I too love beans. Great write up! I was about to leave a pedantic correction that sweet peas are edible, just toxic, but then that got me thinking about what does “edible” even mean? Like how poisonous or unpalatable does something have to be for a line to be drawn? Eating it once will kill you, like death caps, or maybe eating it your entire life will increase risk of death like alcohol? Something in between like sweet peas?
I think it depends where you end up for your career and how good at writing you are. Sounds like you were already proficient. A lot of people aren’t! I am in a research role now where manuscripts, PowerPoint, and posters are my main deliverables, so writing and figure design is quite important. I work with a lot of younger folks and they really struggle with organizing their arguments through writing and visual design. Practice helps, but at base I think it’s a critical thinking issue. They aren’t dumb, they just know the conclusion but don’t know how to step their audience through from a beginning to an end in a logical and engaging way.
I had to take a technical writing class at one point (memos, patents, manuals, etc) and yea that’s a totally different type of writing that probably won’t help with emails and PowerPoints! I don’t think I’ve ever “used it” but it was eye opening and I have a lot of respect for people who can do that well. I guess (to pull in what you said earlier) this type of writing is just critical thinking for technical exactness where I think the type of communication I do in my job, and what I assume a lot of day to day communication other stem people do either internally or for the public, is more rhetoric through storytelling, which is where I think the gen ed classes really help.
I agree that these things should be taught in high school but they aren’t really one-and-done lessons - they are honed skills that take need to be practiced and refined. Gen ed courses really help with that more than stem, because as you said, stem classes require precise technical skills and profs likely aren’t going to spend precious teaching time in critical thinking, reading comprehension, or communication skills if they need to teach you Newtonian physics or biochemistry or something.
I went to a college with a strong engineering program. Presumably students would have to have done well in high school and on SATs to get in. Engineers treated college as a job prep program and were pretty blatantly put off by doing any gen ed coursework. So many companies and firms complained to the college about the graduates’ poor writing and communication skills that they had to institute a writing exit exam to graduate with a bachelors. All you had to do was write a 4/5 paragraph essay to some generic prompt - the exact sort of thing you do for SAT or AP exams. The pass rate was ~25% for graduating engineers! This was a few decades ago now, I imagine as ai gets more commonly used for writing assignments this issue will worsen… Or fundamentally change how critical thinking works in a way that I can’t foresee.
One persons drawback is another persons “salt of life” haha. Yea they aren’t healthy, that’s for sure. Tasty though!
I can’t really taste the difference between beef and impossible burger IF the burger is a cm or so thick. If you tried to make a restaurant burger (2-3cm thick, rare/med rare) I think the difference would be pretty noticeable. It’s good in ground beef recipes, too (like pasta sauce or stuffed squash). I’m so happy this alternative is available. Big fan! It’s not that much more than beef I think? I dunno it all seems pretty cheap compared to fish/coffee/beer/wine.
The article says there’s been no police activity since decriminalization in Oakland, but there was a big bust a few years ago. They raided a grow operation and took all their money and equipment, rendering it useless. I think they didn’t make any charges or arrests? so still better than jail time!
California still criminalizes the sale of mushroom spores, making growing your own more difficult. It’s been interesting and convenient to be able to buy a menu of shroom products from organizations and churches around town. I hope it gets more popular and less expensive.
Another thing to consider for someone I assume not from the us: the states, especially Florida, are very big. Moving states means moving very far away. Florida is also deep in the south so moving to a different political climate is an even farther move. Driving from Orlando to Washington DC is a 12 hour trip each way.
You aren’t going to be able to visit family and friends after you move if you are poor.