Letting kids (and kids at heart) go wild with their imagination and dress up.

Meeting/seeing neighbors.

Eating candy.

I feel really sad for all the folks on lemmy having a bad/frustrating Halloween. I think it doesn’t have to be that way, but it does definitely take neighborhood-level effort. We’re really lucky to live in a big Halloween neighborhood in a walkable area. We saw all our favorite neighbors and met some new ones, and enjoyed all the creative decorations and costumes we saw while we were out.

But the best part of the night is always getting to see people light up when you recognize their costume. Every time I see a kid dressed as Batman and go “whoa there’s Batman!” or compliment a princess on their beautiful dress, you can just see them stand up straighter or strike a pose and it’s awesome to see everyone dressing up and enjoying themselves. I probably saw a dozen Marios tonight from age 2 to age 20 and every single one of them was over the moon when I complimented their costume.

Awww I’m sorry it sucks to be prepared and get no one. We’re in a big trick or treating neighborhood but on a side street and last year we only got like 5 visitors. This year we just took candy over to our neighbor on the more popular street and didn’t hand any out at our house. One street over from our house and the entire sidewalk and street was mobbed with under-10’s. I think it’s highly neighborhood- and street-dependent.

Ask your neighbors where the good trick or treating spot is. It may be far away from you and people are just driving there instead of sticking around the neighborhood. Or it’s possible if you’re in a less walkable area that people might do more “trunk or treat” instead where they coordinate and go to a parking lot to do trick or treating.

What you are describing is not osmosis, it is capillary action. Capillary action is caused by the forces between the water molecules and the molecules of the tube overcoming the force of gravity. You can read more here: https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Physical_Properties_of_Matter/States_of_Matter/Properties_of_Liquids/Capillary_Action

Briefly, the water molecules are attracted to the molecules of the tube by adhesive force. The liquid molecules are also attracted to each other by cohesive force. The interplay of these forces causes capillary action.

However, it seems that tree sap moves by more than just capillary action. If you scroll down part way in this book they talk about it a bit: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/phy2053bc/chapter/cohesion-and-adhesion-in-liquids-surface-tension-and-capillary-action/

Kids love this shit as long as you keep it at the ELI5 level and stop when they are done and lose interest. My kid will throw around words like “microorganism” and “bioaccumulation” because I actually explain biology concepts when he asks. The other day he had a question about atmospheric composition and he was absorbed for about 5-10 minutes, complete with looking at molecular diagrams, and then he was done and went off to make his Lego people fight each other with flamethrowers.

If you have knowledge, share it with kids and let them see you enjoying science. They absorb more than you might think.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol) if I can’t get it under control without meds but I agree with the other posters about trying to figure out the root cause! For me, the main causes of headaches used to be hormones from the pill until I switched to a different form of birth control (IUD). Nowadays my headaches are mostly dry eye or allergy related so I keep eye drops on hand and take allergy meds and I’m down to headaches once every week or two. Staying hydrated and taking fish oil supplements has also helped my dry eyes.

Yeah this is what happens with our kid (who, admittedly, has ADHD so maybe he’s a bit unusual). The first day or week after a cool experience he’s pretty meh about it and won’t volunteer much in the way of thoughts or feelings and then suddenly he’ll realize it was real again and all of a sudden he won’t shut up about how cool it was! Then eventually he settles down into a steady pattern of “hey remember when we did X thing wasn’t that so cool we should do it again” which is my favorite phase because that’s how I know what he really likes that stuck with him. : )

Not OP, but we have a bidet and a basket of cut up t-shirt cloths next to the toilet that are single-use and then go in the wash every week. I wouldn’t personally reuse washcloths for wiping out of fear of UTIs, but I’m extra paranoid.

Agreed. We have kept wearing masks in specific places (public transit, crowded events, airplanes) and it really does make a difference. I never get sick from airplane trips any more, which used to be a fairly regular occurrence.

I will say, I was never able to figure out how to stop a properly fitted mask from giving me a terrible headache after 8 hours of use so I’m glad I work from home and don’t need to make the choice of mask vs comfort at work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zZzn-KxeRI

Can’t quote the lyrics without sharing the awesome lyric video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbQSzs11euk

Used to sing this song to my kid at bedtime but he hasn’t asked for it lately. Maybe I’ll try to work it back into the rotation.

