I was the first of my siblings to cut contact with my dad and stepmom. I had to really consider how I would feel when my dad died, if I cut contact, I didn’t want to regret it.
My stepmom was abusive and my dad always chose her over our safety.
Now all but one of my siblings have cut contact.
They tell people we ghosted them. They reach out regularly to try to contact us. I’ve realized it’s because they feel bad about themselves and it’s never about knowing us or caring about us. Half the messages they send us say stuff about how we are going to hell and we need to find Jesus.

The hardest part is explaining to people with normal families, they never understand that parents who can’t love you exist, and that a big happy reconciliation wouldn’t be a good thing.

Our library loans out state parks passes for a month so you can go to parks for free. It also loans out hiking gear, provides immigration resources, and oddly, a ukulele.

I retired early in September. I lost about 30k. I put this years Roth investment into a cd that doesn’t mature for 3 years because I knew what was coming.

It’s strange but now that I’m not working the loss bothers me less. I think I hated my job so much losing money made me feel like all that hard work and misery was futile.

Luckily, I don’t plan to live off my retirement investments for another 10 years. I reduced my cost of living by building a tiny house, and living super minimally. I live on what could qualify me for food stamps in my city. Instead I have a garden and I grow food.

I have a part time side business that pays most of my expenses and it tends to do better even with economic turmoil because it’s cheaper than buying imports. Sales are up 10% over the same time last year.

There’s only one good answer to this question period.

Personally I find real people and everyday life more interesting than the bland reboots and sequels of movies from my youth.

I think it also makes me a more aware person to watch content from people whose lives are totally different than mine, in different countries, with different abilities.

The only good movies and shows I watch are based on sci fi books or computer games that already did the work of building a plot and characters. And there’s a few really comedic writers that do great work- mostly on Apple TV.

It’s definitely pesticide. Plus a lack of plant diversity. If farmers focused on building strips of natives bordering their fields honeybees wouldn’t even be necessary. Honeybees are an invasive species in the US. There are thousands of amazing American bee species that would pollinate our crops if we leave a little room for them, and stopped using pesticides and herbicides everywhere, all they need is a small amount of habitat.

Where I live, in a very large city, there is a ban on roundup and we have no issues with a lack of bees, as long as there’s not acres of lawn.

I’m an ecologist and I used to work at a botanical garden. we had a bee researcher who found 120 species of native bees, plus tons of wild honeybee colonies breaking off new ones every year. He believed it was the plant diversity in the gardens that contributed to the number of species.

The thing is, you can do plenty of damage just with gravity. Fly high enough and drop anything and it becomes a weapon. Theres a YouTuber I follow who tried destroying a car by dropping things with a drone. It was scary.