You should hang out near Fort Bragg sometime. The Special Forces train exactly as you describe.

Also of note: most of them are very unhappy with the way things are going in the US. I disagree with them frequently, but they also have some good points.

Taliban? Vietcong?

That was pretty much my point.

Most poor mothers I've know would love to be stay-at-home moms because they're only working to survive and not for personal fulfillment, and because they love their kids.

Well, it's clear from the movie Marion was very young when they had an affair. We don't know exactly how old, but she says, "it was wrong, and you knew it" and "I was a child".

I love the movie. This was one of his big flaws. He's not supposed to be a moral paragon - he was a grave robber and antiquities trafficker, after all.

Edit: Supposedly, the actual script says she was 25 when they meet again, which would have made her 15 at the time.

There was a lot of pressure to "do something" in the Balkans, and the military wasn't averse to showing off its goods, so something was done. Imagine the media pressure with Yemen x1000. That was Bosnia and Kosovo (probably mostly because it was in Europe).

Also, US military has intervened militarily in Syria, many times, and even with troops on the ground. Did you miss it?

The Uyghurs are a poor analogy, because despite the intense oppression they're under, they're not being mass-murdered. And a humanitarian intervention in China due to Uyghur situation is just not in the cards, because realism.

So sure, Bosnia+Kosovo interventions weren't just "benevolence". It was a convergance of factors (power dynamics, US President open to idea, media+public pressure, limiting intervention to air campaign, etc). But it wasn't an oil pipeline or some ridiculous conspiracy, either, like I sometimes hear.

Oppose them or support them, it was literally American bombing campaigns that stopped the Bosnian genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

50%: some combo of good luck, genes, diet, exercise

50%: some combo of bad luck, genes, diet, exercise

Adopting in 40s? Will the parent even still be alive when the kid graduates college? With good luck, genes, and good diet/exercise, yes. Otherwise, likely not.

Those days are long gone now, but it was highly satisfying to see the look of panic on athletic, rich banker’s face when some punk kid in a t-shirt, shorts, and cheap bike passed him going up a hill.

Uh, lady, you’re 37 years old. If you seriously want a kid, you need to approach finding a spouse with the same seriousness and intention you (admirably) now approach finances. Otherwise, it ain’t gonna happen.

But I guess that’s another article.

Which arthritis med, exactly? So many have been pulled off the shelf by the FDA.

But Levadopa for Parkinson’s (which I’m highly likely to get if I live long enough), and its newer analogues, may be one of the few worth the trade. Grandparents on both sides w/Parkinson’s.

99% of the other drugs are not worth the tradeoffs, for most people.

Best option of all is to stay fit. Some of mine were out of my control (genetics), but some were probably not. And the extent to which the genetic ones expressed was probably somewhat in my control.

I’m now at home, where I’m slowly healing just as well. As long as I can eat and drink (and failure to be able to do that is what sent me to hosp to begin with), I stay here.

I’m going to come out of this more healthy, I’m determined.

If you’re younger (or older!), I strongly endorse avoiding the pharma industry to the extent possible. The side effects will almost aways catch up to you at some point, usually during a crisis or other sickness. Work on your weak spots “naturally” (eg, if you’re anxious, master meditation and physical workouts). If you’re on a chronic drug, always carefully re-evalulate risks/benefits at least once a year, and find out if there are any new non-pharma approaches.

With a very few exceptions, pharma is about temporarily soothing symptoms while doing nothing for the underlying disease.

And good command lines, like propeller configured bash or zsh, have better discoverability than most GUIs.

But sure, I point non devs to Chromebooks, Macs, (or windows if absolutely necessary).

For someone fluent in command line usage, this is very wrong. I'm 10000x more productive in a terminal and X Browser session than on windows, and almost never need to look things up (and when I rarely do, it's on man pages, not web).

But otherwise, I don't disagree. I'm not trying to convince windows users to switch to Linux (unless they're devs, in which case they will suffer professionally if they don't).

For most regular users, I recommend Chromebooks these days.