Fluoridated water and occasional low-dose supplement tablets are the clear reason why I didn't have a single major cavity until I was nearly 50, in spite of a lifetime of very haphazard, on-again off-again brushing habits. (yes, I've since standardized my brushing!). My parents and other relatives aren't especially genetically resistant to tooth decay or anything, so I'm pretty sure it was the fluoride that gave me such a cavity-free first five decades. That certainly saved me money, but it saved the public health system even more. Meanwhile I still did my part to keep dentists in business with yearly cleaning and checkups.
yeah and ugh. but tbh we see this wording even from outlets surprisingly far to the left. (of a depressingly right-shifted so-called center, but anyway.)
Dammit, Daily Beast, these are not "entitlements". They are programs Americans were forced to pay into with the guarantee that they would receive proportional benefits.
I think "vast" majority is an overstatement. I realize the vote skewed in his direction among the older generation, but a majority is not a vast majority.
Not too sure America ever had a Justice system, only a money and power driven legal system which in some of its finer moments managed to approximate justice.
I've never married, but I've always had housemates in shared rentals. What this (humorous but with a definite core of reality) piece points out is exactly why I tend to highlight the simplicity and durability of cast iron instead of making it out to be some kind of finicky diva. The cleaning is so easy and quick, you don't have to worry about scratching it or overheating it, yadda yadda.
I honestly think the bad taste left over from some people being all hyper protective or finicky about their cast iron is just an unfortunate result of poor seasoning. I too was overprotective for the few early years when I thought I knew how to achieve a good coating but actually didn't yet. And all that, in turn, is just an unfortunate downstream effect of the fact that cast iron skipped a generation or two in so many families, so much knowledge and practice was lost and had to be restarted by word of mouth and the Internet. Alas.
A new housemate moves in, sees the several cast iron items, and typically says something like "ooh, I'll leave those alone, I wouldn't want to mess up your special wares." -- because of the many pansplainers they've already encountered before. I tell them "no, seriously, you can play rough with these pans, it's fine. All I ask is that you not leave them sitting in water overnight." There really isn't that much they could do to harm them.
From what I read today this includes the IRS's project to let Americans file their taxes for free. I forget the most recent status of it except I think it was already in effect as a pilot project available in certain states and was planned for national accessibility. And obviously there's been big money pressure to kill that effort.
Thing is, yeah they're fucking stupid but they're also voters who the Dems could have persuaded and hardly tried. Repeatedly spamming "vote for us or you get Trumped again" doesn't count as persuasion.
Right? And meanwhile the alternatives also cost more than they ought to if our whole system weren't so fully captured by profit seeking.
It seems our species as a whole has deep problems of greed, corruption, nepotism... we're fundamentally, maybe even genetically, not very close to systemically social and selfless behavior. We turn any system of government and economy and social structure to the benefit of an elite few eventually.
