Fun fact, though, Kraft Mac and Cheese removed artificial dyes in 2013, didn’t tell anyone at first, and waited to see if consumers would complain. Nobody did, so they announced that they were able to replace the artificial yellow colors with really colorful spices like annatto and turmeric.

So you’re still gonna get staining. Turmeric gets in everything.

every line on graph 1 has a slope less than 1, so this is not a meaningful evaluation to determine anything, in and of itself.

It’s meaningful to the only question I’ve asked, whether tall women prefer as large of an absolute height difference as short women do. The answer is no. Tall women prefer taller partners than short women prefer, but they prefer a smaller gap between themselves and their partners. According to the graph you posted (fig 1, which says it’s the confidence intervals for “preferred partner height”). As the paper explains:

We found that male height was positively correlated (r = .69; p < .001; N = 188) and that female height was negatively correlated with preferred partner height difference (r = .49; p < .001; N = 461; ESM Table 2). Thus, taller men and shorter women preferred larger height differences, i.e. the male partner being much taller, whereas shorter men and taller women preferred smaller height differences, i.e. the male partner being only slightly taller (in line with Pawlowski (2003)).

So I think I’m reading that graph correctly and you’re not. Your discussion of fig 2 seems to be talking about the part of the paper on people’s satisfaction with their partner heights, which is a different metric than preferred partner height.

Everything else you’re talking about is not particularly interesting to me, and wasn’t what I was asking about.

Delta typically refers to change over time.

Delta just means difference. A change over time is the delta of that variable over delta t.

My question (do taller women have a preference for less height difference compared to shorter women) was actually answered by the graph, because the slope of the line is less than 1.

A 1.6m woman seems to most prefer a 1.78m partner (18cm taller), whereas a 1.8m woman seems to prefer a 1.89m partner (9cm taller). I other words, it’s not that they’re less choosy, it’s just that they expect a smaller delta when they themselves are tall.

Of course, the thick line in that graph doesn’t correspond with the headline numbers mentioned (21cm), but I also notice that the thick line isn’t the center of the acceptable range. That is, women seem to be more forgiving of people who are taller than their ideal than they are of people who are shorter than their ideal. That’s an interesting finding, too.

He played 7 seasons in the NBA, was kinda a journeyman playing backup center for a bunch of different teams.

But her height is actually useful. She’s a starter in a sport in which height is a useful physical trait, which helped her with university admissions with a scholarship. She’s apparently a professional who has been on the roster of some overseas teams, and plays for her national team (Canada).

Plus growing up in a family with tall people might make it easier to deal with. Her dad is former NBA player Mike Smrek and presumably has a social circle of very tall people and maybe even their very tall children.

So I don’t doubt that a lot of tall women actively dislike their own height. But this particular woman probably has reason to like being tall.

This effect is even more pronounced when examining satisfaction with actual partner height: women are most satisfied when their partner was 21 cm taller, whereas men are most satisfied when they were 8 cm taller than their partner.

I don’t have access to the full article, but it sounds like they didn’t examine the sliding scale of height preferences, by one’s own height.

The article says that taller people have a taller ideal height for their partners. And it also says that on average women’s preference is a partner 21cm taller than themselves, and men had a preference for 8cm shorter. But from the publicly available text, it doesn’t seem to report on whether that preferred delta between one’s own height and the ideal partner height changed with the absolute height of themselves.

So I’m curious: does the data support the conclusion that a 5’ (1.52m) woman would prefer a 5’8" (1.73m) partner, and that a 5’8" (1.73m) woman would also still prefer that 21cm/8 inch difference, looking for a 6’4" (1.94) partner? Or is there a sliding scale where already tall people aren’t exactly looking for excessively unusual outliers, and that the preference of tall women is something smaller than 21cm, such that the overall average might be that very short women prefer a big height difference but very tall women prefer a small height difference?

