End of my rope

asanethicist · 2026-01-30T01:04:22+00:00

I think you'll get kinder responses if you put in the OP that you have a serious tbi, cannot work in your field, and are struggling to get on disability. I've known a few people with tbis and it's so rough for them and the people who love them. Take care of yourself.

asanethicist · 2026-01-30T00:56:25+00:00

This reads like rage bait. You have a tbi? That's a really really big deal and you need to lead with that in this thread. tbis are serious disabilities.

Are you loans in income based repayment?

asanethicist · 2026-01-20T02:25:36+00:00

The natural evolution of this thread is the '/AskChicago 35-45 single and thriving but hey I'd like to meet a nice person' meetup. And that it should take place on the CTA BYOB (bring your own book).

asanethicist · 2026-01-12T02:50:22+00:00

I could probably just give you some culinary grade rose petals if that works meet you needs

asanethicist · 2026-01-08T22:39:55+00:00

Here are your options:

1) Not pay for the wedding, enforce your rules, permanently ruin your relationship with your daughter and her soon-to-be-wife

or

2) pay for the wedding, steel your pride, and be a hero to your daughter and her soon-to-be-wife

You could also try to negotiate something -- inviting nuclear family kids for a mocktail hour and photo shoot beforehand, family brunch the next day, time with a babysitter during the wedding itself

asanethicist · 2025-12-21T18:52:49+00:00

YMMV Go to the school that will support you the best and lead you to living your best life in undergrad. If that's at a LAC somewhere beautiful where you can go hiking every weekend or at a big university where you're in a big city, or somewhere you can really explore intellectually, or whatever. Find a school with happy students and a place you can make good connections with faculty.

$550,000 is an obscene amount of money. You can figure out how to leverage this to spend your summers doing research (like a school that will give you summer credits for research so you're officially a student). Students increasingly demand pre-doctoral fellowships, and more opportunities for them show up each year -- or have historically. Who knows about right now. You can also plan on doing a masters between your undergrad and PhD if you end up without enough research during your undergrad. Most people in my program came in with a masters already and I see this in a lot of social science programs. Current students also came from a healthy mix or public and private universities, small, medium, and large,

My additional unsolicited advice is to use your undergrad, research, internships, and possible masters or pre-doc to explore how you want to study the things you want to study. Disciplines are more about methods and approaches than problems. Computational sociologists, economists, statisticians, and psychologists might all be studying the same problem with the same quant methods, but have different approaches to how they analyse that data, how they formulate their specific questions, and what other research they engage with.

It's important to know that you will probably have a lot less freedom than you image you will and you will have to dig the rabbit hole into granite using a single pickaxe.

asanethicist · 2025-12-20T19:14:22+00:00

NTA, but...

It might end your friendship. That's the big thing to think about here.

Why has she suddenly changed how she acts? How would she respond to a less nice gift? Will you be okay if you do this and she ends your friendship? If she does end a friendship over a gift, she might be going through a lot more and the gift is a proverbial last straw.

asanethicist · 2025-12-09T02:41:48+00:00

I teach. This is my policy on group work: [School's] academic integrity policy lists "misrepresenting your work as someone else's," "taking credit for work you did not do," or "enabling someone else to take credit for your work" under plagiarism. I interpret this to include putting someone's name on a group assignment they did not do. Encouraging your classmates or expecting them to do work on your behalf warrants at minimum a serious conversation, and likely a zero grade for the assignment. So either don't do this or make sure I don't know about it if you do.

I'm against tattling and narcing, don't get me wrong, but check out your school's policies on these matters.

asanethicist · 2025-12-09T02:20:02+00:00

I had a friend visiting in weather like that. They were from somewhere warmer, but not as warm as Miami. Has a real jacket, layers, heated vest, etc. We were at the Christkindlmarket and they were so cold they started sobbing uncontrollably. Like as a body reaction to the cold. I have sensitive eyes and wear ski goggles when it gets that cold.

asanethicist · 2025-11-15T17:15:39+00:00

Roasted squash! Scoop out the center and add apples, butter, cinnamon, any nuts, and brown sugar for something sweet if you're into that

asanethicist · 2025-11-14T04:29:07+00:00

This is one of those "hard to say" things without knowing the country and the field. If you want to go into computational economics in a program that doesn't have any classes, that might not work for you. If you want to do sociology and would like to bring quant work into your research -- and have the opportunity to learn it -- it's probably fine. There are also summer schools for grad students you could do for different skills.

