Oh don’t feel bad for us. It’s also hotter than hell with 115% humidity every day for 7-9 months!

23 miles door to door for me. Can take as little as a half hour (zero traffic)… Or as much as an hour 20. And good luck predicting exactly how bad it will be at any given day/time!

Also in the greater Atlanta and can confirm. My job thankfully has me work from home as much as I can (I also travel a lot, which requires getting a vehicle from the office). But it’s still a nightmare every time I do have to go in.

I’m a childfree woman. I am being sterilized in less than 2 weeks. I have a very very long list of reasons I don’t want kids. I won’t bore anyone by typing them out.

What I find most interesting in this thread is how people have so much of an option on other people’s choices still. It’s 2025, can we just let each other live?

No, it is not immoral to have kids. The world has always been messed up and it will continue to be until we all die out. Maybe that will happen in the next generation, maybe it won’t happen for another 50 generations. We cannot know either way.

No, it is not immoral to not have kids. You do not have a responsibility to continue your bloodline or some nonsense. You can still be invested in the future even if you don’t personally have kids.

I wish everyone had put their gender in their replies though. As a general rule, I often see more childfree women than men. I think this is because women are often put in that caregiver role earlier than men and they see how hard it is. Also women have to do the pregnancy/birth part and that seems awful. Men think of the time they’ll have to teach and play with their kids, women imagine having to cook a nutritious meal every night or get called negligent. Of course that’s not always the dynamic but you have to acknowledge it swings that way.

Very technically there are two (at least down here in Dixie Alley). The two months with the most tornadoes are April and January.

I’ve used free tax USA for years. I don’t pay for filing my fed, just my state. But my taxes tend to be pretty simple, so I guess ymmv

I don’t think that’s a terrible idea for politicians. Let’s see who bought them.

Ummm… Billionaires are people? Imma need a source on that.

Do you actually think they’re shutting down USAID because they’re going to redirect those funds to fixing American poverty or infrastructure?

Your take on soft power is as ignorant as Trump/Musk’s. The game is being played no matter what. Russia and China are always playing. We just walked away from the table and any chips we have will quickly be stolen. As a rich, powerful county, we don’t have the option not to play (and stay powerful anyway).

Depends on the state I imagine. But I just looked mine up and it’s “in the last 10 years” and not “ever” so that’s good.

In my job, I occasionally facilitate training for prisoner firefighters. Not only do they all love the job, they are also the best FD we train with. They read the material, study procedures, get it right when being observed. They get to stay at the firehouse instead of the prison itself, so both getting invited to do it and continuing to do it are huge for the inmates. They also love it. It burns my biscuit right up that they’ll not be able to be a firefighter when they get out.

Oh yeah, that’s where it started. My dad loved it and he’d put it on when I was younger and I’d start sawing logs.

This is true: I have seen the first half hour of every Dune… But I ALWAYS pass out around that point.

Lucifer. My sis loved it and I hated it with a passion. I don’t think Ellis is any good in it and they’re just relying on him (and the other actors) being hot instead of actually telling a decent story or making enjoyable characters.

The fallout will just give you cancer in 10-20 years as long as you wait to go outside for a week or so. Assuming you’re far enough away that the blast doesn’t kill you, stay as underground or as much to the center of a building as possible for that first week and something like 95% of the rad stuff will have decayed.

Sure some people will get enough dose to die, but more people will get sick and recover. Radiation is not like the movies.

It’s worth noting that those dyslexia typefaces are at best neutral for helping those with dyslexia. It’s a marketing thing. I did a deep dive on this recently.

I’m from the rural South and there are plenty of ostentatious displays of wealth. Particularly surrounding how your home looks - decorating for every single holiday for no reason comes to mind.

Plenty of rural Americans are super poor. It generally takes more money to live in the city so that should make some sense. I grew up rural poor - my family were partially subsistence farmers, cutting our grocery bill.

To answer the question from OP - I’m not sure I count as properly middle class but I’m definitely more stable than I was growing up, so I’ll say my biggest changes are being more conscious of what I look and smell like. When you’re poor, everything smells like whatever’s on sale. I have kept my tendency to overbuy during sales for anything is shelf stable for long periods of time even if I already have plenty.

I don’t think that at all. I think you’re struggling and this is a cry for help. I’m just trying to give you a stick. (Like https://boggletheowl.tumblr.com/post/41509206591/ive-been-getting-a-lot-of-these-lately-and-i )

Unfortunately no one outside yourself will be able to save you on this one. You have to decide to make effort to improve. Especially if you’re not in the financial position to get professional help. Good luck and I wish you the best.

Your options are to continue to be miserable or work on yourself. You don’t seem to want to do the work, but you do a good job pulling down excuses.

I’ve mentioned plenty of ways to get around being broke. But you don’t want help. You want to complain. Hopefully some day you’ll get past that. I wish you luck with your health issues.

Changing yourself is not erasing yourself. It’s improving yourself. ‘Old and weird’? Nah, I got lots of old weirdos that are an absolute delight in my life.

Okay, you’re not a bad person. How is someone supposed to know that? What do you do? Tell me about yourself, but don’t say stuff about what you are. Tell me what you do. 3 things.

Chances are the more you do, the more you’ll find yourself around people that will find what you do desirable.