In Spanish, up until 1994, “ll” and “ch” were considered distinct letters from the component parts. But “rr” has never been considered distinct from “r,” even though it is pronounced differently, in large part because no words start with “rr” and any word that starts with “r” is pronounced with the rolling R sound.

I agree with the others who say to get in the mode of making new friends through hobbies and other activities. Not every friend you meet will be dateable (a woman you find attractive who is available and attracted to you too), but the act of being social and making new connections does a few things specific to dating:

• It helps you build your social skills for when you are talking directly to potential dates
• It gives you new leads on friends of friends who may be interested in dating
• It gives you a solid social circle, which makes you more attractive

Plus, like, the actual benefits of friendships with other people, and having people to pursue your hobbies with, will just be great to have even without dating.

Some concrete examples of how I’ve made friends (I’ve moved cities a lot so I had to do this like 7 or 8 times in my adult life):

• Pickup basketball at a gym where this happens on a regular basis (even if not formally scheduled). Not a lot of women, but a handful of women might participate. But I’ve made lifelong friends this way, and have met some friends of friends through this.
• Other social gym settings: scheduled classes with opportunities to work with or talk to others. I’ve made friends in CrossFit style gyms, and my wife has made friends through yoga and spin. Now I’m a regular at a serious lifting gym (and I drop into powerlifting gyms in other cities while I’m traveling), and there’s often enough rest between sets to just talk to people and get to know others.
• Being a regular somewhere, including places that don’t cost money, like parks and libraries. I’ve made a ton of friends at dog parks, and have dated a few women I’ve met at dog parks. When you see the same people a few times a week, that familiarity gives you an opportunity to build up a real connection over time.
• In a similar vein, recurring volunteer opportunities. In one city I lived in, I was a regular volunteer at a kitchen for feeding the homeless and elderly, and would strike up conversations with people while chopping vegetables or whatever. I got to know some, and ended up exchanging phone numbers at some point. I’m now on the board of a nonprofit and occasionally hang out with some of the other board members.
• Socializing with neighbors. I take regular walks so I see a lot of the same neighbors around. Sometimes we strike up conversations, and sometimes we invite each other to events we host in our homes.
• Work and career events. I did happy hours with coworkers, entered recreational sports leagues, participated in the occasional professional development type organization, and have made friends that way.

I’m still a social guy. I’m happily married, but I still make new friends through many of these avenues, plus through my kids and socializing with other parents at their activities. You do it enough and you learn what type of people you vibe with, and who you enjoy being around. With that baseline/foundation, it’s much easier to engage with potentially available women, too.

Speaking as a working parent (married to another working parent), it’s worth pointing out that this dichotomy isn’t mutually exclusive:

raising children is far more self-fulfilling than working a job could ever be for most people.

I agree with this! But I also would note that of the 168 hours in a week, being away from them for 50 of them (especially if they’re at school anyway for 30 of them) doesn’t really detract from my ability to do both big picture parenting (teaching life skills, moral values, building memories, being a role model) or even the small stuff that adds up (cooking meals, helping with homework, listening to them, talking to them, taking them to and from extracurricular activities, pursuing hobbies together, etc.).

So it’s not an all or nothing thing. Most working parents can still raise children in an immensely fulfilling way, so the fulfilling part of a stay at home parent isn’t actually exclusive to the stay at home parents.

I loved cooking in a professional kitchen. The job itself was great. Some of the coworkers were all over the place, but I fucking loved the good ones.

And there’s something immensely satisfying about the teamwork behind turning a bunch of raw ingredients into multiple delicious meals, perfectly timed out with each dish hitting the table at the right moment. (The frustration of a kitchen that isn’t doing this is a separate story.)

But the industry itself has so much toxicity. Bad managers, bad owners. Substance abuse problems. And the real reason I left wasn’t actually the bad pay. It was the miserable hours. I was always a night owl but I couldn’t deal with the isolating separation from my family and non-industry friends from working nights, weekends, and holidays when everyone else was building memories and reinforcing bonds.

