There are large departments within large for-profit companies whose entire raison d'être is to lie to the public to make the large company seem better than it actually is.

See: marketing and public relations

Why would anyone ever trust what's said by a company's own staff who are paid by the company to say things good about the company

I've heard they're best when cooked from frozen

I'm seeing huge fixer uppers on 2+ acres for sub $250K well outside the main population centers

I have a handful of incandescent half mirror globe bulbs. I haven't had to replace any do haven't looked for LED versions

For real. Who the fuck eats at subway these days, the food quality is absolute shit, they treat their staff like shit, and they charge you more for the pleasure

I just looked on Zillow at house prices in Vermont and there are some fucking good deals, but not in the really desirable areas like where you probably want to live

Austin, TX. Prices here more than doubled from 2019-2023, but have been falling for well over a year now. A ton of new homes and apartments are still hitting the market too, so I doubt we've hit the bottom.

Almost completely transitioned to LED at this point. Still have a handful of half-mirror incandescent bulbs. They probably have LED versions of those now, right?

A torchiere lamp on the lowest setting, an orange Turkish lamp, and a big, green candle

My local sub shop has great sandwiches for $8

Home prices are rapidly falling in my area after several years of out of control growth. The real problem is interest rates, which add hundreds of dollars per month to mortgage payments for the same home price. Fortunately interest rates are temporary and are starting to go down too.

"Microblogging was a mistake" - Jack Dorsey

Uh...who's voting to restrict access to meat again? What rights are "the other side" trying to restrict?

People are going non contact with people who are toxic, not just because of how they voted. Dude in the screenshot clearly has more going on than just how he voted that drove his daughters to go no contact. You can read his reaction and recognize that

The word "uninhabitable" usually means whether humans can live there, and I specified I was talking about humans. The earth is not going to become completely uninhabitable by humans. I'm saying you're wrong when you said "this is the last generation of humans on earth."

There's no climate scenario short of nuclear winter that renders the planet completely uninhabitable by humans though. We're not facing a situation like The Road where the sunlight is completely blocked, killing every plant. Even with the worst case climate change scenarios, people are going to be able to find habitable areas and move plants to new regions where they will grow, or utilize technology to grow crops indoors, which already happens

We're likely to see a lot of suffering and disruption along with increased mortality, but humans are way too resourceful to go extinct, even with a severe disruption to the climate

It would make more sense to compare the highest states/countries to each other and the lowest states/countries to each other, but even then you could keep comparing smaller regions and still just not come up with what you're looking for. In the US, there's way more poverty and people who subsist on absolute junk food 24/7. On the other hand, the life expectancy in NYC is over 85, and in my county in Texas it's 82. There are lots of factors that go into this, and the meme above misses the mark

Avg life expectancy at birth in the US is 78.5 years, and the highest avg life expectancy in the EU is Switzerland at 83.4 years, which is a difference of 4.9 years, not 15. Metabolic disorders driven by diet are absolutely the biggest contributor to mortality in the US. You should see the disgusting shit these people are willing to put in their bodies over and over. A lot of people just don't remember not feeling shitty and are completely unaware their diet contributes to feeling bad.

It sounds like your question is not actually about what to get him for Christmas, but instead about how to cope with the situation and maintain a relationship with your son