America is like the beta version of liberal democracy that launched far too soon with a constitution full of bugs and the developers decided to make it nearly impossible to patch.

Voyager is fine but not especially surprising you can’t figure it out

Really disappointed in my Congress woman, Sarah Elfreth. I wrote her an email and she responded with basically “that’s what they told me to do!”

I’m not as anti AI as a lot of people here but trusting it with very important things is asking for trouble. It still randomly hallucinates and gives you bad info. Not as often as it used to but still not good enough to trust with your child’s health.

ChatGPT has taken my bread to the next level and helped me diagnose electronics problems way faster than I have figured out on my own, which is awesome. But it has also given me a blueberry muffin recipe with no wet ingredients and calculated bread hydration 10% too low. I can easily imagine a scenario where some tired parent asks it for a Motrin dose for an infant and gets a wildly wrong answer and injures their child.

Don’t worry about getting banned. They’ll just backlist the card you used and close your account. Easy enough to get around. Send them your video and demand they refund you while you’re on the phone with them. Use the word chargeback liberally. You’ll either get refunded quickly or fuck them, make them get dinged with a chargeback.

Isn’t it still significantly smaller than Earth day 1970? I’d also like to see how it compares to percentage of population since the US has more people now than when other big protests took place. But still, good job America.

It’s almost certainly Oracle but there’s a slight possibility this is correct

If you read the user agreement when you signed up, you would know that you’re not supposed to poop for 3 days after signing up. You shouldn’t be posting until you complete the challenge.

What are good Google alternatives that don’t rely on Google or Bing?

Cats aren’t as big a commitment as a dog but, depending on the cat, they will wreck your shit if they’re not simulated enough. I would highly recommend going to a shelter and adopting a cat that’s a few years old. Kittens need a lot. But a 2-3 year old cat you can get a sense for their personality (although keep in mind they act differently in the shelter.)

Cats are a different vibe than dogs though. Dogs are more like having a child but cats are like having a roommate.

Cat pro tip - if your TV’s aren’t mounted on the wall, find a way to secure them.

Dude just get a cat. I know exactly what you’re going through and you will regret the parrot. A cat is what you need.

Amazon seems to randomly start subscriptions. And then you think you’re crazy and did something stupid but I’m pretty sure they’re just evil. I have been subscribed to Audible multiple times and I have never listened to an audiobook in my life.

E-reader is a much better experience for reading text but tablets are better for comics. There’s very limited color e-ink options and they’re very expensive with pretty washed out colors.

And he’ll overplay his hand, freak everyone else out which drives voter turnout and he loses. Hopefully.

For sure. That’s like saying a Ferrari is faster than a Honda Civic. But you don’t need a Ferrari to get to work.

If you aren’t getting good bread from your bread machine, you’re definitely doing something wrong. Bread machines are pretty simple and peaked in the 90s for the most part. I have one of the cheapest ones on the market from the 90s and the bread that comes out of my kitchen blows away everything at the grocery store for a fraction of the price. I make sandwich breads, pizza dough, English muffin dough, pretty much anything and it’s all good.

I think the big thing people get wrong is not weighing their ingredients. You just can’t make consistently good bread with volumetric measurements. The hydration of the dough (ratio of flour and water) is very important and a cup of flour can vary a lot.

There’s also a ton of very low quality recipes out there. Even the book that came with my bread maker is pretty terrible. If you don’t want to get in to the science of it, just stick to King Arthur recipes. There’s a ton of bread maker specific ones and they often have modifications for bread makers in the other recipes.

Ingredients matter a lot as well. Besides the fact that higher quality ingredients produce higher quality food, flour isn’t interchangeable. So if you’re using regular cheap all purpose flour instead of bread flour, the amount of water it absorbs is different and you’ll get bad results. You can get decent enough white bread from cheap AP flour but you need a lot less water. It will be basically wonder bread though, nothing mind blowing.

In terms of effort, I guess this is subjective. But I just started some whole wheat bread and it took about 5 minutes to weigh the water, salt, yeast, whole wheat flour, bread flour, and gluten. The cycle takes a few hours and my baby will have bread for lunch for the rest of the week. And it doesn’t contain any sugar or brominated flour like every whole wheat bread at the grocery store. Also with a decent loaf of bread is pushing 8-9 dollars at the store, this saves a lot of money. This loaf cost less than a dollar even using high quality flour.

The Zojirushi bread machines are very nice but you don’t need one if you want to make excellent breads and jams. For the most part, the technology in bread makers peaked in the 90s and I’ve never seen a thrift store that didn’t have an entire aisle of them dirt cheap.

I have a late 90s Breadman I paid 20 bucks for years ago (which is expensive but it was new in box) and it’s paid for itself many times over. It makes great sandwich bread and I use it to make all kinds of doughs for other bread products. I make a nice Italian loaf, English muffins, pizza dough, etc.

It paid for itself the first month I had it. Never really felt the need to upgrade.

Why would you presume that? Maybe they’re suffering and trying to raise awareness.

And one of the more likely scenarios is the non-freedom caucus GOP cuts a deal with Democrats to neuter freedom caucus’ power.

Anecdotal but all of the Catholics I know have either converted to the episcopal church or they just never go to mass or talk about it but say they’re catholic so grandma doesn’t get sad. You go to mass, and there are no young people whatsoever. I don’t have hard data to back this up but it seems like the Catholic Church in the US could just collapse before a significant schism reaches us.