Fondots

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago

Something about Chabad-Lubavitch and Brooklyn rang some bells for me, which isn't normally the kind of thing that would catch my attention, so I figured I must have seen something particularly weird about them in the news in the not-too-distant past.

And only one weird story from New York about Orthodox Jews comes to mind for me personally, and sure enough it was Chabad-Lubavitch that was involved in the Synagogue tunnel incident

Not that I think there's any direct correlation between these two incidents, I'm mostly just bringing it up for anyone else who had the same "why does that name ring a bell" feeling.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Honduras? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.

She's in CECOT now.

/S, hopefully

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

When they try to leave they just tend to not get very far because they never learned how to pump their own gas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Just as an FYI, aerodynamics can be a little complicated, it depends on the exact vehicle, the speeds you're going, etc. but there's a lot of cases where a tonneau cover will actually hurt your mpg.

Price is definitely the thing holding me back from a new vehicle as well, even though the maverick is one of the more affordable trucks out there it's still too rich for my blood. I have a friend who just got one though, so I plan on using him as a guinea pig for the next few years until a new car is hopefully in my budget.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It does only have the bumper, I've never looked into it because we've never needed to tow anything. We have the long bed so anything we've ever needed to haul fit in there just fine.

I love that truck. It has yet to hit 100k miles because until the last couple years my parents had 3 vehicles and especially now that they're retired they never really go anywhere anyway.

And for a 32 year old truck, it still gets pretty decent gas mileage, pretty damn close to 20mpg, the new rangers don't beat that by much.

It's not without its downsides, it's rwd so it's kind of shitty on anything but dry pavement unless you have some weight in the bed, and it's 0-60 time is probably best stated as "eventually," but it's done everything I've ever needed a truck to do.

If Ford came out with basically that exact truck with a modern engine to get better gas mileage but otherwise kept the performance the same, it would probably be my next vehicle. Wouldn't mind AWD/4wd too but I could live without.

I really like the maverick but the small bed is kind of a deal breaker. I've heard some rumors that they may add a midgate in a couple years to open the bed up into the back seat so if they do that I'm probably sold.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Yeah, for towing that's basically useless unless you're only using it to tow around a wood splitter or something.

That said, my family has had a 1993 Ford ranger for many years. I'm pretty sure even with the 4-cylinder engine it still has a towing capacity several times that much, but we have never towed anything with it. We have gotten a lot of use out of it as a truck though, moving furniture, camping gear, small loads of firewood, trips to the hardware store, etc.

I can also potentially see this being big for certain fleet vehicles. Growing my dad worked on a military base as a civilian in their wastewater treatment plant. Part of his job involved driving around the base once a day or so to take water samples from a couple places. The public works department had a couple small trucks, Chevy S10 I think, that he'd use for that. They got used by other public works employees, never for anything particularly heavy duty but they did occasionally tote around some bulky tools, equipment, materials, but a significant amount of what they used them for could probably have used a golf cart. I'd be amazed if those trucks went 10 miles most days, they sat most of the time, kind of a perfect sort of situation for them to sit on a charger.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

First of all, this isn't something I support, I don't trust literally anything this administration does, and it's not really something I want my tax dollars spent on

But taking a step back, when I think about it, I'm a little surprised the pentagon doesn't already have one.

Pretty much anyone who goes on TV is getting a quick once over by the hair/makeup/wardrobe people. And it's not like they don't host press conferences and such at the pentagon with some frequency.

And the military is all about appearances - uniforms, hairstyle regulations, polished boots, etc. If you're putting some military bigwig in front of a camera, that's, in part, a propaganda opportunity, so you want them to look the part

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

True, I did think about mentioning that but decided to skip over it to keep things simple.

Animals like cows for example, can get by almost entirely on fiber. Stuff like grass doesn't have much in the way of carbs we can use, but it contains a ton of fiber, and cows digestive systems are set up to actually do something with them.

