If you measure your life only in dollars, maybe. Maybe.

My mom came from a small town and said she’d never raise a kid in a small town - her cousins, all save one, were in jail or pregnant before they graduated high school. Because there was literally nothing to do.

I like having restaurants, a good library system, concerts, bars, not needing to drive to get anything. I like living in a mid-sized city, but if I couldn’t, would go bigger not smaller.

Nah, more like prostitution. Y’all were providing something to them, like escorts. If you were of a legal age to do that it seems fine to me - dangerous sure (lucky you got the right crowd) but not trafficking, they didn’t trick you onto the boat or sell you.

We were settled by Puritans. I do not personally care, and my mom and dad didn’t either. It is not some sexual thing to stay naked while doing my hair and skincare, it’s practical because nothing gets on my clothes. We do have specific family friendly nudist resorts in the US but that’s countercultural, you are correct our culture is prudish.

I am like this and do not understand it. Literally the other day a FedEx guy remembered me because he was my brother’s friend, another guy said he remembered me from 2nd grade. Neither of them at all familiar to me, and this happens regularly. I could never be a spy. It’s not looks, I’m average in looks. This is not a small town either.

I would be happy to never see a PDF again, can we not have something better?

I always think it’s like complaining that nobody under a certain age can use the card catalog, microfiche or whatever. Technology changes. I have so many leftover now useless skills; please God may the ones related to Adobe rot on that same pile soon.

The fuck is a “woman-shaped woman”?

Not as far as I can remember, first memory of him was some story about him stiffing vendors.

It sounds to me like she needs a scapegoat, for lack of a better word, and she’s chosen you to dump on. Do your best to ignore her and don’t feed it. Her opinion doesn’t determine your worth in any way, it’s irrelevant.

Absolutely yes IMO. Straight is not the same as never experimenting. A test run makes sense if you aren’t sure. He fucked and found out quite literally.

You’d need to arrange the code ahead of time with whoever you were communicating with. I can imagine a few ways to do it, the number of letters in the words, the arrangement of the spaces between words, first letter of first word, second letter of second word, up through five words and start over, prearranged code phrases of course but nothing that would work with an unwitting recipient.

I did accounting because you can do that for any company, it’s such a flexible career. I’ve done jobs that were mostly IT and jobs that were mostly numbers in Excel, for different companies in different industries and have never had to work anywhere I think is evil, nor at any location with a long commute.

So if you enjoy that sort of work, accounting is a good degree. Technically my concentration was accounting systems, but right now I am doing more just accounting with a really good group of people.

In my experience, you make friends by being a friend. Some people just acquire a collection of friends to do things with, those are good people to start with. I invited one of our gay coworkers to a concert (because he liked the band) and now all my kids love him and we also go to yoga together. He is definitely someone who collects friends, he does hang out still with other people who used to work here.

Someone like that is a good place to start, to practice having friends. Once you are more comfortable with people it will be easier. You only have to be involved at the level you want, but basically I’d say if you want someone who would change your medical dressing that needs to be someone for whom you would do the same. That’s how you would know it’s ok. For me I would get an appointment with the walk in and pay, instead of asking someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

We learned American Spanish when I was in school, no vosotros, no soft S, because we learned it from Cuban teachers. My kids got a mix but mostly, as you are saying, Spain Spanish. I think part of the reason is that Spain Spanish is one thing - canonical Spanish, yes? But in the Americas it’s varied, different in the US from Mexico, from Colombia, from Argentina, Costa Rica. Dialects.

Any homemade card is more thoughtful than a purchased one. So I don’t think it matters if you are a good artist or not. It’s a thoughtful message and you created it yourself.

This is sort of what I saw in California - where I’m from, Hispanic people were “the white people”, and people descended from Africans were “the black people” and I wasn’t aware of any sort of prejudice against Asians, they got lumped under the big umbrella of “white” . But when I was in California it was more like black and white guys considered themselves Americans, all one thing, and discriminated against Mexicans and Asians.

It’s all made up, to keep people divided. Not to say there are no historical reasons reverberating still - institutional wealth comes from the past and slavery, so descendents of slaves have legitimate grievance- but the categories/rules of in groups and out groups and who is discriminated against are not the same all over the US.

For every one making millions, there are millions making near nothing.

People at the top of every industry DO make that much. Think about the UHC guy, you don’t think he was pulling that much?

Inequality is baked in.

I got some crazy genius IQ score when I was a kid because I was very good at taking tests and read a lot, good with language. Just happened to be good at what they were testing.

If you like to do programming, create things, are curious and interested in things, you ARE NOT STUPID. Not everyone’s intelligence runs to language or something tested by those tests. They are not really tests of potential, and the only reason my mom got us tested, the only reason I got two of my kids tested, was to get us into the better classes in school because they will only do it as an accommodation for a learning difference in.the public schools here. My other kids went to schools that promoted them based on their performance in class, which makes so much more sense.

Now - my friend had a legit genius boyfriend and he was a raging asshole, I think because he had nobody who thought like him, he was alienated. But the problem was that he was an asshole, not that he was a genius. So as long as your partner is nice and you can talk to each other, there is no problem, don’t borrow trouble and don’t think of yourself as stupid.

I mean, it depends on how old you are, right? I did a 22 year monogamous stretch, but before that and between that and my husband now (10 years so far monogamous) got around some & had fun, my # would doubtless be shocking to many if I could even figure it out but it doesn’t mean I can’t be in a stable relationship, I was before and am now too. Husband similar story.

Some of us can enjoy recreational sex and also enjoy committed relationships.

This is absolutely a real thing. I had a calorific breakfast sandwich for breakfast this morning, a diet coke for lunch, it’s been 8 hours, not close to hungry yet. My kids think it’s odd, that I should be hungry at lunch regardless but I think that’s the way appetite is supposed to work, they just haven’t quite stopped growing yet.

That’s why people will see a skinny person eating a whole pizza and think “WTF”? They don’t see that the person is then full until next day lunchtime or whatever.

My husband says if you push past that and eat (he bulked once) that your appetite adjusts and you get bigger and hungrier. But bodies generally want to sort of stay the size they are, so don’t signal “eat, dammit!” if you have funded it enough to maintain.