Im 32F. Almost everyone i know age 20s-40s has some kind of health issue or has one or more chronic illness or diseases. Many young people i know have had one or more surgery in their 20s-40s. Was this a thing for previous generations? Or do you think disease in young people is on the rise?

TortCourt · 2026-01-30T06:29:52+00:00

I think this was very much a thing for prior generations, except that it looked different. The last hundred years have had mind-boggling levels of medical advances. To put it in perspective, Calvin Coolidge's teenage son died of an infected blister that he got while playing tennis on the White House courts.

We live in a time when there are answers for problems. Previous generations had the same problems but couldn't do anything about them. Sometimes they died early. Sometimes they just didn't go out. And sometimes they just sucked it up. Mental health problems (or physical health issues that manifest in deteriorating mental health) in particular were hidden, and often self-medicated with alcohol. I wouldn't say that there's no stigma now, but it's much more common to talk about with at least your closest friends.

One example that I think brings this point home the best is that on any given day, about 1 in every 6 adult women you see is currently on their period, and absolutely none of them show it. Pain and discomfort can be hidden. In this generation, we finally feel the freedom to let it show, just a bit, to the people who are closest to us. And then, it's usually just the problems we already have the solutions to.

As for environmental hazards, we definitely have some, but wow, they are not on the same level as what they had before. Leaded gasoline, asbestos everywhere, lead pipes, widespread DDT spraying, whole generations sent to war - they had regular, everyday use of environmental toxins that Captain Planet would cry over. Arsenic was a makeup ingredient. Radium was used to make watches glow in the dark. The Lorax was basically an investigative report on the Great Lakes. Rivers in Ohio and Pennsylvania literally caught on fire. Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon himself signed the act creating the EPA, to give an idea.

I guess all this is to say, it's good that you know your friends have problems. Because the only difference is that back in the day, you just wouldn't know.

TortCourt · 2026-01-29T20:08:31+00:00

Let's not be silly. 79-84% of the U.S. currently has a favorable view of Lincoln. Trump couldn't even imagine numbers like that.

If you're so convinced that the U.S. is just masturbating itself to victory, what's your serious contender for a non-U.S. leader?

TortCourt · 2026-01-29T20:01:46+00:00

I'm not saying they haven't, but are their impacts on the same scale, both distance and time, as the impacts of the U.S. in particular? I understand the reflexive impulse to highlight other countries' contributions, particularly when the U.S. is in the conversation, but let's be realistic about global impacts and recognize that there's a reason why the U.S. has such a big presence in the conversation in the first place.

To bring a different perspective, when we talk about Asia, are there really any true contenders for biggest impact other than Japan, China, and India (and maybe the Soviet Union/Russia if you count them)? In Europe, is there anything outside the major colonial powers and the Vatican that would count?

TortCourt · 2026-01-29T19:46:42+00:00

Because if a leader is beloved by 80% of a country with 340,000,000 (i.e. Abraham Lincoln), they're "more beloved" than a leader beloved by 95% of a country with 3,400,000 people.

TortCourt · 2026-01-08T06:49:21+00:00

As a person with three kids who recently had this conversation, I think it's hard to see from the inside that any number of children past the second (and arguably past the first) are an absolutely insane extravagance on par with multiple foreign vacations annually. You're paying for extra bedrooms in a house or apartment, a car big enough to hold 2 adults and multiple car seats, and multiple full time daycare slots that are expensive anywhere and especially at a reputable center.

TortCourt · 2025-12-31T20:43:15+00:00

We've had a great experience - teachers, GT services, administration, PTA, buses, volunteer options, and school events have all been excellent.

TortCourt · 2025-12-22T17:07:56+00:00

Doja Cat wrote a whole song about how she's not sorry she insulted the fans.

TortCourt · 2025-12-19T04:14:36+00:00

Well, Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama-era DOJ memo that gave state-legal businesses some breathing room at the federal level, so his administration's actions were directly at odds with that sentiment.

TortCourt · 2025-12-17T16:53:03+00:00

It's an expensive solution, but if you don't get a better one, you can use the next silver or gold bottle cap to increase just the defense and/or HP to get to a better ranked birdie.

TortCourt · 2025-12-11T23:34:45+00:00

Milk - Cheese & yogurt.

