Prescribed narcotics would be OK as long as related doctor or company restrictions on operating heavy equipment or such were complied with. But in the US marijuana is still federally illegal. The feds usually don’t seek out prosecutions where states have legalized at the state level, but banks won’t accept business accounts if marijuana is sold because of the federal illegality, and businesses involving heavy machinery generally also still feel the legal risk of explicitly allowing marijuana use is too high.

Cute, but I’m not sure how helpful it is. I raised swallowtail butterfly caterpillars one year, and only one of the four cocoons had a butterfly come out of it. Insects have a really high random mortality rate.

It’s common for retirees or others who are able to cover living costs without paid work to do unpaid work with their religious congregation or for local charities. Being a valued coworker doing work recognized as making the community better doesn’t require being paid.

Alaska has had their Permanent Fund for decades, and it’s not been shown to be inflationary. At some (I believe much) higher amount of money distribution, UBI would be inflationary, sure, but there’s a lot of benefits to be had at lower support levels.

The most satisfactory setup seems to be great indirect and task lighting that is just as easy to turn on and off as the overhead. Requires lighting purchases and maybe installation, and maybe “smart” switches if there aren’t switched outlets or other readily accessible places for the controls, which is a barrier. As an intermediate step, a different colored (warmer white) and less bright bulb in the overhead can make it more tolerable.

Many applicants use an AI service to do the copy-pasting for them. Who cares if it messes up 10% of the fields, if it enables 300 applications to be submitted per day?

For the first forty years of my life, I could not understand people (including my mom) who disliked overhead lighting. Now, I would way rather fumble in the dark than have that stuff glaring at me (grudging exception if I am using a knife in the kitchen). It’s become a minor source of friction with my husband. I don’t understand what changed.

Yes! Differentiating hangry from true disagreeableness could really help prevent misunderstandings.

“Night soil” (human poop) fertilizer has a way higher risk of disease to humans than manure (animal poop) because it’s rare for pathogens to infect multiple species. Some pathogens do cross species lines - avoiding nightsoil on human food crops is not a standalone protection - but it’s an important way to significantly reduce risk.

Septic tank discharge fields are great places for flower gardens. No veggies.

Cattle farming is also a major cause of rainforest deforestation (although beef cattle since that is internationally transportable where dairy is more perishable). Palm oil produces more calories per production acre than dairy, where many acres have to be used to grow the grains used to feed the cattle. The transition is being managed irresponsibly, but once stabilized palm oil should have less environmental impact than butter.

Charitably, could there be some kind of regional difference where people living in certain places truly have something different? Over the winter, I came across a thread asking for radiator repair advice, and people from parts of the world with water radiators were very casual “open it up for investigation” while people from parts of the world with steam radiators were like “do not open anything you will die”. Lots of confused comments, too, until someone figured out the disconnect.

I would like to believe that, and in the social spaces I frequent Musk’s star has certainly fallen, but the number of people who sunk a ridiculous amount of cash into the SpaceX IPO speaks to there still being a lot of believers in his purported genius.