Famous is different from working. I have known plenty of artists who just hustle and make a living - singing telegrams, weddings, bar gigs, teaching, they make enough to get by. They are working musicians.

Then there are all those bands who plug on, famous but not wildly so, I think they are making enough to live on just their band earnings.

Then a very few who get rich. Mostly those are kids of connected people, not always but often.

It’s the same with any entertainment industry, right? Average earnings on onlyfans is something like $3 a month.

And there is just So Much Talent in the world, and people have limited entertainment budgets.

That headline. First I thought Iranians sunbathe and play with drones at the same time? Then had the unfortunate mental image of Trump sunbathing.

It’s really hard to have a routine when your work schedule is irregular. I don’t think you are wrong to rely on easy to prepare stuff but you need more nutrition, yes? My kids say I have ADD, and most of them do, my second to youngest was having trouble because Adderall so I got her some easy things.

Bagged salad packs with the dressing.

Packaged Hummus from the grocery, on Triscuit crackers, has a lot of calories with fiber & nutrition from the hummus.

Apple with sliced cheese or peanut butter

Do you like tuna? Make tuna salad at the beginning of the week, or a can dumped on one of the aforementioned bagged salad mixes.

Hard boiled eggs last a long time in the fridge, also an egg dropped into your ramen would add nutrition.

Keep your work schedule in your phone calendar and set an alarm for dinner.

For breakfast cold fermented oatmeal is amazing, we call it summer oatmeal. Mix rolled oats with yogurt, coconut water and/ or kombucha/kvass/tepache if you have it, juice or water if you don’t. Mix in dried fruit and nuts and seeds, even chocolate if you want. It should start a little sloppy as the oats will take up the liquid. Taste and adjust, sweeten if you want, I don’t. Put it in the fridge and each morning take a little for breakfast.

And also, don’t stress about eating regularly if you don’t have weight issues. If your body is feeling ok and staying in a healthy size you don’t need to force yourself.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your dad is a racist.

I would say it’s a shining example of my theory. He wants to go back to when he was ignorant of the struggles of other people. They did exist, he just didn’t know and now he does.

I think people who think the past was better are all white men, and it’s because they didn’t have to think about other people. They want to go back to ignorance.

He literally says that to you? The 1950s? Have you asked him specifically why? My mom had a great time in the 1950s and no way would she ever have wanted the world to go backwards to that time. She recognized, as she became older, how bad things were for her mom, for black kids (her school was segregated), for so many people.

The only reason I can imagine wanting to go to the past, is to try to make this future better, but I know better than to fuck with the timeline and can’t imagine I’d be able to do anything about it anyway.

Hozier

Father John Misty

SZA

Tyler Childers

And oh my God, the juggernaut that is Fontaines DC

ETA I agree with Future Islands.

When I was a dancer - if one of us was injured, they made us come & watch the practice because apparently your body does gain knowledge just by watching.

But that was with a baseline knowledge already.

I think it would help, learning about swimming before doing it. More so if you are already physically active in some other way though.

English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English is harder than, say English to Spanish or Arabic because the sounds are so very different - I am sure I simply can’t hear some of the different sounds in tonal languages, and had a friend who moved here from Taiwan when she was so young she learned better in English than Taiwanese but still she could not hear the difference between ear and year.

I don’t think it’s impossible but do think it’s unusual. My dad was bilingual English and Spanish and I wish my parents had done the “one speaks English one speaks Spanish” language immersion but we only spoke English at home.

Huh. I have. Didn’t know what it was, but heated the water, dropped in a spoon and it boiled over aggressively even though it didn’t look like it was boiling.

We do use a kettle, this happened at work - the microwave there was a lot stronger than mine, and I couldn’t get the water to look like it was boiling.

My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.

To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it’s about an hour walk to either of those.

The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.

That whole room is horrifying. Is your dad a sea witch?

I looked at my paycheck (US) vs. one of our Swedish colleagues when I was doing our payroll, and yes, the tax was about 45%, my federal withholding is much less but once you add in the deductions for 401k (unsecured pension scheme) and health insurance (that doesn’t cover anything except annual wellness until we pay in 8,000 USD) and social security (the fed pension being paid now to old people, and their healthcare) my deductions also leave about 55% of my pay for net pay.

