Also on iodine, there was a product out there called “Polar Pure” that I fucking love

Unfortunately, it was basically just a bottle of pure iodine crystals, so they got caught up in some new anti-drug regulations and got shut down because iodine can be used to make meth.

But it was a great product, and if you look around you can still find new old stock. It has an indefinite shelf life (iodine crystals don’t go bad) and one bottle was enough to treat something like 2,000L of water.

You filled the bottle up with water, some of the iodine would dissolve into it, and you’d use a capful or so of that concentrated iodine solution to disinfect your drinking water. It had a special bottle design to keep the iodine crystals trapped inside when you poured the liquid out.

Pure iodine crystals aren’t exactly an easy thing to get your hands on, but if anyone is able to that’s probably a good way to go.

Pretty much exactly what it sounds like, water that comes in blue cans. The manufacturer claims it has a 50 year shelf life or something.

It costs several times what regular bottled water does, and it’s literally just water, not flavored or sparkling or enhanced with any vitamins or electrolytes or anything, just water in a can. It’s kind of a stupid thing to buy, and arguably you’d be better off just filling up some sturdy jugs from your tap and treating it with a couple drops of bleach and dumping it down the drain every so often, but I can also see the convenience of a buy-one-cry-once set-it-and-forget it prep like that.

Best is one of two

First was a couple who are more like friends-of-friends. I like them, they’re cool people, but I’ve never really hung out with them except when we’re part of a group of mutual friends, so I was actually a little surprised to get an invite to their wedding.

But anyway, I booked a hotel room with a couple of those mutual friends. Did a little light pre gaming, and hopped on the shuttle bus to the venue. The ceremony was nice and short and it was a nice venue.

Then we head into the area to have dinner, and find our assigned seats, and we’re a little shocked when the bride and groom joined us at the table instead of being off at their own private table somewhere. They said they wanted to sit with their friends, so they did, they were of course off talking to various friends and relatives a lot, but they definitely carved out a nice chunk of the night to eat and sit down and eat and enjoy their wedding. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people getting married where they say they never even had time during their reception to actually eat, that’s always sounded terrible to me and I think they felt the same way. Food was amazing as well, I had just about the biggest slab of prime rib I’ve ever seen and it was cooked to absolute perfection. They even came around offering seconds if anyone wanted them.

A big part of how I knew them was because we were all part of a large group that regularly went to a music festival together, and as you do at a festival, we all tended to get belligerently drunk. Apparently part of the reason I got an invite was because of that, in their words they paid for an open bar and wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth, and they knew the whole music festival crew would be up to the task.

We were all on our best behavior, but we were all definitely pretty hammered when we boarded the bus back to the hotel to continue our party at the hotel bar.

We slept in way too late to grab breakfast at the hotel, so most of us made our way to a nearby diner to grab breakfast.

All in all just a really fun day with good friends, good food, plenty of booze, and a nice casual wedding.

The second contender for best wedding is actually one I officiated. Years ago I got ordained online from the universal life church, and never really did anything with that. I’m not religious, it’s just a fun little thing to be able to say that I’m a minister.

My buddy apparently remembered that. We were in scouts together, he was a couple years younger than me and sort of looked up to me as a mentor and we’ve stayed good friends. So time comes for him to get married and he immediately says he wants me to do the ceremony, and I of course agreed.

This dude has a way of finding really cool stuff, and somewhere in his adventures he finds a cave. It’s open for tourism by appointment and the entrance is through the owners’ basement. He gets to talking to the owner, and apparently it had always been her grandmother’s (who originally owned the house/cave) to have a wedding there, but no one had ever approached them about that. Since he was looking for a wedding venue he jumped at the opportunity. They also charged a ridiculously low price for it (I think they initially said like $50, he gave them like $500 and even that is fucking peanuts to pay for a wedding venue)

The wedding ceremony itself was pretty small, there’s only so many people you can cram into a cave at once, but more people were invited for the reception. I came up with what everyone seems to think was a really good script for the ceremony, even if it was a little hard to read in the dim light of a cave.

