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Refrigerator only needs a GFI if it is within a certain distance of a sink.

Not anymore. NEC 2023 requires GFCI for every 120 or 240V outlets in the kitchen, regardless of their location or proximity to the sink. This was a big change.

I'm not sure where you are getting this.

According to the CPSC, who analyzed some 10s of thousands of fires, something like 50% of them were caused by wire arcing that could be prevented with AFCI breakers. This is the exact reason why the NFPA is moving the NEC towards eventually requiring AFCI on every circuit in the house.

This is mine, too.

I'm in my 40s now but I didn't get serious about saving and managing money until my mid-30s. Lived a very fun but expensive lifestyle downtown in a major city for many years while single.

I'd be a lot closer to some of my financial goals if I had been more focused on saving through my 20s and 30s. While my family is doing fine compared to many others, it feels like I'm always trying to catch up. This really starts to hit home when you add kids.

The wirecutter DIY test used a filter with a rating of FPR 9. Since FPR isn't standardized like MERV or HEPA, it's hard to tell what this means, but likely to be < MERV 13. The OP used a HEPA filter on their testing which is > MERV 16.

This is exactly the way I feel.

After working at home for ~13 months now, it will be very hard for me to go back to the office. I have young kids at home and getting to spend extra time with them every day is a huge gift, on top of having no commute. There are some negatives, but I feel just as productive and more engaged.

The problem with low humidity in winter isn't forced air heating, it's air leakage. But since most houses have poor thermal envelopes, your statement turns out to be mostly true.

Winter temperatures in the US midwest and northeast with average daily temps far below zero (C), combined with leaky old houses. The stack effect draws in cold, extremely dry air at a rapid rate.

Typical CO alarms only go off when there is a level of gas that is an imminent danger. A lower level of gas could be present and go totally undetected, but present an ongoing health risk. There are special CO monitors that are capable of detecting and alerting down to 5ppm but they are rarely installed in homes.

I think you meant to say honey bees, Apis, comprising only a handful of species, are not native to the Americas.

There are around 4000 known species of bee (Anthophila) native just to North America.

I think you need to move further back. Civilization accounted for a sharp decline in life expectancy due to disease and other factors like extreme agricultural labor. Humans have only gained back what was lost since the industrial and technological revolutions.

Extant hunter gatherers, living without access to modern medicine, have been studied to show life expectancy closer to 70.

The transportation mode is critical for a commute. The time spent commuting can be mitigated somewhat if you are active in the process.

As an example, I live relatively close to my office in the suburbs, and most days I walk ~50 minutes each way for my commute. I could drive it in 10-15, but my family has reduced from 2 to 1 cars this way (owning a car is expensive and a massive headache). I also spend far less time at the gym because I walk many miles per day just commuting, plus I feel fresher when I get to work. I can definitely say I am much more satisfied with this arrangement than if I was driving for the same duration. The major negative is less time at home with the family, which I admit is a challenge but one I've been willing to put up with for the other advantages.

It sounds like you don't like the bitterness of Campari and you're not alone in that. I guess it just takes time to develop the taste.

There are many delicious Negroni riffs, but the standard and classic is always equal parts gin/Campari/vermouth. I use a good London Dry gin (personal preference for Beefeater) and Carpano.

I think there is absolutely something to this. I have mild tinnitus and my hearing is fairly poor after too many years of loud headphone use. However, I rarely notice a bothersome perception of noise unless I focus on it.

Other similar phenomenon exist. For example, some people are strongly bothered by floaters in the eyes while others seem to take it more easily in stride, as the brain will naturally compensate the vision. It wouldn't surprise me at all if individual tolerance varies wildly to these issues.

Modern agricultural systems are built on the mass usage of systemic insecticide treatments (whether necessary or not). Neonicotinoids are almost certainly better than what came before them, although they have a limited useful life as insects inevitably develop resistance.

Phasing these chemicals out requires a new sustainable approach to pest management - more buy-in from farmers for IPM approaches that don't involve routine use of toxic chemicals. Assistance and training programs need to be put in place to achieve this before regulatory restrictions should be applied.

a -40C day is usually much more enjoyable than a +40C day

I can't believe I just read this :)

With an appropriately-sized and designed HVAC system, home, and fans, 40C is completely comfortable indoors. If your home is designed well, you probably don't even need a whole lot of energy to achieve this.

The difference is, in 40C you can also be outside at any part of the day, for any duration (especially in the shade). I haven't spent a great deal of time at -40C, but I can tell you my experience is that it was pretty miserable to be outside in, even bundled up.

A large part of the air pollution from cars comes from nitrogen and sulfer oxides, which are byproducts of combustion.

I think you both have some good points.

Escaping death and disease with technology is a slippery slope. If that technology disappears or is unavailable, it puts a species in potential peril. Selection pressure keeps the fitness of the gene pool resilient, although at a cost to many individuals. This is relevant to all species, human and otherwise.

