TheGoddessAnoia

Every now and then, I sit back in wonder: when I was born, DNA had only recently been confirmed as the 'carrier' of heredity (it is, as always with science, much more complicated than that), and we hadn't yet isolated the bases or realised that it varied from one species to the next. We were clueless about the double helix, RNA, enzymes, ribosomes.... I have been incredibly fortunate to live when I have, especially as it rather looks like the pursuit of knowledge is about to take a firm backseat to the exercise by money of absolute power. Thanks to all those people who gave a lifetime to slowly answering so many of an old woman's questions.

Edit: Except Richard Feynman, who was a misogynistic, self-centred jerk. You got your rewards in life, bub: may you spend all eternity surrounded by grad students who have never heard of Feyman diagrams and hate the bongo drums.

I've been working out at home since the late '70s/early '80s, as I found gyms in that era seriously woman-unfriendly. I splurged for a simple bench, a barbell/dumbbell set, a cheap area rug and a book by Arnold Schwarzenegger on workouts for women. At my peak, I was pressing 130% of my body weight, and able to bring my head down to my knees without fracturing a vertebra. Nowadays, my aim is to be able to carry my own groceries 9 blocks home, chase the cat up the stairs and down the hall when it's time for his meds, and defend my wallet as needed.

I prefer this. It allows me to focus, protects me from dorks who think I need their advice or should surrender the machine I'm on because they need it, saves $75-100 a year in membership fees, the cost of 'proper' gym clothes, the time and money travelling and I can work out when it fits into my day. I recommend it, but you will need a level of self-discipline and a daily routine that works for you. Don't just buy the weights and start flinging them around: find a good book or two/a couple of websites and learn about basic nutrition needs, the best times for exercising, and why you need to cycle your exercises and take a day off regularly.

Don't be discouraged if it takes a while to get into it, and see results. If you miss some time, just go back to it when you can. I can't explain how good it feels every day, being fit, but it is worth it!

If cherries are expensive, blame capitalism, not cherries. Cherries are densely nutritious: one cup of American cherries has less than 100 calories, but 12% of the vitamin C you need in a day, vitamins A, B6 and K, potassium, copper, manganese, is very high in polyphenols -- which protect against diabetes, brain disease, heart disease, certain cancers, aid in muscle recovery after strain, and ease inflammation, especially in the joints. As a bonus, cherries also contain serotonin, tryptophan and melatonin, which elevate your mood when you are awake and then help you get a good night's sleep.

You can buy all those things separately, as supplements, for significantly more than the cost of a cup of cherries, or you can buy an entire pound of your favourite type of cherries for between $US2.20 and $US5.26 depending on type (prices as of yesterday). In Canada, the price when converted, is about the same. I would not recommend trying to get all your nutrients just from cherries, though: many years ago, a friend and I raided a neighbour's tree and ate our fill, then spent some time in our respective bathrooms learning that cherries also have a lot of fibre!

Can we also have balloons and street food and Harry Bains leading a sign painting class for workers and a Don Messer tribute band? We could turn it into a real Jubilee! Also,Ms Smith and co. would be so confused we could have them and over the souther border before they have it figured out!

small44 , it's not just GenZ. Retired Boomers living on a pension, immigrants trying to earn a basic living,, working class folks of all ages, creeds, colours et alia, are all having a hard time. My lucky find is that Dollarama, a Canadian company, has a lot of in-house brands and a lot of non-American imports. and i has enabled us -- creaky old boomers who worked in social good professions rather than for profits -- to find almost everything we need either from Canada or at least not from the US, and still afford to eat relatively healthy and pay the cat's vet bills.

Giant Tiger is also a good Canadian company to patronise. If I can't get it there, I won't wear it.

A big problem is cost. For many of us, Canadian products mostly cost too much. Because they are smaller, and often local/niche, the manufacturers do not gain the economies of scale that the large US/multinational companies do. One of the depressing things about this experience for me has been Canadians scolding Canadians who, due to their low income, cannot buy most of the Canadian products that pop up in discussion here, on reddit, on Facebook. Sure, company X makes great real wool sweaters in Nova Scotia, but if those sweaters cost $C175 each, you can bet my immigrant, young, old, and/or working class friends won't be buying them, any more than they will be buying that vegan Canadian toothpaste that costs twice as much per ounce as the mass manufactured US ones.

Perhaps with time, some of these companies will grow enough to be able to offer lower prices, but until they do, me, Shelina, Dilpreet, Édouard, Rosie et alia will be buying our furniture at that non-American mass manufacturer, IKEA. And we'd like to remind everyone that Dollarama has a lot of house products -- alas, not toothpaste -- made here in Canada, that are effective and affordable for working people.

Thank you for going to all that trouble. I am definitely going to be tea shopping now!

Yeah. And I will be appointed the Queen of the May -- in perpetuity.

It's the Sun, you guys. They've become famous for losing lawsuits over the lies they print.

Thank you! It's got exactly the kind of thing I have been searching for! May your (kitchen) drawers never give you grief and may you always be able to find that little silver nubbly thing that rolls under the couch!

Japanese and Chinese myths and legends have excellent representation in games and movies: the Egyptians have representation and followers everywhere! The Celts and Germanic peoples contributed pretty much everything found in European fairy tales. The Middle East gave us their myths and their gods, and people from European/North American cultures know at least a few Hindu Gods and their tales, again, often thanks to video games. That leaves sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, and the Slavic and Siberian myths 'underrepresented'. Can't say about middle and South American ones: I suspect they are better known in the Americas than in Europe, but I dislike them, so haven't the background to be sure.

Um, I hope you are talking kitchen, since the other drawers are more the business of Petulia, that one the Seamstresses think is an actual goddess. Bah! No one ever chanted "How can it close on the damned thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?" in her name!

Better they pour that money into figuring out how to instantly terraform a planet completely different from the one on which our type of life evolved, which would take about 4.5 billion years, and only work if an enormous number of unique events that happened on and to this planet were arranged to happen to that one, too. Despite all the sci-fi and tech bro brouhaha, it is next to impossible for a life form that evolved here to adapt, even with huge amounts of genetic engineering, to a different planet with a different history around a different star (or stars, it is very likely that about half of all the stars in any galaxy you can see are in binary or bigger systems of their own.

There are books and articles written by real scientists who have actually studied the topic all their lives that make it very clear that the moon is a possibility, Mars is on the edge of the odds, and anything beyond that is a Isaac Asimov dream for quite a long time to come -- probably longer than there will be humans to dream it.