The Google Nest Mini is a smart speaker, not the smart thermostat with a similar name.

I mean, come on. Being not too proud to ask for help, allowing someone else to feel useful and genuinely being appreciative of their help? That’s pretty fucking hot to be honest. Maybe I’m a slut for being made to feel useful and appreciated.

OG sandals involved socks always. Granted fashion has changed a bit over the various millennia since the invention of sandals and socks.

Old enough to know what the Internet sounds like and to have actually made mixtapes on tape.

Being much closer to her height than his I can confidently say that’s just not true, short of your feet literally hanging off the end of a bed. You just have bad posture, bad form, and don’t stretch.

Why? Height doesn’t automatically equate to back problems. Uneven weight distribution (belly, boobs, etc.), poor stretching habits, lack of excerise, bad posture/form/lifting, or injury equate to back problems at ANY height.

Not just typical. It should be celebrated. I for one throughly enjoy seeing cross cultural exchanges of any creative type. Exotic doesn’t need to be derogatory or dehumanizing. (it’s really unfortunate that it most often is.) Everybody is exotic somewhere.

Git gud.

This is only looking at emissions. It’s absolutely not considering the consequences of the heavy metal mining that is required to produce those massive batteries. It also totally ignores the problem of how to dispose of, reuse, or recycle those old batteries once they can no longer be effective in your vehicle.

Obviously we ultimately need to dump internal combustion engines, but focusing solely on emissions is a kind of green washing meant to convince you to consume. The 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) continue to be the most effective way for an individual to limit their environmental impact. Those first 2 R’s are all about reducing by taking public transport and re-using that older car (and keeping it well maintained to reduce consumption), not going out to buy the newest electric swastika.

All of those kinds of communities, where people tell anecdotes about their lives, turned into creative writing excerises for wannabe authors long before we had to worry about AI slop. TIFU, AmITheAsshole, RelationshipAdvice, etc. were all getting pretty derivative and sensational for clicks long before the exodus. Now they’re all either that or illiterate attention seekers showing off the results of their latest LLM prompts. I liked those stories too, but I don’t want anything to do with any of those communities anymore. It all just turned into a training ground for LLMs generating engagement. YouTube still tries to force those dumb AI story voiceover videos to me constantly. We used to joke that “nothing ever happens”, but everyday that sentiment feels a little less cynical and a little more real.

Pineapple pizza really is kinda meh by itself. But, pineapple + jalapeno + a salty/savory topping like pepperoni can be amazing.

Semi-tangential non-sequitor: The news algorithms offered up the recipe for an “Italian treat” recently that had me appalled and curious in the same way I expect pineapple pizza haters are. It was very ripe cantaloupe slices wrapped in prosciutto. I don’t even really know what to say. I just don’t want to be alone in knowing about that monstrosity.

First of all, yes, those look like shit. Brown gravy? Square flat bricks that I assume are meant to be biscuits? Just awful.

But, an over easy or sunny side up egg is always a welcome addition to biscuits and gravy. That’s the only thing they got right.

I really don’t get how people screw up the gravy so badly. It’s just sausage crumbles in a pan, coated with flour once the fat has rendered (melted) a bit, then adding milk or cream and pepper to your desired consistency and taste respectively. Simmer and add spices until it looks good. Maybe add some minced sage if the sausage doesn’t have it already. If you’re not starting your gravy recipe for biscuits and gravy with sausage, you’re doing it wrong and should be ashamed. It doesn’t come from a box. It’s not white as a sheet and devoid of spice or flavor. It’s not vegetarian. It’s not gluten free. It’s also not brown gravy, which is made entirely differently using fond to give it the brown color.

The biscuits are no better. Even Bisquick biscuits from a box would turn out better for most people than these depressing bricks.

What’s wrong with tuna salad? Potato salad? Macaroni salad? Coleslaw (a kind of cabbage salad)? Mayo isn’t really all that different than many other salad dressings either. Also, pretty much any decent deli sandwich is basically a salad with meat and cheese dressed in mayo between two slices of bread.

You’re missing out.

Bicycles (and electric scooters) are vehicles that should also be following the same rules as car, i.e. not driving the wrong way down a one way street and not bombing down the sidewalk. I mean, I still look both ways, but that’s because people are dumb maniacs on the road, not because bicycles.

Can you still buy a star? Obviously dubious that you actually own it. But certainly bigger than anything on earth and a bit tricky to deliver.

He was TOO good at the satire. On the left dum-dums thought he was actually right, while on the right dum-dums thought he was on their side.

Also, I think people are hitting their limit of joking about the collapse of democracy and civil society. I know I am. I know there are now movies, TV, and books that I might have found interesting in less interesting times; now it all just hits too close to home. John Oliver can hit those “too close to home” topics and move on to other things. But it always felt like when Colbert was doing his conservative pundit schtick, he was trapped in it. It was harder to laugh along with him about other things that weren’t specifically about that kind of satire. He might have had some more material of a particular idiom if he’d stuck with it, but that idiom can wear thin.

Aggressive is modifying “virtue signaling”. I guess I could have been more clear by adding an “ly” to make it clear that aggressive was an adverb.

But, honestly in my experience there is ALWAYS someone finding some new way to understand your comment so that they have something to argue with. I was both making a joke AND making a point. Complicated, I know.

And it is something to criticize: OP asked about “X”, commenter replied about NOT “X”.

I downvoted your comment because it’s doesn’t really add anything to the conversation, it’s just aggressive virtue signalling.

Oh yeah, I’m aware. I don’t really disagree in general, but that dependency on devices is problematic. Also, I think that dependency is almost entirely a fiction. The only vendors I’ve ever met that don’t take cash, weren’t selling anything I’d generally need in an emergency or miss if I couldn’t get it immediately, e.g. craft/art fair vendors and fly by night food trucks. And I mostly managed to navigate everywhere without a map, even though I kept one in the glove box. The U.S. (I assume we’re talking about the U.S. because carbrained) is fairly easy to navigate without either as long as you can find a highway and you can read road signs. Maps helped sometimes sure, but the lack of one never made me feel unsafe. Sure, things can go badly, but that’s due to a lack of ingenuity and knowledge (street smarts as we used to call it), not the lack of a phone. In fact, I’ve gotten just as lost while looking at a map and trying to follow a friend’s directions. Maps, physical or digital, are almost always wrong or outdated to some degree.

You’re only as dependent on your phone as you make yourself. That crutch is the real danger.

It’s amusing to me that the very idea of leaving the house without your cellphone is seen as very dangerous. But I guess payphones and landlines at every tiny shred of civilization aren’t really a thing anymore. Nobody could track me and I could get genuinely stranded occasionally for the first few decades on my life, but I never felt that lifestyle was dangerous. Just raw dogging life before it was cool I guess.