BUT I don't tear down people for choosing that life, urban living isn't for everyone.

My contempt for small town and rural America comes from living in it for about 5 years, and then regularly visiting it for another 3 or 4 years. I'm glad I live in a walkable city now. But I don't really criticize people for living that rural life, except in defense to someone else attacking my own lifestyle.

When this song came out, I remembered joking with my Army friends (many of whom are from rural areas, and definitely shared the experiences of getting stationed in rural areas) that it's weird the song! didn't include stuff like "find decent sushi" or "attend an NFL game" or "order pizza after midnight." Or if I'm feeling particularly mean spirited, I'd throw in "find a six figure job" or "hold hands with a white woman in public."

Realistically, though, something like 60% of Americans live in suburban America: close enough to a major city that they can go in for events, but far enough that they can feel that they're isolated from crime or whatever. Nobody actually likes rural living, but some residents of suburban America likes romanticizing rural ideals while still living in an environment that gets the benefit of the economic engine of a nearby city, and the density to support a variety of restaurants and stores and activities. There's an entire subculture of people who own $80,000 trucks and $3,000 guns, who have $200k+ jobs in the city but say their heart is in the country or whatever.

I'm healthy, fit, educated, and kinda rich. I'm also a man.

Do you believe those circumstances grant me with privilege?

The answer is obviously yes, so I'll acknowledge it, rather than try to change the subject to ways in which I'm not privileged. Bringing up ways that white people may not be so privileged doesn't actually address whiteness as privilege.

And privilege isn't even something to feel guilty about. It's just worth acknowledging in a "know thyself" kind of way.

Stop arguing semantics. We're done here.

Compare to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master——that's all.

Yeah, if you want to make up your own definitions to the words you use, and then order those around you to stop arguing semantics, then you're basically not having a conversation at all.

Your comment was confusing because you don't seem to understand what is or isn't part of an operating system, and the mere mention of the operating system was pretty far removed from any relevance to your own point.

It's a proprietary service, and if you want to argue that companies can run proprietary services in a closed manner, denying access to third party clients, cool, that can be your position, but it would be an incoherent position to claim that only OS developers should have that right.

I still say "y'all."

Y'all means all.

To me, the obvious answer is stainless steel. There are cheap ones and expensive ones, and everything in between. The more expensive ones tend to be constructed with more even surfaces, with better heat transfer (things like an aluminum or copper core), and more durable to regular or even careless use. But even the cheap ones are great.

Stainless advantages over traditional Teflon-based nonstick:

• Metal utensils and scrubbers don't damage it, which means you can use thinner spatulas and scrub more aggressively, or do things like whisk in the pan (helpful for making sauces or gravies)
• No need to worry about maximum temperature (Teflon reacts poorly to high temperatures, degrading quickly and off-gassing fumes that are mildly harmful to humans but deadly toxic for birds)
• Oven-safe (if the handle is oven safe), which is good for certain recipes that are easier to just transfer to the oven (certain sauces or braises)
• Much better thermal conductivity, for faster temperature response to turning the heat up or down.

Stainless advantages over ceramic non-stick:

• Metal utensils and scrubbers OK (ceramic nonstick is more resistant to scratches than traditional nonstick, but the guides still all tell you not to use metal)
• Can withstand higher temperatures (ceramic nonstick isn't as bad as traditional nonstick at high temperatures, but it still loses nonstick properties under high heat, over time).
• More likely to be oven-safe (some ceramic nonstick is oven safe, but you'd have to look and check, and still be mindful of temperature limits)
• Better thermal conductivity

Stainless advantages over cast iron:

• Better thermal conductivity (cast iron actually sucks at this but nobody seems to acknowledge it)
• Easier care, no need to season
• Can handle acids no problem, so things like slow cooking a tomato sauce or deglazing with wine/vinegar/juice are possible without weird dark discoloration in your food.
• Much lighter in weight, so much easier to use when transferring or pouring food, washing the pan, etc.

Stainless advantages over carbon steel (including carbon steel woks):

• Easier care, no need to season
• Can handle acids

Don't get me wrong: I literally own every single type of cookware listed here, and I cook on all of them for different purposes. But the stainless is my workhorse, the default I use on weeknights, because it's easy and mindless and I literally can't mess it up.

EDIT: Wow, can't believe I forgot to actually list the disadvantages of stainless. Main disadvantages:

• Not non-stick. When things stick, it can be a huge pain in the ass, ranging from making your food ugly to actually ruining a dish (for example, if the sticking causes you to destroy the structural integrity of the thing you're cooking, or the the stuck food starts scorching and adding bitter burnt flavors to your food).
• A little bit more effort to clean in typical situations, and a lot more effort to clean when there's food residue stuck to the pan.

High cost of living cities are previewing a problem that seems to be spreading everywhere: The cost of providing child care is getting far too expensive for working parents, while wages of the actual child care workers are insufficient to actually keep people in that career.

The weasel word in all this is “overweight (but not obese)”.

