if its rush hour on a highway, everyone is driving under the limit.

This might be true in a lot of places, but let me introduce a counterpoint: Los Angeles.

We invented freeways, and I’m convinced we’ve perfected shitty traffic. Get on the 405 anytime between 6a and 10p? Gridlock, everyone is going below the speed limit. Get on basically any of our other freeways at rush hour? Yeah, that’s going to be us doing our best impression of NASCAR, driving bumper to bumper at least 10 over the speed limit.

It’s so well known that it’s a meme at this point. Every holiday season there’s a bunch of posts on social media about visitors needing to get with the program. My favorite this year was the “stay the fuck away from the left lane” guy.

Is it safe? Probably not. Is it reality in LA? Absolutely.

This is the first thing I thought of too, would be neat to shoot once, super impractical.

That’s what we used emulsified sauces for (in addition to flavoring) when I was working in kitchens. Mayo for instance is a tasty sauce, but it’ll also prevent the bread from absorbing moisture from the other fillings.

I don’t know why, I’m pretty sure hotdogs are more expensive per pound than ground beef at my local shop. 70/30 (which is fattier than I normally purchase) was $3/lb last time I was there, hotdogs are almost double that. Maybe that’s just a local thing?

I think this labelling is just marketing. Given the name of the product contains “hamburger” they can assume anyone buying it already knows they can add ground beef. I think they just added hotdogs to the label to give people ideas about other proteins they can use.

It’s been decades since I’ve eaten Hamburger Helper, but I recall liking it more with hotdogs.

Why not have both? I’ve lived in the western US my entire life, but I think pickled herring is delicious, and I made rillettes (which is like a pate) just the other day.

Rich people aren’t even in the graphic, they’re way off the top of the scale. The top of this graph doesn’t even get you into the top 5% in my state.

You sound reasonable, and I don’t have all the information, but maybe I can play devil’s advocate.

Suppose your friend is actually a good dad, and is using his time without his kids around to catch up with his friends, listen to what’s topical in your life, and then do something other than talk about his kids?

This is a non-rhetorical good faith question: should kids be the sole focus of their parent’s lives once they have them?

I agree that kids need to be the top priority once people have them, no question there. But aren’t parents allowed to have lives of their own as well?

I don’t have kids and I’m at the age where most of my friends have them. The folks I knew whose only focus was on their kids gradually phased out of the group. Many of those people ended up divorced unfortunately. The parents I see regularly spend most of their time on their kids, but also have hobbies and interests outside of just kid stuff.

People who have their own lives in addition to being good parents seem to be happier and more well rounded. It also makes connecting with them easier for people without kids. I’m up to date on their kids, go to birthdays, and occasionally babysit. We have kid friendly dinners at each other’s homes, go camping with kids, etc… But we also go out once in awhile without them, catch games, play golf.

I feel like that’s healthier.

The apocryphal story is actually kind of interesting.

Roads and right of way established during the pre-firearm era were that you’d ride on the left, with people going the opposite way on your right. This was so you could use your dominant hand (usually your right) to use a sword to defend yourself.

Roads after firearms were available often established right of way with riding on the right, with oncoming traffic on the left. This is because when you shoulder a firearm on your right shoulder it’s easier to aim left.

Stagecoach drivers would sit in the left seat, with the extra person sitting on the right, holding a shotgun, hence the colloquial term for the front passenger seat.

I have no idea how true this is, but it makes for an interesting story.

I’m not sure that’s the point of the story, but I may be wrong. What I got from it is that the Democratic party has already gerrimanderd basically everywhere they could, leaving few other places to manipulate to counter the Republican effort in Texas (and other states).

I voted, and not for Trump, but I think it’s fair to say that both major parties screw around with districting to enhance their advantage and cement their control over states. It just so happens that the Dems have fewer cards to play in this particularly stupid game.

You’re being obtuse. Separate men’s and women’s clubs work just fine IRL. Sports, social, and charity are just a few examples in my local community which are thriving.

Again, you make some great points, especially about profit motive and lack of strong consumer rights.

If I want a smoker I can monitor on the fly I will look at something like that thermometer paired with a standard steel smoker that will last decades.

When I’m not going old school with my stick burner I run a Yoder YS640S with a Fireboard controller. The Yoder is an extremely high quality pellet smoker which given proper maintenance will last longer than I’ll be alive. It and the Fireboard are designed, built, and shipped from the US (where I live), which is also nice. I don’t know exactly how Fireboard runs their cloud services, but from looking at the privacy policy and sniffing the unit’s traffic (a few years ago) it looks like Google Cloud and Analytics. They also disclose that if you use the Fireboard outside of the US, that your data will be stored and processed in the US, which is interesting, but may be misleading.

Fireboard is an interesting company, they started out by making temperature monitors and blowers for retrofitting into home built smokers, which I think is pretty cool.

