Maybe it’s because I’ve become a pretty outspoken anti-theist, but after growing up and being exposed to better theological and philosophical arguments, I’ve come to the conclusion that Lewis is an overrated hack.

And yes, the Silent Planet books were absolute torture to get through.

Not to mention “barley in middle school”

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty good for a cereal crop.

It’s actually not (just) the acidity. Pineapples and several other tropical fruits have an enzyme called papain that breaks down peptide bonds in a rather unique way, to the point that the texture of the meat can become quite off-putting if the enzyme is not used properly

Edit: acidic or not, it’s definitely best not to put any sensitive parts of your anatomy in pineapple juice

I believe that’s a cantaloupe.

🎵To Be Fay-aaah🎵

As someone who lives in this same town, black bears are more like overweight raccoons.

Fun fact, our “city hall” is at the tiny community airport, which also had a restaurant with the best chicken wings in town (salt and vinegar wings FTW). The restaurant was still going when this happened in 2019, so my guess is the bear smelled the food and went looking for the kitchen, only to get sidetracked by the city council meeting.

You’ll be hard pressed to find someone deny basic science in today’s world.

They didn’t outright deny it (out loud), but they cast doubt and equivocate about the parts that don’t agree with their preexisting worldview.

Jesuits have done some decent work for humanity, but they are not scientists, mostly because they start from a premise they want to be true and find evidence for it instead of the other way around.

Edit: in fact, why did knowledge need to be “curated” through the Dark Ages? I’ll give you a hint: it starts a “C” and ends with an “atholicism”

Not OP, but mine was really pretty manageable. 2 days of sitting in an easy chair and icing my balls, 2 days of “walking is fine, but avoid any sudden movements,” and a week of “it’s a little sore, but it doesn’t really hurt.” After that, it was about 2-3 weeks where I didn’t really notice it unless I moved the wrong way too suddenly (whereupon I’d get a quick twinge, but nothing too bad).

Really a pretty small cost for the benefits. I don’t really like painkillers, but I do recommend some THC gummies for the first week and a fresh series to binge

I can’t wait for the new album. Definitely a project that evolves with every album, so I’m excited to see where they go next

I get that! I’m partial to “getting two birds stoned at once” and “people in glass houses sink ships” myself.

making gang bucks

I think you mean “like gangbusters,” but it’s totally possible “making gang bucks” is a term I just haven’t heard before.

Cheers!

I’m inclined to agree with you, but Valve doesn’t often miss

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not overreact here. There are only a few cases where wishing that upon a person is acceptable, and I’m not sure this qualifies as a war crime.

po-tay-to, po-tah-to

I have tons of playlists and saved music on spotify; how is Tidal at importing data from other services? It’s not really a deal breaker, but I’m really picky about my music (so I don’t really care about “radio” features or curated playlists), so it’d be a real pain in the ass to start from scratch.

The tricky point here is that fossil fuels were a silver bullet for a long time! There is so much energy in those chemical bonds and they just bubbled out of the ground, so why wouldn’t we use that for everything?

Trying to get people to understand nuance and using the right tool for the job is a lot trickier since most people inherently resist complexity as a solution for replacing a simple technology.

“No Skyrim until you finish your homework and finish your chores” is a fantastic motivator for my 10yo. When I can model that I can’t play Rocket League with him until after I finish the dishes, it drives the point home that IRL responsibilities need to come before video games.

Depends. The cheap houses, yeah, there’s as fair bit of noise, but you can’t hear everything. From downstairs, you can hear when someone walks across the room above you, but not when they’re walking in other upstairs rooms. And from rooms on the same level, you can hear if someone is talking loudly in the room next door, but not enough to make out what they’re saying unless they’re yelling.

Well-built houses or buildings made for occupancy by multiple families usually have better sound insulation between the rooms/floors/units, so it’s not always an issue.

Edit: the plus side to that is I know all the noises my house makes at night, so as a light sleeper, I know when something is wrong in the middle of the night, and I only need one decent sound system for the whole house, which is great for listening to records while doing housework.

We could have avoided burning a ton of fossil fuels if nuclear hadn’t been demonized in the 60’s, but as it stands, that ship has sailed. Let’s skip that stage on the tech tree and move to fully renewable!

Edit: I guess I should say that I think nuclear will and should continue to be a pivotal part of any smart grid for a long time, since it fills a niche that “true” renewables can’t yet. I just don’t think pushing to build them now is ideal, as it’s more pressing to decommission all fossil fuels plants ASAP by any means necessary (which might mean using only the existing nuclear plants while we ramp up production of other green energy sources)