I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your dad is a racist.

I would say it’s a shining example of my theory. He wants to go back to when he was ignorant of the struggles of other people. They did exist, he just didn’t know and now he does.

+3 or so, benign neglect, with unavoidable trauma. My dad died when I was a teenager and that sucked, my mom fell apart, also she was diagnosed bipolar and I didn’t enjoy being a child at all, but do honestly believe my mom did her best, and we were fed, housed, schooled, (ETA including sports! She was big on physical fitness, and that is something that absolutely ended up improving my adult life, once I recovered from my own disordered/restrictive eating) and not interfered with much beyond that.

What score would the over-involved helicopter parents of my kids’ friends land on this scale, though? Those kids aren’t spoiled exactly but certainly not neglected.

I think people who think the past was better are all white men, and it’s because they didn’t have to think about other people. They want to go back to ignorance.

He literally says that to you? The 1950s? Have you asked him specifically why? My mom had a great time in the 1950s and no way would she ever have wanted the world to go backwards to that time. She recognized, as she became older, how bad things were for her mom, for black kids (her school was segregated), for so many people.

The only reason I can imagine wanting to go to the past, is to try to make this future better, but I know better than to fuck with the timeline and can’t imagine I’d be able to do anything about it anyway.

Hozier

Father John Misty

SZA

Tyler Childers

And oh my God, the juggernaut that is Fontaines DC

ETA I agree with Future Islands.

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

I’m American. I regularly walk to the shop that’s 1.75 km, won’t drive it because it’s too close.

The closest Real Grocery is 2.5km, that I take electric bike. Same for the Whole Foods that’s much farther (5.5km) but that I consider an adventure ride and certainly not a walk. The groceries would melt by the time I got home if I walked.

All of these my husband drives to, and I think that’s more typical. I have hangups about driving short distances.

I don’t use my car much anymore, so would consider that liquid, and could make the kids pay some rent now they are working (not much), if I sold that and nothing in the house needed repaired or maintained (ha ha ha) I am at almost 3 years. So I guess if I had some fatal illness and was willing to run out all of both my &my husband’s retirement money I could stop working. Well, no, nevermind, I couldn’t, because the medical care would bankrupt us. But we would not immediately starve anymore. It only took half a century to get here!

I have eclectic taste in music. Mostly I give thanks for streaming services and radio - back when we had to buy albums I got literal anxiety because there was simply no possible way I could get even 1% of what I liked, and the thought of cataloguing it also oppressed me.

So -

I do read Brooklyn Vegan occasionally for stuff I might not have heard of, and tours, Pitchfork for live versions of songs.

I also let the streaming algorithm have its way with my playlist often, when not listening to a whole album. And I listen to radio (literal FM community radio) shows I like, and sometimes my kids scoop me on some artist they think I will like. And understand that the universe of music I might enjoy is blessedly so large I will not get to the end of it.

Oh and I go to concerts - often I have found bands because they opened for someone I went to see.

My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.

To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it’s about an hour walk to either of those.

The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.

I do have thoughts in words, language. I don’t exactly hear or see it but it’s definitely language based. Often two levels of thought, one superficial and another underneath, thinking about those superficial thoughts.

Oh this is going to sound like my mind is in the gutter, but there have been a couple of NSFW collaborations between smut posters who met on the NSFW then made some posts together. I find that just delightful.

If we can stop things ending up in the Gulf, instead of polluting it -

Stop fertilizer runoff and disappear oil rigs, move all hotels back from the beach by a quarter mile or so.

If that option is unavailable, Ron Desantis, Rick Scott, Ashley Moody and Beth Bondi, Citizens United, and the gerrymandered voting district maps.

I use plastic produce bags to cover rising sourdough.

Always use the peels of the pineapple to make tepache!

No, political wife is not what I signed up for. Unless I was too afraid to leave, in which case I would try to secretly work against him. Which is also terrifying but at least useful.

I am actually living less than a mile from where I was born, like some middle ages peasant who never traveled, but have traveled. I’d like to have been born here, but in the timeline where Al Gore waited for the ballots to be counted and won.

I like to have a drink but hard NO to doing it before anything important. I strongly prefer to feel clear headed for those moments.

I’ve not been to many, but have had people repeatedly tell me our wedding was the best they’d ever been to, so I guess ours was the best by some measure. I have an enormous family, husband and I got together as adults so both had kids too, some grown, we ended up with 50 people only inviting immediate family (brothers, sisters, their partners and kids, our parents, our kids) the weather cooperated, we had open bar and only one person got too drunk, DJ not great but not bad, so much dancing, it was nothing super fancy nor bare bones, I would say nice enough so everyone could feel comfortable and not more.

If anyone is wondering, the things I think made it good - open bar, kids running around, good music, enough structure but not too much (a cocktail hour then ceremony then reception with music & a first dance, then food, then more partying, food left out for people to get more if they want, no assigned seating, tables pushed to edges so big dance floor and again I think open bar is a non negotiable, make sure there are plenty of non alcoholic options at the bar too)

It does feel like going out in underwear, to a place where everyone is in underwear, and the people wearing full clothing look out of place. I don’t even have a perfect body but grew up near the beach, saw every possible body type in swimwear. So I am comfortable enough looking near naked in public, since everyone is. It’s nice.

I guess I’d die. It’s never either of those where I live. And crops would fail either way.

In terms of personal comfort:

If the only triple digit temp was only ever exactly 100, then I guess triple digits.

If it can be Celsius, 9 is so cold but not kill you cold, I would be sad but not dead.

You know what’s funny? I have experienced the inverse of this. I run pretty cool so always take warm or hot showers, but one time there was a cold snap and my water heater broke. We had well water so it was very cold, and down here we do not really have heaters designed to handle actual cold so the house was freezing too. So I had what was probably the most uncomfortable shower of my entire life, shivering and teeth chattering so fucking cold, thought I would die, but when I got out? The air felt almost warm, it was so pleasant not just because it was over, but because it somehow blunted the feeling of cold. I don’t understand how chilling my core somehow warmed me (it usually works the other way) but it sure did.

At night here I do shower hot, I think the theory is that then when you lay down, your body temperature is dropping and that makes it easier to fall asleep.