I’m doing better without him, so don’t worry too much about it. Old women tend to live alone simply because men die younger, so it’s no biggie if some of us start that trend a bit early.

I remember an old guy who really wanted to remarry when his wife died, courted and married someone new, and then expected her to do all the household chores because that’s what women do. She was aghast. He hadn’t given any indication that what he wanted was a free maid while wooing her, and she backed out of the whole thing immediately – much happier to be on her own than take on his expectations.

The reddit hivemind gets triggered by the very idea of cheating. As far as I know, there was no cheating in my marriage and eventual divorce, but it didn’t matter to me if he cheated or not. It mattered to him that I didn’t cheat, so I didn’t. From my point of view, I’d have a problem if he was spending all his free time with someone else instead of helping with the house, chores, relationship, and so on, but random sex was fine by me – as long as it didn’t result in pregnancy or become a full-blown relationship.

Years ago I read some paper about how humans have two primary and competing reproductive strategies: monogamy versus promiscuouness. It theorized that cultures tend to codify monogamy as the standard to follow because its proponents get very hostile to the promiscuous whereas the promiscuous do not much care what the monogamous do.

Agreed!

I might think it is in my self interest to lie, cheat and steal, but if I do that, my community and my reputation are worsened, and I may have a harder time getting a better position in a crappier world.

If instead I think it in my self interest to volunteer at the local food bank, I might see my community and reputation improved, and by demonstrating a commitment to community, perhaps I will get a better job offer.

More basically: civilization has figured out that fair trade benefits both the farmer who needs tools and the blacksmith who needs food. It is in everyones’ self-interest to support things like: rule of law, commerce, and education.

He’d tell you because I was crazy.

I’d say it was because he wanted us to both move in with his (wonderful and supportive) family.

I was crazy, but not THAT crazy.

We had been living far away from his family, but he’d landed a fantastic job in their home town. Before the move, his mother started calling me and telling me that if I wanted to live in her house, I’d have to be respectful, and not go out drinking all night and coming home drunk – something I’d never done or concieved of doing – or what chores I would have, or how loud I could be, and when we would eat, and so on. I told him that I could not live 24/7 with his mom. I said I was moving to MY mother’s and when he got us a place of our own, I would join him. He didn’t. We divorced.

Nah, gotta got vinyl because cassettes deteriorate just sitting in their cases while vinyl stays pristine … until you actually play it, anyway – but if you want to store an audio recording for longevity, press a gold version of a vinyl album.

Not the OP, but I imagine “vendor harassment” means people hawking gutters, phone services, and other 3rd party people/items inside Costco.

I, too, have considered not renewing because I feel like the quality of products has gone way, way down. For me the issue is mostly heat-and-eat food but I’ve also been dissatisfied with some household items – plastic laundry baskets that broke too quickly, for example. For food stuffs, I posted a while back on bake-at-home pre-made pizzas with bad crusts and bad toppings. I miss the old mesquite chicken wings that were replaced with garlic wings that have the mildly chemical flavor of jarred pre-chopped garlic. At the food court, I understood them getting rid of fresh onions for hot dogs during covid, but I didn’t understand why they got rid of the sauerkraut. I stopped buying anything from the food court once that happened.

Also, they keep removing my core purchases; particularly cheeses. They used to stock a triple creme brie-like round that I loved. It is gone. I miss it. The remaining soft cheeses do not compare. That was a bit of a luxury, so I didn’t NEED that, whereas my biggest problem was the removal of 2lb bricks of cheddar cheese. I’m not talking about the fancy cheddar like kerrygold (which doesn’t melt well), but the generic ‘commodity’ cheddar that had been stocked in the main cold cases near bacon, hot dogs, and bags of shredded cheeses. I don’t want shredded cheese. I want a big block I can slice or shred myself as needed. They also used to carry a locally made cheese/horseradish spread I liked buying with local pretzel sticks but both of those are gone, too. There were other similar items but you get the idea.

As for produce, I live near farm country so I can usually find plain produce in season for a better price than Costco if it is local. Produce from other countries can be cheaper at Costco some of the time, but very often our local bulk-produce outlets can beat Costco on price at the cost of a reduction in freshness. Where you have the choice of 5 celery sticks for x or 40 celery sticks for 2x, my choices are: 1 head of celery for x (regular grocer), 3 heads of ‘ugly’ celery for 2x (bulk produce outlet), 3 trimmed heads of celery ‘hearts’ for 2x+ (Costco). I get the ugly celery and put the leaves in whatever celery-using soups/stews I make in the next few weeks. I find those leaves add a pleasing flavor in such dishes, so I feel ripped off if I only receive ‘hearts’.

When I was in high school, I was very anti-authority and swore all the time to be “against the man”. When I started working in day care I had to cut out all swearing all the time because it was too automatic to ONLY stop in front of kids. When I got a real job, I continued my no-swearing bend as a general rule because – at least until you get to know the people around you – people will treat you with more respect if you don’t sound like a foul mouthed low life.