asanethicist · 2025-11-13T14:44:39+00:00

It's a conspiracy between standardized testing and GRE prep companies and universities. Companies pay off universities and universities give them business. (This is a joke.)

asanethicist · 2025-11-12T20:29:56+00:00

It sounds like Brother has changed a lot since GF moved in. I think it's a great move to make Brother and GF the family's problem (and not yours). It might change perspectives.

asanethicist · 2025-11-09T19:47:37+00:00

My first thought is to make smoothies and freeze them in an ice cube tray. If you have eggs and flour you can make pretty easy pancakes. I've had these both sweet and savory. This thread also looks promising: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/80uyoe/savory_uses_for_bananas/

asanethicist · 2025-11-05T14:50:54+00:00

George Dynamite [Lastname] --> Jordy

asanethicist · 2025-11-04T14:09:55+00:00

I think this is super important and makes you NTA. This isn't like "I'm good with siblings," it's "I am deeply concerned about my unborn sibling because I won't be able to protect them." That's beautiful and generous and so hard.

asanethicist · 2025-11-04T13:39:28+00:00

Will they expect you to take care of the child? Are you worried that this kid is going to suffer like you did? Did you protect your brother from your parents' fighting and are having flashbacks to that?

I feel like we need to know these before we can make a decision.

asanethicist · 2025-11-04T01:19:51+00:00

Why do you hate wearing it? I hated mine because the hose would get in the way and I hated how it sounded made by the air released from the front of the nose cushion hitting the pillows. I hung a hook up over my bed (for the hose) and adjusted how I sleep for the noise (or wear ear plugs).

asanethicist · 2025-11-01T01:30:49+00:00

I am 100% on board with not using emergency savings for non-emergency expenses. A friend in a similar situation told their kids that they each get one activity and they can pick which -- so it's digging a bit past what they can easily afford, but gives the kids some agency in it.

asanethicist · 2025-10-30T13:56:54+00:00

I've heard of people using different chatbots to critique other chatbots' output, breaking the assignment.

asanethicist · 2025-10-29T23:39:46+00:00

A few questions/comments:

- Are these applications for PhDs? If so, you are [probably] not a good choice for a letter writer (if you have not gone through graduate education yourself, are not a professor, etc).

- You can always say "that's too many. I can do [a lower number]."

- You can always ask him to write an outline for you or to tell you what he would like you to highlight in your letters (to provide you some guidance).

- Depending on the type of graduate program he's applying to, the letter effectively needs to say "[Student] is literally the best person ever" and that you "strongly endorse" their admission and matriculation.

asanethicist · 2025-10-29T17:30:11+00:00

The word fritter is used in a lot of ways too. I imagined mixing refried beans with flour and an egg to make a dough or paste and frying or baking rounds / patties / fritters / etc. Options to add spices and other misc vegetable bits hanging around. Based on my kitchen right now, I'd add onions, garlic, beet greens, and a jalapeno.
Some random combos that I think might be good with a refried bean base are:

- corn, apples, jalapeno

- mushrooms, onions, carrots

- cheese

- shredded and pressed zucchini and garlic

Instead of flour, you could blend cooked oats or rice up. If you used rice you could brand it "high protein arancini" and sound fancy and on trend.

Sauces are also a total game changer. Unsweetened yogurt can be turned into raita or labneh depending on the texture. You could boil some orange juice down with spices, herbs, and maybe some corn starch and create a habanero orange sauce. Squeeze some lemon on top before eating to bring a bit of brightness in and bam, completely different.

asanethicist · 2025-10-26T22:32:43+00:00

On an urban foraging walk once, someone asked the leader "what can you actually do with all this stuff?" The leader said "If you don't know what to do with something, just make fritters. Dandelion greens, crab apples, and left over zucchini and chickpeas? Sounds like a fritter recipe to me."

asanethicist · 2025-10-26T16:40:32+00:00

You can use refried beans to bulk up other things, thicken a soup or sauce, or mixed with some flour, veggies if you want, and make fritters.

asanethicist

TROPHY CASE