mwproductions

Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be a documentary.

Is this how I'm supposed to meet women these days? I'd better get planting.

My first thought (you might even call it my gut reaction) was "my microbiome," so it's along similar lines to yours.

Yep!

I keep my reusable bags in the car, so when I drive to the store I already have them. If I have to carry them anywhere... Well they are bags after all, so I just put them all into one bag and boom! Bag of bags! And then once I'm in the store, they just go into the basket or cart. Sometimes if I know I'm only buying 1 or 2 items, I'll just bring a single bag into the store and carry it around with me.

There have been a few times where no baskets have been available, so I'll just put the stuff I'm buying directly into the bag, and then take it all out when I get to the checkout counter. It feels weird to do, but no one has ever seemed to care.

I grew up in Honolulu, and every once in a while there would be a tsunami warning. I don't know how old I was—I would guess 6 years old, give or take a couple of years—but during one tsunami warning my parents drove up a ridge and parked on the side of the road to wait it out. We had a VW Vanagon, and I remember sitting in the van playing with toys to pass the time. At some point, a girl around my age joined me in the van. Her parents had the same idea as mine, and I guess they invited her to play with me while we all waited.

I'm in my 40s now. I still think about that girl from time to time.

My thinking is along the same lines. I think OP and his wife both have good arguments for making certain dishes certain ways. And indeed, it seems (to me, in my unqualified opinion) that they need to have an ongoing conversation about which dishes each wants made which way.

OP's wife is nostalgic for a certain boxed pancake mix because it reminds her of her deceased mother? Cool, that's pretty low-stakes, just make the boxed shit. But part of OP's self-care routine is cooking food from scratch, and that's important too.

OP is right that fighting over this is silly. OP is wrong that scratch-made will always be better. Oh, I'm sure it will taste better, but in the long run it will be worse for OP's marriage.

And crucially, they both need to be flexible. If OP takes pride in their cooking and the couple is having company over for brunch, then maybe leave the boxed pancake mix in the pantry and let OP wow the guests with their delicious and fluffy scratch-made pancakes. And of course, OP needs to remember that that flexibility is a two-way street.

What a lovely false equivalency!

I imagine it depends where in the state you live. I'm sure the west side has more people bringing their own bags than the east side.

I was just thinking about this yesterday. In Washington state, they passed a law awhile back where stores can still give out plastic bags, but they have to be "reusable" (which means they're thicker, which means they use more plastic) and they charge you 8¢ per bag. Most people just pay the 8¢ per bag and walk out with half a dozen of them. I assume they're throwing them away at home, because I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever seen someone actually reuse these bags.

How does this reduce plastic waste? If anything the amount of plastic being thrown away has increased. The per-bag cost far too low to incentivize people to bring their own. Some stores offer a rebate if you supply your own bags, but it's usually 5¢ per bag, which is also too low of an incentive. So what we have is performative "feel good" legislation that ends up making the problem worse. As usual.

What happened to "my body, my choice?" I choose to put vaccines in my body.

If so, it's propagating. I live in the NW USA and have been noticing it for years.