SpaceCadetriment

I was all gung-ho for taking out a huge chunk of change for college while going through the financial aid process. They dangle that carrot everywhere you look when you are trying to plan how you are going to afford tuition and housing.

I was just about to pull the trigger and figured it would be wise to ask my Mom if it was a good idea. She sat me down, explained the fine print, created a spreadsheet and gave me a crash course in how absolutely fucked financially I was going to be for likely more than decade after graduating if I agreed to the terms of the loan.

Decided 2-years at a CC then transferring to a state school was a much better plan than crippling debt and a degree from a fancier college.

Almost 20 years later I still thank her regulalry for breaking it down for me, because my 18 year old self did not understand financial structuring and predatory loans.

Are slugs still a thing anymore or have the machines evolved enough to make them a non issue?

We used to buy rolls of nickels and sit in my garage and hammer them out into the size of quarters. The worked fine in quarter machines at the the pizza shop and soda machines around town. This was in the early 90s so I’m sure things have evolved since then. Y dad would tell us he would use washers growing up.

This is a great question and one I constantly think about.

I've been listening to NPR regularly for 20 years and don't want to imagine a world without it. That being said, I do not see seasonal phone pledge drives for local stations as a sustainable way to fill the gap on funding. The model of holding the broadcast hostage to get X amount of donations before resuming programming seems woefully outdated.

Nobody does fundraising like that anymore. Public broadcasting is sadly being painted into a corner where fewer people tune in every year, while simultaneously required to limit commercials and advertising due to their being publicly funded.

On top of all this, there are an infinite amount of free sources now available that are carrying what came off the AP or Reuters wire.

I have no idea what the solution is to local funding, but it's long overdue for an overhaul. Every pledge drive I listen to sounds more and more desperate.

To follow up on this, do you see an overall declining trend towards the desire for animals being used in traditional eastern medicine, or is the demand steady?

Part of me wants to believe younger generations would be more inclined to move away from the practice of using exotic animals for medicinal purposes, but I also know there are a lot of booming middle classes in the world, specifically China, that would maybe see a spike in demand due to the cash that is flowing through their economy.

My friend had the same experience, except it took him becoming a father until he finally stopped. He was in agony, profusely vomiting for hours sometimes after smoking. He would call them "abdominal migraines" which apparently some a Dr diagnosed but likely because he wasn't candid about his THC intake. He would always equate the sickness to stress.

Magically, after he stopped smoking they went away, yet his life is much more stressful now that he's a father and another one on the way.