painting is known by that name but didn’t find anything discussing where the name comes from.

Wikipedia states that the original title was “La Venus del espejo” which translates to “The Mirror’s Venus”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokeby_Venus

I love your weird knife Wednesday posts. I’m not even into pocket knives, but I always enjoy reading these. Your writing is great and your enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious.

On this train of thought…

OP, if you don’t make it clear that you want to date her, then make sure you accept the ambiguity of the situation and that she might have no idea that you want to date her (romantically). It can feel like your interest is obvious if you ask her to hang out one-on-one. But she may not immediately see that and could accept, assuming that you are strictly going as friends.

It’s totally ok to ask her to hang out, just don’t build up the situation to be more than it is. If she says yes, you’ll have to play it by ear. Maybe she’ll consider it a date. Maybe she’ll consider it a strictly-platonic hangout. Or maybe somewhere in between.

Edit: and if it goes well —even if it just ends up being a platonic hang out—I’d lean toward specifying “date” when you ask her to go out again.

If the others suggested aren’t quite right for you, you might try looking for an interval timer app. These are generally used for fitness, but it seems to me that type of setup might do exactly what you want if you just set up a “workout” that has a single 30 min interval and repeats.

Some replies in the Reddit thread confirmed that they had also gotten their money back, while others claimed that their request for a refund was denied, so the decision seems to be made on a case-by-case basis.

Or use a scale.

Haha. Re: option 4, I was being glib. A more charitable way to say it is that they want to connect with you and spend time talking with you (and they don’t realize you are busy and want to keep working on your task). A lot of NTs will use time talking to coworkers as a way to recharge. To them it’s a nice break from what they’re doing.

Good context and explanation. Thanks. After reading that, I’m less sure my reasons apply as much to your particular situation, but I’ll throw them out there anyway:

1. They assume you don’t just want the answer but why that is the answer. For me, I tend the learn and remember better if I understand why X is correct. If I’m just told X, I’m more likely to forget that answer later. If I have the context around the answer, I understand it better and can recall it better. Similarly, they may think you have (or will have) similar questions, so are showing you how to find the answer to those related questions.

2. They don’t realize your question is precise/pointed and think you will have follow on questions, so are answering the potential related questions.

3. if the question doesn’t have one right answer or they think their answer is right but could be wrong, they are providing background sort of to say “This is how I came to this conclusion, but you may come to a different one or there may be alternatives.”

4. they just like to hear themselves talk and are happy to have a break from their work.

Aside: when I said “they assume you don’t just want the answer…” or similar statements, I don’t mean that they are literally stopping and thinking about whether or not that is what you want. It’s probably subconscious and their default way of answering questions. Understandably, this leads to your frustration: even though you are giving a clear, well thought out question, they aren’t stopping and thinking about why you asked the question that way. Instead they are answering in their default mode.