I think that's the whole point of the article. Lots of doctors seem to assume that all-cause mortality is correlated with BMI in a straight line, but this article argues that it's actually U-shaped with the minimum in the "overweight" range. It's arguing that these specific people in that overweight but not obese category are getting bad medical advice and treatment because of assumptions derived from observations of the group of people who are overweight or obese.

Why can't we just wirelessly transmit the power, maybe have it hit a collection device that can harness about 4 kwh/m^2/day

My favorite example, in Chinese-speaking families, is just how common it was for people to say "open"/"close" the lights, instead of turning on/off the lights.

Also, in Chinese, "no" is not a complete sentence in answering a yes/no question, so the way one generally says no is to just repeat the verb in the negative: "Are you going to the store?" is answered with "Not going." So sometimes native Chinese speakers repeat the verb when speaking in English, too.

And my personal favorite example, is how the phrase "long time no see" entered the English lexicon: the two leading theories are that it either came from Native American or Chinese speakers. I wouldn't take sides on that debate, but will note that it pretty directly fits a direct translation of the Chinese phrase.

the Allies could have kept fire bombing cities and it would’ve caused far more deaths

This is an underappreciated fact. I grew up in U.S. public schools learning in elementary school about the massive scale of destruction that atomic bombs did bring (and, well, the Cold War was still going at the time). We knew the words Hiroshima and Nagasaki very early on. But it wasn't until I was in college that I learned about the destructive scale of firebombing Japanese cities (and frankly, I learned it from a film class discussing Grave of the Fireflies, not from a history class).

And maybe I'm jaded because I'm a combat veteran who has seen firsthand the toll that an extended period of conventional warfare and insurgency brings on urban areas with millions of residents, but I don't think of nuclear war as really that big a departure from the shittiness of things that are actually within more recent memory. Or maybe that's a misconception I hold that should be corrected, and these anti-nuclear people are right to express concern about cultural attitudes towards nuclear weapons, I don't know.

My kids are still young, so some of my list might not work for OP's 8 year old, but if it's an all ages discussion, I've got a few, some of which might translate to more ages.

Free stuff when weather is nice (relatively speaking, in this unusually hot summer):

• Playgrounds/parks, including splash parks and swimming pools.
• Scavenger hunts on a walking loop: give a list of things to find, either by just seeing and checking off, or things that can be collected (e.g., acorns falling from trees). Combine with farmer's market or other street markets to make the journey slightly more productive.

Free stuff when weather isn't as nice:

• Free Museums, if you have any nearby.
• Cooking at home together. (This is free in the sense that it doesn't cost any more than feeding yourself by cooking without the kids.) Things involving dough or batters are often fun for kids: pizzas, muffins, pancakes, etc. My daughter loves "whipping" cream by putting heavy cream in a mason jar and just shaking it for a few minutes, until her arms are too tired. I also like dishes where they understand every step, even if they can't perform every step involving high heat or sharp objects: fried foods that get battered/breaded before frying, ravioli or dumplings that need to be filled/assembled before boiling, etc. Some steps are more about them watching than them doing anything, but if they take an interest at a young age you might be able to introduce teaching them how at the appropriate age. My kids obviously aren't allowed to touch the controls on the stove/oven, much less the open flame of the outdoor pizza oven, smoker, or charcoal grill, but always like watching me light up some fires. Little pyros.
• Photography. An old unused cell phone might be good enough, but kids can learn the basics of capturing a moment or composition/framing just from the lives around them. My kids have standing permission to take my (locked) phone to take pictures, and I'm probably going to buy a dedicated kid-friendly/rugged point and shoot for them soon.

Low cost activities:

• Art projects at home: markers and crayons, sure, but one-off projects that involve sculpting or assembling or gluing something 3D can sometimes mix it up.
• Some sort of fun musical instrument where the kids can be creative with audio: toy keyboards/xylophones, kid-oriented electronic beat machines or drum kits, etc.
• Museums or other fun places with one-time memberships where you pay once per season/year to go for free each time. Some parks/pools/playgrounds might be privately run, but could sometimes be worth the cost of a season pass.
• Car camping overnight in state/national park areas. Work in a few day hikes and other outdoor activities, make a thing out of setting up the shelter/tents, maybe starting a fire (weather and location dependent), making smores or other camping friendly food, etc.

Higher cost activities:

• Hotel or house rental near a beach or lake, with beach activities during the day.
• Sending them off to visit out-of-town grandparents and other family (or hosting family to come visit). A big part of the fun of summer camps is the people anyway, so giving the opportunity to interact with loved ones they don't normally get to see is often a fun break from the routine. Depends on the people in your family, though.
• Big theme parks or water parks with higher cost of admission (and often more involved travel logistics).

I'm probably missing a bunch. But that's what I can think of right now.

OP, how about you? You mentioned you've already got some things going on, maybe we can compare notes.

It's Always Sunny did a pretty great use of a character taking some kind of brain enhancing chemical and learning Mandarin almost overnight. In real life, it was all gibberish, but someone fluent in Chinese would probably let it slide because movies/TV never actually get Chinese fluency on screen. And then later on it's revealed that it actually was gibberish in the show, too, and the Chinese speaking person was just humoring the idiot who thought he was becoming smart.