The part I object to most in terms of cost here is the healthcare - my deductions may mirror the Swede but I don’t think they also have to cover the first 8k of cost out of pocket.

(Edit - it was Sweden not Denmark)

I don’t mind really, just wish it was used for more things that helped society. And it needs to be a little more progressive, though it is the most progressive of the taxes we have here.

My ex MIL, who literally used WIC and welfare when she was a single mom, and leveraged that into a nursing degree, rails against welfare now and doesn’t want her taxes going to that, doesn’t want to pay. Not even in a pull the ladder up after herself way, she just refuses to admit she benefited from it.

It does feel like going out in underwear, to a place where everyone is in underwear, and the people wearing full clothing look out of place. I don’t even have a perfect body but grew up near the beach, saw every possible body type in swimwear. So I am comfortable enough looking near naked in public, since everyone is. It’s nice.

My kids call me Mom, step kids call me by my first name.

Oh and sometimes mama, in Spanish.

How? Flour here is up to about $7 for a 5lb bag (2.2kg) and I make 2 loaves with 1kg flour, I’m at $1.50 per loaf flour only, not counting the flour that went into the starter, or electricity or time, or other ingredients (brioche uses eggs & milk, pan de mie lots of butter, sandwich bread I usually use whole wheat and some oats and milk, a little butter or olive oil, focaccia lots of olive oil, stuff like that) . I don’t even use packaged yeast and figure my cost is likely $3-4 per loaf.

My homemade sourdough costs more than store bread, but not more than fancy sourdough bakery bread. I can’t buy flour wholesale, don’t make that much bread. But when it’s good it’s better than any bakery bread I’ve had. So, better, probably not cheaper.

Home cooked meals vs. restaurants does save money.

Gardening - most things work out cheaper than buying, though as I am a salaried worker I am not allocating labor cost.

If it were to be compared to doing 1.5x pay overtime, then working more would make more money than we could save by doing cooking and gardening, it would always work out better to spend that time at work. But then the health impact of doing all that work and always eating out would have to be factored in.

Yeah I was an anorexic teenager and while I didn’t just keep getting smaller, was maintaining at 99lbs, 5’9" for years. I weigh about 150 now and even though I literally feel so good physically, and understand that’s kinda unusual at my age, and have managed to at least keep my bone mass (it’s low, obviously, but not declining, made it through menopause with all of it, and that’s also unusual) and logically understand that:

1. This is considered smack dab perfect weight for my height and age.

2. Losing weight now would be kind of dumb and counterproductive.

I cannot shake the fear and dislike and anxiety over being this big. I don’t want to be 99lb, no way no how absolutely not. But at every single point between that and this I feel too fat. There is no weight that will look how I want, though, and again, I suspect this here is ideal because nothing hurts and I’m strong, though not fast. I know it’s my mind that is the problem, and not my body. But knowing it doesn’t make me not feel too big.

Local community radio, monthly.

A little towards anything I read or listen to, not often but as I can I do.

Towards disasters if work is doing a fundraiser, we have a charity arm and I know where the money is going as I work in accounting.

Directly to people, again as I can. This is the biggest $ category probably. If I have cash I will give it, don’t think about trying to sort out who “deserves” it, that’s not something I can or will do. Will pick up an extra meal occasionally if there is a homeless person around. And have given space in my house occasionally, though at least once did not when I really should have, there is an occasion I regret not offering that to someones I know - I think it would have helped them get back on their feet much faster but I was worried for my safety (from my ex not the people who needed).

I don’t consider myself generous in light of what I have, but still digging out from being poor myself.

I think when the surgery is good, nobody notices it. Two women at my work had to get eyelid lifts for medical reasons, and both came out looking so much better and not at all “done”. Really nobody would ever think they had plastic surgery and even I forget then think wow that was great work.

That standard filler face though? I know the look it’s emulating and we cannot all look like that! I knew an old old lady who had been a Vogue fashion model in the 40s and 50s and she had that bone structure that ages so well, the high big cheekbones, eyebrows that had started out so high she had room for them to fall, I look at those overdone samey samey faces and it’s not going to work. I cannot take my wide round face and morph it into that with filler!

Sunscreen. Retin-A. Sleep and exercise. Those are the way to keep looking good as you are getting old. I can’t understand botox because if exercise keeps everything else healthy how is it bad for your face?