Fascinating article, definitely worth the read. OP you should include it in the main post!

Top-of-my-head identification attempt, approximately left to right, top to bottom:

rhododendron, iris, milkweed(??), mushroom (???), trillium (?), can’t tell too obscured, narcissus(?), no idea, columbine, too obscured, no idea, random forest shot

Bothered me as well so I went and looked it up, because sometimes animals I associate with North America are present in Eurasia too.

Northern cardinal range:

So definitely a North America exclusive, and it seems all cardinals, the Cardinalidae family, are New World birds. Stupid meme made me go learn something.

(Also “desert cardinal – Hungary” should have tipped us all off that the country assignments were random)

Live in the US? Have a yard or balcony where you can grow plants? Then you should check out the Xerces Society’s plant lists for recommendations re: plants to support pollinators in your geographic region.

https://xerces.org/publications/plant-lists

For the curious, the original text says “cute” in Japanese (the infamous “kawaii”)

c/SocialScienceMemes

(Does this exist? It deserves to exist, if for no other reason than to encourage heated debates over where psychology memes should go)

Check pharmacies; most have been replaced by chains, but some independent pharmacies are still around, and will have a number of home staples.

Ethnic markets in general are a good option for finding locally-owned shops, but they’re going to differ in terms of what staples they actually carry.

To add to this, the “default” for a three-character ensemble in circa 90s kids media was: one (white) boy, one (white) girl, one (non-white) boy, for a 1:2 gender/race and 2:1 “diversity” ratio, which made the media feel diverse (back then this was generally considered a good thing) while still making male and white the default. In other words, a win-win that still was a setback to true diversity. Examples: Wishbone TV show and Harry Potter (if you count ginger as non-white).

Someone didn’t watch the Star Wars prequels

I haven’t seen a TV ad in years; who’s out there talking about Pueblo?

For NM I’d say Roswell; 5th largest city (48k population) but well known b/c aliens

Crazy thought, but what if it differed by industry? Something like blue collar jobs get Monday off, white collar gets Friday off. That way office workers can for example more easily stay home to get their cable serviced and plumbers can more easily meet with a mortgage agent. Obviously because of overlap it’s not perfect (office workers can’t meet with mortgage agent, plumbers can’t get their cable serviced), but there’s a huge issue currently with people working 9-5 M-F being unable to access services that are also only available 9-5 M-F, so this would at least distribute things a little more. (This kind of thing already exists for some industries like restaurants, where W-Su workweeks are common)

Magnolias have entered the chat

Hence why the members of c/fuckcars are so intense (I include myself in this).

The only practical way to avoid exposure to society’s car dominance in your everyday life is to live far from society… Which ironically forces you to own a car and drive to get literally anywhere.

Agree with everyone else that this isn’t normal for someone your age and get a second opinion.

However addressing your other questions: you’re at an age where lifestyle starts to really matter. Diet, exercise, ergonomics, environmental exposure to pollution/toxins, alcohol/drug use, sleep habits: these are all things that many healthy young adults can avoid having to worry about… until suddenly they can’t anymore. It is common, especially starting around age 30, to find there’s unhealthy behaviors from your teens and 20s that you just can’t do or do to excess anymore. It’s different for everyone; for some people it’s that they can’t sleep on a crappy mattress anymore, or drink certain types of liquor, or pull all nighters, or eat garbage, etc etc.

So while it sounds like you have some personal health issues outside of what’s “normal,” you still are at an age where the cumulative effects of a poor lifestyle can start to catch up to you. I think a lot of people greatly underestimate how sedentary their lifestyles are in particular, and of all the behaviors to change for the better as you age, going from sedentary to active is probably the hardest, given that our world is built to keep us sitting: sitting in our cars, sitting at our desks, sitting on our couches, basically sitting from the moment we wake until we go to sleep. Humans never lived like this until very recently: basically every decade since the personal automobile became the standard mode of transportation it’s steadily gotten worse. So yes, definitely do some doctor shopping, but now is also a great age to take stock in your lifestyle and how you’re treating your body. Because yes, it does get a little harder each year, but the speed of which it gets harder is at least partially up to you.

Not a paleontologist, but these renditions seem shockingly consistent for a dinosaur. T-Rex for example went from full upright to balanced to covered in feathers in half this timeframe. And let’s not even talk about poor iguanodon…

Feeders are okay, but the real joy comes from watching hummingbirds feed at flowers. In my experience they’re big fans of fuchsias, and I’ve also seen them at fireweed.

Edit: dropped an h, misplaced an s

Sooo are centipedes like fruit flies and not engage in any real form of sexual selection, or is the female going around judging the fuck out of every jizz pile she encounters?

“Mmm-mm, look at that poor viscosity, obviously from a low-quality male. This one on the other hand: deep color, firm texture, nice and sticky… clearly produced by a male with the superior genes I want to pass along to my offspring.”

Okay but if Arizona and New Mexico’s mountain regions get forest cutouts, central Washington needs a grasslands cutout to represent its shrub-steppe habitat.