lovely_reader

Fair, but that's pretty much how a lot of people feel about imperial units, too.

It sounds like your group wouldn't readily welcome a member who wasn't an intelligent, rational individual. I wonder, if a current member experienced a crisis that led them to a kind of blind, irrational faith, would they still be equally welcome?

You're right that it's wrong, but ostracism doesn't strike me as something that can be outlawed—not just because it's one of our fundamental primitive social behaviors, but because of logistics. I'm curious how you envision it working? That is, you could probably forbid a church from declaring excommunication in a formal fashion, but could you actually stop its members from shunning someone? It would raise a lot more questions, like what if one member of the church is revealed to have abused another? Does the church still have to welcome them back?

Those have a 5- to 10-year warranty, depending on which kind. Have you tried reaching out to GE for replacements?

Would smaller groups feel a reduced strain from that?

Would the shrinkage in the labor force make it impossible to provide end of life care and financial support as the larger generations age?

What type of help would you be offering in that example?

It's imperative to get to know a kid's parents and check with them before ever inviting a minor to interact with you in their absence, especially alone. Huge red flags.

A mother struggling in public might well accept your help—as long as you offer it to her. If you instead address the kid, that's gonna be a no from most parents.

If you've seen pictures of people from cultures who don't wear clothing that supports breasts, you can see the difference in shape that constantly fighting against gravity makes.

There are a lot of factors that can contribute to sagging, but bralessness doesn't seem to be one. There are studies indicating that bras likely weaken breast tissue over time, making sagging more likely in people who wear them regularly. Of course, even those studies are tricky to generalize to the broader population because of how many factors there are to control for (breast size, pregnancies, tobacco use, genes, etc etc etc). What we do know is that the difference in breast shape from one whole ethnic group to another is largely attributable to genetics, and as for the photo: those women simply have very different bodies.

Interestingly, photos of African women have been used countless times throughout history to dishonestly market bras to fashionable Westerners. The image of African women who simply have a different body type from their own has frightened millions of white ladies into bras.

Do you shop at Trader Joe's? Those compostable bags are next level

I can just see people trying this for the first time, knocking the foil out of alignment and pouring a whole pan of hot grease down the drain

This came up in an anti-racism group I belonged to many years ago, where I learned to try to be aware of my acceptance of whiteness as "default" or somehow raceless. I also learned not to jump in and center myself in conversations about how race is (or worse, should be) perceived by those negatively affected or sensitive to it—or at least I thought I learned that, but here I am about to press send.

I came away from that conversation with an understanding that while I may feel that my race is immaterial to my identity and my point of view, it is nonetheless a real component of the context of my attitudes and online presence, so it's valuable to ask if there's a reason I'd want to hide it.