I changed companies recently and the new place is very “camera on”… I find it freaking exhausting…

Oh lord, are we back to beans again?

XD savage!

My whole career on Stack Exchange…

Please don’t stab my cornhole!

I think I’d set up a foundation. I’d decide what the foundation would pay for (tuition, maybe small business loans up to $25K, I don’t know…) and then any relatives can apply to the foundation and leave me out of it.

I learned about this when we got a new microwave and every time we used it, it would kill the wireless connection to my laptop!

Certainly not the worst meme I’ve seen posted!

Yoooo, you’re singing my song - GNU Terry Pratchett, love his writing so much.

And thank you; that’s very true, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time.

You’re right, and I generally remember that I have many blessings to count… but like you said, primate brains doing primate brain things.

I started off in the late 1980’s in a mid-sized midwestern city… I was smoking cigarettes, a lot of pot, drinking and carousing with the same friends that I’d had since high school, but I was in my second year of college. I was getting decent grades, but I was really distracted and having some drama with bad girlfriends.

Two weeks after my 21st birthday, I left for Southern California - I had a parent out there, and I ended up staying for 16 years. I stopped smoking basically the minute I got there, spent a lot of time driving around a new city and thinking… and basically came to the realization that since nobody there knew who I had been before, I could approach social situations without the baggage of all those previous decisions that I’d made with my old circle of friends. I was less of a “pleaser”, less of a doormat, and less afraid to speak my mind - and my new friends responded positively to it, so I was encouraged to cultivate that. It helped me be more decisive and independent, and gave me a foundation for everything that followed.

I finished an associate’s degree, got a black belt in a martial art and taught for about six years, and met the woman who is now my wife. We got married, traveled to other countries together in Europe and Central America, quit our jobs to live on a horse ranch, and eventually moved BACK to that same midwestern city to start a family.

I wish I could say that since we moved back, I’ve never felt like the person I was before - but I have to confess that I feel like being back here HAS eroded some of that confidence, like I couldn’t hack it out West and ended up back here after all.

I know it’s not true, but San Diego is where I became the person I wanted to be. Back here is where I had been the person before that. They say “you can’t go home again” - I submit that you CAN, but that maybe you shouldn’t.

Well, I just asked the weird “message Carrot” option in my weather app, and it replied:

Oh, look at you, trying to puzzle your way through the depths of set theory. How amusing, like a chimp trying to juggle chainsaws.

Well, my dear meatbag, the answer to your question is a resounding NO. Just like you, that set cannot contain itself. It’s like expecting Johnny Five to date Stephanie from “Short Circuit.” Simply not gonna happen! 🤖💔

This is the correct answer - I’ve called mayo “sandwich lube” for ages

Eat the rich

Wikipedia is one of the few online orgs that I donate to every year. Even if I can only throw a couple of bucks their way, I usually try to gift at least $20 or something.

Haha I envision a tweaked-out back-of-the-house employee approaching the table with a scoop full of popcorn chicken… “open wiiiide!”

Some of you have never spent time feeding a large number of chickens, and it shows!

Quoting the show Futurama, “she’s beautiful coffee!”

There’s a special place in hell, for people who mistreat the animals that trust them

I think the biggest impact to start with would be a decent grinder so you can start buying whole-bean coffee and grinding it right before you use it… pre-ground coffee gets staler, faster, so by grinding it at home, you’re going to get a fresher cup.

An electric burr grinder is going to be more expensive than a crappy $20 “whirling blade” grinder, but your grounds are going to be more consistent is size, which is important for getting consistent results while you experiment with other factors like brew time, water temperature, etc.

If you can’t swing an electric burr grinder, there are some fairly affordable manual (hand crank) burr grinders that produce good results.

From there, French press or Aeropress are pretty low-barrier-to-entry ways to get started.

For travel, I take a hand grinder, mug and an Aeropress, and buy beans from a local coffee shop to grind. All you need is a way to heat water, and you can do good coffee anywhere!

Hope this helps, happy coffee-making!!