The reception was at a brewery, and the food was mostly a buffet of fancy pizzas, all really good, excellent party food. Again, everything was really chill and low-key.

The worst was my brother in laws wedding. He’s a good dude, but if I hadn’t married his sister I don’t think we’d have anything in common with each other.

His (now) wife’s family is fairly well-off and have a really nice vacation house on a lake in upstate New York where they go a lot. So they had the wedding up there.

Even before the wedding, it rubbed me kind of the wrong way that neither my wife nor I were ever asked to be in the wedding party. Not that I had any particular burning desire to be in it, but that just kind of seems like a normal courtesy thing. Until that point I know that I had figured he’d be one of my groomsmen when my wife and I actually have a wedding (COVID threw a monkey wrench into our plans and we ended up doing the courthouse thing, so I think we’re planning to do a big 10 year anniversary in a couple years)

The place is about a 6 hour drive from where most of their friends and family live, and for the rest of them it’s even longer. It’s not convenient to any sort of a major city where you could easily take a flight or a train or something to save yourself some of the driving, and let’s be honest, no one really wants to take time off for a wedding so most people were driving up 6 hours on a Friday, doing wedding shit Saturday, then driving 6 hours home on Sunday. They didn’t seem to understand why some of their further-flung relatives RSVP’d that they weren’t coming.

The hotel they reserved a block of rooms at is what some people might call “charming” or “rustic,” but personally I’m more inclined to call it “a crappy old house where everything creeks, none of the doors seem to close quite right, and the bathroom fixtures haven’t been updated in about 50 years.”

It was also August, and it was an outdoor wedding. Fuck that shit, it’s too damn hot to be outside for a wedding.

And I’m pretty sure the reason we weren’t in the wedding party was because they needed someone to babysit his/my wife’s grandmother. She’s got a pretty bad case of dementia, and was just really lost and confused the whole time she was there. She lives with his/my wife’s mom, but if course she was going to be busy with wedding stuff all day.

My wife drove us up, so I didn’t have my own car there. The entirety of the town we were in was about 3 block long, and mostly touristy shops selling stupid knickknacks I had no interest in. We were in a nice wooded area, and I’m an outdoorsy dude, and I pretty much spent all day looking at the mountains surrounding us thinking how much I’d rather be hiking than wandering around this crappy town.

I also normally work night shift and had turned my schedule upside down for this. I think my wife assumed I was going to sleep in, so when I woke up at a pretty reasonable hour (9-ish) figuring we’d at least be able to grab breakfast together before we got stuck babysitting her grandmother, she was nowhere to be found. She’d gone off to get breakfast with her dad (who was really pretty much the only other person there I knew, and he’s a really cool dude, I was looking forward to spending some time with him, we don’t get to see him very often)

So that left me by myself with no way to really go anywhere, and no one around I wanted to hang out with. A pretty crappy start to my day which put me in kind of a bad mood.

No really good food options in that town either- a crappy pizza place, a bar that’s just like every other mediocre bar in a touristy town, and a little breakfast and sandwich shop that was trying really hard to be cool but had nothing particularly exciting on the menu. Your best option was to drive about 15 minutes to the next town and eat somewhere there.

And of course we still got roped into all of the wedding picture bullshit.

The wedding and reception were nice enough, aside from it being too damn hot, food was ok but forgettable (my brother in law and his wife have just about the most bland palates imaginable, no surprises there) if it had been somewhere closer where I could have just attended the wedding and went home that night I probably would have left with an overall fine impression of the wedding except for feeling a little snubbed about the wedding party.

But it was absolutely not worth 12 hours in the car, the cost of a hotel room, and spending most of the day either by myself or babysitting a senile old lady who had no idea what was going on.

But at least now I don’t have to feel obligated to have him in my wedding party and I can free up that spot for someone I actually like.

It was both best and worst since I’ve only lived in one apartment in my life

It was actually a pretty nice apartment, I might still happily be there if they hadn’t kept jacking up the rent every year.