Swearing all the time for no reason is a very low-rent affect. Letting out a rare swear will add considerable emphasis when your peers know it is not your normal behavior. Always swear when you hurt yourself. It helps.

It is easy insta-food, so just look at it as a day without needing to plan or cook. That said, if you have roasted peanuts and/or cilantro to use as garnish, I think both will improve the meal.

If you mean the dry-shelf instant noodle bowls, then yes. I think of those as an alternative to ramen noodles since they don’t need refrigeration and cook in a similar manner. In both cases, there’s no pretense of either having fresh ingredients or being anything like a complete dinner-style meal. I like instant ramen (especially with an egg and some greens in it) and I like the instant pho (also preferred with greens, but no egg).

While I expect dry instant noodles to be a minimal affair that one might opt to dress up, I thought the Pad Thai would be more of a complete meal – and it is, but it didn’t taste much like Pad Thai. I understand that bean sprouts are impossible to keep shelf-stable, but Snapdragon could have included little packets of peanuts and chill flakes to improve the meal.

I gather it is widely distributed.

I thought I was going to rely to this question, but you covered it so perfectly that I’ve nothing useful to add. Thank you for putting in the time.

And for hot peppers.

Is it any good? I used to like Lidl and Aldi breads before COVID, when you could slice it right there. They stopped that, and so I no longer had a reason to drive 5-10 miles out of my way to go there. I’d go back for a good sauerkraut, though.

I generally agree with you, but it is so complicated. I read a piece in The Nation a few years ago (written 2019) and whenever I see a question like this I have to dig it up. Sex workers in Spain applied to become a union (OTRAS, for short, full name basically means “the other women") and were approved in August 2018. Here are a few snippets:

After OTRAS was legalized, its two dozen or so members—who include women and men, both trans and cisgender—quickly found themselves engulfed in a national controversy. Prominent activists, academics, and media personalities swarmed social media under the hashtag #SoyAbolicionista (“I’m an Abolitionist”) to denounce what they saw as basic exploitation masquerading as the service economy. The union’s opponents argue that in a patriarchal society, women can’t be consenting parties in a paid sexual act born of financial necessity. They liken sex work to slavery, hence their name: “abolitionists.”

OTRAS calls this abolitionist opposition “the industry.” “They live really well off of their discussions, books, workshops, conferences, without ever including sex workers,” Necro says. “We’re not allowed to attend the feminist conventions.” OTRAS accuses “the industry” and the government—the two loudest arms of the abolitionist camp—of racism and classism, and is irked by their claims to feminism. “A government that refuses to guarantee the rights of the most vulnerable, poorest women with the highest number of immigrants? How is that feminist?” Borrell bristles. “We’re the feminists, the ones fighting for their rights.”

While advocates for legalization argue that it will make sex work safer, abolitionists counter that it could instead endanger women who, unlike the members of OTRAS, did not choose to enter the profession on their own. Abolitionists frame their anti-prostitution stance around the issue of human trafficking, specifically for prostitution. They argue that regulating sex work will simply allow traffickers to exploit women under legal cover.

“The trafficked women have no papers, so if police raid a club, the women have no choice but to say they’re there because they want to be,” says Rocío Nieto […] Once law enforcement is out of earshot, Nieto says, “none of the women tell you they want to be there. None of them tell you they want to do that work.”

A handful of smaller radical-left parties also back OTRAS, as well as one unlikely ally: the right-wing Ciudadanos party, known for its harsh anti-immigration stance, among other more traditionally conservative postures. “Experience shows us that when the State refuses to regulate, the mafias make the rules,” the party’s press corps wrote me in an e-mail.

Thank you!

I’m so sorry.

Why can’t the U.S. buy decent sauerkraut at the store? Why must we make it ourselves or get awful kraut? Germany has a unique and delightful kraut for seemingly every town and village, but the U.S. has exactly one type from a handful of companies that all make it the same. Well, maybe two types if you count ‘canned’ but I don’t reckon that to be actual sauerkraut. What was the topic? Sandwiches? Well, if I could find a good kraut, I would spend my days trying to recreate a reuben-like masterpiece.

If you are willing to switch, tell your current carrier and sometimes that will light a fire under them to actually address the Support call. We had that happen recently. Internet went out. The issue was outside our house with the provider’s line. They said they’d send someone a week later, so we pointed out it would be faster for us to switch providers, to which they replied, “We can’t get there tomorrow but how about the next day?” We accepted and they actually did fix it in two days instead of seven.

The latest pluralistic article starts with a long rant about “rent” and what’s wrong with it (then explains how Intellectual Property rights are basically the same thing and talks about software). Anyway, you might like the rent part: https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/

Find an individual reviewer you agree with and follow them.

Exactly! You can also find more than one to follow, and take note of which never match your tastes. For me, I will avoid any movie recommended by PBS’s Patrick Stoner until/unless someone I trust tells me otherwise. I used to have two critics I particularly followed. One had the same taste in foreign film as I, and the other was ready to enjoy a stupid Hollywood rollick. Alas, I’ve lost track of the former and the latter is now at Slate doing a variety of stuff. The result is I pretty much stopped going to the theater.