I have a white Prius named Shadowfax so if I need to go somewhere fast I can yell “run Shadowfax, show us the meaning of haste!”

Local takeout ftw. I haven’t eaten at a pizza chain in years and don’t miss it at all!

Now the real question in New England is Italian-style vs Greek-style pizza

Another vote for mindustry! That game is a blast.

I have a child and I’d be the first to recommend not having one. It’s expensive, it wrecked me emotionally and physically, and I worry every day about what kind of world my kid will grow up into.

But all those things are worth it in the end to me because I really wanted to be a parent. My kid is an absolute treasure to me and I put up with the suffering because I do genuinely love parenting and love seeing him grow up. If I was any less enthusiastic about the process going in, I would have either run away or killed myself by now. That’s how demoralizing and traumatic parenting can be. Granted I have a special needs kid but so do probably 10% of parents so do you want to roll those dice?

All that aside, the fact is that parenting these days is filled with societal obstacles. With both parents working, you’re rationing sick days and constantly running out, leaving no time for vacation or personal days off. This leaves the option of either taking unpaid days off or reducing one’s working hours. Since no one is home doing housework all day, working parents spend their evenings and nights doing housework. If you need to run an errand or take the kid to a doctor’s appointment, that comes out of either your paid work time or your free time. Childcare is both expensive and hard to get, with wait-lists for daycares in some cities of several months. And once your kid is in public school, you have to find after school care, which is not guaranteed for every kid at every school.

And don’t even get me started about summer. Three months of cobbled-together summer camps and asking/begging family members and friends to watch your kid when their busy schedules permit. If your kid has special needs or requires trained caregivers, you are out of luck.

These are fixable problems, but they require massive government-subsidized investment in childcare and parental leave structures and the government is not doing that. Childcare salaries are so low that the supply of daycare teachers is basically dried up. Same with public school teachers and afterschool caregivers. Why work as an afterschool teacher when you can be an independent nanny and make twice as much per hour? As for parental leave, there is no requirement that parental leave cover anything beyond the bare bones of the time needed to give birth, leaving most new parents to burn through their entire year’s worth of sick time during their babies first month of life when there is a doctor’s appointment just about every week. Then blow through it again next year when the kid gets sick twice a month in daycare. My kid is six years old and this is the first year I haven’t run out of sick days before June.

Our society was designed for families with at least one full-time caregiver, and now that is basically impossible but the system has not been updated. This game is not designed for us. So why would anyone choose to play?

Sparse on details but she was with an older man who was not her relative so I’m not hopeful it’s a good reason. 😣

Found safe and alive! I wish they’d put that in the title of the article but of course they want you to click on it.

cries in working parent

My employer gives us 8 sick days a year. When we run out of those we are supposed to use vacation time. It’s downright depressing how fast we blow through the sick time in a bad winter season.

I’m very very lucky to work from home, so I can neglect my sick kid at home while getting work done and thus avoid having to burn through my vacation time as well. Others aren’t so lucky.

Highly recommend IGNEA if you like melodic metal. A few faves:

Jinnslammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_qqeXzM4g

Disenchantment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnV9vpEit6E

Mermaids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU9WFEwsQQw

But gosh their stuff is just all awesome.

When watching eagle nest cams, I’ve seen little birds and mammals hanging around eagle nests and scooping up scraps of leftover prey. I think in many cases a large raptor isn’t going to go chasing around a little birds when they’ve already caught something bigger and the little birds play clean up crew and take away scraps that would be too small for the larger birds. Not sure if that’s the case here but it’s a cool little cooperative situation to notice. You’ll also see little birds nesting under osprey nests, probably for the same reason.

You seem to be implying all people and countries are on a scale moving closer to some single ideal.

I mean that’s definitely how some people interpret it but at least for me, patriotism encompasses the idea that my country should be best for me and the people in it but that other people in other countries get to think the same thing about their country and work towards their own version of “best.”

But I’m not gonna argue that everyone does patriotism this way because that’s clearly not the case 🙃 plenty of “patriots” out there willing to wreck their own country in a war over bringing their own ideals to a different place.