But I had some complaints

The kitchen was ridiculously tiny, and one of the cabinets couldn’t open all the way because it hit an overhead light fixture. We actually pointed that out when we first viewed the apartment (it had recently had some light renovations and that was obviously an oversight) and to their credit they installed a smaller fixture before we moved it. It still got in the way and the cabinet didn’t open 100% but it opened wide enough to get anything you needed in and out.

The bathroom vent fans definitely shared ductwork with other units, and someone along that vent liked to sing in the shower. We also occasionally heard her yelling at her kids. We didn’t mind that so much, it’s kind of part of living in an apartment that sometimes you’re going to hear what your neighbors are doing, it was usually more funny than anything, but it was a little weird the first time we heard someone singing from our bathroom.

The people above us liked to vacuum at like 10am on a Sunday. Not too unreasonable I suppose, but I worked night shift and it could be a little annoying from time to time when I was trying to sleep

They also had some kind of water leak one time that fucked up our ceilings a bit, and it also leaked right into our circuit breaker causing some electrical issues. No serious damage done though, and again they were quick to repair it.

When we moved out, our roommate discovered that the window in his room was leaky, which had caused some mold and water damage in his room. He never noticed it until then because of how he had some furniture placed along that wall.

There really wasn’t any decent spot to have any sort of a proper dining table, at least not if you also wanted to have a couch and a TV, so we pretty much ate off the coffee table or folding tray tables the whole time we lived there. (The apartment was actually fairly spacious overall, it was just sort of laid out weirdly)

I’m “lucky” (Also I’m overall very pro-nuclear, don’t let those sarcasm quotes give anyone the wrong impression) that I live in the evacuation zone for a nuclear plant, so my county distributes potassium iodide for residents in this area (for anyone paying enough attention to put their name on the list to have it sent to you or to stop by the office to pick it up) so that’s one thing I don’t really have to put any money or effort into stockpiling.

I’m not particularly concerned about the plant, and I’m not in an area that’s likely to get nuked if WWIII really gets going, though I may need to worry about fallout depending on the wind.

Definitely good advice and we are cycling things.

Our plan is focusing on dry goods that probably would last a couple years (maybe with some loss of nutrients/quality) just sitting in your pantry as long as it’s reasonably clean, dry, and no bug or rodent issues. I can’t say that I’ve ever had things like flour, rice, or beans go bad on me, and I’ve definitely pulled some out of my pantry that have been sitting there for a couple years.

And we’re further hedging our bets vacuum sealing them in mason jars with moisture and oxygen absorber packets.

For anyone doing the same, a paper cupcake/muffin wrapper in the top of the jar allegedly helps keep your vacuum sealer from sucking up any dust from your food. It didn’t seem like that was a major issue when we were doing it without, but I figure it can’t hurt either.

The thing we struggle with is cycling emergency water supplies. We don’t tend to use any sort of bottled water, water quality from our tap is actually pretty good (if a bit hard) and we put it through a filter anyway, so we never really think about cycling out whatever jugs or bottles we try to stockpile. I may have to bite the bullet and order a couple cases of that stupid blue can water or something.

I have a slight tendency towards paranoia and over-preparedness, it’s something I know about myself and keep in check, I don’t want to be the weirdo living in a bunker full of spam and guns. I keep it to a reasonable level of preparedness, a little extra food, a battery backup for my sump pump, some tools, blankets, water, etc. in the trunk of my car, etc. I’m seldom caught unprepared for anything that might come up, but I’m not actively stockpiling for the end of the world.

My wife tends to fly by the seat of her pants a bit more. I remember when I ran out to buy the backup battery for the sump pump before a big storm she asked if I really thought we’d need it. We ended up losing power for 16 hours, and while that battery didn’t last the whole time, it at least bought us a few extra hours of not having to bail out the sump pump with buckets to keep our basement from flooding.

So I definitely took notice when a couple months ago she started wanting to buy some rice and beans and such in bulk to vacuum seal so we’d have a bit of a stockpile on-hand if things started getting rough. If she’s starting to get worried like that, it usually means things are already pretty damn bad.

