Not just aging, I would say intelligence is highly variable just on an individual level due to all sorts of factors. How much rest you get, the quality of said rest, current physical comfort level, distractions, stress, whether you’re hungry or have eaten recently, time of day, whether there’s a time constraint, etc etc etc. I wonder how many “stupid” people are genuinely that way even in the best conditions, or if the majority are just suffering from any of multiple detractors on them. Because of this I try not to judge, because I don’t know their lives.

If it’s a straight edge and the measurements don’t have to be too precise I would just sand the edge flat, personally

I actually think it would be the opposite. I imagine during the American push west it drew the novelty seekers, the people who weren’t afraid of change and dynamic settings. Neurotypical people would probably stay home. Also, a study from 2024 had results that favored ADHD people when they had to perform a foraging simulation. The impulse to move on and explore is well suited to it. My family has started trying to do a little homesteading, and wow the skills that are involved and the amount of problem solving means there is always something new to do. We are constantly challenged to work with our hands to find creative and affordable solutions. Animals and dependents create external accountability. Deadlines aren’t just meaningless bullshit on a calendar, they are real things that become vitally important enough to awaken the “panic monster”. I’m sure there would be struggles for an ADHD person to do everything, but this was also a time where no one would be doing it alone. Farms and homesteads would hardly ever be a “nuclear family” mom/dad/kid unit. You would have had grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, transient labor, etc etc. The homestead would have a dozen or more people on it, so if you had executive issues with cooking but a hyper fixation on gardening, there would be other people to cover for you. If you were having trouble getting started on something, another household member might get everything needed together and then get you to help them do it instead.

I’m not going to try to sell it as a paradise or perfect existence but I do think that societies and communities used to have a lot more flexibility to accomodate neurospicy individuals. This era we find ourselves in is unique because we have never had so many households of so few people. Throughout history we have had tribes and communities and big households, and neurodivergent people were given a place because they were family members and a part of those communities. Now we are all expected to fend for ourselves completely alone, of course we can’t do it all.

Thank you for providing a possible answer for why my Jellyfin server is such a memory hog. It eats up memory and CPU even while idling and grinds all of my other services to a crawl if I let it

You’re not the only one. I’ve been having an issue where Jellyfin just decides to use 90% of my server’s memory and cpu just for giggles and I haven’t had the time to unravel it so it’s just unusable at the moment.

I genuinely liked Pulaski and still do despite the internet consensus, but I think a part of the hate was a reaction to Gates having been sidelined after season one. She was a feminist and did horrible things like ask for equal pay, so the menfolk producers figured they could cut her and get someone more compliant. Source for this: had a chat with her at a convention, same thing happened to Terry Farrel.

I was going to recommend Primal Kitchen! I only will get theirs, it tastes like what (IMO) ketchup is supposed to taste like.

Thankfully ice cream is something that can be easily made at home and the jump in quality makes it well worth it. Frozen drum type ice cream machines end up in thrift shops all the time, but are also under $100 new. I don’t eat any ice cream that isn’t home made now, it’s completely spoiled me. I use light cream, whole milk, sugar, my flavoring of choice, and add a little alcohol (the equivalent of a tsp of wine per serving) to keep it soft. I really can’t recommend it enough!

Are you in the US? There are a couple of native blackberries that don’t grow in brambles, but they are still quite pokey. This one basically grows as a couple of arching canes, usually on a tree line with a few others.

Rubus Ursinus (Pacific blackberry) and Allegheniensis and a few others are native to the US. They’re still prickly but not evil, we have some in the backyard and the turkeys love them.

Is it something you do as a hobby/interest or for a living? Bc that sounds like a lot

Yes to both. I have always been interested in clothes and fashion since childhood (dolls and sewing and crafting etc) and I like getting the most value out of my money, which led me to thrift shops and buying second hand. Thrift shops and the quality of their items are highly variable but for some time I lived in a place that had multiple fantastic shops. I would rotate through them and grab high quality items that were not selling there and sell them online. I moved and don’t pick as much to sell anymore, but I still buy for my family and self.

