Pretty much anything to get a groan or chuckle out of my wife.

One time while cutting up an avocado I remarked that they need better prizes, because I always get the same one- a little wooden ball.

That was of course good for a groan, but it would not be the end of it. I tend to do most of our cooking, and since our kitchen is kind of small my wife is usually in the living room while I am and can’t really see what I’m doing

So now whenever I’m cutting up an avocado I let out a groan of disappointment. And since my wife is a loving, caring sort of person she always asks “what’s the matter?”

To which I reply with an exasperated “Another little wooden ball”

Going on 10 years, and she falls for in any time.

–

This isn’t one I think particularly much of, I wasn’t even particularly trying to be funny, but my wife got quite a chuckle out of it, so it ranks. I was doing dishes, while she was again in the other room, I think on the phone with her mother.

I go to grab a spoon to clean from the rather large pile in the sink, which set off a bit of a chain reaction of dishes and pots shifting around and making a bit of a racket.

I paused for moment, and just kind of commented out loud to myself “huh, so that was a load-bearing spoon”

And apparently something about that delivery made my wife crack up.

–

Another time I was dead tired and crashed early, and was apparently not very willing to share the blankets or pillows or something when my wife came to join me.

Being more asleep than awake, I mumbled that she could pry them from my cold dead hands WHen she tried to get me to give some bedding up for her use.

Unfortunately for me, my wife is one of those people who is always somehow cold, and so she just applied her icy hands to my body, causing me to exclaim “AAH, COLD DEAD HANDS!”

–

I once showed her a picture of a snake I saw when I was out for a hike. She asked me how big it was, I told her about 2 feet

Which I also told her is 2 more than most snakes have.

–

I pointed out some geese, and asked if she knows how geese fly in a V-formation, which of course she did. Then I asked if she knew why sometimes one side of the V was longer than the other, she did not

I informed her that it’s because that side has more geese.

I haven’t really noticed a burst of activity, but it’s certainly occured to me if I ever turned to a life of crime that I’d do stuff during that shift change, a couple of the departments we dispatch for definitely take their time with it and there’s often a pretty solid block of time where unless something serious is going down you’re not getting a quick police response.

Some of them handle it more efficiently than others, and the size of the town is a pretty big factor too. I’ve had more than a few callers complain about how long it’s taking because they live right by the station, but usually officers aren’t just hanging around at the station, they’re out on patrol and responding to incidents, shift change is pretty much the one time you’re going to find the station full of cops.

I work in 911 dispatch, and there’s definitely something about full moons.

It’s not that we’re busier, or that the calls I get are more serious, but everything is just a little bit off when the moon is full. It’s subtle, I don’t think it would even be reflected in the types of calls we’re entering, but a lot of our callers just get weirder.

I sometimes borrow my dad’s truck, a '93 ranger, when my car is in the shop or I need to move something big

And the headlights on that thing are terrible, after driving around in more modern vehicles it feels like they barely light up the road in front of you. It’s actually almost a little scary to drive at night sometimes.

It does have halogen bulbs, not significantly different from the ones in my own car, but the way the reflectors and such are designed around those bulbs is clearly very different,.

First of all, I’m talking about gun ownership in general. Not necessarily about these specific people and their community.

Secondly, unless you have the stats to show that not a single hunting license was sold to anyone with a Chula Vista address, you’re just making a pointless generalization. Sure, it might be very uncommon, but out of around 280,000 people there I think it’s pretty likely that someone there goes hunting.

Finally, that applies to target shooting and such as well, different guns for different types of shooting.

I can see it adding up a lot faster than you might think.

Hypothetically, let’s say you have 2 or 3 people in your family who are avid hunters, lots of people go hunting with their spouses and/or children. And each of you have, let’s say, a deer rifle, a shotgun for turkey and waterfowl, and a .22 for small game. So off the bat that’s about 6-9 guns.

And maybe you started your kid off with a .410 or a 20 gauge shotgun and a smaller .22 rifle for them to learn the fundamentals when they were younger, and when they got older you got a 12ga and a more appropriately-sized rifle for them to use, so there’s another couple guns.

And maybe some of you have different guns for different purposes, maybe you prefer a semi auto shotgun for waterfowl and a pump for upland hunting for whatever reason, or if you live in the suburbs you might be limited to shotgun slugs and straight walled rifle cartridges in the areas you can hunt closer to home so maybe you have a gun that meets those requirements and then another rifle for when you can go hunting in the mountains.

So you can pretty reasonably have a dozen or so guns in your household from just having a couple people who like to go hunting before you even start talking about carry or home defense guns, dedicated range/target shooting guns, or collecting them, etc.

I work for my county, I have coworkers who are proud that they don’t vote and don’t follow politics

WE. WORK. FOR. THE. GOVERNMENT! Go up the food chain from us a couple steps and our boss’, boss’, boss’ boss or something along those lines is an elected official! You’re basically passing up an opportunity to choose who your boss is, and those elections often end up happening on off years when there’s no presidential or other big election going on and even less people turn out to vote, so your vote really counts.

Maybe you need some visual aids

This is what most Americans mean when we say “jelly.” It’s a spreadable preserve similar to jam.

