That’s how wedge issues work. Take an issue that most people didn’t have opinions on one way or another and beat opinions into their heads until they forget how it used to be something people just let live. When a party can’t sway people on bigger issues, they create some new ones. Then you end up with people whose whole ticket is filled depending on how a candidate feels about this ONE issue.

I agree. These are just SO EASY to make a decent amount of food with minimum effort in very little time. Poverty? Maybe. Absolutely exhausted parents with no time nor energy to cook a more traditional wholesome meal? Absolutely. BOOM, family fed. Time to go to bed.

The rapper is Del the Funky Homosapien. Involved in lots of other rap groups of the era as well as the previous era. I still remember this song every once in awhile and get it stuck in my head.

My ex wife was bulemic; we went to support groups together over it, sometimes.

The usage of laxatives and finger down the throat are classic signs of bulimia. Body dysmorphia very frequently goes hand-in-hand with those behaviors, as does having to hide these behaviors.

Fortunately, it sounds like you may be able to have a good support system that can help you keep this from going too far. There’s an opportunity here.

Take this on if you could: losing weight these ways actually ends up being a lot of work, with a terrible trade-off. You may lose weight, but at an even higher cost to your physical and mental health. It’s work to hide it from your friends and family, work obsessing over your food intake, and work mentally rationalizing everything. Then, you’ll have to deal with all of the negative health effects, and there actually are a lot. Consider taking that amount of work you’re willing to do and put the efforts toward more healthy ways of dealing with what you see when you look in the mirror. You can lose weight healthy ways, but you can do it while learning to love yourself, as well. It IS possible. I highly encourage getting some therapy—somebody to talk to about these things, and find what’s really down at the core of these feelings you have.

When you start a new job at a big company, you feel really incompetent and self-conscious because everybody else has been there so much longer, yet little old you know nothing about how any of it works or what’s going on.

But then you go walking around talking to people, and you realize nobody actually knows what the hell is going on, and they just pretend they do.

It’s kinda like that.

But sometimes you meet some really competent and knowledgeable people who seem to have a better grasp and perspective on things. It’s good to not just listen to these people, but to bounce questions off of them. They don’t judge, because they know.

I’m always reminded of the scene in Alice in Wonderland where the talking flowers explain to her that they can talk because they’re planted in firm soil, while those planted in soft soil are asleep all the time.

If it was any other name at the bottom of that quote I would’ve doubted.

Depends on whether it’s a consumer-level product or one marketed to big business. This goes for other brands, as well. For example, I have a color HP laser printer that I love. It’s a whole different type of product than their absolute crap consumer inkjet products.

The ocean is absolutely PACKED with life like bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic organisms. Even if the salinity is high, it’s unlikely that you would get an ideal “pickling.” Hypothetically, if were there very few of those around for some reason, maybe? Maybe for a little bit. A more likely situation may be one where an organism was eventually fossilized due to being covered by something. And we ALL know being fossilized is better than being pickled, right?