You have thin soles so you can tell where you are in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

Not a hockey fan, is that because it’s too cheap or too expensive?

You can put them in between 2 bowls with their (the bowls) rims against each other to create an oblate spheroid-ish thing, then shake it real hard for a few minutes. It should remove the shell pretty eaily, if loudly.

Edit: Sorry, turns out, that’s garlic cloves. Shrimp peeling is really only easier raw. You can rip the legs off and just give a squeeze and it’ll pop out of the shell. In my experience, once they’re cooked the shell will break up much easier. As someone else said, a stock is your best bet if you really want to avoid peeling. I mean, technically you can eat the shell if you make sure to grind them up completely when you puree them. I’ve never tried anything with the shell still included, so I can’t speak for the taste, but you could try a bisque if you’re dead set on not peeling.

How does that work, physiologically? We’re talking dopamine in the brain. If what that user said was true and “overstimulation like that drains your dopamine reserves (or something),” then another person being there wouldn’t make a difference.

I mean, it’s because they have a misunderstanding on how brain chemistry works, obviously. Like, it can store it, but it doesn’t get used up from doing things that feel good. That’s what makes dopamine. And while loneliness is a problem in the general population, it’s more likely that longer lasting gratification from sex isn’t from the physical act or even just the physical act with another person, but the joy gained from the relationship as a whole. Pretending that there’s chemically something different happening in the brain just because there is physically another person there is ridiculous. I’ve had plenty of unfulfilling sex with people I didn’t like that didn’t make me happy/content afterwards like masturbating would have.

While it doesn’t work as well with or as your joke, the ATF is actually now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. So we need to add the E as well and we can spell FACET, which is less fun. Or use M for Marijuana and spell FMEAT.

🎵 MaaaaaaaaaataVatnik 🎵

🎵 You got to put on the red light 🎵

🎵 The day is all gone, You’ve got to read your book into the the night. 🎵

has aged like fine wine

This has nothing to do with your actual points, I just wanted to share a neat fact about wines and this common phrase. The quality of wine has little to do with it’s improvement with age. In fact, most wines - fine ones included - are intended to be consumed within a year (Usually less) of bottling or being sold. Wines typically have to be designed to age over long periods with a number of different small ingredients that can affect it. Most wines will start turning real vinegary after a year and be basically all vinegar by year 3-ish. Though wines with metal screw-caps will last longer, though not receive any of the benefits of the aging process should they be “age-able” as small levels of oxygen that leaks in through corks are essential to the aging process.

More to our actual point, I remember hearing a theory once when Alyx came out that Valve releases new large games like that when they have new technology they want to show off. Half-life showed off the physics engine. Portal used the physics but showed off the portals. Alyx showed off the VR tech. And they only do it when they know they can do it well. Since their goals aren’t direct game sales but to just make a really good game that uses a specific tech, they succeed but have no intention to milk the franchise.

Actually, after writing that I looked and found an interview with Gabe after Alyx was released where he outright stated that the series was meant to be used this way and not to sell games.

Newell said “Half-Life games are supposed to solve interesting problems,” and explained that Valve doesn’t want to just “crank Half-Life titles out because it helps us make the quarterly numbers.”

Corporate has clarified that they use the ingredient Not Bugs^TM

“It’s definitely Not Bugs^TM!”*

It’s actually pretty normal and you probably do it without realizing it. Occasionally the lungs just need to absorb a little extra oxygen to catch up. You ever watch a dog sleep and every now and then they just take a big inhale? Same thing.

Found this neat source:

“A sigh is a long, deep breath that is often viewed as an expression of stress, sadness, exhaustion or relief. However, the most frequent sighs are unnoticed and occur spontaneously every several minutes, about a dozen times per hour.”

. . .

“The lung is composed of hundreds of millions of alveoli, the gas exchange units at terminal ends of the respiratory tract, each of which is about 200 micrometers in diameter. During normal breathing, alveoli spontaneously collapse, a pathological condition known as atelectasis. A sigh is hypothesized to reverse any alveolar collapse, because it is a large breath that re-expands all alveoli, filling them all with air.”

