What contingencies should I be planning for in day to day life?

Those related to what you do and where you go in day to day life. The only people who need to worry about a micrometeorite punching a hole in the spaceship get training for it already.

These might include such things as: locking yourself out of your house, having an auto breakdown, being confronted by a mugger, being in an unfamiliar building when the fire alarm goes off, coming upon the scene of a serious accident, where to go and how to get there when widespread flooding is imminent, being stranded in a foreign country without funds or a ticket out, when to see a doctor when a mole you've always had starts growing, getting old, and so on.

Do you have insurance for anything? The list of what it covers is a list of contingencies. If it's worth spending money for the monetary compensation, it's worth thinking about how to deal with it if it happens, and how to stop it happening.

I am by no means an expert, but here are a couple of options that come to mind. I came up with most of these by thinking "what kind of emergency are you reasonably likely to run into at some point, and what can you do to mitigate them?"

• Learn some measure of first aid, or at least the Heimlich maneuver and CPR.

• Keep a Seat belt cutter and window breaker in your glove compartment. And on the subject, there are a bunch of other things that you may want to keep in your car as well.

• Have an emergency kit at home, and have a plan for dealing with natural disasters (fire, storms, etc). If you live with anyone, make sure that everyone is on the same page about this.

• On the financial side, have an emergency fund. This might not impress your friends, but given how likely financial emergencies (e.g. unexpectedly losing a job) are relative to other emergencies, this is a good thing to plan for nonetheless. I think the standard advice is to have something on the order 3-6 months of income tucked away for a rainy day.

(Note: my motivation for this is almost exclusively "I want to look like a genius in front of my friends when some contingency I planned for comes to pass", which is maybe not the best motivation for doing this kind of thing. But when I find myself with a dumb-sounding motive for doing something I rationally endorse anyway, I try to take advantage of the motive, dumb-sounding or not.)

Often being prepared simply means that nobody notices anything being at odds. Don't optimize for flashy solutions.

What to do when things get lost
1) Your credit card
2) Your mobile phone
3) Your keys

What do you do when things you rely on break:
1) Your computer
2) Your car

Who to call?
1) Police imprisons you and charge you for a criminal act
2) You have a medical emergency (also set up a ICE contact list entry on your smart phone)

Identify local forms of natural disaster and what you intend to do in the circumstances. (bush-fires, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, snowstorm, bear-pocalypse... whatever is normal in your area)

Identify what you plan to do in case of a power failure (owning some candles or something) depending on how bad the failure is and how long it lasts... I suggest owning a external battery block for phone charging - give extra peace of mind that you won't run out of battery. (something like 15000mah should be plenty for most people)

(I have never suffered a technical failure but) preparing for a hard-drive failure, monthly backups, cloud storage... how will you manage if you suddenly are unable to earn money for 3-6 months? have savings; have a plan; programs like pocketbook; YouNeedABudget, calculate your burn-rate. Unexpected spends i.e. bills. Plumbing problems sometimes just happen in old houses - know what to do (how to change a washer etc.), Know how to open an S-bend if something is dropped down a pipe.

(basic first aid training was mentioned elsewhere but I wanted to add that we don't train the heimlich manoeuvre in Australia)

know how to use a fire-extinguisher (you just have to read the instructions on the front; but maybe read them before you are in desperate need to know them)

qualified to drive larger vehicles can help in life.

knowledge of the law in some areas.

knowing how to cook delicious things on short notice (1-2 recipes that you can whip up really quick).

Take people you spend time with to first aid, heimlich, and CPR classes. You will need their help if you are the one choking or unable to breathe.

Build up enough stamina and physical fitness to run at both a sprint and for several minutes straight. Running away from a fight can be a very good strategy for not getting harmed.

Read the "Influence: Science and Practice" chapter that discusses Social Proof. I think it was chapter 4. The suggestions involved help avoid the bystander effect where a person in need is left alone and unassisted by a group of onlookers. The chapter deals with a few examples of effectively communicating and prompting someone to help you in an emergency situation. This is especially necessary in an urban environment.

• Install a smoke detector

• Do martial arts training until you get the falling more or less right. While this might be helpful against muggers the main benefit is the reduced probability of injury in various unfortunate situation.

I have a small multitool on my keychain and have for several years; it most often comes in handy as a bottle opener but the small pliers, knife, screwdriver, and wire stripper have all been used.

I have the entire road system of North America as of three months ago downloaded as about five gigabytes of data on my phone (yay micro SD cards) which comes in handy when driving through rural mountains.

A charged car battery exists in the trunk of my car for jumpstarting (and also for running my big computerized telescope out in the field, which is how I ensure it is kept charged, because it is dual use).

Mostly for hobby purposes but also for contingencies, I have built a portable solar-powered lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack that charges from sunlight at 25 watts, can store 200 watt-hours, and can discharge upwards of 100 watts at either 12 volts DC or 120 volts AC.

Potentially relevant stuff from brief Google site searches:

• "Studying and Part-time work/supplementary income"
• "Interesting (or semi-interesting) part time jobs?"
• saving money by doing tasks in cheaper, time-consuming ways
• bisserlis talking about joining a temp agency
• "low stress employment/ munchkin income thread"
• "Physics grad student: how to build employability in programming & finance"

I feel like part-time work, and lightweight methods of converting time to money, have been chewed over in even more LW posts, but I can't quickly dig them out.

The therapists I know would strongly recommend seeing someone in person, rather than counsel over the internet. So if you can't find a psychiatrist/psychologist in the DC area who is in the EA/LW community, I'd suggest you relax the EA/LW criterion rather than the DC area criterion. Good luck.

