computer science/engineering/STEM is the only thing worth it.
It's mostly engineers who make money. The actual sciences are basically a low paying career for how much knowledge it requires, and pretty much require much more than a 4-year degree to climb that ladder, or they just go into the same category as everyone in the humanities and the arts: go get a job that requires a 4-year degree but doesn't care what your major was.
Most of us have many different parts of the job, and like certain parts more than others.
A doctor may be passionate about actually solving medical issues but might hate communicating with difficult patients, dealing with paperwork and recordkeeping software, dealing with insurance companies, marketing his practice, managing staff, etc.
Programmers may actually love coding but hate dealing with customer requirements, or the office politics of sales versus delivery, or even the way their team is run.
It's like that everywhere. If anyone is only able to do work they're passionate about, that person is gonna have a rough career.
I graduated with a philosophy degree. I'm a lawyer now. So are a huge chunk of my classmates from undergrad.
Even the ones who didn't go on and get more schooling tended to find white collar work in some kind of business, same as the people who majored in business administration, finance, marketing, other business school fluff.
There are plenty of majors that are interesting and help students learn how to think, how to write, and how to research. And there are plenty of career paths that don't care about major, just want to see a 4-year degree for their entry level people.
A bachelor's degree isn't a vocational degree. It's ok to major in something you don't intend to work in, because at the end of the day more than half of college educated workers aren't working in their field of study. Part of the reason is because the typical 4-year degree teaches only barely enough to scratch the surface of what actually happens in industry, and those entry level workers need to learn a ton on the job anyway.
Here's a helpful chart of career outcomes by major. Note that many of these undergrad majors tend to be feeders into graduate or professional programs, and that a lot of the joke majors in the humanities and liberal arts have long term outcomes that are better than the sciences. Compare biochemistry to philosophy, for example. Both of those majors kinda expect people to go get graduate or professional degrees after, but the unemployment and underemployment rates are pretty similar.
Have a plan for getting a job. Whether that plan involves a specific major or not is up to you, and isn't strictly required. It's mainly engineering that provides a specific pipeline from undergrad degree to specific career in that field. All the others are much looser about which degree is required, or require additional schooling to enter (and once you have a graduate or professional degree, your undergrad basically doesn't matter).
The pizza dough tastes better when allowed to rest and rise slowly in the fridge. Using a ton of store bought yeast for a quick rise is fine, but planning out the dough the night before is better.
I love Chinese food so much. I've visited twice, and always make room for food.
My favorite street food is probably sheng jian bao, the pan fried buns with soupy pork filling sealed in.
In terms of a single standalone dish, it's hard to say. I like noodle dishes, like Taipei style beef noodle soup. Or Wuhan style re gan mian.
And for the type of meal where there's a lot of dishes on the table to be shared, my favorite dish in that setting is probably Mapo tofu. I did a food tour of Chengdu once and just everything Sichuan is so good, but Mapo tofu is just all my favorite Sichuan things in a single dish.
I've lived all over the U.S., so here are some of my favorites:
Texas:
Louisiana:
The American South in general:
Southern California:
New York:
Chicago:
In terms of popular and well known local dishes, the deep dish pizza and Chicago dog are great. I agree with you there.
The one that people outside of Chicago don't know a lot about, that is still a delicious representation of the city, is Italian Beef.
And the one that is uniquely Chicago but isn't going to be winning over people in a blind tasting, is shots of Malort.
All else being equal, in terms of structure and property itself, I'd rather live in a detached house.
But all else isn't equal. I'll sacrifice my ideal building type in order to live in the specific neighborhood I want to live in, within easy walking distance of amenities like parks, groceries, world class restaurants, bars, and things like that, all while being able to get around by bike, mass transit, or even easy/cheap hailed vehicles like taxis or Ubers. And that means I'm living in a dense urban area, where detached houses are rare and prohibitively expensive.
So I look for neighborhoods where I'd actually like to live, then look for places there with the right number of bedrooms and floor space, and then look to see what is within a feasible budget for myself. The first time I bought a home, I would've preferred to rent, but the building we liked in the neighborhood we liked happened to be condos rather than rentals.
But housing is a package deal. And house versus townhouse/rowhouse/brownstone versus low rise condo versus high rise condo versus apartment versus someone's accessory dwelling unit is only part of that package. And the other parts are more important to me.
The average added sugar consumption for American adults is about 70g per day, which works out to be 25.6 kg (56.2 lbs) per year. People can shift their source of sweetener and consume a dramatically higher amount of honey without necessarily having a diet that is all that different from the national average.
I plan on going abroad in the coming year
See world. Oceans. Fish. Jump. China.
David Epstein's The Sports Gene talks about several areas where it's a feedback loop between nature and nurture:
But outside of all of that, it also matters whether we're talking about becoming a world class athlete or just a hobbyist. For weekend warriors running a 5k in a pack of thousands of participants who paid to be there, practice and training are going to be far more important predictors of their performance than any kind of genetic or innate talent. The genetic or innate bottlenecks might show up in the Olympics, but not the amateur hobbyist runners.