So I’ve been kicking my usual casual emergency preps up a notch, still holding myself back from becoming a full-on bunker weirdo, but fuck if that’s not starting to look kind of attractive.

I remember seeing a comment somewhere wishing they would reboot Xena, but lamenting that they would probably make it “too woke” if they did

I don’t think there’s much they could do to make Xena more “woke” if they tried.

Most of the time their argument is that they want me to have something physical to open/unwrap, so bank transfers aren’t going to be any more attractive to them.

Read, watch TV/movies/YouTube, play video games, take the dog for a walk, work on one of my many hobbies that I’ve been neglecting, see if any of my friends wants to do something, take a nap, listen to music,

And if I get really bored, there’s probably something I’m supposed to be cleaning or some other chore that needs attention

“home” by Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zeroes

it’s gotta be just about the most banal, saccharine, faux-folksy bullshit I’ve ever heard.

And it certainly doesn’t help that when it came out I was living at home still and my sister played it to death.

So I did not read the article because of a paywall I’m too lazy to circumvent right now

But from OP’s summary, the main technology they’re talking about is concrete reinforced with steel or other fibers.

And that’s definitely more advanced than “pyramid age”

But it’s also pretty much a direct descendant of mud brick reinforced with straw which humanity has been using since well before the pyramids. Same basic concept, different materials.

So yes and no.

Philly: A cheesesteak, hoagie, or Italian roast pork (with broccoli rabe, roasted hot peppers, and sharp provolone cheese) sandwich, and a citywide special (traditionally a 12oz PBR and a shot of Jim Beam for $5)

Yuengs & Wings (which rhymes) would be another solid choice

For the kids, maybe a birch beer and a soft pretzel

My dude, I think someone needs to tell you, Russia is part of the imperialist west now. Has been for a while. They’re maybe not always in agreement with the rest of the West, but the disagreement is only over who should be the top dog, not over any deeper philosophical/sociological/political/economic/etc. differences.

They’re not championing communism and haven’t for decades, arguably they haven’t since well-before the USSR officially fell apart.

They drank deep from the capitalist kool-aid, to the point that they’re almost a parody of crony capitalism taken to its most ridiculous extreme. You know all the talk of oligarchs and Putin’s yachts, and all of that? What part of that sounds like redistributing the wealth and seizing the means of production for the working class to you?

I’m sorry you have to find out this way comrade, I can only assume that you spent most of the last half century or so in a coma to not know this. I know the revolution must go on, but for now you should really focus on your physical therapy, and maybe catch up a bit on all that has happened. If you’re going around this uninformed, you’re not going to be able to advance the cause in any sort of meaningful way.

Funeral rites and traditions vary a lot around the world. I don’t know the specifics in Russia, but I know in some places traditionally family has played a big part in preparing the body for burial- cleaning it and dressing it and such, . There may also be additional religious rituals and such that would be performed.

But at the very least, I’m pretty sure that almost anywhere in the world would normally give the next of kin che opportunity to see the corpse if just to confirm that it is in fact their relative they’re about to bury.

Not that I particularly like this, but this isn’t exactly something new.

For most of my life, my mom worked a clerical job at a local elementary school, so I got some decent glimpses behind the curtain of my local school district.

Our district was all-around pretty well-regarded, some nearby districts, put bluntly, were not, and it wasn’t unheard of for parents in those other districts to try to send their kids to our schools. Maybe they moved out of the district and didn’t update their address, or they listed a friend or relative’s address in our district as their home address, etc. and every day their parents would drop them off at a bus stop in our district.

And I certainly don’t blame those parents for trying.

But our district did have someone whose job was to verify residency in those kinds of cases, they’d interview people and stake out bus stops and such. I imagine that a lot of districts do something similar.

