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Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

nytimes.com

101–110 of 314 posts

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#101

I'm more and more convinced that people who don't have kids should have double the tax burden compared to parents, at least for the first 5-10 years. The stress is unimaginable, and then some people have the gall to complain when parents try to do it well. Appalling behaviour. I would not tolerate such complaints as a manager, but thankfully I have never met such attitude in my life.

Kidless workers do have some more tax burden. If you presume that taxes are wisely spent, and some of it on education, equal tax payments result in unequal benefit. Not complaining, Just explaining. I live in a country that has decent, tax funded, public education; I understand you may not. But as a kidless tax payer, I fully support decent public education paid for with my tax contributions. I don't think tax should…

That’s only one limited side of it. The very limited tax contribution you’re making towards their education pays off in spades for you. When you’re old, they’re fully funding your social security, providing you with healthcare, keeping you alive militarily for a long time after you have any practical value to society (well, it’s true). If they were not, and only people with children only could take advantage of the resources of the young and healthy, you wouldn’t make it to old age. Parents end up putting up the bulk of the capital to produce these highly profitable resources, and let’s face it, you’re reaping the disproportionate benefits, especially as you get older. Also, I don’t have any data, but I would wager the safe majority of childless adults are not due to infertility. I’m not saying people should be forced to have children or anything- but it’s hard to take seriously the argument that childless people are victimized by slightly excess taxes.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#102
post #26

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner. Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedb…

I am so sorry. When we talk about collateral damage from the pandemic, nobody thinks of the parents who had their kids home for months. In Australia, the lockdowns were quite severe. My wife and I were aware that while we were suffering, our kids were too. Their lives were completely turned upside down. Sadly, kids lack the needed brain capacity to deal with emotions and serious changes in routine, so it compounds th…

>I once worked at a place where someone was fired because his number of commits was lower than the other developers. He was a brilliant developer and always got his work done. But apparently his commits were too small (he liked to lump a lot of things into commits, instead of several smaller ones).

Bloody hell, I can't imagine how dysfunctional other things must have been if this was allowed to happen without someone pointing out what a daft rationale for firing someone that is.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#104
I am so glad I got married and had a kid. My wife doesn't drink - and honestly it's way less fun to drink - even have a glass of wine with a meal - when someone else isn't. Plus with my daughter I don't drink when my wife isn't around because I'm always worried something is going to come up and I'll have to drive her some place on short notice.

I think if it were just me on my own I might drink more ... and I always kind of worry that I'd get a taste for not the drink but just that mellow relaxed feel no pain that comes with 2 or 3 drinks. That's trouble for me I think.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#105
post #26

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner. Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedb…

It's impossible to describe to non-parents how high maintenance toddlers and very young children are. There are no words.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got jealous because they're toxic dickheads. Who does that to people?

Hard to say without knowing their complaints. Not sure how I’d manage to be productive when collaborating with some of my team members if they were not there during Norma working hours but were there during the middle of the night. Offsets all requests and fixes from them by a day.

Sounds more like a problem with how stories/tasks are split.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#107
post #91
post #26

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner. Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedb…

> And I really enjoyed the 5 minutes between the pandemic and WWIII. I chuckled. I'm glad you still have your sense of humor. But from another perspective, yes, it's quite sad for humanity. I remind myself that disease and war were far more widespread in centuries past.

This is how I compartmentalise the awful situations across the world, no matter how bad things get they were much worse in the past and we still managed to endure. I include a nuclear exchange with Russia and extreme climate change in this category because apparently humanity got down to as low as around 40 families at one point in our history which is about as close to extinction as you can get and still come back.

The other side of this is that even though there was more bad things happening in the world in the past, the average person would have known about far fewer of them by virtue of lack of access to information. I don't feel shame in going days or even weeks ignoring the news sometimes because humans aren't built to mentally function with a 24 hour news cycle pumping a firehose of the world's doom and gloom into our heads, let alone psychologically manipulating us into scrolling past ads all day.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#109

They should've opted for weed.

Anecdotally I know 3 adults in 3 different states who tried weed for the first time during the pandemic and all of them developed new-onset panic attacks and disassociative symptoms within less than 6 months of regular use and had to stop. Not sure if it was better than alcohol…

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#110
post #97
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your colleagues get jealous because you used the alternate schedule well or simply because you had an alternate schedule?

Not sure if they were jealous. They were very young and most were very talented & driven. When you're 25 and living with your parents you can't grasp what it's like to have a wife and kids on top of the job. It was a combination of really bad timing due to the pandemic and me just being a bad fit in the team, and management was garbage. One of those kids was really talented and I learned a lot from him ripping me to…

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