The extra "stomachs" they have allow for some extra fermentation and such to happen so they can break down that fiber into simpler carbs.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Gonna try to give a very general ELI5 sort of answer

There's basically 3 main types of carbohydrates

Simple carbs- basically sugars (mono- and di-saccharides)

Complex carbs- starches, whole grains, etc. (polysaccharides)

Fiber- arguably these are just really complex carbs that your body can't really break down

In general, sugars are the source of energy your body actually runs on, especially glucose. Everything else basically gets broken down into glucose.

Your body can pretty much use simple sugars as-is or can easily break them down into a form it can use. There's some variation just how quick and easy it is for your body to use different sugars, but in general your body will start to feel the effects of eating sugar in the space of a few minutes, and the effects will peak within about an hour or two.

Complex carbs take a little more digesting to break down into a form your body can make use of. They're basically being turned into simpler sugars, but that process takes a while. You might hear about athletes carbo-loading with a big spaghetti dinner or something the night before a big competition. The idea there is that the energy from that big, complex carb-heavy dinner won't really hit them for a few hours or even until the next day, and it will keep providing that energy for a longer period of time.

Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can't really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of. It goes in your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out the other end relatively unchanged. That doesn't mean it's useless though, it still plays an important role in digestion. It takes up space in your stomach helping you feel more full. It absorbs water and helps keep your stool soft and helps waste move through your intestines, and it minds to things like bile acids and cholesterol so that they can be passed as waste.

Again, this is meant to be a very general answer, there's a lot of details I'm glossing over both just to keep things simple, and because I'm not a doctor or anything of the sort and I'm not 100% sure myself.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 days ago (3 children)

My first exposure to the word "Kafkaesque" was on the show Mission Hill, with a character complaining about how often people misuse it. I didn't really understand what it meant, I was like 12 years old staying up late to watch it on adult swim, not quite the target audience for either the show or Kafka.

As I got older and began to understand the world better, that colored my perception a bit, I heard a lot of people use and more often misuse it, and little clips of Mission Hill played in the back of my mind.

I miss the days when everyone seemed to be misusing the word "Kafkaesque." Now it seems like you can slap that label on just anything and it would be accurate. It's almost hard to misuse it anymore.

Please, no meat-touching, ma'am.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

I'm not looking for troubleshooting

WTH is going on with my phone? Anybody else having new problems?

That sounds a hell of a lot like a troubleshooting question. Otherwise you're just screaming into the void and I'm not sure what kind of interaction you were looking for by posting here. I suppose we could just say "that's rough buddy" and "yes/no, I am/am not having that problem" and move on.

His tone could use some work, but so could yours. Those are very relevant pieces of information to ask for when trying to figure out what's wrong with your phone.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

When you say it won't loosen when turned, do you mean it's totally seized up or it spins but the part doesn't come off?

If it's totally seized up, have you tried dousing it with some sort of penetrating oil? WD40 might do it a pinch, but a specialized penetrant like PB blaster or liquid wrench would probably be better.

Soaking it with some CLR or something might also help to break up and rust, lime, or other crud that might be in there.

Still won't come loose? Get the beefiest screwdriver you can find that will fit the slot. Maybe give it a couple good love taps with a hammer and see if that helps bust it loose.

If you can find a suitable bit, an impact driver/wrench may do the trick too.

Get a big ol' set of channel locks, vise grips, a pipe wrench, etc. that you can grab onto the screwdriver with to give you some extra leverage, and go to town.

Sometimes a little heat will do the trick, you can try hot tap water, boiling water, heat gun, and blowtorch if you're willing to accept a bit of a risk.

If it's spinning but you don't seem to be making any progress

Do you have access to the back of the tub? Often there's an access panel so you can get at the plumbing. If all else fails you can try to take the drain apart from the back/underneath

EDIT: I suspect this is part of a pop up stopper something like this- https://youtu.be/c5_o166BCDQ (not my video) just so you have some idea how this thing goes together

Edit 2: sorry I fired off a couple quick thought and this is still rolling around in the back of my head because I'm havi a slow night at work. These pop up drain stoppers are like $15. Don't worry about breaking them too much, the whole assembly pretty much unscrews. Bust off the plastic parts and if you need to cut off the screw head, get a tub drain removal tool (also about $10 -15) try to find one that's hollow if there's still some screw sticking up, unscrew the whole drain and replace it.