I had this problem with soap for a while (there was a "Dove isn't soap!" campaign that didn't say what it... like... was... and I switched to Ivory because I wanted soap.)

This is a perfect exemplar of something I really hate about this website. A poster asks for advice about how to buy a diamond, and instead he gets mostly replies saying "don't buy a diamond." I will try and actually be helpful.

My advice would be:

• Your girlfriend probably has much stronger views than you do about jewellery, and after all she will be the one wearing it. Propose with a "fake" ring, then go shopping for the "real" ring together. I got a very nice-looking ring off Amazon for £10 to propose with. This minimises the chance of making a bad decision, and is also a romantic thing to do together.
• If you do insist on buying the ring beforehand, make sure you can take it back. Many places will do returns within 30 days. Borrow a ring she finds comfortable to get the sizing.
• Do not get hung up about high degrees of quality. VS2 clarity and H colour is plenty. She will never tell the difference between having a VS2 and VVS1 diamond on her finger - these differences are only visible when put next to another diamond in the right light, which will never happen.
• But make sure the cut is top quality.
• Shop around. My experience is in London, but over here the prices in the diamond quarter and online are about the same. Beware of anyone who won't give you a straight price. Despite what anyone tells you, diamonds are close to commodities.
• Make sure you get a certificate, and don't buy anything with a non-GIA certificate.
• She will be wearing the ring all the time, and indefinitely into the future, which means there will be inevitable wear-and-tear. So platinum is probably the best metal.
• There is no reason to spend anything like the upper range of your budget. You can get an extremely nice (genuine) ring in the bottom half of that price range, and artificial will only be cheaper.

I do not recommend choosing a diamond. Diamonds are both less pretty than and more expensive than moissanite; if you have the budget for a diamond, you can get better for cheaper with moissanite. The exception is if you know for a fact the recipient is a natural stone chauvinist, which doesn't sound like your situation at all (you basically can't get natural moissanite). Bonus: moissanite is from SPACE.

If you are unwilling to consult her in advance on her taste in rocks, the safe choice is a gold-band solitaire with a round brilliant cut rock set in prongs. More expensive, more interesting, and also pretty safe is a "past present future" setting with three rocks, matching if you want to be conservative about it. I'm not sure what the conventional alloy for gold-looking jewelry that needs to not deform with use is, but if it looks like yellow gold and anyone makes a point of telling you how many carats it is, it's probably good.

Unless you are sure your GF really likes to follow social traditions this may not be the best idea...

Our story: we avoided surprises and discussed thoroughly whether we want to spend a life together or not. It also included whether to go through the expense of a wedding or just live together. We concluded that a wedding is a nice thank-you ceremony to our parents, and besides the whole point is that we planned a child, otherwise we would just keep cohabiting, and she was afraid I could dump her into the difficult life of 35+ single moms later on so basically the wedding would be a way to promise in front of 50 relatives that I won't. She felt she would not risk having a child otherwise. Thankfully diamonds are not a tradition in our country (they cost more than what savings a young-ish man usually has, and getting into debt even BEFORE the wedding / setting up the new home sounds really dangerous). But gold rings are. Anyway she strictly forbidden me to buy a gold ring because we need to rent a bigger apartment with a proper child bedroom and buy new furniture so it makes more sense to blow our savings on that. She said a silver band €300 tops. So I waited a few weeks to achieve at least a surprise about the timing, waited for a national holiday that was about some big battles and said "This day we remember men who did brave things, so it is a good time for me to do something brave and..." :-) Later on, I had some of my inherited gold jewelry molten down for the actual wedding bands. As a decoration, we decided that we will write into each others rings to the outside what virtue we need to work on the most for us to be happy. I need to work on my patience and she needs to work on her courage i.e. actually accepting job promotions offered so we wrote these on the rings as reminders.

Anyway this non-traditional approach worked pretty well for us, although it may feel a bit "coldly rational" and not too "romantic". What I would propose on a meta-level is finding out how much your GF likes being romantic and how much she likes to follow social traditions and conventions. (And how much you like to follow them, and what it predicts about your long-term marriage stability. Are there any other social conventions that you would less like to follow?)

I live in NYC, so have access to the diamond district

Don't go to the diamond district. You'll just get a lot of high-pressure sales tactics and, likely, misleading information.

I am leaning towards an artificial diamond

Cubic zirconia? The main thing to be sure of is whether your GF is fine with that. If she is, just order a huge one online, they'll be cheap.

My price range

Your price range for the complete ring or just for the stone? You can pick the stone and the design separately, that's common.

Generally speaking, you need to figure out first if you want a natural diamond or a cubic zirconia stone -- that will greatly affect your budget, the stone size (and so the ring design), etc.

Are you picking out the ring entirely on your own or you are consulting with your GF?

The advantage to having Stupid Question threads is that it's easier to make it clear that that the questions should be treated kindly.

You are allowed to ask in the open thread. I don't think having it more often would help. The SQ thread is for things that you are embarrassed or afraid to ask elsewhere. Apparently some people have questions that they didn't bring up before the first stupid questions thread.

The simplistic approach is that A and B share 1/2 of their (variable) genes by virtue of being siblings, and so their child C will have that shared half, and half of the remainder (i.e. a quarter) will come from B, so C and B share 3/4 of their genes. By the same approach, D and B will share 7/8 of their genes, and thus E and F will have 7/8 shared for certain and 1/16 shared by chance, and so their children will share about 15/32ths of their genes, i.e. be about as related as actual siblings.