blackbrook

There a certain ironic cycle there. The cycle you describe of building the suburbs, stores moving in, and people moving in is one part of the cycle. This leads to over-development (in that fucked up car-centric way we have, which leads to traffic congestion etc), and people start moving further out to get away from it. They end up on the edges of it "in the country" with maybe a 40 minute drive for groceries. But then often, the sprawl follows them and their bit of "the country" gets more and more like what they fled.

I've seen this conversation many times on Reddit, and from what people say I assume there is a regional thing going on on. I'm from a part of the US where toilet stalls do not have massive gaps. There is a big gap at the bottom but too low for anyone to be seeing under unless they are crawling on the floor. Gaps along the sides are quite narrow. 1 cm at most, and nothing anyone is going to be seeing you through unless they are some kind of freak putting their eye right up to it. These stalls are prefab panels you can easily put into a room. The gaps mean ventilation for the room takes care the stalls too.

I assume stalls started this way and became normalized, and in some parts of the country they've gotten sloppier, and sloppier, and normalized these huge gaps I hear people describe but never see.

This might be my bias, but I assume these are the places where everything is a suburban stripmall wasteland, where there are no sidewalks, and where it seems to me the whole environment is increasingly dehumanized.

Some kind of broth or bouillon would be good in it too. Hot sauce. Garlic.

I add those kinds of things to porridge too sometimes. Savory instead of sweet porridge should not be ruled out.

Here's an another idea for oats: basically make Mac and cheese except with oats instead of pasta. Whole oats if you can get them.

Chilli is s great thing to learn to riff with. You almost can't go wrong adding things to it. What you list here is a good starting point, but I'd almost certainly add onions and peppers to it.

Farro or cracked wheat can add a little meaty texture to a veg chili. The best veg chilli I ever had had sweet potato, something I'd never have thought of.

I'll avoid the word normal, but definitely not something most people would ever do. (It's the sort of thing I might do though.)

Obviously I don't know the details of your back pain, but I would caution you that doing stuff like that (focusing intently on something in front of you, possibly bending over slightly, for an extended period of time) is probably not good for your back.

I relate to this too, and I think I've figured out why. I've spent most of my life cultivating a normal impersonation. This has made me sensitive to what is not normal, and even judgemental of it. The problem is you can only keep up a normal-impersonation for so long, and it can be exhausting.

Why can't people just be the right amount of weird?

It's pretty important to keep sodium, magnesium, and potassium in balance. If I wasn't eating and depending on an electrolyte drink for these I'd make damn sure it had all three and in reasonably correct proportions.

It's really so engrained in the culture it would have to be replaced by end-of-the-summer-cookout-day.

Everytime an American on the left does this, they just set back their own cause. It's enough to make you believe a conspiracy theory of some powers on the right actively encouraging it.

Sometimes it does. No advice can ever be one size fits all.

That's at least true for American English. I'm unclear if it holds true in British, Australian, etc. Or if it works in other languages that use these words.