The stars at night are big and bright.

So there’s an issue with cheeses in America, and I’m sure abroad as well, that I first was apprised of in Food Lab’s No-Boil Baked Ziti, real nice recipe. A note below the recipe talks about the ricotta cheese they recommend, and it says:

Look for a ricotta cheese that contains nothing but milk, salt, and starter culture or acid.

America, I’m sure you’ll agree, love to sneak shit into food, so I’m always extra careful, when making Italian style dishes, to keep an eye out. For some reason, I don’t think my grandma had this problem 50 years ago when she’d feed me the raw spiced meat before she’d roll em into balls and pop them in the oven.

I live in suburbia and I can get cheese with like three ingredients from ShopRite. Legit, good quality cheese according to the likes of Serious Eats and their Food Lab, and their recipes are fantastic and I trust them with my food life.

Oddly enough, I can go to that same ShopRite and get individually wrapped yellow squares of whatever. A dozen different kinds. Or I can get real cheese sourced from all over.

Are you my wife?!

Curious why you say that. I used to do the slog to lower Manhattan every day, 90 minutes by train, and another 10 or 20 minute walk, depending where I was going. I’d get back in the train later in the day knowing I should open the laptop up and work, but just couldn’t do it.

Now, in fairness, if I was driving 90-120m, I’d kill myself. But at least I’d do so listening to the Wheel of Time audiobook.

And extra fairness, my job went remote after COVID (for the majority of it). Public meetings have returned to in person sadly, but my day work is 90% remote. And on those rare occasions I get dragged out of my home wearing a suit, I do so belligerently. I’m done showing up 20-30m early, I get there when I get there. And I gotta leave early now too. I have really just started to not give a fuck, which is not great as an independent contractor.

I’m sitting here reading every comment to find this, so glad you said it. This is the way, OP. If you focus too hard on this global view that we’ve been gifted (cursed with), you’re going to get wrapped up in the negativity. Focus local. Attend local meetings. See what’s happening around you. Join the environmental commission. Plant trees. Donate time or money or both to a local YMCA.

One of my most rewarding experiences was riding on a rescue squad. Having two kids put it on the back burner, but doing a 12-hour shift once a week left me feeling fulfilled, and sometimes very tired, and helped to bring my focus to problems I am more capable of dealing with.

Now, it’s kids. Soon enough, it’ll be something else. I have decided that it won’t be saving the world, though.

My wife sent me Andrees Arctic Balloon Expedition. From there, the rabbit hole into Svalbard was self-inflicted.

Repetaur sounds like a great fictional dinosaur to add to my son’s repertoire.

Yeah, personally I’m all about clear the intersection. There’s conflicting movements and it’s a bottleneck, let’s all get through as efficiently as we can. This doesn’t mean flooring it, but we can at least apply some throttle, and not just through but beyond the intersection, because contrary to what some folks believe, there are people on the road other than you.

Yeah, and for anyone concerned, this doesn’t mean jam on the gas, but you got a make some move. You can be conscious of intersecting traffic and whether they’ve actually come to a stop, as well as aware of everyone behind you apparently being in a huge hurry, because they always are. So take your foot off the brake, let me see those brake lights go away, and it’s at least a signal to everyone that we are underway here at Silverstone.

Yep. Lemmy and Reddit are absolutely terrible for trying to have a positive outlook. If you want to be mad, come here. I’m sure other doomscrollers are the same, I just don’t have any.

What doesn’t kill you leaves a scar that lasts forever, physical or emotional.

I got a ticket in France (I’m from the US) in a Hertz rental and never paid it, so I too will never rent from Hertz again.

Did it work after that?

Nothing against OP, but there’s a lot of people who are completely unaware of their surroundings. Perhaps OP is young, not a homeowner, whatever. The older I get, the more I certainly become aware of these things. The question I asked myself was why come here and not a search engine? But it’s not important, and I think OP got some valid answers here, and hopefully they learned about their community.

As others have said, it’s not across the board. I’m sure there are places in the US where it’s hard to recycle this kind of stuff. Just like I’m sure there are places in Europe where people bury these things in holes in the ground. It’s just the whole “Hurr durr America stupid” thing is old af, and so when I read these jabs I like to talk about how I live in good America, where we have education and social safety nets and electronic recycling.

And the majority of comments I make in this fashion apply fairly broadly to the entirety of the Northeast Corridor, DC to Boston, which is kind of where America started. Just wish there were more northeast corridors, because I do understand and appreciate that some of the criticisms I read are true of portions of the country, and it’s unfortunate.

The jesters that immediately come to mind for me are Wit from Storm light Archive, and then The Fool from Farseer, and each of them had the freedom to do whatever they wanted. It seemed like a nice gig, but you got a earn it.

We have that in the US too, but condescend away.

They should just put these signs in time. Just put “5 seconds ahead” if you’re doing 35mph. I feel like I can rationalize 5 seconds better than I can rationalize 300 feet.

I’ll toss my easiest one. I get chicken breasts from Costco, so we freeze six 1.5lb packs and bust em out when we can. I generally don’t do frozen but have in a pinch, but chicken breast in a crockpot with a jar of your favorite salsa and either taco seasoning or some alternative, sazon packets, or some other shit. Eight hours on low, shred around 630, plop it back in, stir it up, and you have chicken that goes great over rice. Can of black beans, don’t drain, just dump it all in a pot, heat over medium, add some adobo. Super easy, my kids eat it, can go in a taco, rice, we do it on nachos from time to time. And best of all, it ain’t bad for you.

They’re Marines, I can tell you from experience, they are unfortunately used to it.