I don’t remember exactly when I had my first alcoholic drink. Probably 22? I remember not being in a big hurry to start drinking, and I remember trying a wine cooler and thinking it was ok except for the alcohol flavor. Wine coolers! 🤣

I probably started drinking regularly around age 25. Some friends were having White Russians at a dinner party, and I really enjoyed the taste.

Nowadays I don’t drink much. Maybe one drink a month? It’s a tasty treat once in a while, but I hate the hung over feeling which seems to hit after like 2 drinks even if I’m careful about hydration.

Alexander, is that you?

But in space its the only option you have

Hmm, this has me thinking about the stealth ships in The Expanse. The engineering needed to make it work makes me want to cry, but in principle you could run a Peltier cooler with a swappable heat sink.

To be clear, I don’t think this is a viable option, but it’s interesting to think about.

Do I sound “schizo”?

No. You sound depressed, not schizophrenic. At least to my ear (well, eye, since I’m reading your comments rather than listening to you!)

I shared this with my wife. She said “It sounds like pangolin programming.”

This and the shopping cart test tells you a lot about a person.

Excellent. I’m also partial to this bit in the Drumhead:

With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

I lean towards discounting both rumors. I think the temptation to use said kill-switches would prove too great to resist, particularly for the authoritarian types involved.

We saw this a lot with provisions of the “PATRIOT Act”. It was championed as tools needed to combat terrorists and claimed to be reserved for such cases. In actuality, it was used to go after people running fan sites for sci-fi tv shows, among other things.

If such a kill switch existed in computer hardware, I’m sure it would have been used already. I’m less sure about a kill switch in the planes. On one hand, that’s a pretty situational tool, and you wouldn’t want to play that card until you really needed it.

OTOH, we didn’t hear about threats to throw the kill switch during the bluster over Greenland. If they had one, I think it would have been part of that bluster.

I don’t think I have that much perseverance. I’m super grateful for cookbooks with easy-to-follow recipes - I’m pretty sure I would have starved under the fail-until-you-figure-it-out approach.

In order to learn how to cook, you must first learn how to cook.

I worked in a group home in college, and part of the job was cooking. When I started, my cooking level was pretty much spaghetti and sauce from a jar. Fortunately for me, there was a set menu with recipes to follow.

I’ve learned quite a bit since then, but I’m still very much a “mechanical” cook. I’m good at following recipes, but I won’t typically be able to improvise a meal with whatever is on hand. I’ll take a look at what we have and start searching for likely-looking recipes.

The horrors persist.

But SO DO I!

Because I’m not a sociopath. In this theoretical happily-ever-after dating app, I want to make people happy by connecting them with the right other people. Ongoing business comes from happy couples giving word of mouth recommendations to their friends and family, not from trying to lock in a misery subscription.

Maybe I’m old fashioned. I remember a time when capitalism meant “make money by doing something helpful for people” instead of rent-seeking bamboozle profits.

any kind of dating app is self-detrimental for revenue

It doesn’t have to be. In the US, about 4 million people turn 18 every year. Let’s say you get all of them signed up and all of them optimally paired off. You still have another 4 million new signups next year. Until the world falls off a demographic cliff, you’ve got an evergreen customer population.

That being said, the well is VERY poisoned at this point. The match group is a cancer on our society.

Heh, I’ve also heard 33x for a 3% rule, but that really starts to get into “well, how cautious ARE you?”

I’ve heard 25x

True. Dishwasher is one thing, but IDK that I’d be able to swap out any parts on my coffee maker or immersion blender.

Any mushroom is edible…once.

manufacturers actively making products harder to repair.

Possible counterexample: My dishwasher. The drain pump is super easy to replace – unplug it, disconnect the hoses, and pop it off the little metal piece that supports its weight. It takes longer to bail out the water in the pan and wiggle it out from under the counter than it does to replace the faulty pump.

(At the same time, it’s a pretty crap model. We’ve had to replace that drain pump 3 times since 2019)

PRNDL

My brain wants this to be “Purndle”