Now they weren’t doing random checks on students based on nothing, they only investigated if they had some credible reason to believe the student didn’t live in our district- they received a tip from someone, or a student told someone that it was happening (sadly a decent amount of them came from younger elementary school students who didn’t get what was going on and they let it slip that they lived in another town)

Now of course, this article could be about something a lot more creepy and invasive, the article doesn’t really have much for me to go on.

It’s a shitty situation all-around. Every kid of course deserves to have the highest-quality education possible. Unfortunately, educating children isn’t cheap, in general you’re looking at in the neighborhood of about $10-20k per student per year at a public school in the US (paid for out of taxes and government funding and such, we’re not that bad of a capitalist hellhole that you need to shell out 10+ grand out of pocket every year to send your kids to public school.) A handful of extra students in a district can add up to some pretty significant extra expenses, I can certainly think of a few things I wish my school could have thrown a few thousand at back when I was in school, and maybe they could have if we had less kids attending our school who didn’t actually live in our district (although I don’t exactly have great confidence that our district would have allocated those extra funds appropriately if that were the case, as always, the issues at play are many and complicated)

Kind of reminds me of the daisyworld simulation.

It’s been a long time since I read about it, so I may possibly miss some details.

Daisyworld simulates a planet entirely covered by 2 species of daisy- black ones and white ones.

The black ones are better able to absorb the suns rays, so initially outcompete the white ones, however because they’re absorbing more of the rays, that leads to the planet warming up.

At a certain point the planets temperature gets too warm and the black daisies start dying off. Since the white daisies are better able to reflect the sun’s rays, they’re less effected by the increased temperature and start to outcompete the black ones.

After a while the white daisies are dominant, and since most of the planet is now reflecting the sun’s rays the temperature starts to drop, until it gets to a point where it’s too cold for the white daisies but since the black daisies can absorb more of the sun they start to outcompete the black ones again

Lather, rinse, repeat until they reach a sort of equilibrium.

I don’t have any significant mental health issues, but I can see the appeal.

Sometimes you just really need to get stuff off of your chest. Ideally you have people close to you that you can vent to, but some people don’t, and even if you do, sometimes they’re just the wrong kind of people to have that sort of conversation with.

And just being able to say something out loud can help you figure things out on your own. Sowe programmers and such do “rubber duck debugging” where they just explain the code and the issues they’re having to a rubber duck or stuffed animal or something on their desk, and the act of talking through it sort of engages different parts of your brain and often that’s enough to find the issue (I remember one time back in high school I was taking a programming class, I was presenting my project to the class, it worked, but it was a mess of ugly spaghetti code, and as I was up there explaining it out loud for the first time, something just clicked and I realized how I could have done it a much better way.) Some people feel really stupid talking to a rubber duck though (especially if it’s someone who’s already afraid that people think they’re “crazy”) so having an actual human to talk to could be really helpful for them.

And a lot of these things have other resources they can offer. They may be able to help you find a support group, therapist, housing assistance, have some sort of a crisis team they can send out to meet with you, etc.

And for what it’s worth, I work in 911 dispatch. This will vary a lot around the country of course, but while we certainly do get a decent amount of calls from crisis hotlines, they’re basically all for people who are in imminent danger of harming themselves. And the number of those calls I get is absolutely tiny in comparison to the amount of calls I’ve transferred to 988 and our police never so much as drove past the callers house.

“large” is relative.

Unless you’re incredibly thorough about totally cleaning out the vault, ATM, every teller drawer, etc. you’re probably not gonna be able to get more than a few 10s of thousands if you’re lucky

But even a few thousand, or hell, even a couple hundred could be huge for a lot of people.

That might be rent for a month or a couple of months when they’re really struggling, what they need to keep their car from getting repo’d so they can get to their job, pay for some badly needed home repairs, medications, etc.

I’m not struggling, but I’m not exactly doing great either, a couple extra thousand bucks on-hand would be amazing for me, and for some people it could be literally life-changing (even life-saving)

I’ve given 2 strangers strangers a jumpstart in a parking lot at night over the last year or so. I suppose technically those people I helped know about it, but I haven’t been going around bragging about it to anyone (until now I guess)