I call it replicator chicken. It looks perfect, striking you as having been cooked in pristine oil, is consistent and properly fried, but then when you taste it you get the world’s blandest recipe. It’s really like a well-meaning computer’s idea of chicken tenders.

The sauce is decent, and utterly necessary, but it’s really not worth it, even within the space of fast-casual chicken fingers. I prefer Layne’s or even Zaxby’s.

I agree with the general takes here, and can add one for specific situations. I have some very old keyboards, and frankly even my newer ones rely on designs that are over 40 years old. In this particular case, I find the old tech superior, because they simply feel nicer to type on, and that’s what a keyboard is for.

I also have quite a few fountain pens, but whereas with a little effort the keyboards are as good or better than an average modern model, I’ll admit there is a fussiness and mess with fountain pens you have to weigh against the nicer writing experience.

Also, won’t anyone think about the fact that Trump literally makes energy policy based on the fact that he thinks wind turbines are ugly?

While they’ve got it apart, they can make sure to use a high quality battery!

That one’s not actually a problem. The flag is always “hoist side forward” to symbolize a no-retreat mentality. We shall ignore Vietnam and Afghanistan, and how that goes in the reign of President “why they no helping me?!?” remains to be seen.

I believe the correct adjectives are “spongy” and “bruised.”

I particularly did this when I was in the UK or Japan, but that’s more because I have no faith that I will remember to pick the correct way.

I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re trapped in here with me!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_(Simpsons_artist)

It really kicks the llama’s gnu’s ass

The actual ad, if one is feeling like a fuddy duddy.

Like a candle in the wind…

The first Fantastic Beasts movie is set in New York, and it makes several appearances in the supporting lore books. Apparently, Americans don’t really like Quidditch, preferring some sort of magical-explosions basketball-ish game. Jeez I wish Joanne weren’t such an awful piece of shit human.

Okay, so I’ll point out that Murray Rothbard and David Gordon are prominent in the “Everything should be completely equal and fair as long as we first enshrine my generations of privilege” Austrian-school economists, beloved of white guys everywhere who never got over their Ayn Rand phase.

Makes it much funnier, actually.

With apologies to the baseball fans in the room…

The definition of woke:

You can’t just be up there and just doin’ a woke like that.

1a. Woke is when you

1b. Okay well listen. Woke is when the woke mob

1c. Let me start over

1c-a. The blue haired liberal is not allowed to say to the, uh, patriot, that prohibits the patriot from doing, you know, just trying to oppress the fringe groups. You can’t do that.

1c-b. Once the blue haired liberal is in the kindergarten classroom, she can’t be over here and say to the patriot, like, “I’m gonna get ya! I’m gonna teach your kids about pronouns! You better watch your butt!” and then just be like he didn’t even do that.

1c-b(1). Like, if you’re about to teach about racist history and then don’t teach it, you have to still teach. You cannot not teach. Does that make any sense?

1c-b(2). You gotta be, pooping in the right bathroom, and then, until you just wash your hands.

1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the drag queen, like this, but then there’s the children you gotta think about.

1c-b(3). Okay seriously though. Woke is when the teacher, err drag queen, says or does a thing that, as determined by, when you do a move involving the history and CRT

Do not do a woke please

My buddy’s older brother did the thing where you remove the little filter cylinders from the coax in, I think(?), the curbside junction box. I saw the cylinders and the result, but not the deed.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-effects-workers-psychological

The article is… fine… I guess.

I think what they’re saying is that the dissent says out loud the part that the majority would prefer to keep quiet. It’s a clear consequence of the “clever jackass 7th-grader” mindset that comes from the Originalist school of jurisprudence.

You can’t run a modern nation-state or withstand a bad actor in power if you insist that it must all be done exactly as set out in 4,500 words by a bunch of 18th-century provincial lawyers writing by committee, and that anything not expressly forbidden is allowed because… “oh well.” SCOTUS abdicating its role as a backstop of liberty and good sense to instead be a bunch of pedants is a piss-poor reason to send your country to hell, yet here we are.

They’re about to find out what we actually were getting in return.

This is one of the huge under-analyzed aspects of all this. The US “over” invested in defense and foreign aid, and got virtually all the soft power benefits of a hegemonic power, and by simply setting an upper limit on the worst abuses of imperial overlords, it generally had its allies saying “Thank You” for the privilege, with no particular signs that the bloc was weakening.

If the US is not an accessible market or a reliable guarantor of security, or if (for fuck’s sake) it’s threatening the territorial integrity of its own allies and trading partners, then it’s just China with less cheap shit to sell. Hell, even China doesn’t do the last one (offer not valid in Taiwan).

And both are fucking delicious (and honestly pretty similar, mostly with the tomato being less “in your face” with the murgh makhani).