 

7/17-7/20 at Penn Sylvan (PSHS) in Mohnton PA, about an hour-hour and a half outside of Philly

No lineup announced yet that I could find.

Haven't attended myself yet, but I saw some people post about it last year and it sounded like a fun time. Seems like a smaller festival that doesn't really get any big names.

 

Also of note-

It's their 80 year anniversary

They've chosen not to raise their rates this year

Rates are 50% off during their "shoulder seasons" in May and September

Still kind of dipping my toes into social nudity, but I made my way there twice last year and had a great time and look forward to going back. Last year I camped out for their beer fest and came up for the day one other weekend.

For those who have strong opinions one way or the other, they do have a pretty active community of swingers, I was asked a few times if I was in "the lifestyle," but it never felt pushy and never made anything weird, and everything out in the open stayed pretty much PG except for the fact that everyone was naked.

I've heard that some of the regulars can get kind of cliquey that wasn't my experience, but I haven't been there enough to really comment on that.

Hopefully I'll see some of you around this year.

 

Looking for some inspiration, my wife's out of town this week babysitting he grandmother with dementia, so she's been eating a lot of very bland, old-white-lady-palate-approved meals (her grandmother once described some jarred vodka sauce as being "too spicy")

We're both pretty adventurous eaters and spice-lovers, and I know it's driving her mad by now, so I figured I'd welcome her home in a couple days with a dinner full of all the biggest flavor bombs I can find

Help me light her taste buds on fire, decimated my spice cabinet, and make my toilet tremble in fear of what is to come.

 

I recently got my hands on a very old but still totally serviceable full-sized deli slicer, and my local restaurant depot is very liberal about handing out day passes to anyone who walks in and asks for one, and the savings buying a whole log of meat and slicing it yourself are pretty bonkers, totally worth the pain in the ass that is breaking it down to clean when I'm done.

Of course it's just the wife and I, and 6lbs of Pastrami is a lot for us to go through before it goes bad. So far I've mostly been getting a few friends to chip in and divying up stuff between us or doing a little bartering and trading lunch meat for homemade bread and such, but I'd like to start freezing some to have on-hand.

Anyone have any experience with this to share? I have a vacuum sealer and a deep freezer to work with.

Which meats freeze well, which don't? Is it worth trying to slice it then package and freeze it in smaller portions, or should I freezer larger chunks of meat then thaw and slice it as-needed? Should I just abandon the idea of freezing and stick with the little ad hoc food co-op thing I have going?

Of particular interest to me is homemade roast beef and turkey, I'm never going back to the deli counter for those after I've been making my own (those boneless turkey roasts are amazing for this purpose, even if I'm sure there's a little meat glue involved in them)

Also cheese, I've never really contemplated freezing cheese until I found myself with a 9lb block of Swiss in my fridge. My gut says cheese doesn't do well in the freezer, but my gut has been wrong before.

I also kind of like the idea of having pretty much a lifetime supply of prosciutto in my freezer, although a quick Google search seems to tell me that prosciutto does not freeze well at all, which seems odd to me, since it's pretty low-moisture I would have thought it would freeze spectacularly well.

Besides that, anyone have any other cool ideas about what I can do with a slicer? I've already sliced down some beef to make cheesesteaks, and when I get my smoker up and running when the weather gets nicer I'm going to have a go at making my own bacon, and will probably use it to slice down beef for jerky as well.

 

This is a true story.

My dad and sister went out shopping on black Friday one year. The went to a local mall that was of course packed. They went to drop a couple of their bags off in the car to free up their hands for more shopping. On their way back to the car, a lady who was driving around looking for a spot pulled up next to them and asked

"Are you two going out?" Hoping to nab their parking space if they were leaving.

To which my dad answered "No, we're related" earning some befuddled looks from the lady and some amused Snickers from my sister.

 

Sunny is, as far as we know, a purebred Malinois, she's almost 4 years old, and is a strong contender for being the Laziest Malinois in the world (which still means she has more energy than any other dog I've ever known)

Some Malinois like to catch frisbees, run up walls, chase bad guys, parachute into hostile territory, etc. Sunny just like to wait for you to get up so she can steal your chair.

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