Thanks for the chuckle! Considering the health advise is specifically about two beers, saying a couple in context seemed confusing. Thus the quotation marks.

I’m a social drinker, so I’m more likely to drink “some” drinks once a week than a little every day. The latter is really not appealing!

I would like to know if, health wise, it’s the same to drink 2 drinks per day or four every second day (excluding the obvious short term effects)

Being the governing body means having responsibilities towards the population. They want to erase the population, obviously they don’t want to be in control when that happens!

The Trump presidency is eroding the international US standing at a pace that leave me speechless. He is shooting in the foot all the US historical allies and enemies alike. Even Europe is slowly distancing itself from US, that was unfathomable a decade ago.

Unfortunately, that’s becoming more and more true, and the quality of college classes has to adapt to a student population that is more and more divided depending on the quality of their high schools.

Students coming from good high schools have already internalized effective studying mechanisms, and often the basics of many topics in the first years of college, while others coming from worst high schools have no clue how to organize themselves to be successful. Often, they lock themselves up and spend unreasonable amount of time trying to make sense of things they don’t have the perquisite for. A good read in this direction is Whistling Vivaldi. Obviously, high school quality is very connected with the whiteness and affluence of their location, putting poorer and minority students at a disadvantage even before the starting block.

Mini-rant incoming

There is that, sure, but also courses are structured to make sense as a whole, such that the end connects to all the pieces you have been gathering along the way. Therefore, it is often easier and mire fulfilling to study at the end of the semester, when the end goal of the techniques studied is shown. On the other hand, postponing all to the end is obviously a bad plan. So to avoid that, courses are structured with mid-terms and homework hand ins and so on to force students into learning a bit at a time, thus often loosing track of the global picture and making studying feel harder and less motivating. Plus, constant testing is a source of increased stress and lower productivity (who would have guessed).

I don’t know the solution to this conundrum, I just rant about it.

When I was a student, I tried to take rest days before exams if possible. During my bachelor I had a strict rule of never studying more than 6 days a week, 10 hours a day (including commute). Having some time off was fundamental. I dropped that rule during the master and barely graduated :/

Now as a teacher, I often see students not able to pace themselves, giving it their all and collapsing half way through exam season. Understanding your own limits is rough… in particular when it had worked for so many months. But they overlooked how each month took a toll and at some point you can’t keep it all together.

If you see your burnout lasting more than a couple of days of rest, reach out. The sooner the better.

Get in contact with student support services, most universities have some sort of mental health “crisis” support system. (Crisis between quotes because what they can handle varies wildly). They can not only help you with your burnout, but also get in contact with your prof and let them know. You could (likelihood depends on the university) get a second chance at a later date without having to retake the full course.

Unfortunately, burnout and similar health issues have skyrocketed between university students since covid, the universities try to keep up, but… funding processes suck, so it really depends on the state/county/specific university.

All the best!

US hell hole…

You write about (a quite shitty) reality, but the picture is somewhat of a dream, everyone is projecting their own wishes all around it. Running water, electricity, in the vicinity of supermarket/restaurant/pharmacy… it’s all there, in magic country land.

I am also a city person. I love disconnecting for holidays, but then I am back with similar minded friends, in a city with all city commodities and I don’t think I would switch.

That’s terrifying…

They check if you can afford it “right now”, but the situation could change: a kid, an emergency, inflation, loosing your job, inflation… have i talked about inflation? Or the loan rates could change too

That assumes your means are constant and your spending isn’t, but this situation is the opposite: long term spending items (mortgage, car debt, significant inflation…) and means that dropped by losing jobs or pay raises that do not match inflation.

It seems to me that a lot of US people use credit cards to smoothen over larger purchases, so if you buy say a guitar for your hobby it doesn’t come all for this month’s budget but you plan to pay it off over multiple months. Often, credit card companies also encourage this behavior, giving short term low interest loans. But the overall market in the US is way more volatile than in Europe, so in the months you are paying off (your guitar, that fancy holiday, the tickets to a show…) you could lose your job, or the interests on your house mortgage could change significantly. And you are screwed.

Overall, Europeans tend to dislike credit unless it’s in the format of a mortgage, while it is a much more widespread form of payment in the US (and many other places). So, to most of your questions the answer is: most people have some credit card debt at all times.

Popcorns don’t need an air popper: a pot with a lid and some oil+salt.

Warning: you need to keep the pot at a high temperature for quite a while, so avoid using non-stick pans because they are going to die quickly.

Frozen spinaches haven’t gotten a lot of attention in this thread yet!

Depends on how poor is poor and the cooking budget, but they stay good for a long time and you can add a bit to basically any dish: omelette, rice and beans, tomato pasta. Tasty, simple and flexible

An Italian home cooking staple is pasta with butter and sage. Just melt the butter with the sage and gently fry while boiling the pasta

I moved recently and the overall lack of ethnic stores is driving me up the walls! They are usually both cheaper and better quality than anything you find at the supermarket… I guess I moved to white-as-butter-land :/

Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad is going better now, and wish you luck for the next pay bump too! (God, what a horrible system, having to bet on joining the military… sorry you had to go through that)