Nefara

Love the Expanse but it'd be a hard sell to the teacher considering how much violence and sex is in there. It's not excessive for a book for adults but for YA? Torture, abuse, some of the intimacy scenes are more descriptive... again, love the series but I wouldn't give it to a bunch of 14 year olds as required reading.

Haha yeah. So I think Murderbot and The Martian/Project Hail Mary would be solid choices, because they're cinematic and entertaining. They have humor and a lot of action. Murderbot hides the vegetables well and brings up a capitalist dystopia, personhood, gender identity and the meaning of freedom in subtle and clever ways. I'd be surprised if a teenager who read All Systems Red didn't ask for the sequel pretty soon after 😋

I kind of want to suggest Children of Time and the other Adrian Tchaikovsky books in that series. He's very good at writing non-human intelligences and it stays relatively hard sci fi throughout the series. I just am not sure how much they would appeal to teens, I certainly would have liked them but I was very bookish. I really like the exploration of emergent cultures and technologies and the books all have a hopeful and optimistic turn to them.

Also seconding Andy Weir books, and Murderbot by Martha Wells.

I think, while it's relatively clean as far as sex or violence goes, there's some problematic elements that speak to the author's "old fashionedness". For one, the author seems to think that being possessive of a romantic partner to the point of violence is a heroic trait. On multiple occasions otherwise sympathetic characters clench their teeth or their fists at or even attack other male characters that show interest in their female partners. There's also a conspicuous lack of queer characters. He does have a Bob finally identify as a "Bobby", but it takes hundreds of generations and they're used to illustrate just how much the iterations are drifting from the original, not to mention that they never actually show up in the books (yet). Every Bob is heterosexual. I don't recall any gay or queer characters ever being mentioned in any of the books.

There's also a suspicious undercurrent of genetic determinism. On multiple occasions characters are encountered with a very heavy implication that they are just born better and smarter and superior to their peers, and I find that kind of thought smells off to me. It reminds me too much of eugenics and people who believe in a master race or that certain classes are born to rule others.

They are fun reads and certainly enjoyable. As far as having teens read them, I would be concerned that they would absorb everything without being critical enough of the content. I think there are better, more inclusive choices that are more modern in their attitudes and cast of characters.

Chicago is obviously not the best location for it, but if you can find it you should really have some lobster. You can get other species of lobster in other countries but a chance to eat a Maine lobster would be a shame to miss.

My dad likes to tell a story about a time he was riding on a subway car next to a shaggy looking guy with a laptop. My dad looked over and asked "oh, is that Linux?" and the guy replied "it's GNU /Linux, actually" in a really snarky way. My dad snorted and said "who are you, Richard Stallman?" and he said "yes".

Those numbers are old, btw. The numbers got skewed when people were finally legally able to divorce each other freely in the 70s and without much social stigma. Modern divorce rate is more like 25-35% So that's a good chance that wedding ring will stay on :)

Dr Pepper made with real sugar, the taste with HFCS is just not the same.

SteakEze had these microwave angus burgers that you could get at BJs that basically mimicked McDs flavor. Whenever one of us was craving fast food, we could pop it in the microwave and it scratched that itch and was much cheaper, easier and faster. Sadly haven't seen them for sale anymore and they got taken off the website.

The thing I miss the absolute most is some fruit nectars I used to get that came in big glass bottles, by Fruit of the Nile. They had mango, strawberry guava, guava and orange mango and they were all so incredibly good. My favorite was the mango, it was rich and thick and luxurious, almost just a fruit puree. They made the best mixers. I still use the bottles around the house. I don't think the company made it through Covid 😫

If you mean Amazon, hard at first but once you get into the habit it's not hard at all. Whatever you would search Amazon for, search DuckDuckGo for or your websearch of choice and put -amazon in. There are SO MANY online stores out there, with perfectly reasonable prices and even free and fast shipping.

Some general recs:

B&H Photo or Microcenter for anything electronic or computer related

For clothes, if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it's a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.

For something hard to find you can't find another site for, try Ebay.

I've been avoiding Amazon for about three years now. I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. I encourage everyone to get out of the trap of thinking that Amazon is the only option.

I recently took up a volunteer position in local government and it was as easy as showing up and being willing to make meetings twice a month. I now have a say in the future of where I live and it's helping me focus on the things I can change.

I wouldn't say inescapable, plenty of people can keep sexuality out of their media and there are asexual/ace spectrum creatives out there too.

Yep, it was always the women ending up conveniently nude and bound up in various methods and scenarios. The scenes were not overtly sexual so it went over my head when i was younger, but was pretty blatant when I grew up a bit.