Thrifting is sort of like gambling, except it costs time instead of money to “play”. You only pay after you “win” by finding the Awesome Thing. Sometimes you will strike out and not find anything, that’s normal. If you only look at one thrift shop once or twice you will likely not find anything, and you usually will find something other than what you were specifically looking for. However when you “win” and find something truly special and exciting, it can keep you going back to the hunt.

Men’s clothes are harder to thrift generally, because as a group, men are more careful consumers and will wear their clothes out instead of donating them. However it’s still perfectly possible to find good things. You already know to look for natural fibers, but did you know you can dye stained shirts in your washing machine with dye from most grocery stores? If you have a an otherwise good quality plain shirt but it has some discoloration, you can spend $5 on a bottle or box of dye, and either throw it in a big cookpot on the stove or run it through the hot wash cycle with anything else you want to be that color. There are also other places to thrift, like online second hand marketplaces (Ebay, Poshmark, Vinted, Thredup etc), Church fundraiser sales, and of course good old yard sales.

Honestly there is a tangible difference in clothing made of synthetics. Like, literally, you can feel the difference. I thrift a lot, and am a clothing and textile snob, and through many years of groping fabric I’ve become able to identify cotton, silk, wool, rayon etc just by touch. In my experience textile labels seem to be accurate as long as they are present. The really shady manufacturers will not put a label on or will call polyester/acetate/acrylic some other name to pretend it’s fancier than it is. If something says it is 100% cotton I personally have never found it to be otherwise. There are methods to test, for instance burning a scrap and looking at the residue or using bleach on protein fabrics (wool/silk). Most often when I misidentify something though, I check the label and it’s like 2% elastane which is frustrating because that stuff wears out and is completely unnecessary in knit fabrics.

Anyway, my recommendation is to avoid feeding the fast fashion industry as much as possible, and thrift or get second hand as much as you can. Those heavyweight 100% cotton T-shirts from the 90s or early zeroes are made of way better quality materials anyway.

That’s just sci-fi. Star Wars is a fantasy set in space

Orrrr you know, people who just don’t have that much libido and are otherwise content. Or literally anyone in a happy partnership but on the asexual spectrum. Or mature people who have longer refractory periods. Or people with busy schedules who are too tired during the work week. Etc etc etc.

I genuinely appreciated being able to do a round trip for under $100 all in including train tickets. Like you I had my own backpack, snacks, water and wore extra clothes. Going to miss those deals.

God is a story just like Narnia is a story. God doesn’t want anything of you any more than Aslan does, or Batman, or Gandalf. You can take what strength you want from characters in stories, but that’s all that any god has ever been.

There is no separate “divine” part of you that is “higher” or needs to defeat some “animal” part of you. You are an animal. You are a humble part of a 4+ billion year history of the Earth and one of many living organisms. All that makes you special is that you have more control over your environment than many.

I think you’re right that the Big Bang is a kind of dumb theory, that’s entirely based on a relatively flimsy assumption that the speed of light is constant and red shift must mean expansion, but it conveniently allows deists and other spiritual folks to point a finger at some deity or other and so it persists. I am not an expert though and I recognize it might be the best theory we have right now, but again to try to say that a storybook character is real because of it is silly.

If you’re in the US it would be worth talking to your town and town’s planning board then. It would be up to the town planning board whether or not that was an acceptable use of that specific land in that specific area. A developer would only buy that land if they knew they would get a build permit. You can attend a meeting and there’s usually a time slot for a public input session on the agenda and you can bring that up. If you’re not in the US I’m not sure how it works but it might be similar.

Very often the fields that those solar panels are covering are land fills or polluted sites that would be unsuitable for any kind of building or agriculture due to contamination. Utility grade solar often seeks out land that is already disturbed and unsuitable for other purposes because it’s cheap.

Covering parking lots with solar panels doesn’t make them any less horrible, we should all be aiming towards as little wasted space as possible. Which means no parking lots.

Do you have a link to the map you like?

So where are all the “I did that” stickers on the gas pumps with his face?