As a kid, by the time I started hearing about the system via video game magazines, which were kind of like miniature websites but printed on paper and then distributed via mail and stores, I was convinced it would be the next big thing. By the time it was launched, I knew it was going to be the new top dog in the industry. When I finally got my hands on one, it was (pardon the pun) game changing for me.

The system definitely had its flaws, but it was an evolutionary step up and order of magnitude bigger than anything I’d ever experienced before.

And go figure, it was the last system I owned before I stepped away from the gaming hobby for nearly 2 decades. Life, uh, got in the way.

Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe?

No. When did I do that?

I definitely miss the cached pages. I found that I was using the feature very frequently. Maybe it’s just the relative obscurity of some of my hobbies and interests, but a lot of the information online that shows up in search engines seems to come from old forums. Often times those old forums are no longer around or have migrated to new software (obliterating the old URLs and old posts as well).

I saw something the other day where they were interviewing some people from a republican group in North Carolina. Their response was basically that it’s a non-issue for them. Even if every awful thing about him is true, they said they aren’t electing saints, they’re electing politicians.

The conservative folks I talk to always, always, always bring up the price of eggs and the price of gas when they are talking about how bad the economy is these days.

I’ve heard “Groceries have doubled in price.” many times. Obviously I can’t prove that’s not true for them, but then I ask what items that they buy regularly have doubled in price? The answer: “Eggs”.

Okay, so what else, I know that eggs alone do not make up your entire grocery bill? “Everything”. That’s pretty much all I get.

Even if they can tell me a few more things that have doubled in price, it’s basically going to be outliers or things I know for a fact they rarely/never buy. Like when it comes to the eggs, they’ll make claims like “eggs are $10 a dozen”, but when pressed about it, you find out they’re talking about the gourmet premium brand that’s always been way more expensive than the cheap ones and which they’ve never purchased in their entire lives.

Nah, that’s just a cop-out if not an outright strawman.

It’s not surprising here on Lemmy, but on pretty much every other site I’ve ever mentioned issues I’ve had with Amazon, the replies would be filled with people claiming it is the best customer service, that they’ve never had any issues with Amazon at all, and that it must be something I did to cause the problem.

Personally I stopped using Amazon on a regular basis almost a decade ago after it was clear that the company I first started using back in the mid 2000s was irrevocably changed for the worse.

Not going to lie, I kind of wonder if Anna Kilgore named her cat Miss Sassy in honor of Lindsey Graham.

When you think of it, so many of them are immigrants. They don’t belong in our suburbs. They don’t belong in our homes. They should go back to the desert where they belong. But no, instead they’re pricking us with their thorns and I shudder to think what they’re doing to our pets and the wildlife.

Sort of weird looking by current standards. I don’t know how long it will be before I see one of these. I live in a rural area, and our local USPS seems to use personal vehicles I guess? I don’t really know for sure, but they don’t drive the standard white and blue box that USPS drivers had when I lived in more urban/suburban settings.

Well one thing’s for sure, it’s not a good thing. No ma’am, it’s not a good thing at all.

To make this all about me, me, me: Another part of my childhood is now gone. But I have to say, 93 years of living a good life is something to aspire to! I can only hope I live that long or live half as amazing a life. I can also only hope to have that deep of a voice. DOES IT HELP IF I TYPE IN ALL CAPS TO DEMONSTRATE?

Any relation to Elton? He sings about food sometimes, too.

Oh, if Alton said that then it must be true. Who’s Alton?

Edit: I need to see what dried beans I have and maybe go shopping. I will give this a try with a couple different types of beans and report back if I fart or not.

Hope you have some alpha-galactosidase at your disposal.

The simplified explanation: A reason beans give some people gas is due to certain types of sugars and carbohydrates they contain. Those sugars are water soluble. Seems like brewing beans would concentrate those sugars and lead to epic tootage.

Also, one method for reducing how much gas that beans cause is to soak them in lots of water. Basically, soak them for up to 8 hours, drain, rinse, and repeat a couple more times. It works on the same principal, that the soaking process will remove at least some of the problematic, water soluble sugars. Supposedly adding a small amount of baking soda helps, too. I’m less certain about that.

I recently joined WTF and based on the list of the instances this place is federated with, my assumption is that’s the basis for the WTF name. So, maybe something like this could be useful for choosing an instance that’s not 1/2 filled with bat shit insane posts by default rather than requiring significant and immediate curation (i.e. blocking stupid shit like hexbear and ml).

Collard greens are the leaves. Cauliflower is the flower head. Flowers are often a different color from the leaves, especially in species that rely on animals for pollination. Additionally, cauliflower is white, in part, because of a lack of chlorophyll. If collard greens had no chlorophyll in the leaves, then the plant would not be able to grow. If they can’t grow, then they aren’t likely to end up on a dinner plate or for sale in a grocery store.

This actually is a good point and is one of the reasons that overuse of emojis can be annoying for some folks. Basically it boils down to the fact that a lot of people using them don’t use them effectively or in a way that provides any “value” to the reader.

For an otherwise clear and benign statement, a grinning emoji to signify that the writer wants their statement to be “fun” isn’t particularly useful, relevant, nor insightful for the reader. At best, it comes across as unnecessary filler like an ad at the end of a sentence. It makes no difference, it’s just there for the writer’s own pleasure. Nothing wrong with that, but hopefully you can see that it would be annoying for some folks.

On the other hand, using emojis effectively, like putting one after making a sarcastic statement provides insight and meaning to people reading. In other words, it has value for the audience, provides useful context. A lot less annoying to people when they actually derive some benefit from it.

One issue is, a whole lot of people don’t recognize this and/or don’t care.

I don’t really ever travel with my laptops, at least not to put them in bags. I think the Mac laptops had a known issue with defective batteries, though.

Perhaps. I’m not chewing gum anymore right now.