Water softeners use a salt brine to flush out the ions off the resin beads. The resin beads do eventually wear out but should be good for 5+ years in most residential applications. The softener salt does have to be topped up frequently though. Softeners are not particularly exoensive to keep operating.

If her primary concern is drinking water, you can get an under sink RO filter for a couple hundred. They’re very easy to install yourself. I’ve even helped a friend install one connected to their fridge so that the fridge dispenser would taste better. We are on city water that tests well except for microplastics and it sometimes tastes a little bit like soil or musty. The RO systems come with a particulate filter, carbon stage, Reverse Osmosis membrane, and a remineralization stage. RO is the only way to effectively remove microplastics.

Personally, I would consider having a particulate filter and maybe water softener for the whole house. Neither of those should be crazy expensive. The water softener is only if your city water tests hard or if you have mineral buildup on your shower heads or in your dishwasher. If you’ve done any plumbing work, a particulate filter is pretty easy and affordable to install yourself.

Reverse osmosis for the whole house is simply unnecessary. Install one yourself at the location your family gets their drinking/cooking water.

https://www.mcmaster.com/product/4361K71

This unit from mcmaster carr is what I use. Please be aware that chlorine does damage the RO membrane, so it is important to replace the first two filter stages approximately every 6 months. The fourth stage is recommended to be replaced yearly and the RO stage is supposed to be good for 2 yrs.

https://www.mcmaster.com/4361K81/ https://www.mcmaster.com/4361K82/ https://www.mcmaster.com/4361K83/ https://www.mcmaster.com/4361K84/

Express Water also has some decent under sink and counter top options.

Removing chlorine for the whole home requires a large activated carbon filter. They’re pretty expensive and the media gets saturated and has to be replaced every so often to keep absorbing chlorine. I would only do this if your wife has extremely sensitive skin that is getting irritated from your tap water.

Oh and Reverse Osmosis systems waste more water than they clean without expensive recirculating pumps and controllers. That’s acceptable for a couple gallons of drinking water a day, but would be very wasteful and expensive in a whole-house system.

401(k) is managed by the employer and you can only pick from the funds they have selected. That really doesn’t leave much choice for most people.

That’s why people should consider doing a rollover into IRA anytime they have a job change and not just rollover into the new employer’s 401(k).

If you know anyone with a sensitive nose, ask them if the place you live in smells musty or moldy. I’ve had family members go through similar issues also without any help from the medical system and mold was a major contributing factor. You and anyone else who lives with you will be nose blind to it and won’t be able smell it without spending a week or so elsewhere.

Not exactly the prompt, but “Chuck” Season 2 Episode 13: “Chuck Versus the Suburbs.”

Ants already have taken over the world. They vastly outnumber humans and already live in just about every area humans do.

2 * 0 = 0

Doubling the mass of photons is no change.

Repealing Bournoulli’s principle requires changing how kinetic collisions of molecules translates into bulk measurables like pressure and density. There’s no way to predict what that does without first specifying more about what changes are made.

Go ahead and sign up for a non-euclidean geometry course. Constant pi assumes flat geometry, and I’m ok with that.

Liquid cooling is meant to be contained in tubes, fittings, and resevoirs. You have to use mineral oil if you want an aquarium pc.

Early 90’s here and I think the passage of the Patriot Act was a pretty important demarcation line, not just for abandonment of due process, but also when all the major networks embraced telling their audience who to hate.

Ground hornets pattern match too. I had a massive nest I had never noticed in an old stump. They hadn’t bothered me despite having walked by numerous times. Then one time I hit the nest with the riding mower. Man that sucked. I’m not outright allergic, but a dozen stings does make me feel sick. After that, anytime I got within 20ft of the nest with the mower they would come out in force.

Then a few years later I had the same thing happen with a raised garden bed. They never bothered me and I didn’t even know they were there, until my weedwacker attacked the entrance of the nest. I had to steer clear of that section of the garden for a few weeks after.

Ground hornets are horrible.

Surely the second commandment was more of a suggestion.

And they will make sure to continue to not know a single thing about what was said. Ignorance isn’t a valid legal defence, but it sure is a common deflection tactic these days. Law makers have a professional and ethical obligation to become informed on the issues their constituents care about, but it seems like it’s rare to find one that remembers that obligation.

Will Forte. His voice and “quirky” style I find just irritating and not at all amusing.

High aspect ratio just doesn’t roll off the tongue does it?

Yeah, black holes in media where they are depicted as a giant space vacuum cleaner is a big pet peave of mine. Unless you get really close, nothing is remarkable about the orbital mechanics of a black hole. The equivalent mass star would have burned you up at a much further distance than the gravity starts to become noticeably wonky.

It’s a shame that writers focus so much on the gravity and neglect accretion disks and astrophysical jets which do extend large distances and are visually stunning as well.

The problem isn’t methane production, it’s excessive soluble proteins producing a thick foam that prevents the methane from being expelled through the esophagus. Any feed produces large amounts of gas in grazing animals. What changes is the animals ability to safely vent the gas.

https://biologyinsights.com/why-does-alfalfa-cause-bloat-in-cattle/

Sometimes animals escape their enclosures and mis-feed themselves. The couple times I’ve witnessed this were the result of cows helping themselves to a field of alfalfa. Alfalfa is good as a component of a silage mix but is too rich to be consumed fresh on its own. But cows love alfalfa and are good at finding weaknesses in fencing.

Definitely, any changes natural or anthropogenic would be measured and to great accuracy. I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn’t the outlandish part. See global warming denial despite years of record setting temperatures.

Ignoring conspiracy theory stuff, people aren’t very good at perceiving changes in light levels if they happen gradually. During any solar eclipse there are wide bands where only a partial eclipse is observed. It’s pretty common for people in those bands to not notice that something has changed even with 50% occlusion.