The 2026 2 MEAL ALL SEASON DINING - PRESTIGE ADD-ON at Six Flags near LA is $99 for a whole year, and includes 2 meals a day, which sounds bonkers.
I think you have to add it to an annual park pass, but that sounds like a great deal assuming you don’t mind eating park food.
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.
Exactly, thank you!
These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, do both. I train with my neighbors fairly regularly, at the range (including tactical training), hunting, fishing, navigation (land and ocean), first aid certifications, etc… We also work together to keep an eye on our neighborhood and on behalf of our other neighbors (early COVID times were absolutely wild here). I maintain a several HAM radios and a base station, and worked with some of my neighbors to help obtain their licenses. We all garden, cook, and do home repair and IT.
Unfortunately since we live near a major metro area when SHTF the best mid term plan is to bug out entirely, so we have updated plans for rendezvous and exfil to specific less populated areas. And as far as I know most households have bags ready to go.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying we’re preppers, we certainly don’t imagine ourselves that way. We just acknowledge that disasters happen and our society isn’t equipped to take care of an entire metropolis. We’re not under any illusions of being master survivors.
I feel like this is just common sense, not paranoia. In school we all had it drilled into our heads to keep extra water, preserved food, and bags ready in case of a major earthquake (common enough in our area). I don’t see why our planning isn’t just a natural extension of that kind of preparedness.
Food poisoning while on a road trip. On a shoestring budget so we were staying at a campground. Everything coming out of both ends simultaneously, doubled over in pain, delirious for ~24 hours. Only available place to do that was while laying on the floor in the campground shower. I was in there all day with the water on until the cleaning crew kicked me out.
No solids exited my body, it was excruciating.
Some current whale species still have internal bones which are vestigial legs.
I might be in the minority but I love my standing desks. I’ll sit once in awhile but I’d guess that 90% of my day is standing.
And to those who think standing is just being in one position all day and therefore is just as bad as sitting, I completely disagree. In practice I’m constantly shifting around, moving one leg back or forward, or walking in circles when I’m talking during a meeting and don’t need to look at my screens. Sometimes I’ll bring a chair over and put one knee on the seat for a few minutes to stretch my quads and hip flexors. It also helps if you get a soft pad to stand on or shoes designed for being on your feet all day.
My desks even go really low, which I squat at for about an hour a day. Full heels on the ground squat, keyboard and screens low enough to work without cranking my neck.
I’ve been working behind a desk for 25 years, and next to a true ergonomic keyboard I think my standing desks have done the most to keep my body from breaking down.
I generally agree with you, with my one exception being The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, fantastic movie.
With the lapels meeting so high on the chest I’m not sure that person is wearing a vest, so I’m guessing a 2-piece
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.
Agreed, we can certainly do better. I was hopeful that hybrid classes would eventually work well, but it seems post COVID we’ve figured out how to mess that up too.
Connectivity, teachers funded and equipped to handle an online class component, a home environment capable of being supportive for students, parents who aren’t in a situation that requires them to work 3 jobs to make rent so instead they can actively participate in their children’s education.
We’ve got a long way to go and I’m pessimistic.
That’s pretty far, but I’m happy you had a bus. That wasn’t an option given how early I was going to school, so it was a bike or a skateboard for me. That makes for some very early mornings, but everything worked out, and somehow I made my way.
I understand not everyone is equipped for early mornings, and I certainly don’t look down on anyone for that. The downvotes on my post were entirely predictable, it just sucks that if your personal experience doesn’t align with whatever is popular among Lemmy users you get shat on.
Shit is hard, I get it, but with a little help some of us can navigate it and figure our lives out.
I understand that studies have been done and show that early start times hurt some student performance. I’m not contesting that is true for many, but it didn’t seem to affect me or my friends.
We all played sports so we had 6:15 start times for morning practice or workouts. I lived about 3 miles from my high school (and even further from my middle school, which also had morning workouts), and was responsible for getting myself there. I rode my bike, or skated, with my sports equipment 4 or 5 days a week.
Class from 8 to 3:30, then afternoon practice or competitions until about 6:15. This required me to make and bring two meals to school. I was rarely home before 7:15, so that’s a 13 hour day at school Mon-Fri, then homework. On weekends I played club sports and found time to socialize. Thankfully I didn’t have to work during the school year until I found a internship at the end of my senior year.
I had all AP or honors classes, so academics weren’t exactly easy, but I got good grades, as did my friend group.
Was it easy? No. Did I have fun and enjoy my time? Hell yeah. My days were full, we didn’t have time for video games, and social media didn’t exist.
I’m lucky that I had supportive parents and a stable home life. They paid the bills and made sure there was food in the fridge, but I was expected to do everything else on my own.
I’m certain that experience made me who I am today, mostly responsible, productive, and confident I can handle whatever this crazy world comes up with. Stuff doesn’t always go my way, but I’m prepared mentally and emotionally to deal with it.
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.
I’m not sure what you’re saying. If you write software for Apple mobile devices, you’re creating it for iOS. If you write for basically any other smartphone, which represent nearly 75% of all devices worldwide, then you create for Android.
In the US they probably have a huge number of potential customers on iOS, so bringing experts and designing for their iOS experience makes sense, as you point out. But saying that platform is the most popular worldwide would be factually incorrect. You don’t write apps for hardware (there might be some small tweaks to take advantage of available hardware like on Pixels), you design for the platform.
Also, it appears that the design for iOS is sound, and OP just fundamentally misunderstands how to share specific sets of photos with Google Photos.
None of this is to defend Google’s data collection policies.
we aren’t in college to learn a specific skill so much as we are there to learn how to be taught.
I really like this idea, but prefer one small change: I think it’s best to learn how to learn.
Learning how to be taught is part of that, and a large part. Understanding when to absorb information, rely on experts, and apply yourself until you improve is fundamental. You won’t get any arguments from me there.
But being taught is only one facet of learning. Sometimes experts aren’t really experts, or don’t have the learner’s best interests at heart, or omit things to protect their own interests or ideology.
Learning how to learn involves fostering fundamental curiosity, not being afraid to fail, asking all the questions even dumb ones or those with seemingly obvious answers. Finding out “why” something works instead of just “how”. Fundamentally curious people who learn as a habit tend to also develop a scientific method-like approach to evaluating incoming information: “Ok, this is the information I’m presented with, let’s assume the opposite, can I prove the null hypothesis?” This acts as a pretty good bullshit detector, or at the very least trains learners to be skeptical, to trust but verify, which is enormously important in the age of misinformation.
Being taught generally tapers off as someone gets older, or becomes an expert. Learning never needs to taper off, so long as your brain still works.
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.
This is untrue. In many cooking styles using animal based stock as the entire foundation of the dish is completely normal. Subbing veggie stock isn’t always possible given the chef is going for a certain flavor profile. Veggie fond is not the same as animal fond, which also changes the flavor. Animal proteins denature differently, and some proteins are specifically used for their chemical and physical properties (think cream for a sauce, or eggs for a souffle).
While it is usually possible to sub vegan ingredients to approximate most of the effects of non-vegan ingredients, doing so entirely changes the flavor profile, presentation, and shopping list.
Can it be done? Absolutely. Is it as trivial as you make it out to be? Not even close.
I say this as a seasoned chef who has worked in commercial kitchens and cooks 3 meals a day at home from scratch. When I know I have guests coming over for a meal I attempt to accommodate for their dietary requirements (this doesn’t just apply to vegans), but it is rarely as easy as leaving one thing out. It usually means making two (or more) sets of completely separate mains and sides, which doubles the work and significantly increases the time spent.