I think that’s true of many people.

But I suspect that the numbers are pretty evenly split between “would thrive in either role,” “would be miserable in either role,” “would much prefer being in the paid workforce,” and “would much prefer being a stay at home parent.”

My wife and I are squarely in the “would much prefer being in the paid workforce,” because we like our jobs, and because we want our children in an organized school environment (and paying for after care is fine for them and for us). Most of our social circle are in the same boat. But most of us are mid-career white collar professionals and have better than average flexibility over work hours and location (at perhaps the cost of a blurred boundary between work and home). So our jobs are easier to balance with parenting.

On the flip side, home situation matters a lot, too. How much you enjoy different types of household work (cooking, cleaning, home improvement/maintenance), different functions of a caretaker (feeding kids, scheduling out activities, being that first line as an educator or first aid or driver, etc.), how well your hobbies and interests fit into a lifestyle as a full time caretaker, etc.

One of my friends gave up his main career to take care of his kids, but now that they’re in school he went back to personal training at a gym. He lines up clients and is only available for sessions between school dropoff and pickup (10am to 2pm). It’s a good intermediate holding pattern for him, and he’ll likely go back to his main white collar career once his kids are old enough to be latchkey kids. That being said, I know he wasn’t super happy not working outside of the home, and this personal trainer thing has him in a much better spot than when his kids were too young for school.

The exclamation marks in “Surprise!” evoke the same energy as “Oops! All Berries,” like you’re biting into a “salad” and discovering it’s Oops! All Mayonnaise.

Pretty much nobody in my friend group (and we’re all parents) would prefer to be a stay at home parent. Personally, that’s a bad fit for me, my skill sets, and my preferences. I’d be miserable and bored, and feel that it would be a waste of the things I’m good at. My wife would feel the same way in that kind of caretaker role.

Like, I think if we won the lottery and didn’t have to work to maintain our lifestyles, we’d still send our kids to school and camps and things like that to get them out of the house and socializing with other people, while we’d probably still choose to work in some capacity, for some kind of public interest or passion project we’d do for reasons other than the money.

Staying at home with kids just doesn’t sound appealing as a day to day routine. I like my weekends with them, but I also like that we use the time to catch up, too.

Agreed. I love pizza with light bodied, high acid reds. And all sorts of other great Italian food and wine pairings.

You’re quoting 2 Broke Girls to give cultural critiques to Coldplay?

The US is an outlier in how it charges prices for healthcare services.

But every country in the world has prices charged for cold liquid helium. It’s very expensive to gather, process, store, and ship, regardless of what kind of health care economics apply in your country.

I’m still active in my 40’s and I have a bunch of nagging sports injuries, some of which trace back 20+ years. Overuse injuries are common, too. Ask pretty much any serious runner or lifter or full time athlete, and they’ll all have things that they just live with.

Mexican food pairs really well with lime. Margaritas have a ton of lime.

Other pairings work really well, too. Most would agree that a great full bodied red wine would goes really well with steak or lamb or other red meat.

There’s a whole body of study on which drinks pair with which foods, and which foods pair with other foods. If your local library has it, I’d recommend checking out The Flavor Bible by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, which is a really useful reference guide for looking up an ingredient and seeing what other ingredients go well with it.

the kid is gonna die after it wears off

Ah yes, the SUV is basically the bride from Kill Bill, doing the five point palm exploding heart technique.

There’s evidence piling up that there is an inverse correlation between outdoor time in childhood and nearsightedness. It’s believed that the brightness of sunlight helps stimulate eye growth in a spherical shape, whereas children who don’t get a lot of sunlight are more likely to have eyes grow in a non-spherical shape with greater distance between the lens and the retina.

You can search the scientific literature for myopia and childhood sun exposure for a large number of studies on the topic.

Does screen time correlate with myopia? Maybe, but through the confounding variable that both stats tend to be inversely correlated with sunlight exposure.