I'm fairly certain it's highly related to our health and diet. Anecdotally, I've noticed a huge difference both with myself and others.

I've made a number of observations on this, personally, and over the years have figured out some things that help them avoid me (or prefer others):

* High vitamin D. You're either getting this from sunlight secondarily or foods (eggs, fish, etc.)
* Garlic. Lots of garlic. This one's the biggest, and for me one of the easiest to address since it tastes good with food.
* No perfumes or scented deodorants. They love that shit. Avoid it like the plague.
* Generally low-carb diet (no crap starches).
* Sulfur. This one surprised me, but it's something we naturally need and don't usually get enough of in our diets. I found it out on a lark during a particularly buggy camping trip when a woman I was with (who wasn't being bothered as much, contrary to my experience that women are bothered more often) swore by it.

My wife also noticed a marked decrease in skeeter interest in her when she stopped being vegan.

Also anecdotally and related, because i know this comes up a lot in outdoor talks lately: ticks. They hate oregano and garlic oil. And neem oil, topically, mixed with lotion. I've had them climb up my sock and then fall off (seemingly intentionally) repeatedly when trying to get onto my skin after a diet heavy in garlic and oregano. It's at least as effective as DEET and sticks around longer.

Sweat also seems to attract them, perhaps due to it causing the odors to be more airborne.

So then you support laws that empower unions to do more than just fund leadership's politics?

Yes, that was my point. I'd rather be unemployed in Europe than struggling to make ends meet with two jobs in the US. Don't get me started on healthcare.

I'd rather work in the US, with all the opportunities to be found here.....either director or actual 1099 contract working....where I can make more than a comfortable living.

I have good insurance and have access to the best and most modern health care options in the world here in the US....I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Life if GREAT here.

Every country has its problems and all, but you have NO reason to be looking down your nose at the US.

If it sucks here so badly,, why are SO many trying to come here?

and when a serious illness hits you in the EU or Canada why do you try your best to get to the US for treatments that your socialize medicines won't or can't cover?

In an elite school it doesn't seem there would be a whole lot of "year full of dumb people" happening.

Don't forget the vast number of students admitted on the basis DEI (race, sex, injustice over the years, etc)....

When you admit based on criteria other than merit and measures of intelligence, you're bound to have more dim bulbs than you might think of in an "elite" university.

All this nattering about licensing and we haven't yet had one comment -

to their detriment for about 10 years? The employee ranking system IIRC

Dude. Its Kenya, not Somalia

What's the difference....?

Which is why you have to ensure what you measure actually produces desired outcomes and not create perverse incentives. Reminds me of teh Dilbert cartoon where the PHB announces a bug bounty and Wally says “I’m writing myself a new minivan”

THAT SUCKS BRO

Also, anything sounds big when you put it in gallons. Doesn't sound so big when you mention that's 92 acre feet, the amount used by less than 20 acres / 8 hectares of alfalfa per year. Or when you mention that a typical *closed loop* 1GW nuclear reactor uses 6-20 billion gallons of cooling water per year (once-through uses 200-500 billion gallons, though most of that is returned, whereas closed loop evaporates it)

I don't think it has anything to do with that. As soon as I saw the headline, my mind went "cohort study". And sure enough, yeah, it's a cohort study. Remember that big thing about how wine improves your health, and then it turned out to just be that people who drink wine tend to be wealthier and thus have better health outcomes? And also, the "sick quitter" effect, where people who are in worse health would tend to stop drinking, so you ended up with extra sick people in the non-wine group? Same sort of thing. This study says they're controlling for a wide range of factors, but I'd put money on it just being the same sort of spurious correlations.

Regrading the "Killdozer" guy -

Those two things go hand-in-hand a lot more than I am comfortable with.

Ok thanks for the SPR definition, etc.

Yes, we are more car dependent than the 70's, but thats only because we're a larger country, more populace more cities than the 70s

I grew up in the 70's....and to my eyes, it isn't much different as far as requiring a car to live....never in my lifetime has there been any meaningful public transit anywhere I've lived across the US, but it isn't like anyone I've ever known missed it, etc.

Just normal way of life here.....I started working at restaurants when I was about 16yrs....saved my money and bought my first car (with some parental help) as a senior in High School.....and got that first taste of independence ..

I just thank GOD there was no social media back then and we didn't have cameras everywhere....ugh.

But the US has always in modern times been car centric....to see when it was not you'd likely have to look back about 100 years....

It would be an entire 7 years later before anybody managed to put a thermistor in the package to stop cpus from destroying themselves. An eternity in that era.