And this is a gelatin/gelatine dessert, in America it’s commonly called “jello” after the brand name, and I believe in what you call “jelly”

I believe this is a common brand where you are

So which one were you thinking of when you wrote your comment.

I think this is something that gets lost in translation sometimes between different English dialects

When you say "jelly"are you referring to a fruit preserve similar to jam that gets it’s gelatinous qualities from pectin

Or are you referring to a gelatin-based dessert like Jello?

When most Americans talk about peanut butter & jelly, we’re talking about the former.

We’ll it would be harder to pick some Democrats from this neighborhood and a bunch of Republicans from that neighborhood if the district size is only one neighborhood

Also it would allow for more specific representation. Using myself as an example, my district is basically my county plus a couple small parts of some neighboring counties. One end of the county is pretty rural, the other half butts up against a major city and pretty much just bleeds right into it. We have some ridiculously wealthy old money areas, and we have some that look like they were plucked from a movie about gang violence. There’s a few towns here that I’ve legitimately never even had to drive through. It’s kind of insane that all of these different areas are being represented by the same person, we have very different and sometimes conflicting concerns. And if I needed to go to my representatives office for any reason, I’d have to drive about an hour to get there because of course she’s set up shop at the far end of the county from me.

Personally, I think the ideal way to draw districts is to kind of have voters do it when they vote. Give them a map, have them select the areas where they live, work, shop, drive through regularly, or have other connections to until they’ve selected an area with a big enough population to be a district. Then feed those maps into a computer and have it average them all together to generate the new district map.

Here’s one out of left field- Bucky O’Hare

The franchise has been dormant for about 30 years, and even back then there wasn’t that much established lore for a modern reboot to tiptoe around- a comic book that frankly not too many people read, a couple pretty good video games, and a Saturday morning cartoon made to sell toys, and there was little to no continuity between those different properties, you pretty much have free reign to go in and do whatever the hell you want with it.

And there’s was some pretty good stuff in there to work with that’s maybe even more relevant today than it was when it came out- plotlines about inept bureaucracy, imperialist/capitalist toads controlled by an AI, pollution, climate disruption, slavery, etc.

And the property was kind of hamstrung by its budget and stuff. I definitely enjoyed it as a kid, and when i went back to rewatch it a few years ago as an adult I thought it held up well enough but the animation and voice acting was definitely pretty janky at times, but even still it managed to have some bigger overarching story arcs. It also had a couple strong female characters without getting preachy about it, though there’s certainly some room for improvement in how they were written.

And if nothing else, today we can probably count on the furry community to watch a show about a green rabbit space ship captain, a cat space witch, a 4 armed pirate duck, a muscly baboon, and their nerdy human audience surrogate.

I’ve casually perused some Gameboy mods over the years, but never actually done any

And I have no idea what these shops are offering

But to give you an idea of what I’ve seen out there in general

There’s of course shells and buttons, and replacement parts to replace worn/damaged components (and I would imagine that in some cases those new components might be better than the original)

There’s options for better screens, and backlit screens on models that didn’t originally come with them

USB charging (and charging in general for models that originally used disposable batteries, and higher capacity batteries for those that already had rechargeable)

Video output to hook it up to a TV or whatever

Amplifier circuits and such to improve audio quality

And I’m sure there’s others, but that’s what I remember seeing off the top of my head.

50000 yen is around $315 right now. I feel like I’ve seen some places selling pre-modded Gameboys at roughly about that price point, so depending on what they’re offering that’s potentially a pretty solid deal.

But a lot of mods seem like they’re pretty much just a matter of opening the case up and popping the new components into place, and the parts aren’t terribly expensive, so you could probably shave some money off by DIYing it at home if you’re more interested in having the Gameboy than the experience of going to a workshop to do it. Some mods do require a bit of soldering, it didn’t look like it was particularly complicated soldering, but I know that a lot of people just aren’t interested in attempting that themselves, don’t know what your personal comfort level with that is.

No first-hand experience, and arguably not really a cult, but I have a friend who’s a recovering alcoholic, and according to him a few of the local AA groups around us have a few members who are in the weird fringes of the rationalist community, maybe sort of tangentially connected to the “zizians”

For those not familiar with the zizians, behind the bastards had a pretty decent series on them

There’s also a decent amount of weird overlap between self help type groups like AA (not that AA isn’t without plenty of valid criticism) and abusive cult-like organizations. I think the elan.school (Joe vs Elan School) webcomic touched on that, and I also recommend that as an interesting look into the troubled teen industry (trigger warnings for child abuse and such on that)

I think the name Donald has been out of style since before Trump was born.

Imagine spending your whole life being compared to Donald Duck.

Congress already basically has the power to overturn court rulings. They make laws.

Courts only rule on whether things are or are not in line with those laws.

This is of course simplified and a bit absurd for humorous effect, but in broad strokes this is how things work.

Let’s say there’s a law on the books that says people are not allowed to wear hats. Someone gets arrested for wearing a bandana on their head. They go to court challenging that arrest arguing that bandanas are not hats.