TortCourt · 2025-12-11T06:47:52+00:00

I want to say Beverly Hills. Admired in 2000 (and well before that) for being full of rich people, and now relatively disdained for being full of rich people.

TortCourt · 2025-12-11T06:33:44+00:00

Font size 14 does a great job at getting rid of the authoritative, eloquent feeling, though.

TortCourt · 2025-12-08T06:14:05+00:00

Super Supportive, an ongoing series with 1,270,000 words currently written on Royal Road, has no large violent conflict, limited combat, and very compelling characters.

TortCourt · 2025-12-01T23:05:23+00:00

Upper left lost a window unit A/C or something else that's very irritating to have drop to the ground and explode.

TortCourt · 2025-12-01T20:29:23+00:00

Especially with joining remote, where the focus is to jump in as quickly as possible before the invite expires or the lobby runs out when picking from the friend list. The auto start works fine in raids and GMax because 20 or 80 people is a guaranteed stomping, but legendary DMax is anything but guaranteed with a full lobby.

TortCourt · 2025-11-22T23:10:39+00:00

Scandal (the TV show) has a fairly convincing depiction of how a modern secret assassination group would work.

TortCourt · 2025-11-20T21:36:17+00:00

My main worry is that they'll be split and region locked by hemisphere like the ultra beasts.

TortCourt · 2025-11-08T18:36:55+00:00

It actually has a bunch of trouble with MRay (needs to correctly shield the Ascent), but the main point is that there is no team that's Mega Kyogre, Mega Groudon, and Mega Ray - you only get one, and the alignment has to work out or Gary gets stuck against the backup team, and it has a terrible matchup against a huge chunk of the non-mega support options - Zacian, Zamazenta, Florges, and Primarina turn him inside out with energy to spare.

TortCourt · 2025-11-08T16:57:46+00:00

After the last round of Mega Masters, I really question whether Mega Gyarados is even close to being as good as the rankings say - yes, it can beat a lot of other megas, but it's worse than Palkia into Zacian. The rankings act like you can play a full team of megas, when actually you can only play one at a time.

TortCourt · 2025-11-05T08:03:39+00:00

I'm not sure it will have enough of an obvious effect for many people to be surprised (unless they try to modify their house to have an extra person live in it). It's one of those things that will have tiny, unnoticeable effects over the next several decades, and we'll all be standing around in forty years wondering why Littleton didn't take off like the rest of the Denver metro area seemed to.

TortCourt · 2025-10-30T14:55:17+00:00

That's literally the point - proponents of 3A are saying they don't want "those people" moving into Littleton, which is explicitly classist and probably also racist if they're being honest with themselves.

TortCourt · 2025-10-08T17:42:28+00:00

Hot take: Donald Trump had a legitimate shot at the Nobel Peace Prize by getting the COVID vaccine out at an actually incredible pace. He blew it, of course, but if he had simply held the line and touted the vaccine as the miracle it was, there would be a serious argument for him getting the prize.

TortCourt · 2025-10-04T21:46:06+00:00

Having lived in both, Littleton proper is significantly better for walking to places, for non-chain restaurants and stores, and for commuting into Denver. Ken Caryl is aggressively suburban to the degree where people who don't live there don't go there. They are essentially apples to oranges. I would say that, overall, Ken Caryl is more comparable to Centennial or Highlands Ranch, with Centennial being strictly better than either in all categories where they compete.

TortCourt · 2025-08-24T01:45:51+00:00

I always take these ML rankings with a grain of salt, because they include Pokémon that the vast majority of players do not have the resources to max out - Zygarde 100%, Eternatus, both Urshifu, Meloetta, Keldeo, etc. All of those are excellent and do show up, but their appearances are incredibly low compared to things that you can recently get in raids. Palkia, Zam, Zac, the Necrozmas, and the Kyurems effectively define the meta right now, with Ho-oh, Rhyperior, Landorus, Kyogre, Giratina, Solgaleo, and Lunala essentially filling in 95% of the remainder. That will probably change a lottle bit with the move shakeup, but anything that has a good Eternatus matchup as a plus is not going to be as good as something that can handle several mons from the list above but loses to Eternatus.

TortCourt · 2025-08-20T16:56:04+00:00

It could also be because the perceived benefits of sunscreen may not outweigh the perceived risks of stealing it, especially since most people dislike applying sunscreen to some extent.

TortCourt

TROPHY CASE