Oddly, though, you can’t just cut it out from shows that have it, especially if they actually film in front of a live audience, though even those with canned laughter are playing in the same sandbox. The pacing and the vibe gets completely thrown off because the writers and actors have to account for the laughs, and it becomes eerie without them. It’s a different style of making TV that’s seeking a different type of reaction from the TV audience, and has different limitations. Understanding that can let you enjoy the best examples of the form (admittedly almost all 20 years old or more). Stock characters slinging zingers and potentially doing pratfalls can be amusing (though the form has a direct lineage to radio shows so it tends to be light but verbal – the physicality is a huge part of what made I Love Lucy groundbreaking), but it doesn’t shine when trying to do cringe, nuance, dramedy, or densely packed humor.

This is not to say that you should watch The Big Bang Theory. You should not. It’s awful. The easy tropes and low cost of production (other than stars’ salaries if a show takes off) means that so much garbage has been done in this format, I daresay higher than single-camera “movie style” shows. It’s just that it’s not quite so simple as “write more funnier.”

IMO, it’s almost like telling a musical theater writing team that their play would be better if the characters weren’t constantly breaking into song. For the record, my instincts and tastes leave me sympathetic to that last point, so I just don’t watch many musicals, live or recorded. It’s not that they’re bad; the appeal is just lost on me. Same with multi-cam sitcoms with laugh-tracks.

Without it most of them are just condescending and misogynist. It’s always sunny in Philadelphia has no laugh track and is just great.

I gave up on television sometime around the end of Stargate SG-1, somewhere in the middle of Eureka!.

It was right around then that only the 24 hour news networks were what they said they were; there was no Sci-Fi on SyFy, no history on History, no music on MTV, no discovery on Discovery…adult prime time television was going to the humorless “gritty realism” phase, and the only topic anyone would smalltalk about was Game of Thrones.

To this day I watch basically nothing but Youtube.

…how do you know what earwax tastes like

You guys were taught that it was god?? I was taught it was always satan or some lesser demon lying to me.

Tbf he was crucified by romans of unspecified religion. Also he got better.

I’m basically invisible.

I should have just gone to your zoo… I ended up with maybe 40 quills or something, my friends collection from pulling them out of her horse and dog is bigger…

Very sadly, it was not. I’m not sure if it was my fault, the prep or what. I do eat all sorts of wild game that I’ve hunted or salvaged. I love squirrel and pigeon, I’ve eaten road kill deer, bear, moose, goose… Cotton tail and snowshoe hare… Wild Turkey… Basically if it’s made of meat I’ll give it a go. Still waiting to try raccoon and beaver, which I do wonder if they won’t share some similarities…

But I found it very unpleasant. Raw the meat was so… gelatinous? Delicate? Like pressing with a finger would leave a sad dent. It spread out on the cutting board like gravity was too much for it.

We did it as taco meat so I just threw it in the instant pot with onions and maybe some chili spices I can’t recall… it had that skunky gameyness that I’ve started to associate with older animals and poorly handled meat. She may have been a great Grammama but the meat was well cared for and eaten fresh.

We shredded and ate it on tortillas with onions and homemade salsas. My sister and brother in law didn’t mind it and my partner said it was ok but I’ve sworn them off for now. They are very charming creatures so it’s not all bad.

I had porcupine when I was a kid. I found it gross, the meat smells gross and it’s super gamey. Was cooked by my grandparents who are native and hunted all their lives so it wasn’t cooked wrong or not cleaned, I just thought it was gross.

Unrelated but moose meat is the best meat in existence IMO. I could eat that every day for the rest of my life and die with a smile on my face.

I had no hallucinations - they may have been inhibited by my absolute panic.

It was a very long time ago for me but from what I can recall -

I felt immediately mostly disconnected from my body, and like I was constantly falling or about to fall. I essentially laid there starfished on the bed telling myself over and over that it was supposed to be really short and wondering if I’d just killed myself until it passed, then got up and decided I’d never touch that shit again.

whoa! that’s funny – once I turned into a ferris wheel! I thought that was just a me thing, but circus tent sounds poetically close to my experience.

That same time though, my partner had a maybe too-intense time, meeting wise aliens and disappointedly coming back to this stupid life.

Clearly for some folks it’s great. I dunno maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. It hits you all at once, there is no buildup, and that may have contributed to me freaking out.

