That’s a good point about the marketing. My grandma actually has official Jell-O brand cookbooks, as well as Carnation ones (they’re the ones that make evaporated and condensed milk, also popular ingredients of the era). Most are small and just made of paper, almost like those little cooking magazines you see in check out lines now, so I imagine they were either free or super cheap, probably sitting right next to the product they were highlighting.

I have never had a lima bean that was practically flavorless. They’ve always tasted completely horrid to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of putting evaporated milk in meatloaf, but it seems like almost every recipe from the 1950s calls for it (or condensed milk, or gelatin). It showed up a lot in my grandma’s old cookbooks. I have no feelings towards evaporated milk, but I have yet to try a recipe with sweetened condensed milk that wasn’t delicious. To be honest, I think they were just so excited about all the new food “technology” that was cheap and readily available that they couldn’t help but put it in everything. I can’t really fault them there. If Jell-O was a new thing that hadn’t existed when I was a kid, I’d probably want to put it in everything, too.

Florida age of consent law: The age of consent is 18. People who are 16-17 can legally have sex with anyone 23 or younger. It is illegal for people under 16 to have sex with someone over 18. I’m not sure what they do if both partners are underage. Personally, I’d just like to meet the person who decided it was more acceptable for a 16 year old and a 23 year old to have sex than for a 15 year old and an 18 year old, because that person is freaking insane and should not be in charge of making laws. Yes, two high schoolers having sex is so much worse than a high school sophomore/junior and someone who graduated from college a year ago.

That’s not true. I’ve seen cases where it was an 18 year old boy being arrested for having sex with their girlfriend, and cases where it was an 18 year old girl and her younger boyfriend. Some have been on TV news, some were in Seventeen, some on the internet, but there’s no real shortage of media attention for these sorts of cases. Many people (myself included) strongly believe the law is flawed in this regard.  The issue here is that, while this girl technically did break the law, 1. the law is flawed and there’s no real reason this should be illegal, and 2. the primary (though perhaps not only) reason the other girl’s parents are pushing this is because the girls are gay. What would they have done if Kate hadn’t been 18? What would they have done if their daughter had been the older one? Quite honestly, it takes a pretty cold-hearted parent to pursue legal action against their child’s similar-aged consensual partner based on a technicality (I say it’s a technicality because of the way the law varies from state to state, so it’s just pure luck of the draw whether it’s legal where you live or not). That’s one way to make your child hate you forever, not to mention that you’re ruining the life of someone who—while they technically did break the law—did nothing morally wrong. (Nevermind the fact that people couldn’t stop whining about how the lives of the boys in the Steubenville case were ruined because they’d have to register as sex offenders for, you know, actually raping someone. But no, let’s not mind at all when someone has to register as a sex offender for having sex with the person they were dating, who wanted to have sex with them.)

They were 15 and 17 when they started dating, and are now 15 and 18. Do you have any idea how many 15 and 18 year old couples there are in high schools across the US? I knew plenty of people that fit that description when I was in high school. Of course, it was completely, totally, 100% legal there—which just adds to how stupid it is that it’s not legal in Florida. When your relationship is legal in some places and illegal in others, that should raise questions about the logic behind those laws. As for your question, I would decide whether I approved of my child’s significant other on a case by case basis, and I would base that opinion on the person themselves, not their age (though I certainly wouldn’t be okay with it if they were, say, 23). But the law can’t be case-by-case. It has to be black and white, but that doesn’t mean it’s right the way it is now.

Over half the teenagers in this country choose to have sex before 18, most (I assume) without their parents even knowing, and I’m sure very few had their parents’ permission.  Also, the fact is, some teenagers don’t realize it might be illegal for them to have sex with the person they’re dating. When I was in high school, they taught us our state’s age of consent laws in sex ed (fun fact, this couple would be legal there), but most schools no longer have sex ed, and I doubt most teenagers go out of their way to make sure having sex with their boyfriend or girlfriend is legal. There is literally no reason it ever shouldn’t be (between two high schoolers), but the laws are messed up so sometimes it is.

The statutory rape law is flawed. In Florida, an 18 year old having sex with a 15 year old is illegal. In Pennsylvania, it’s not. The legality of their relationship varies from state to state, which is just ridiculous. Statutory rape laws exist to protect children from being coerced into sex by adults. They do not exist to punish high school students for having sex with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and to use them as such (regardless of the gender of either partner) is absurd and wrong. Two people who are both in high school are peers and should be allowed to have sex with each other if they want. What’s more, the strict definition of the laws (which, admittedly, is necessary, but still flawed) means that it can be legal for a couple to have sex up until the older person’s birthday, at which point it becomes illegal until the younger person’s birthday. That is also messed up. There is no logic by which it makes sense for it to be illegal for a couple to have sex now when it was perfectly legal yesterday.

No? The eggs you get at the store are (except on rare occasions) unfertilized. So, yes, they’d be more like chicken periods—nevermind that chickens don’t have periods—than aborted chicks, because there was never any chick to abort. (I’m also not entirely sure how non-mammalian abortion would even work.)

My aunt and uncle had a shiba, and it was the best trained and best behaved of all their dogs (they’ve also had Yorkies and Boston terriers). It took a bit of effort when he was little to keep him from jumping up or from trying to run off when he was outside, but once he was trained, he was great. He was one of my favorite dogs besides my own. Shiba inus are moderately energetic (though not as much as, say, collies), so you have to pay attention to them—you can’t just lock them in a cage and ignore them, but why would you do that anyway? If you don’t want to take care of a dog, don’t get a dog. The problem is that too many people buy high energy breeds and then try to keep them in a tiny apartment where they’re alone all day. That’s not fair to the dog. People need to research the breed they want and make sure they aren’t too high maintenance/high energy for them. That’s not a flaw in the dog, it’s just a matter of needing the right type of dog for your environment.

Does the preview-skipping thing actually work?