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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • 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.


  • So… your source to back up your point is an excerpt from a fictional book written by someone who’s expertise is in writing fiction?

    Personally, I try not to take the word of someone who is not an expert, or at least versed in that particular area. Just because Pratchett was very a progressive writer doesn’t mean his opinions on gun control should be taken for anything more than his own personal position.

    And if we’re just going to cite his fiction as his opinion, we have to assume he was also pro-police violence. I don’t know how much Discworld you’ve red, but even as Vimes progressed as a character and got better in a lot of ways, he always ended up resolving the issue by skirting the actual law and bending the rules to fit his purpose. Often he would espouse how much easier his job and the city would be if he wasn’t restricted by the law. Not everyone else, they still need to follow the law, but Sam Vimes knows better. There were even times when Pratchett would start to push back on that idea like he was going to have Vimes actually understand that police aren’t special and should be as answerable to the law as anyone… then the conflict would always be resolved by Vimes going outside the law and taking it into his own hands. He never learned that lesson. Quite the opposite actually.

    So for those unfamiliar, Pratchett was so conservative, he was writing about rogue cops taking the law into their own hands before you kids ever heard those words put together.



  • don’t even know enough to care in the first place.

    but ultimately it’s the user who decides to use the service, and how to use it.

    So you admit they don’t have access to the knowledge needed to make better choices for their digital security. Then immediately blame them. I think your bias from the point of view of a one that is already more informed on this sort of thing. If they don’t know they need to know more, how can they be expected to do any research? There’s only so much time in a day so you can’t expect people to learn “enough” about literally everything.


  • I routinely pre-make breakfast sandwiches for the week and have pretty much perfected what I like at this point.

    English muffins a great for reheating, sourdough I find reheats the best. I typically toast them slightly as well to maintain some crunch

    What you came for: Eggs. I switch up between fried eggs and scrambled. I like my fried eggs a little undercooked, so they can be messier to eat, but scrambled eggs require a good bit of cheese to hold them together. Fried is pretty self explanatory since it’s still one piece and you just stick it on there. For scrambled I’ll mix in some cheese while I cook them, then when I put it on the sandwich it gets a slice or 2 of cheese on top to melt and hold it in place. I’ve tried using cookie cutters or muffin pans to get egg rounds, but getting a size that also matches your sandwich usually requires buying a special sized thing that’s used only for that purpose, which I try to avoid. Plus I’ve found that having the eggs in a disc shape just seems to not hold up as well over the week compared to scrambled or fried. The texture tends more to rubbery for me for some reason.

    Bacon or ham is good as well

    Instead of getting sausage patties already shaped, I’ll opt for the tubes of raw sausage. like with the eggs, pre-shaped patties are always too small and you don’t get full coverage, and you definitely want every bit to have a little of everything. So I get the tubes and stick them in the freezer while I cook most everything else, then when it’s close to frozen- but not completely solid, just more firm- take it out and with a serrated knife cut into thick rounds. You’ll want them thick because you’ll need to press them to expand the diameter. They’re gonna lose a lot of that size when the fat cooks out so make them bigger than your sandwich when you press them out. Then you can just pan-sear the patties and finish off in the oven if they’re not cooked through yet.

    I’ll then put the sandwiches together. Depending on how well the scrambled eggs are holding together, I pay stick the bottom half of the sandwiches in the oven for a couple minutes just to melt the cheese slice on the eggs and keep them where they’re supposed to be.

    Once done and they’re all put together, make sure they’ve cooled off completely and wrap each one in foil (definitely spray some non-stick spray on the foil to make it easier to remove after re-heating). Then in the morning you just toss a foil-wrapped sandwich in the over (I use an air-fryer typically but conventional ovens work as well, but will need a lower temp and take longer. But you can have that warming up while you do everything else to get ready for the day).

    It takes some time to set it all up, but I usually set aside a whole day on weekends to do my grocery shopping, cooking and prep for the week. And these sandwiches seem to keep pretty well for me. I’ve been able to make enough for as far out as 10 days and don’t notice an appreciable decline in quality.


  • 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.”



  • 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.



