How women over 30 are rewriting the single mom narrative in America
Are trash pandas our next pets?
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My S (who loves raccoons) sent me that article.
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My husband read about this on BBC this morning and spent the next hour sipping coffee and flipping through the photos and videos of raccoons and coatis he has taken in our backyard and Mexico, respectively 
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From the WaPo - why do we have such big feelings about Elmo. I donât know why this caught my eye, but it did. Apparently, many people canât stand Elmo. The article posits that if you are GenX, you are likely to dislike Elmo. Iâm pretty solidly in the middle of GenX and Iâm an Elmo fan - maybe because my older son, as a toddler, adored him? Maybe because I find myself needing that random bit of unfettered joy and happiness because so much of everything else is not that? Who knows.
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Elmo is youthful joy personified (or puppetified). Sometimes I think our society has a problem with little kids being little kids, so they think Elmo is dumb. We need more Elmo & less Oscar in our lives!
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That would explain the feces flinging! 
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I canât read the article, but honestly Iâve never heard that before.
I think Elmo is very likable, as are all the other Sesame Street characters.
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We had a flood in our basement which caused us to go through many boxes, including the one that had the original âTickle Me Elmoâ my mom bought for my son in the mid-90s. They were going for a LOT of money that Christmas (people posted ads in the newspaper hoping to buy them) but I refused to let my now ex husband sell it and then buy a new one after Christmas. I wondered if it was worth anything now, but I havenât checked.
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These women have made millions of dollars off this. Itâs horrifying.
The âwellness spaceâ is full of grifters like this, telling people not to trust doctors, not to take vaccines, not to take medications, but to âlike and subscribe,â and watch their reels and tiktoks, and subscribe to their Substacks, and buy their supplementsâŠ
And theyâre harming and killing people in their wake. An essential read 
FBS was founded by ex-doula Emilee Saldaya, and most women find it through its podcast, which has been downloaded 5m times, its Instagram account, which has 132,000 followers, its YouTube, with nearly 25m views, or its bestselling The Complete Guide to Freebirth, a video course co-created by Saldaya with fellow ex-doula Yolande Norris-Clark, available for download from FBSâs slick website. Analysis of FBSâs financial records by Stacey Ferris, a forensic accountant and academic at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, suggests it has generated revenues exceeding $13m since 2018.
When Lopez discovered the podcast she was hooked, listening to an episode almost every day. For $299, she joined FBSâs paid-for, private online community, the Lighthouse, where she met the three friends in the room when Esau was born. To prepare for her freebirth, she purchased The Complete Guide to Freebirth in May 2022 for $399 â a vast sum to the then 23-year-old nanny.
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I actually knew someone very well who turned out to be a drug kingpin. I was completely shocked! He didnât do drugs himself. He was involved in the world of international sports. He fled to Canada but couldnât stay on the straight & narrow. He was arrested there (not drugs, but illegal gambling) and jailed ⊠and he later broke out! He was captured and to my knowledge is serving a life sentence in Canada. At least he never killed anyone (directly). I think my absolute disdain for people who put the pursuit of money above all else is partially rooted in knowing this guy. He was never going to be poor - he was charming, and he was a good businessman - he just had to have more and more money.
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How âEverybody Loves Raymondâ Brought My Mother and Me Closer
The show wasnât an obvious draw for a Bengali immigrant and her teenage son. But the charactersâ needs were things we needed, too
This one hit me hard.
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I was considering posting this after I read it yesterday. Itâs pretty heartbreaking. Worse were comments online from people who just doubled down on the hatred, rather than even trying to understand.
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