The court hears the arguments from both sides, the guy who was arrested arguing that the law doesn’t apply to bandanas, and the lawyers for the police arguing that the law applies more broadly to other forms of headwear.

The court listens to those arguments, and considers previous similar cases to look for precedent, (like maybe there was a guy who was arrested for having a baseball cap tied to his belt and whether that counted as “wearing” a hat, or someone was arrested for wearing a KFC bucket on his head and whether that met the legal definition of a hat, or someone who was arrested for wrapping a hat around their feet and whether that counted or only if you wore it on your head) Maybe they even consider whether wearing a hat should be considered a form of free speech and whether that law is legal.

And then that ruling establishes further precedent, which will affect how/if that law is applied going forward. If the court has already decided that wearing a bandana doesn’t count as a hat, then it doesn’t make sense to arrest people for it in the future because the court will just throw the case out based on that precedent.

Now whatever the outcome, let’s say Congress doesn’t like what the courts decided. They can pass newer and more specific laws concerning the legality of bandanas and other headgear, maybe even going so far as to add a constitutional amendment to specifically protect or exempt hats or bandanas as free speech.

And then going forward, the courts would need to rule on cases based on that new law or amendment.

So if the court rules that bandanas are ok, then Congress goes and makes a new law specifically banning bandanas and goes through the trouble (for some reason) to amend the constitution to say that bandanas are not free speech, then future arrests based on that would be based on that. You couldn’t retroactively arrest someone for wearing a bandana before it was made illegal, but you could sure arrest them if they do it again.

I was a delivery guy for a local pizzeria once upon a time (and that place still has their own drivers, and even their own delivery vehicles, which is practically unheard of)

And I’m not gonna lie, door dash and such was great for a while because it let me get food delivered from restaurants that otherwise didn’t do delivery.

But I’ve stopped using them, for a few reasons including their shitty business practices

But the straw that broke the camels back in each case that made me delete was them fucking up my order.

And that happens, I’m not particularly mad at the store or the driver, I’ve been there

But the way that these delivery apps handle it is, to me, unacceptable.

When I contacted them, their response was to just issue me a refund.

And to me, what should have happened, is I should have immediately had a replacement sent, expedited as much as possible, at no extra cost.

That’s what we always did when I was a delivery guy, and often with a gift certificate as an apology.

And sure, a refund on top of that would be nice, but really the root issue is that I don’t have the food I ordered. If I order it again, I’m going to the back of the delivery queue, and if I happened to order it when I was low on money I may not even be able to reorder it that day because that refund often takes a couple days to clear.

I once heard Spam described as “everything but the oink”

And so when I describe scrapple, I usually start with that, and then describe scrapple as being “mostly oink”

My wife and I did a quick courthouse thing because I got a new job and she needed health insurance. The plan was to do an actual wedding of some kind a year or two later but COVID and a bunch of other stuff happened so it’s been on the back burner. I think we’re looking at a 10 year thing now, which is nice because it’s given us a lot of time to think about guest lists and such.

We have a pretty decent amount of friends we want to invite, I think we’re in the ballpark of around 30

Some of those are gonna have +1s, so that gets us up to around 50 or 60

Then we have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. and some of them have +1s, depending on the size and relationship you have with your family, that can make things balloon really quickly.

And if you’re able to budget for it, it can be advantageous to invite as many people as you can, money and other wedding gifts can add up pretty substantially. That’s not a major factor in our guest list, but for a young couple, maybe looking to buy a house and have kids or whatever, that can be huge.

I’m not too sure about what the version of scrapple you received was, it sounds like some kind of bastardized hash, but scrapple is a common breakfast thing in the Mid-Atlantic/Delaware valley area.

The version I’m familiar with as a Philadelphian, admittedly doesn’t sound a whole lot better on paper, but the actual eating experience sounds a lot more pleasant. It’s basically pork scraps and organ meats simmered down until they’re falling apart and mixed with cornmeal and buckwheat then formed into a mushy loaf, which is then sliced and fried.

You’re not going to identify any particular piece of pork or anything else in it, it’s a pretty uniform grey mush, and the only real texture comes from frying it to give the outside a nice crispiness. Nothing tough or chewy about it, you barely need to chew it, the texture is probably more like polenta (which it kind of is) than anything else you might be familiar with. It also usually doesn’t contain any apple or potatoes.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you find yourself near Philly don’t let whatever you were served in the south turn you off from trying actual scrapple.

Parts of Ohio have goetta, which I think is supposed to be pretty similar to scrapple but with oatmeal instead of corn meal.

I’ve also heard of “livermush” and “liver pudding” being served in some parts of the south, which honestly sound like dead-ringers for scrapple to me, though I have some friends from the south who insist that they’re different from and better than scrapple.

I feel like whatever you were served was some southerner trying to recreate something they heard described one time but never actually tried themselves, or just slapping the name on something without knowing that there’s another dish out there with the same name.

Got up bright and early and had my mom drive me to target for the game cube launch

I’ve done a lot of midnight movie releases, and a couple Harry Potter books releases

It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, but I worked late at the time anyway, so when Skyrim came out I just swung by game stop after I got off work to get that at midnight