I had a fire unrelated to my smoker which destroyed the smart bits of the Yoder, and both Yoder and Fireboard customer support were excellent to work with to help me rebuild my smoker.

I’m not stanning for either of these companies, perhaps just explaining why I’ve opted to make some tradeoffs for the convenience this particular product offers.

If I need to adjust it remotely I will look at why I need this option first: is it realistic that I would just adjust it without checking the contents?

Yes. I’m primarily looking at internal temp curves. Sometimes that prompts a simple pit temp change, sometimes it means I need to interact with the contents like spraying or wrapping. I’ve cooked often enough on this unit to know what the contents look like and how they react to smoke given the internal and pit temp curves.

Generally speaking I agree with your take on garbage consumer products being designed to extract money from the consumer before crapping out early and being thrown away. I think I’ve done well to select the products I have to keep that from being the reality with my pellet smoker.

Depending on the internal temperature curve I may need to change cook temps in the pit, which I can do remotely. I also monitor the curve to determine when to spray and wrap, and other activities, depending on what is smoking.

You make some good points.

I live a mile and a half from the ocean and run my smoker for long periods. It’s really nice to monitor and change the temp while I’m drinking the beer you refer to from the sand. I make a few quick runs back up the hill to tend to things, but mostly I’m free to be elsewhere for the 12-ish hours the smoker is running. It’s really nice, not a hard requirement, but really convenient.

It’s a mixed bag.

Growing up was made difficult because school is so slow that I’d rather be getting into trouble than sitting in class. By the start of middle school I’d already read the entire high school honors reading list, I had to walk to the high school from my middle school in 7th grade to take math classes. I rarely had regular school work in high school, nearly all of my academic teachers designed a different curriculum for me, which was nice but probably mostly to keep me from acting up in class. I never studied or did a shred of homework, but got good grades.

Social interactions were tough, I’m not much of an empath, not that I don’t experience empathy but emotions just aren’t intuitive, actually they often are the opposite of what you’d expect to be helpful, especially among young people. I had to concentrate to read people’s faces and mannerisms to understand the emotional and social subtexts of most interactions. I self medicated with alcohol a lot in high school.

All of my academic classes in high school were honors, and my final 2 years were all AP, while lettering in 3 varsity sports (4 total, but you can only play 3 each academic year). It wasn’t until my second year in uni that I ran into a class for which I actually had to study (nuclear chemistry), and boy was that an awful surprise. A handful of classes were like this for me, most I just showed up 3 times and got a good grade: the first day of class so I wouldn’t get dropped, the midterm, and the final.

I read quickly, think systematically, and information just sticks in my head. It was very difficult to understand why this wasn’t how most people were. Everything I do I analyze for improvement, and remember to do it better the next time. My wife calls me a skill collector because people seem to think I’m super good at everything, but to me it’s just logical that if you’re going to take time do something you might as well do it as well as possible.

After uni things started getting easier. Being forced to closely analyze social interactions and systematically give the “right” reactions is extremely useful in professional life. I wear this mask in all my interactions with all but my closest friends. It’s a bit psychopathic, but I don’t do it to anyone’s detriment, it’s mostly to get along and fit in.

I’ve self selected for highly intelligent friends, and I’m exhilarated to meet new people who can communicate with the kind of bandwidth that our brains run at, if that makes sense. I’m still close with most of my friends from high school, who have had varying levels of success, but I still have to be guarded when it comes to activities or conversation to make sure I don’t stick out too much.

In general I have a very pessimistic view of people and the world. The average person isn’t very sharp, and half of all people are dumber than that. However many smart people do evil things, most of the time for no reason at all. It’s exhausting to keep up with it all, so I just focus on my path and my family, and do what I can to directly improve my community.

It would be nice to fit in a little easier, but I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything else.

You’re not wrong, but in this specific case he was in ICE custody for less than 12 hours.

I agree this is total fuckery, but at least the dude was released hours later.

Source

I don’t expose anything to the internet other than the WireGuard endpoint.

This is the way

Segregated facilities are already illegal, including language about them in contracts is redundant, because contracts which compel illegal behavior are unenforceable.

Morning: Work out, shower, coffee, protein shake, make breakfast for my wife, hop on the laptop.

Night: Cook dinner, kiss my wife when she gets home. Hit a few golf balls on the simulator. Watch an episode from an anime series if there’s something new. Maybe have a cocktail with the neighbor.

Shower, scroll for about 30 minutes, sleep.

I feel very lucky, and try not to take each day for granted.

I agree, but most Lemmings seem to be completely intolerant of right of center views. I’ve never seen any content in that community that’s right of center without being downvoted into oblivion.

If Lemmings just don’t want other views here, that’s fine, it just kind of sucks when all I get is an echo chamber.