Glock is Austrian. They just love the US market.

2 hours of cooking for a 10 minute meal sounds like a skill issue.

I really wish we could retire the phrase “tech bro”.

It actively alienates allies that we desperately need.

The average techie does NOT fit the mold of “tech bro”.
They tend to be very liberal https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/122582/web.345435/#/summary They tend to be more LGBTQ friendly than most industries https://www.spiceworks.com/hr/diversity-inclusion/guest-article/top-lgbtq-friendly-industries-in-the-us/

There’s a loud minority of tech leaders who qualify as “tech bros” and they’re not representative of the industry. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-02-20/california-silicon-valley-andreessen-zuckerberg-musk-donald-trump

If we continue to lump that large majority of nerds in with that group; at best we’re wasting time yelling at allies, at worst we’re driving them to the other side.

Where do the Thunderkittens fit into this evolution?

Or Fritz the Cat?

We make food “from scratch” on a regular basis.

We’ve found a few different sources for fats. I’ll focus on the pork-fat ones.

The most common source is to just collect fat any time we make pork things. The advantage is that it’s cheap and easy; just let it cool and add it to a jar in the fridge. The disadvantage is that it will have a lot of other flavors (especially salt).

Sometimes we just by processed lard. That’s basically the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s very pure and has no flavor besides the fat itself.

Often we’ll wet render our own fat. Traditionally that would be the trimmings off of other cuts. Unless you’re butchering a pig (or have bought into a fractional pig through something like a CSA) those bits usually aren’t available. Typically we’ll just buy cuts that are very high in fat. For pork, that would be pork belly. We’ll just buy an uncut slab and wet-render it. Trim any meat you want to cook with (belly is the part that bacon is made of) throw the rest in a pot of water an simmer it for a few hours. The fat layer that collects on top is almost pure lard.

We’ve also found that duck fat is a great substitute for lard. It has a similar smoke point to lard (slightly higher). It tastes different from lard but it’s also good enough that the flavor itself will improve meals. Duck breasts are about 50% fat if you buy them with skins. You can also buy duck fat on its own.

It’s not just the sexual aspect that makes people uncomfortable.

Many people view it as childish. Children are really into their stuffed animals and love playing dress up. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying activities normally associated with children but other adults tend to look down on it.

Some furries like to talk about their fursona as a spiritual extension of themselves. Many people associate that kind of language with crazy old hippies.

Finding plot holes in Harry Potter is like shooting fish in a barrel. There’s no challenge to it.

Rowling took “a wizard did it” as far as it can go.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=a+wizard+did+it#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2884189e,vid:sVgVB3qsySQ,st:0

I almost forgot “pants”.

Yeah. It confused me at first too.

It’s not too bad when they use some word that we never use at all. I had no trouble figuring out what a “bellend” is.

It’s more of an issue when they use a word differently.
Me: “Yo blondie, that’s not how you’re supposed to wear condoms.”
Nigel Covington III: “You git, I most certainly do wear rubbers on my feet.”

That’s just the name.

In the UK, “public school” just means that admissions are generally open to the public. They’re still very expensive, are often boarding schools, and tend to have a lot of castles on their campuses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)

That’s one of many many plot holes in Harry Potter.

There’s really no depth to the world building beyond, “What if British public schools taught magic?”

It doesn’t make sense in any context beyond that because the author never considered it from any context beyond that. Whenever you run into some crazy crap in HP and wonder, “Why TF would anyone do it that way?” The answer is almost always, "Because that’s how they do it in British public schools.

It was a typo. I meant to say that the Democratic leadership seems to have put their and their parties interests above those of the people but I wanted to avoid editing my post too much.

I’ve been called many names, including “tankie”, so I’ll take a stab at responding.

I’m not mad about the debate at all. I expected something fairly similar. I’m mad that Biden and the Democratic leadership seems to have put their own interests above the interest of the party people (edit: Ugh. Terrible typo).

If Biden had gracefully stepped aside and given just about any other Democrat his full support, we’d be in a much better position now. Instead we have a candidate with a ton of baggage and who presents an easy target for Trump’s style of argument. Many mainstream Democrats, including the NYT, are finally starting to realize this. Unfortunately it’s probably a year too late. At this point it would just make it look like Demoratic kingmakers forced him out.

If I went by the modern definition of “tankie” as, an anti-american authoritarian communist. I probably wouldn’t be mad at any of this. I’d be cackling with glee because either of the current nominees will be terrible for the US. Neither of them has a serious long term plan. Neither of them can articulate a policy position. Both of them will continue to erode the power and moral authority of the United States.

Like it or not. Trump is likely to be the next president https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/. At this point it’s probably wise to start thinking about how to limit his impact and how to start cleaning up the mess afterwards.

That’s kinda funny. Do people really use that pun?

It wasn’t really that bad.

They only had the numbers of local people and the phone book would just give you name, address and phone number. If you’re the Terminator and there happen to be 3 Sarah Connors in the phone book, too bad, you’ve got to visit all 3 of them. You could ask to have your number unlisted and many people did, particularly celebrities. Nobody had an on-line presence so the only way people would even know the name of most people was if you told them.

It’s one thing to refrain from commenting but supporting Israel makes it clear that Germany learned nothing.

I can’t guess what individual people will do but, as a group, shoppers end up spending more this way. Supermarkets and grocery stores typically sell many things besides food; toys, magazines, beauty products, etc.

The store also doesn’t need you to eat all the food you buy. If you throw out a bunch of food, as many people frequently do, the store still gets paid for all of it.

They do it to make you spend more time browsing. Shoppers typically get the same stuff every time they get groceries. Over time people learn the layout of their local store and develop efficient patterns to move through it and get everything they want. When the store shuffles everything around they force shoppers to wander around the store and to look at all the shelves carefully for the stuff they actually want. Some percentage of them end up finding new things to buy and spend more money.

I have to applaud David Nolan on some next level marketing for this one.

He invented the predecessor of that chart as a way to promote libertarianism. It’s very clever in how subtly it introduces a loaded question.

The phrasing asks the viewer to consider if they want more or less political freedom and if they want more or less economic freedom. Obviously, most people want more freedom. Therefore Libertarianism is the best form of government. QED!

But that makes two big assumptions that are almost certainly incorrect:

1. It assumes that choice of government is entirely, or at least predominantly, determined by your views on economic and social regulations. Questions of military, legal process, environmental policy, etc are all either irrelevant or can be entirely described within the economic and social regulation factors. That doesn’t even pass the sniff test. If two people agree that they want social and economic freedom, do we really believe that they necessarily have identical political beliefs? No, because we know that in real life they’ll define those freedoms differently.
2. It assumes that complex topics such as economics and social regulation can be entirely described on a single axis of “more vs less". If you look at the disagreements that people actually have, it’s almost always about the types of regulations, not on the degree of regulation.

It’s a little frustrating that unabashed marketing is so frequently trotted out as though it were an established fact.

Primarily because it’s really difficult to move countries. Even when an other country is “better”, by whatever metric you may choose, the high switching cost makes the move worse for individuals unless staying in a country is really really bad. That threshold is typically when subsistence in the country of origin becomes untenable, often due to war or famine.