ETOPS flights are regularly flown 3+ hours from a suitable place to land (single-engine flying time). Considering they are up to 370 minutes (about 6 hours) in some extreme cases, I can certainly see this being a problem. If you had a 3h warning at any given moment, there's a strong possibility that some jetliner somewhere in the world is over an ocean and could not land in time.

Athletic departments don't necessarily have a need to be profitable, and most are not. Clemson averages ~$77 million in revenue over the last few years, mostly from valuable TV rights and ticket sales.

I don't mind the strong sports culture. College football has an immense history dating back to the late 1800s as an organized national collegiate activity. I'm a fan and I enjoy the history and pageantry of the sport. Athletic departments are self-funded by donations, TV rights, ticket sales, and merchandise, and they take no money that would otherwise be allocated to academics. They also can increase the brand of a university, as you pointed out.

I take issue with a couple things: First is that unpaid 'workers' are responsible for driving an industry now worth billions of dollars. Second is that some scholarship athletes are admitted to schools they have no business attending on academic merit, and end up in essentially remedial education. This is true even at prestigious schools with high-level academics.

FizzBuzz covers a lot of (very basic) ground but adding memory manipulation is valuable. I ask a few simple string manipulation interview questions for embedded C developers as a weeder and the point is that we want to see how candidates deal with pointers and low level memory. There are other good follow-ups and alternatives you can build off this. Engineers with years of experience fail these questions all the time. Dealing with 'tedious' things like this is daily part of some developer jobs.

Not craps or roulette (without cheating), but certainly with blackjack. By finding favorable conditions and counting cards, it's possible to extract a slight advantage over the house (say 1% edge). Of course this is a grueling enterprise with an extremely high variance and thus requiring a large amount of capital.

How other countries finance their health care is incredibly wide-ranging. The point is that revenue-raising tax policies are being included in proposals to close the gap, not that they mirror how Germany and France do it exactly. Some candidates have not put forth detailed tax plans but nobody is saying we won't have to significantly raise revenues to pay for it.

projected $30 trillion over the next 10 years

This is a projection and there is much disagreement. If we spent as much per capita as Canada, the cost would go down by around 50%. Single payer is not feasible at the cost per person the US currently spends. Every other country in the world spends less (a LOT less). We have a lot of real examples to follow.

Actually, middle income earners "have the most to lose."

You have a good point, here, but again it could vary significantly depending on revenue-raising changes that are enacted. The Sanders plan includes mostly progressive tax changes.

It is pure fantasy to assume we can get universal healthcare without European level taxes

Agreed, but is anyone really arguing this? The US has very low overall taxation rates (as a % of GDP), well below the OECD average. It should come as no shock to anyone that in order to get Euro-level services, we need a higher tax burden. High earners have the most to lose so it's also not a huge surprise it's an especially concerning issue for them. Most Americans (including those that would benefit most from these changes) are not high earners and they will pay a more measured amount.

I'm not an expert in health care cost containment but there are many doctors, administrators, and number crunchers in the industry who think we can get there if we want it badly enough. Over one third of our total health care expenditure is on administration. By some estimates, we'd drop 15% of the cost (in the trillions) overnight with a single payer system. It's a good start.

I'm "doing okay" as you put it under the current system, but I also feel like a slave to it. As the sole W2 employee with a family to take care of, there is no way I could or would untether myself from a certain kind of employer, even if I wanted to, because the incredibly expensive health insurance I have is so massively subsidized. Personally, I'd gladly pay more tax to get rid of the worry the current system causes. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Embracing marriage as a team sport goes a long way to avoiding petty resentment.

Fully in agreement. Good communication and empathy in marriage are paramount to successfully raising kids. I'm just saying even the most understanding people can hit a breaking point after long enough without sleep, especially without a lot of external help.

So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives?

The negatives are real but they are outweighed by overwhelming positives. In my experience, there was a new level of satisfaction achieved after becoming a father that made it worth every sacrifice.

Logically this makes sense but it can be tricky to implement successfully for everyone. For breast-fed infants, it may be the case that mom has to be more frequently involved in the overnight care. It makes sense for dad to get as much sleep as possible in this case, but that can lead to resentment and other issues.

My wife and I traded off as you indicated but that was no picnic, either. We found it easier to split wake-ups during a night so that each of us could get a manageable amount of sleep, vs one person waking up every couple hours all night long. No matter how you slice the time up, nobody is going to 'well-rested' when there are only two people taking care of an infant.

Even worse, WeWork doesn't generate that much more revenue from tenants than it spends servicing its enormous lease obligations. They admit in the risks section that a significant portion of their members are small and medium sized businesses/freelancers who may be negatively affected by economic downturn. Their average lease duration is 15(!) years, and most do not have early termination provisions.

Oof.

The question is - what else would you do with the money?

I wouldn't stick money in a low-interest mortgage if I was willing to tolerate some risk for a better return. Paying down a mortgage @ 3.5% is not a 'great' investment as you've pointed out, but the key is that it's risk free AND a better return than other no-risk investments (cash).

You may want a no-risk investment if you plan to use the money in the short-term after liquidation, say for another home purchase/deposit.