… all those other words that don’t follow the rule.

Oh boy. I made the jump from SLA to (kinda) publication order. Going from his most intricate series to his first published book was almost jarring. I still liked Elantris though.

Personally, I read through close to publication order, but grouped series together. Well, I guess it’s really just Mistborn and maybe Emperor’s Soul with Elantris, but those last ones aren’t actually in the same set, just the same planet.

It’s because the author is friends with one of the lead guys over at Epic in charge of the game. They cycle through so many characters that they just start asking their friends for ideas I guess.

Oh man, every time someone asks a question along these lines I always think of the movie Hank and Mike. I found it in a discount bin at a grocery store probably a decade ago so I took a little time to actually look into it more this time. I knew it was Canadian and unlikely a big hit, but apparently it was just so poorly received. It made less than $17,000 of the $2M it cost, and it’s real tough to find anyone even reviewing it. I even struggled to find the music from it. (The one song is badass). And it’s got a couple B-tier actors that I remember doing a great job, and I think Joe Mantegna really went for it in his role as the god Pan. Chris Klein kills it in this song.

The crude humor kinda puts people off I think but the satirical aspects cut a little deeper than the movie needed to. And probably when I discovered it I was depressed and had a drinking problem and the overall mood of it really felt at home to me at the time so I was able to just live in those aspects of the film and really absorb the more subtle message. It’s definitely absurd in many points but there’s a lot of heart in it.

And to add to what this user said, planning is also key. Its actually what led my to realizing that my (really bad) ADHD was exacerbating my depressions and anxiety symptoms because I didn’t have the native skills to deal with them. Not thinking about ADHD I just learned to plan literally everything as a coping mechanism for the anxiety. Weekends I’d plan the general things for the week, then every morning I’d write out a detailed version of that day’s tasks, each broken down by parts. If it’s a call I have to make, I write out a little script with key things I need to say/ask and maybe write out the whole sentence so I don’t have to think about it mid convo, I’m just reading. Planning for as many things as I could like that really reduced the stress-load I’d deal in most scenarios.

I cracked a molar years ago and I was too broke and underemployed to get it dealt with. As time went on it slowly rotted away in the back of my mouth. I was already depressed and dealing with it just wasn’t a priority. It just became a part of my life and I would chew on the other side without thinking and eventually the pain just went away because I was stubborn and I think my brain just stopped recognizing those signals. It was bad.

Last year I went to get it extracted and as I was talking to the dental hygienist about it she said something that I really liked and I was actually really surprised at the compassion from a dentist’s office.

I’ve always tried to be open about my mental problems because the world needs to lose the stigma we’ve placed on it. I’m not ashamed by any of it, but I definitely understand why many are. So when I told her that I’d spent several years dealing with depression and taking care of my teeth just wasn’t a priority at that time, she said “Hey, it’s alright. Sometimes we have to let some things go to survive whatever we’re dealing with. But you’re able to take care of it now and we’re gonna help with that.”

You did what you had to do to deal with your anxiety and you should be proud of that. It’s not easy, but try not to view the tooth as a reminder anymore than a messy kitchen is a reminder that you were too busy to do the dishes yesterday. It’s just a result of a thing that millions of people go through every day. You’re taking care of it just like you’d wash those dishes, and then you’re going to move on with the rest of your day. I still have that empty spot in the back of my mouth and honestly, I forget about it even as my tongue pokes at that empty spot sometimes. This is the first time I’ve even thought about it in months and months, and it’s been about a year since it was removed. As for after, depending on where it is, you might not really notice soon after. Generally there’s like this plug of congealed and scabbed blood in the spot that you have to be careful with the first week or so, but I didn’t experience any pain.

My own anxiety had my blood pressure sky high when they first went in and they couldn’t do anything yet so they gave me a while to calm down and one of the hygienists was there and explained to me what to expect afterwards. She assured me it wouldn’t even be noticeable and she was right. But you should be able to ask them as well to get a professional idea for your expectations to assuage your worry. But also, just from experience, I can say that it’ll be fine, you’ll stop noticing and stop thinking about it once there isn’t something in your mouth that you always have to be aware of.

