In the US? Child labor.

Who gave the business major a marker?

I frequently watch videos of people from outside the US trying biscuits and gravy for the first time. Every one starts with “I’m not trying that disgusting slop” and ends with “I want to eat this every day for the rest of my life”

Random pic from the Internet for reference.

They did a lot of this in Los Angeles, and Governor Ronald Reagan and the NRA responded by working together to ban open carry of firearms in California

Eggs. I bought the expensive ones once just for laughs and they taste great without the weird funk. Now I have my own chickens, and the eggs are better than anything in the store. It’s probably more expensive though!

Carrots and celery I always buy organic because they seem to take on the flavor of whatever they were watered with. It makes a difference there for me.

And tortillas, I get the local boutique ones instead of the national mass market ones. Big difference there.

Bro was really into quadrants

I think you said pliers weren’t doing the job. Grab them with vice grips (locking pliers) and use the claw side of a hammer to pull them off like a nail.

Same thing as personal carbon footprints. A meaningless change being pushed on individuals when their total contribution to the problem is a mere rounding error on the amount contributed by the big corporations

Mostly by being an ingredient-only house. If there’s nothing too convenient around and you’re hungry enough, you might be more inclined.

Also you can make big things that you can pick off of throughout the week. I used to make giant pot roasts, which are great because you just dump stuff on top of a roast and pop it in the oven for a couple of hours without having to fuss over it, and eat that for a day or so, get bored with it and make tacos with the meat, etc.

By making it so that social media can’t harm anyone, not just kids.

Next I’d be pretty happy if EDM could stop sounding like pop music too

Just btrfs.

“I’m alright” seems like the universal way to say “I’m not alright”

Dwarf Fortress. I think I have ten thousand hours in the classic game.

Oxygen Not Included for the same reasons. I really like games where you both design, and are affected by, complex ecosystems

Bleu Cheese Not a Republican?

In this house, we serve both kinds of cuisine: macaroni and cheese!

Soooo…

I’ve been working on something for a while now. It has RSS feeds and partial support for ActivityPub, and it’s also got federated web search.

I’m considering adding AT proto for bsky support soon but it’s not a top priority.

It’s been in friends-and-family testing for about a year now. The intent is to release under AGPL, but development is closed until I feel the code quality can withstand scrutiny from this brutal community 😅

Right now I have a to-do list full of things that are stopping me from letting more people access it. My hope is to get them knocked out this summer, though. I’ll definitely post something here when that happens.

I heard about Surf well after I’d already been working on this, and signed up for the beta but have been on the waiting list since last year. I’d really love to see their approach.

I do basic mindfulness meditation, sort of a secular version of Buddhist meditation. I'll give a quick rundown:

• Find someplace quiet, and sit comfortably but in an upright and attentive posture if you can.
• Set a timer for something short and attainable. Three minutes to start? You can do one minute if you're intimidated, no problem.
• Close your eyes and listen to your breath. Feel the sensation of breathing. Focus on it as much as possible and as little else as you can. It shouldn't feel like a struggle, just a calm focus.
• You can't do it? That's normal. Allow your attention to go to what distracted you. Is it a sensation in your body? A worry? An idea? Allow it to happen, acknowledge it, and try to see if you can focus back on your breath.
• Now repeat. The timer is there so you don't distract yourself wondering about when to stop. Keep it up until you hear it beep.

That's the basics, and it's all you need to start with. Next you learn things like how to deal with persistent mental distractions, and some additional types of meditations that have different or additional goals and techniques.

One of the goals here is to build up a technique for helping your mind stay present and focused, "mindful", in whatever shape that takes for you. When my mind is completely restless and I can remember to do it, it helps a lot. It's certainly not a cure for ADHD, but it helps with daily functioning, and with the associated anxiety and self-worth issues that come along with mine.

Most of this is cribbed from Dan Harris, who used to be with ABC News, and wrote a book called "10% Happier", which talks a bit about his story and also has a decent surface-level overview of beginner meditation techniques. I caught him when he was on The Daily Show and he took 5 minutes to talk through the basics, and I tried it and was hooked.

I will say that up until recently I've gone around telling people that I've been a big meditator since I was a kid, but in my own mental health journey I've realized that the thing I've done since I was a kid is dissociating. And it's fine, retreating into my own little mental isolation like that is something that got me out of a lot of traumas, but even if it has bits in common it's not quite the same as meditation. And now I'm like a bodybuilder who realizes years into it that his form is all wrong, and has to back all the weight off and start over.

Or US news in “pics” or “memes” 😡

My mom was a chef, and she taught me some absolute basics like how to hold a knife and a couple of recipes. She also told me that when learning, if I mess up it’s okay, but try to eat everything you make to learn to taste what went wrong.

I got really good after I started watching “Good Eats”, though.