  • I saw that argument and they actually said they put them out after Passover (in spring) then bring them back in when it gets cold. That’s months, right? And they’re not exactly in frigid climes- definitely closer to temperate, so that easily extends well into the late fall.

    Again though, that was written later (A lot later) by someone (who wasn’t there) specifically to try and give a time frame. There’s no way it was an actual description of what happened, but them setting a scene … that has trouble standing up to historical critique.


  • But like, their local tax season, right? From what I remember they had travelled to pay taxes, but the Romans didn’t wait until April like America does.

    Actually, did some quick searching and it looks like the Romans were forcing (I think Jewish people, but it may also have been regional? Sources are giving me different things and I can’t be bothered to log into my account that gives me access to scholarly articles) people to register for a new tax. Since the Romans at the time would usually tax in cycles of like, 5-15 years, if they followed a structured system at all (It also seems like there wasn’t income tax or taxes in individual assets, but they would tax transactions and import/exports mostly). But If I was going to set something like that up, I’d do the registration due near the end of the year. I think they were using the Julian Calendar whish largely lines up with the current day calendar, at least in the year end/beginning. Best guess from what I’ve seen is they likely were there during the Jewish holidays right after the fall harvest.

    So it seems like they waited until after the harvest was done, then had to travel to get registered by end of year and got there and popped out baby jesus around Sept/Oct (ish).

    Of course that’s assuming any of those stories have any validity. Historical consensus is coming around to admitting how little evidence for a biblical Jesus there actually is. Since there are no contemporary writings and all of them were telling this story decades, if not centuries later, it’s super easy to just line up your stories with the way things happened in the past.





  • 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!


  • I don’t know that you need a semicolon but you could definitely use one, and that would probably be the best way. Semicolons are for when two complete sentences are related. But they can still be formatted as two sentences, or even the same sentence with a comma. Many sentences contain parts that could be standalone sentences. But reading back over the original sentence again I would probably say it can just be rewritten to be more straightforward.

    “Another aspect to this video is that Somerset, when actually trying to write some of the material himself, produced complete garbage.”

    Mostly I’ve just been reading a lot of philosophy recently which tends to run on a long and complex sentence structure that’s unnecessary and could be a lot simpler, so this kind of thing has been at the front of my mind lately. That’s probably the only reason I even noticed in the first place.


  • I have no issue with the content provided, but I wanted to give a little constructive criticism on the structure of your writing. Real small. When you say,

    There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually…

    When you say there is a thing, the reader is going to assume the next thing you write to be that thing. So you don’t need the “which is that.” You can just launch right into what you’re going to say, you already set it up. You basically said “I have a thing to say. The thing I have to say is this:”

    Everything else is informative and well presented. No other notes.


  • It could also be the fact that a Mon-Fri 9-5 job just isn’t the norm and often isn’t enough for one to live for a majority of Americans, so they have less time to learn, then make those repairs. In addition, prices for tools and materials have obviously gone up, making those repairs more expensive than “back in the day.”

    Say your AC stops working at the height of summer. You go online and download the manual from the manufacturer, follow the directions to diagnose the issue. Awesome! You know what’s wrong, you just need to make a special trip to the hardware store (maybe where you live isn’t close to one since brick-and-mortar is more and more rare) and you can’t afford to wait for it to be delivered. So you buy the part and tools required at whatever price they’re selling for there because you can’t shop around. You don’t have another day off until next week, so you try to work a little bit every day on it, but you’re tired from your two jobs and only have a few hours free every day really. You’re having to stop and start constantly so you never get any momentum going on the work and it’s taking forever and the whole time you don’t have air conditioning so it’s hot as fuck. You don’t really know what you’re doing so it’s slow going. You’re losing sleep because it’s so hot and at least one of your jobs is physical and tires you out before you spend an hour tinkering with it every night. The little time that you normally get to spend with your kids is taken by this repair, and it takes almost a full week, and you have to hope you didn’t make a small mistake, because again, you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re just going from the manual, like “back in the day.” Or you could just dip into the savings and hire a guy to come out and fix it in an afternoon.

    But you’re right, it’ probably just kids these days.