I actually know this one. Access is available through the MS Office 2019 bundle officially and they pretend it’s not really there with 365, but if you have Office365 you can download the app version to work offline. Access still doesn’t show up on the main list in the app, but if you search it’s there. There’s also a way to search it in apps online in 365 but it just downloads it and only runs in the app.

I recently went back to school and the basic degree requirements necessitated an intro to CIS class. It was just a glorified MS suite class. But I had an interesting time figuring out how to get to Access and no where online makes it clear. That’s the main reason I typed this out. Maybe some day someone else will have the same issue and this comment will show up on a search and be able to help them. You’re welcome future person!

Jesus fucking christ. You know how water works, right? It fits the form of the container it’s in. It’s an simplified analogy to explain what that other guy linked to. We (well, you) see a universe fit to our kind of life, but the reality is that we developed to fit the universe.

You remind me of this guy I saw the other day claiming that a whole bunch of rocks that are vaguely shaped like body parts might be fossilized body parts.

He just kept saying “I’m not saying it definitely is, but imagine if we don’t understand the world, and it’s maybe this way? Crazy right?!”

It’s such cowardly bullshit. If you want to believe a thing because it sounds nice to you, don’t half-ass it and throw qualifiers on it. You brought it up, and then when challenged the tiniest bit, backed down with a “I’m not saying that’s definitely true… but maybe…?”

and that doesn’t match our expectations.

What expectations? Actual scientist, using facts, don’t have expectations of alien life. We don’t know the probability of life existing anywhere but here because we have nothing to compare it to. We have the one universe with the one data set available to us. Until we discover alien life, we should have no expectation for it. Do I think it’s likely there is life elsewhere? Yes. Does that mean I expect it? No. We don’t have enough information about the cosmos to even start to calculate whether it should happen.

I had a roommate once who believed that the stuff from the Alvin the Maker book series was real. The magic and shit. I asked if he had anything that led him to believe that or if he just really liked the books and wanted it to be. OF course he didn’t have any evidence or real reason for it. He just wanted it to be so, so he decided that he was going to believe that thing.

You’re doing that. Stop it. Be a grown-up here and stop believing in make-believe and believe things only when we have sufficient (or in your case, I’ll take any) evidence.

Have you heard of the puddle analogy?

A small amount of water sits there, it this hole in the ground it finds itself in. It looks at this cavity, observes how perfectly it fits the contours of their liquid body. It’s perfect! Every nook and cranny seems to be formed to fit the puddle perfectly.

“This hole must have been made for me! It’s too much of a coincidence that, with all the ways a hole could form, this one formed perfectly to fit me!”

You’re doing that. You’re saying it’s a crazy coincidence that all the right things were in place here for life to exist that led to us being here… but if it wasn’t, then we just wouldn’t have developed as life-forms. Or if the environs were different, life would have developed to fit into that kind of solar system. I think you just like the idea, so you believe it, but I think it’s better to believe things we have evidence for.

Fuck that nonsense. This is the same mindset as every poor person who thinks of themselves as a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” You say it with the assumption that you’re somewhere in that equation and don’t give a shit about any kind of equality. That’s selfish as shit. You phrase it like they should be stopped from helping to make sure their kids are still fed while off at college or some shit, but we’re talking about millionaires helping their millionaire children also maintain their millionaire lifestyle by leveraging their brand to possibly get a role someone without famous parents could use to fucking survive. I don’t care how able he is to do a good job, it’s bullshit to pretend he actually deserves it because his parents really feel like he should.

Yeah.

I’m not vying for a pure meritocracy, but the system we currently have to work and live in, as established, expects merit to be the thing that enables success and advancement in living conditions. As long as that’s the system were in, those that already exist with a certain level of privilege of already achieving acceptable, if not ample living conditions, shouldn’t be given an additional lead on those that don’t. This guy was never going to be poor or struggling to eat because he couldn’t find a job.

When speaking about privilege, I like to use the race analogy. Some people are given bikes while some are given cars, and others even just have to walk. This guy was born with a sports car already, then his parents started him a mile ahead from the starting line.