Lucky you!

There was a family of magpies in my yard at a place where I used to live. They’re so observant that they would look through my windows and watch me while I prepared food or cleaned or whatever in my kitchen. They recognize individual human faces. If you go out of your way to be nice or mean to them then they’ll remember that interaction for a long time and adjust their behavior around you accordingly.

Magpies (the corvids, not the distantly related assholes in Australia) are so fascinating. They’re self-aware (they pass the mirror test) and they’re able to plan for future needs (for example, they’ll cache food and then hide tools nearby to later break into their cache). They have a huge variety of vocalizations that vary by region, sort of like dialects. They also engage in play just for the fun of it, like sliding down snowy hills and tossing and then catching objects. I could go on and on about magpies, such cool birds.

I completely agree. I used to be a huge coffee drinker until I came to the realization that it’s horrible for my sleep and anxiety, so I weaned myself off it for a few months and then stopped.

Two years without caffeine and I’ll never start using it again. It’s so nice not being addicted to coffee (and not spending money on it), not feeling wired/jittery and not getting withdrawal headaches. I just wake up and I’m ready to go every morning.

It’s complete trash. I was gifted one of them and it was one of the worst books I’ve ever tried to read, just painfully bad writing by someone with very little life experience.

$3.50 here too at almost every gas station in my area in the mountain states.

Two weeks ago I filled up for $3.00, and a few months ago it was $1.70 (that only lasted for about a week though).

A lot of interesting opinions on avocados here! I had no idea that most people salt them, but I certainly don’t. Someone commented that they’re like carrots, but I don’t find them to be anything remotely like carrots. And some people said they’re not good on their own, but IMO they’re delicious on their own.

I slice them up and eat them with crackers instead of cheese, and with tortilla chips. I love them on top of bagels with cheese. I dice them and mix them into salads for creamy fatty goodness, and sometimes I’ll just cut one in half and eat it with a spoon. If I’m eating curry then I’ll slice one up and put it on the side. I eat at least one avocado every day, but they’re cheap where I live in the US ($3-4 for 6 large ones).

Pro-tip: they do spoil quickly at room temperature, so once they reach peak ripeness you can put them in the fridge and they’ll be good for 5-6 days.

I was hoping for better answers than the ones you got! Here’s my take as a Swedish/American dual citizen.

Swedes and Norwegians are genetically so similar that genetic tests can’t make any meaningful distinction between them. They’ve interbred for thousands of years, since long before Norway and Sweden emerged as distinct kingdoms. Whether your ancestry is more Swedish or Norwegian doesn’t really matter since the two are very closely related genetically, culturally and even linguistically (Swedish and Norwegian languages are highly mutually intelligible). While there’s no way to know for sure without a well researched family tree, you’re almost certainly a mix of the two.

Unless you’ve researched and know this not to be the case, it’s even possible that your ancestors were from a part of Sweden that was historically Norwegian and that’s why Norwegian culture was passed down to you. For example, Jämtland was ceded to Sweden in 1645 and even today Norwegian culture has a strong presence there.

Lucky for you, there’s WAY more Norwegian culture in the US than there is Swedish culture. Unless you’re prepared to do some serious genealogical research to arrive at a conclusive answer, I’d say don’t worry about whether you’re technically more Norwegian or Swedish – just keep enjoying the Norwegian culture you’ve known your whole life.

Body armor is totally unnecessary unless maybe you’re an on-duty cop or similar. I’ve witnessed several mass shootings and I can’t imagine a situation where I’d wear body armor.

Be aware of your surroundings and try to avoid situations where you’re more likely to get shot. Know where the exits are in a crowded building, and stay near the edges of any outdoor crowd so you can make a quick escape. Always trust your instincts if you get a bad feeling or someone seems suspicious. Take some self defense classes. With enough training you can even learn how to disarm an attacker, but don’t try it without extensive training.

I chose it because it’s the biggest Swedish instance, even if there are only ~100 active users.

Red '89 Civic hatchback. It lacked power steering so I had to turn the wheel a hundred times to make it turn. It felt ancient to me and it was manual transmission. My dad wanted me to learn manual even though most cars are automatic in the US. No power steering absolutely sucked, but it turns out knowing how to drive manual can be pretty useful.

I bought a new Subaru two years ago and love it. But only days later they started sending me offers to trade in my new car for a brand new Subaru! They email two offers every week and I haven’t unsubscribed because it’s amusing to see the value of my car go down and occasionally up (its value increased in December before dropping again). Right now they’re valuing my car, purchased for $28k, at $17k after 24 months of ownership.

Crazy: Years ago I sent a girl from one of those “meet people here” subreddits like 10 photos of myself because she seemed interesting from her bio and promised me photos in return. In the photos I was doing stuff like hiking and exploring abandoned buildings, and there was a badass one of me posing triumphantly on a massive rock in front of a glacier lake. What did she do? Wrote me back a nasty message accusing me of being hideous or having a horrible disfigurement because none of the photos were close-up clear shots of my face and she couldn’t figure out how to zoom in on my face with her phone. I guess my hobbies and interests weren’t relevant, not to mention my face was totally visible if she’d zoomed in.

I sent those same pics to another girl a few months later and six years later we’re still together.

I didn’t downvote your comment, but I’ll explain why I don’t agree with it.

We should upvote and downvote based on whether a comment contributes or doesn’t contribute to the discussion. If I disagree with a comment but still find it thought provoking or worth reading, then I’ll probably upvote. If I agree with a comment that adds nothing worthwhile to the discussion then I won’t upvote and might even downvote. If a comment adds no value to the discussion then there’s nothing to be gained by replying to it.

Agreed. Yesterday I finally got around to deleting my three Reddit accounts that were 9-10 years old (hadn’t used them in a couple years). First I made sure to overwrite most of my comments with gibberish. Reddit is basically Facebook now.

There are tons of issues with healthcare in the US, but quality of care isn’t one of them. Go to any major hospital in the US and you’ll receive world-class treatment, you’ll just most likely spend years paying it off.

I can appreciate beautiful/charming women when I meet them, and sometimes I even get flustered talking to them. But I wouldn’t say I desire them. My girlfriend is peak woman IMO, the perfect partner for me. As long as she’s with me then I don’t need another person in that way.

That said, I’ve absolutely been in relationships in the past where I desired others and wondered what it would be like to be with someone else.

Last year I deleted almost 50 accounts, including:

• Meetup.com
• 23andme
• Microsoft
• Intuit
• Coinbase
• Venmo
• Monster.com
• ChatGPT
• GoDaddy
• StubHub
• RentCafe

I’m in the US and unfortunately deleting data/accounts isn’t always easy with US companies, and a few of them have told me it’s not even possible.

Even Americans shouldn’t buy American cars as they’re all terrible quality. Canadians also need to know that US food safety regulatory agencies were gutted last year.

The amount of AI slop on Reddit these days is insane. A decade ago I could spend hours a day browsing interesting discussions, now I spend 5-10 minutes and I’m done.