It’s good to see that there are sane comments here.

It’s crazy to me when people go through a 10 step logical progression to justify how not voting is somehow the moral thing to do.

It is essentially a trolley problem, and maybe my personal philosophy is too utilitarian, but it’s an easy choice for me to throw the switch that causes the least harm rather than sitting by for maximum harm.

Also, there are a lot of non-voting actions you can do that improve things, but voting doesnt prevent any of those. Anyone who says they do direct action instead is full of crap: do both.

Despite all the attacks on voting rights, voting is still one of the easiest actions to take.

This plus a dose of a natural disdain for being given an answer in the question.

The proper way to phrase a question should be “what is your opinion on X?”. Asking why X is good forces me to accept your assumption that it is good.

Idk about merlin, but with iNaturalist, the purpose was logging sightings and locations of plants/animals/fungi/etc, and letting people double check your ID so it can be used in research.

This built a massive database of images, locations, times, etc, which is a really good training set for image (or sound) recognition. Now the app is really good at automatically recognizing stuff from pictures, so people just use it for that. The app actually started to try to penalize you for using it for identification without actually logging stuff.

I sure am glad I have the freedom to hunt through several arcane websites search functions to find a doctor that’s i think looks good based off no information other than that they have an MD and practice primary care, only to book an appointment for 6 months later, at which point they cancel my appointment because they realize that my plan is slightly different than they thought.

If you sat at a table, and wanted water for each person, you would ask for “waters”. The container is implied.

Vertical surfaces are not nearly as effective for the majority of cases in capturing solar radiation.

I will say, I’ve seen compelling evidence for vertical bifacial panels. In east-west facing configurations, they generate more power when demand is greater and regular panels produce little power. They also stay cooler, so they operate more efficiently. I think it’s often more cost and space efficient to have more panels installed flat to something than fewer panels installed at the theoretically best angle.

Thats a lot of infrared that wouldn’t be used by solar panels.

The best analogy for anything in the fediverse is “it’s like email where you dont need to have an account with the same company as someone to talk to them”.

For Mastodon specifically, it’s just the Twitter equivalent of that.

Library card

The fact that electors physically exist as real people is still insane to me. If a state has winner takes all for their electoral votes, why does a group of random people have to then travel to DC to cast a vote. It’s not 1800 when the outcome of a state’s election needed to travel via horseback to the capitol.

I’m assuming that changes what it actually displays, but is there confirmation that those data dont enter the notification system on the back end?

It’s literally Mali. Having alternate country codes is just a way to take advantage of countries with less of a presence on the internet to be able to get better domain names and at a lower price. .ml specifically was given away for free.

The worst, I think, is .io since the profits of those domains should go to the chagossians, but it just goes to the British government.

This is the right answer. “Opposition leader” or a “shadow cabinet” are not meaningful terms in American politics. It’s like asking who the President of the UK is.

You could go for somewhat equivalent congressional roles like House/Senate minority leaders, or you could try to point to specific political figures that seem to be trying harder to oppose the regime who may or may not be in the federal government like governors, or people like the chair of the DNC.

They can’t go after (for example) the deceased person’s family for the money, unless those family members were specifically cosigners on the lease.

This is “cant” as in “they dont have standing to”, not “cant” as in “they are legally prohibited from”.

Debt collectors can, and often do try to collect from heirs. The heirs dont have to pay, but they often dont know that, and the debt collectors obviously wouldn’t tell them.

Growing up, we had a front door that we never used, so we left it locked, and the side door was always unlocked unless we were going on vacation or something.

My friends parents locked their door when they werent home, but they always left the windows next to the door unlocked, so they or I or anyone could just climb in if we needed to.

I dont know if people locked doors at night, but we didn’t. Definitely no one ever locked the door during the day when they were home. The first time I experienced someone doing that, I was so confused. If a thief is willing to go into an occupied house, they’ll be willing to break a window.

I would never leave keys in a car, partly because of where I live now, but also because cars are deadly weapons, and you shouldn’t leave those around where kids could get hurt.

Idk what kind of animals or weather you are dealing with that know how to open doors.

Yeah, I definitely dont think any country has a monopoly on big meals.

I think it also might be that the cost of ingredients likely makes up a smaller proportion of the cost of a meal in an American restaurant than a restaurant in many other countries. You then end up with restaurants trying to distinguish themselves by giving you a bigger portion size than the competition. You then end up with a situation where there’s an expectation in America that if you order a single item off the menu of a restaurant, you should never leave hungry, no matter what. This means that most people end up with more than they need, so you either take it home, share with someone, or overeat.

I will say that’s all only true for certain types of restaurants. A lot of “nice” restaurants have moved away from the “each person gets a big course and a drink, and maybe you split an appetizer” -style. There’s a lot more family-style than there used to be. There’s a lot more restaurants where a waiter will say something like “for a table of 2, I’d order 4-5 items if you feel normal, 6-7 if you feel really hungry”, and they actually make recommendations on portion size based on what you order. Even fancy places seem to be really encouraging people to share.

Podcasting. He has a trivia-type show called “lateral”.

There was buycott. I dont think it’s been developed for 10 years now.

Soup is about just throwing in whatever you have. Generally, if there’s some kind of a meat/bones, gelatin will give the broth body. If it’s more of a bean or potato situation, you may need to pull a portion out, mash it up, and add it back in to give body. You could also temper some eggs and add them in.

If you dont have gelatin or something starchy, you can add a cornstarch slurry to thicken it. If you have a really thin broth, it won’t taste right even if it would otherwise be really tasty. Taste is an amalgamation of senses, and texture is part of that.

Acidity definitely helps soups. Brothy beans are great with a little vinegar, some soups are good with lemon, etc.