MandieD

107 ms·

691.
by MandieD 4y ago
It would have been even better had the Paycheck Protection Program worked more like Kurzarbeit does in Germany - instead of just giving money to employers on the promise that they'd use it to protect jobs, insist that the employers use
692.
by MandieD 4y ago
Before Covid: cash was absolutely king in Germany. Plenty of restaurants, even in the most touristy parts of Nuremberg, did not take credit cards (maaaybe EC cards, but that’s a different system, and no tourist from outside Europe would hav
693.
by MandieD 4y ago
This is one of those fellows who, perhaps due to some disappointments in his own life or those of friends, believes that all women are conniving dependents, looking only for a man to latch onto and take advantage of, and has trouble seeing
694.
by MandieD 4y ago
While they have Rumspringa as late teens and can theoretically choose not to get baptized and become adult members, choosing not to means exclusion from the only community they've ever known, into a world they have not been educated to
695.
by MandieD 4y ago
Until it has its first period, apparently.
696.
by MandieD 4y ago
> 3. Smaller brands whose market share and item appeal are not worth cloning (e.g., a mechanical keyboard breadboard kit). Even things you might think are niche enough not to attract copycats (ham radio DIY kits requiring soldering and m
697.
by MandieD 4y ago
Additional context: there are many big, nearly-empty counties in West Texas that, frankly, should be completely empty, and I say that as someone whose maternal grandparents were born and grew up in Swisher County (Tulia and Happy), and whos
698.
by MandieD 4y ago
Roads... I grew up in Texas but moved to Germany in my 20's. I went back for Christmas after a few months of flying on the Autobahns, and was really concerned that I'd slip up and catch a monster speeding ticket while visiting hom
699.
by MandieD 4y ago
Pretty sure that middle class Americans rarely flew before deregulation in the late 70s. My mom's middle class parents packed the kids up in the car and took a few epic road trips to visit family in other parts of the country in the 60
700.
by MandieD 4y ago
Do they still have the very cheap but surprisingly good hotdogs right outside the stadium that you can then bring in, which keeps prices inside somewhat in check? (Reminiscing over the $5 student tickets available with college ID in the ear
701.
by MandieD 4y ago
Common in Germany, too, and I’m that 0.5. I don’t see how we’d manage if I had only the choice of working full time or leaving the more interesting parts of IT. My in laws are over 80 and on the other side of the country, and my family is o
702.
by MandieD 4y ago
"Don't accept roses from strangers in Italy" was travel wisdom at least back as far as the mid-Oughts - the gambit there was a seeming well-wisher (often a child) handing a woman a rose, and then an accomplice badgering her m
703.
by MandieD 4y ago
To anyone considering getting a license: the address you use does NOT have to be your actual home address; just one you are able to get mail at. But yes, remember that the address will be publicly available, along with your name, so choose
704.
by MandieD 4y ago
I like to post that picture of a python that tried to eat an alligator when Schaeffler's ill-timed purchase of Conti comes up. Always good for a laugh. Schaeffler survived, but barely, and had Kurzarbeit not been a thing, it probably w
705.
by MandieD 4y ago
Four payments of $25 might be instantly recognizable as $100, but quick, what are four payments of 37.74? If you aren’t good at mental math and are already primed to rationalize this impulse buy, your mind might go to “about $120” rather th
706.
by MandieD 4y ago
I carefully coached my husband's 85 year old aunt in how to look at the pictures she took on her iPhone and then send the ones she wants printed to our shared album. She had the steps meticulously written out. She was good to go! Then
707.
by MandieD 4y ago
I’m coming around to that as I now deeply understand my mother-in-law’s response to why she got rid of their TV when my husband was a toddler, and didn’t get one again until they’d retired: “I didn’t have enough spare time to watch every pr
708.
by MandieD 4y ago
I don’t trust “the algorithm” to pick ok videos for my kid, so I have a playlist of videos I’ve screened for when I think he’ll be old enough to watch (he’s not quite two). So far, tamer nature videos from BBC and similar. Your ad anecdote
709.
by MandieD 4y ago
My husband makes about what you do, but I was still pulling in 2k a month on maternity leave: 1800 in Elternzeit (parental leave) pay, plus 200 in Kindergeld (child benefit), so we were fine. We also only had one paid-off, liability-only in
710.
by MandieD 4y ago
Germany, at least for ordinary immigrants. Stop laughing and hear me out: when you apply for a residence permit, you have an initial consultation appointment at an office in your town or county where, after reviewing your form, you are then
711.
by MandieD 4y ago
My husband is my hero because I rarely changed an overnight diaper that first year. Had to get up to feed/pump, sure. But when the crying wasn't due to hunger... In fact, we ended up with me being in charge of "input" an
712.
by MandieD 4y ago
It took moving to Germany and then becoming seriously involved with a German whose family had always paid for lightly-used cars in cash (and have a general horror of consumer debt) to break me of the assumption that car payments were just p
713.
by MandieD 4y ago
I’ll give a counter example: married at 29, had only an ectopic pregnancy at 31 to show for our trouble, was diagnosed with low Anti-Müller hormone levels, never went the fertility assistance route because losing my mother to breast cancer
714.
by MandieD 4y ago
Banning abortion will put a lot of already/nearly adult people into rougher financial situations - the kind of rougher financial situations that might make the military a somewhat more attractive employer.
715.
by MandieD 4y ago
And in the meantime, women will die of causes we’ve been easily treating in developed countries for decades, because they’re scared of seeking assistance, or medical professionals are hesitant to get involved in something that could result
716.
by MandieD 4y ago
Honest curiosity is refreshing. Additional info: once a woman has had an ectopic pregnancy, any subsequent pregnancy has about a 10% risk of also being ectopic. So when I had a big early 40th birthday surprise, I went straight to my gyno fo
717.
by MandieD 4y ago
And some serious emotional whiplash for an American (Texan, even) woman living here.
718.
by MandieD 4y ago
German doctors weren’t allowed to list terminations as one of their services, nor even write posts on their websites giving factual information about abortion, which you’d know if you’d read the article.
719.
by MandieD 4y ago
And like the Old Confederacy, the New Confederacy also sees nothing wrong with forcing women to give birth only to take the baby away. Oh, sure, giving the baby up for adoption is “voluntary,” but how voluntary can it be in a country that d
720.
by MandieD 4y ago
People need to realize that “woman who might need an abortion” is not necessarily a healthy 16-18 year old with poor impulse control but is also likely to be a married, working mother of 3 barely keeping up with mortgage payments who wasn’t

More ›