I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters. Read them during breakfast until I finish eating, which means I usually end up deleting about half of 'em. I think Tangle might be the best bet, as it tries to be middle ground and tries to provide context behind what both sides are saying. I’m also kinda a fan of “WhatTheFuckHappenedToday”, mainly because it’s brief & direct.

https://www.readtangle.com/

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/

Perhaps not oddly, I struggle to find free Conservative news sources. All the ‘good’ ones requires a paid subscription. How conservative of them! =D If someone has some suggestions, I’m down to just Fox at this point, and it’s like they put the interns in & aren’t bothering to chaperone them anymore.

Somehow I never did, largely because it never came up. I always assumed my generation just doesn’t do Potlucks, but as I’m typing this, maybe it’s me?

Regardless, I barely cook. However, a few years ago I started baking Christmas cookies. Now I’m famous in the family for keeping the tradition alive. Long story short, Scottish shortbread cookies are my dad’s favorite. But he & mom separated when we were still young. My grandma on my mother’s side was the only one who had the recipe. So on years when dad was behaving, we’d have these cookies at Christmas. And vice versa. So I have a strong connection that these cookies = good times. I’m told I’ve gotten pretty good at making them. That, or we’re just all fatties who love cookies. Could be both. =D

I own a model electric train that was built in 1937. So, 88 years young?

Runs well, it’s kinda weird to think that this was a toy and this level of build quality was normal. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly. This was a high end toy aimed at affluent teens and young adults. It would have been equivalent to buying a new PlayStation. But still, I have trouble imagining any toy you could buy today that would hold up like this.

Yo

I like to support the Electronics Frontier Foundation. They’re generally pretty great about protecting our freedoms online. They constantly show up as the good guy in my feeds, whether it’s explaining how to protest safely, or how to internet without leaving footprints, or just generally how to interact in today’s online world. I think the only criticism I’ve ever heard against them is they don’t stand up to Google quite as much as they maybe ‘ought’ to.

https://www.eff.org/

If you care about abortion rights, Planned Parenthood is as good a place to help as any. Although I’ve never contributed, the current administration seems to really be targeting them. Okay, they’re targeting LOTS of minorities really.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

Speaking of which, the American Civil Liberties Union is one of the loudest voices trying to protect minorities from being illegally deported and stand up for birthright citizenship. Another good cause to support.

https://www.aclu.org/

Capitalism.

Also, if I work hard I will be rewarded.

This has always made me wonder, why aren’t US insurance companies getting in on this. It would be cheaper for them to buy the plane tickets & fly their patients to another country.

As much as that sucks, you clearly already know the fix and are working on it. Grats to you for having the skills bro. Please work safe, 2 phase electricity doesn’t play around.

Be aware that most window A/C units are power hogs. Expect to see a significant rise in your power bill. It might be cheaper to have your home A/C unit serviced instead. Could it be low on freon? Would it benefit from having the coils cleaned?

Depends on your expectations. Realize there’s roughly 3-4 guys for every girl. If you don’t standout in some way it will be a very quiet experience outside of the initial joining period (and immediately after the subscription ends if you paid).

Just remember, companies exist to make money. If you’re using the app for free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

There’s already plenty of good advice here. The one that I think is missing is that the clutch pedal probably has like 10 inches of travel, but it only cares about 1 inch of it. All the rest is just slop. You need to figure out where that zone is, and get good at hitting the start of that spot quickly.

Once you can get to the start of that zone reliably, then you can start working on how fast you release the clutch through that zone. The more power you’re applying with the throttle pedal, the faster you can release the clutch through this zone.

Not really no. I make a point to game online a bit with my nephews on Friday nights. But the rest of the week - no, there’s just too much that needs doing. In addition to working full time, cooking, and maintaining the home, now that I’m older I have also added making a point to get enough sleep and get my workouts in. That’s it, that’s all the time there is.

I purposely booked a week of vacation for my birthday this year where I intend to finally play Breath of the Wild. And that’s it, that’s the whole week. Looking forward to it.

A large part of it is choice. I choose to be happy, and my dumb monkey brain says ‘ok, I guess we’re going to be happy today’. There’s a real truth to ‘fake it til you make it’, except it should be ‘fake it until it becomes real’. There was a post yesterday about people being locked into their customer service personality even after they get home from work. Sort of like that. You can lock yourself into your happy person.

Of course, that’s not enough. You also need to figure out what really makes you tick - what do you truly enjoy? For me, I enjoy being creative and applying that to fixing shit. Is that dumb, probably. But man, I’ll be on a high for a month after I save a car that should have gone to the junkyard.

I’m waiting for them to have a flavor for it. Great Grape Gazacide would be my pitch.

Honorable mention for my truck. 1997 F-150. Turns 28 this year, just put a rebuilt motor in it, hoping for another 20 years.

A pair of toe-nail clippers my grandfather gifted me. I’m guessing late 1940s. As far as I can tell, it was something he bought from the on-base military store as things were winding down after WW2. It’s rugged in a way you wouldn’t expect - it was clearly built to last, well, indefinitely. Has this excellent leather carrying case in military olive green that is also wildly over-designed. Not flashy, just built to last.

It really makes me appreciate - we used to know how to make things here (USA). And we were so good at it, even the dumb little things could be built to last.

I always wanted to see if I could ‘fix’ the Berkley Pit mine. It’s a superfund site with some of the most acidic water in the world. It was a cooper mine for decade that went bust. When the owners walked away, it started filling up with rain water. But, because of the way mines work, that water became VERY acidic. So now there’s this lake of acid out in Montana that no one wants to deal with.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit

Inter-mountain Histories: https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/376

ChemAnalyst News - Pit might have rare earth minerals: https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/montana-toxic-legacy-could-become-america-rare-earth-savior-36626

Had almost the exact same experience, although I never bothered to create a new account. Tried & tried to find an appeal process, as far as I can tell they don’t have one. Still not sure why I was banned.

On the upside, I was looking for a reason to leave, and they gave it to me on a silver platter.

I have an unhealthy relationship with food. Oddly, the thing that really finally made it click was playing the Sims, and I noticed my Sim would get up & grab a snack from the fridge every single time they were bored.

At the risk of sounding silly - Instead of focusing on burning the solids, boil the water. Water boils at 100C, at which point the water vapor should separate and leave all the solids behind. Then capture the vapors and condense it back down into clean water. Now, if you later want to incinerate the leftover solids, sure, go for it, fire’s always cool in my book.

I’ll add, simply boiling water is energy intensive. What you are proposing probably won’t work at any scale.

We never really back up and say ‘did you REALLY get that part, because you’re going to NEED it for the next 14 years?’. I can remember I was sick for multiple weeks when we were learning division. I came back, and we were already onto the next topic, and it was just assumed I knew it. Now, I was super-lucky, in that I understood multiplication well enough to puzzle it out. Not every student cares, especially when they are like 8 years old. Just want to learn it enough to pass and be done with Math. ‘What do you mean I have more Math next year too???’

As soon as you miss a single step in the mathematics education train, well, you’re going to be hating math for the rest of your schooling. It’s a series of incremental building blocks, but we never double check that each student really has each piece.