Wolf314159

Shit, my bus stop was at least a half mile away without so much as a sidewalk anywhere, just a dirt road and a canal. You didn't even get a bus stop if you were less than 2 miles from school. We regularly rode our bikes like 12 miles away from home to the movie theater, I think we were pre-teens. Technically I could have ridden my bike to grade 6 (it was on the way to the movie theater), but who wants to show up to 6th grade everyday drenched in sweat or rain (it would always have been one or the other).

You're a biological garbage disposal and your shit goes down the same sanitary sewer line. It's just food scraps like peels, stems, and trimmings. Hardly qualifies as 'insane'.

I'll phrase it like a shower thought:

"Avoiding politics is about as useless as avoiding economics, math, science, or the arts; they permeate everything we do. We even use them to define what it means to be human. We might as well avoid breathing."

I think avoiding partisanship and incivility might be more productive, but it has the problem of being more vague and requiring judgement, thus requiring more effort to enforce fairly and consistently. I don't think there is an answer that will satisfy everyone. Avoiding politics may be a good rule for this community, even if it's pointless.

Brussel sprouts used to be truly awful, made me literally wretch. Now I eagerly make and order them as a bar snack.

To be fair there are two reasons beyond my changing tastes for this. First, my mom liked to steam brussel sprouts whole and serve them with margarine, salt, and pepper, now I generally cold sear them or roast them in the oven with much better seasoning. Maybe even some bacon pieces and blue cheese mixed in. Second, brussel sprouts did actually change over time to get less bitter and awful since I was a kid.

I live in a hot climate so my favorite teas are iced.

Iced oolong sweetened only with some lychee chunks is the only thing close to boba I can stomach. I also like a good iced jasmine green tea. Or just a strong green tea hot or iced.

One thing that the movies miss from the books, which seems like it would be hard to pull off, is that NOBODY in Dune just has a normal conversation with each other. Literally everytime there is dialogue in the book, at least one of the characters is psycho-analyzing every word for some sort of ulterior motive, or some hidden meaning within a meaning or something, it's actually kind of annoying and I'm glad they didn't attempt to work that into the movie.

Did we read the same book, because my impression was that it was almost entirely written from the perspective of main characters that were looking for conspiracies everywhere. Paul and his mother in particular were literally constantly attempting to detect the machinations and plots of others in order to either manipulate their allegiances or literally predict the future. The were the center of an ulterior motive tornado for the Fremen. The mythos they exploited to grab power was built on the foundations of other Bene Gesserit missionaries before them, an army of ulterior motives. The entire theme of the book was secret manipulation of the masses in order to maintain and grow political power. You don't survive in the Dune Universe without psychoanalysis of every interact for ulterior motives.

Pretty much all of the Sci-Fi written by Ursula K. LeGuin features people more than machines. There are technologies in the stories that play a role, but the are described as vaguely as possible to support the plot. As a result, often her sci-fi stories feel more like fantasy.

Octavia Butler wrote the Xenogenesis series which features an alien "species" whose system of technology is entirely biological.

Chess is a war game, so allowing political assassinations or allowing the King to die just doesn't make any sense. Assassination of the King would just mean that the next in line becomes the new King. Only the King can surrender. So in order to force an end to the war you need to trap the King. Killing the King does not end the war, it just creates a new King.

Pancake mix in particular benefits from the large scales at which the pre-mixed stuff is made. Measuring out those smaller proportions of dry powders precisely and accurately is much more difficult at home even if you opt for using a scale instead of measuring cups. Just read the ingredients list to avoid the brands that may include the extra binders and other ingredients you want to avoid.

The "E" (and similarly the "IE") at the end is a very different pronunciation indicator than an "E" in the middle of the word.

There's no need for the weird hate in your spoiler tag just because you don't understand something.

Dog-eared means that a corner got folded down (making a diagonal) on a page as a bookmark. A dog-eared book isn't necessarily beat-up beyond the damage to the corners of pages. Catty-cornered or kitty-cornered is adjacent to something on the diagonal, i.e. not orthogonally next to it like up, down, left, or right. So there is an argument to be made for a loose (coincidental) connection between those ideas, but I don't think they come from the same roots.