Don’t get me wrong, I intended my comment as a warning, but with a trusted sitter in a safe space maybe someone else will have a better first time.

My understanding is it’s not a particularly high risk drug, despite how intensely it kicks you (or at least me) in the face. (but again, don’t take my word for it)

It’s a very weird drug. I only know one person who actually likes the experience.

I went to a white and grey world where I became a bookshelf and the corner brick of a building for a bit.

I tried it a couple of times and have no desire to try it again. It’s more of a drug for people who want to explore and experiment.

My tips: sit down when doing it. Have a sober person present. People sometimes start moving around and injure themselves.

Yeah it was rough. But in the same sense that I’m glad I didn’t own a sportbike when I was young (because I’m certain I’d have hurt myself or others with it at that age), it’s probably not a bad thing that I got some firm discouragement against that kind of experimentation. It didn’t end my experimentation, but it certainly helped me realize I wasn’t immortal.

(I do none of that kind of thing for decades now. Just nothing I want to mess with these days.)

Woah man you’re, like, blowing my mind here

I’ve heard many times that “alcohol is worse than smoking pot” or “they’re about the same”, depending on who you ask. Never smoked pot, so I can’t speak from experience there, but booze never caused me any of the weird stuff I read about smoking.

Sure, drink a lot, and you you will run into some nasty problems. Also seems to hold true for the people who smoke way too much. I know some people who have been smoking for years, and their brains are clearly fried to a crisp. Then again, if they had been drinking instead, who knows how bad it would have been. Probably very bad.

However, smoking once can apparently have some unexpected results, whereas drinking once… Well, if you have just a few drinks, you should be relatively fine. If you drink a lot, you’ll wake up the next morning in someone else’s house with a stolen traffic sign next to you. Oh, and the Unexplained Party Injuries, embarrassing photos, hangover etc. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some serious downsides.

It’s just that smoking seems to have some truly bizarre downsides. Maybe it’s all about how much you smoke.

The guy we buy our edibles from indeed uses a whole ounce in every batch. I only have a nibble and my husband eats half of whatever it is, muffin or brownie.

If skiing takes a lot of physical work, that’s a sign that your stance is off. You can ski almost anywhere just by shifting your body weight from one foot to the other. Back when I was a ski instructor, my old boss (a ski instructor of multiple decades) used to say that skiing is a “skeletal” sport, not a “muscular”. If you’re working hard it’s likely because there’s something wrong with your stance and you’re subconsciously using your muscles to compensate. The most common specific example of this I saw in my lessons (and had a habit of myself which I’ve been working on for years) was skier’s quads burning out, because they were leaning back (consciously or not), because they lacked confidence (consciously or not).

I’ve come to learn that this advice applies to any physical activity. You can tell a master by their economy of movement, whether it’s snow sports, playing an instrument, martial arts, or tossing haybails. Use weight and momentum, don’t fight it.

My instructor told me that if you just relax, you won’t be in control any more, and the board will just slide somewhere. Instead, you need to actively push one of the edges down into the snow. That sort of board rotation requires good balance and strength. If you’re not up for it, you’ll end up loosing your balance, and sort of “falling” gently. No speed required. You can do these gentle falls, and you’ll feel nothing. It’s just that next morning, you’ll suddenly realized how much stress yesterday actually put on your shoulders.

Turns out, you should never go snowboarding unless you’re already able to stand on your heels and/or toes for an extended period of time. That sort of balancing, endurance and strength is absolutely crucial.

You can twist to brake with skis too! (hockey stop) :)

You shouldn’t be exerting too much muscle if you are skiing on relatively unbroken terrain. The only time you really use a lot of leg muscle is in deep, deep, heavy powder, in order to keep your tips up. Or if you are going over huge moguls or bumps at a high rate of speed, using your legs as giant shock absorbers.

If you have tight boots, sharp ski edges, and a slightly forward stance, your leg muscles shouldn’t tire out very quickly.

Yes you can, however it takes a few trips (at least for me) to learn to do that without falling. In the process you will fall a lot and hurt yourself a lot.

That is true. However, spending one hour is way too much. Maybe something like 20 minutes three times a day for two weeks would be better. That way, the impact stress would be tolerable and necessary muscles would have enough time to grow. Sadly, that sort of thing is fundamentally incompatible with the way vacations and ski resorts work.