TheVat

Well I don't. Put up with people who are annoying, that is. If you ever become annoying, you will be dead to me. You and all your descendants unto the tenth generation. 😁

The body is complex. Think of it as like the global weather system. Organ systems interacting, complex metabolic pathways, complex biochemistry, our cells interacting with bacterial symbionts in the gut, immune system interacting with invaders and with our own tissues, etc. Tinkering with all that is somewhat like tinkering with weather - all kinds of unforseen consequences emerge. It would be weird if there weren't side effects. Even a drug like acetaminophen (paracetamol, Br.) which seems gentle and harmless can adversely affect liver function in some people. Ibuprofen can be hard on the kidneys. Dosing many drugs is based on the good outweighing the harm.

It relates a Ben Franklin attributed quote to the thud with which the unionize joke landed. Had I hyphenated unionize (after, in parentheses), the "charge less" double entendre would have been clearer.

Emily Lime has been keeping up with the news in South America. Tin Maduro boss a Caracas SOB or u damn it.

This Gordian knot, of when intervention is a police action against an oppressive tyrant and when it's war, goes back a long time. I generally see the important criterion as: do most citizens want regime change and can they, with assistance, implement a transition to democracy and rule of law. The problem, as with say the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, is that what people want and what they get often diverge. Our (US) interference probably made the Sandanistas turn more authoritarian and brutal, and ultimately our ham-handed effort to further stable democracy failed. The CIA training and funding of the Contras led to a horrible civil war and brutalized both sides. We should really stick to humanitarian aid and economic soft power.

Correction: No lava, a Toyota's top sedan (a despot's) - a Toyota Avalon. Thanks.

No lava, a Toyota stops sedan (a despot's) - a Toyota Avalon.

Yep. At this point, a reasonably alert six year old could play the MAGAnistas. The central argument, the sources said, was that the Rodríguez siblings represent a “more palatable” version of so-called chavismo — the socialist ideology named for deceased leader Hugo Chávez — for Washington, since neither has been indicted on narcotrafficking charges by U.S. courts. However, former regime officials— whose accounts have been used by U.S. prosecutors in cases linked to the so-called Cartel of the Suns—have implicated both siblings in logistical support and money laundering operations. The maintenance of chavismo also suggests that companies like Conoco and Exxon aren't really going to be all that interested in getting back into the game, given how the original chavismo guy treated them. This whole theater of the absurd will prove about as geopolitically effective as was Turnip's "protecting Christians" in Nigeria. If I were writing political satire I couldn't hope to come up with anything sillier than the Donroe Doctrine. The administration is a parody of itself.

I was amused that Delcy seems to have pulled the pistol away long enough to condemn Turnip's action. (From NPR): ....speaking to Venezuelans in a televised address, Rodríguez pushed back against Trump, saying what the U.S. had done to her homeland was "a barbarity." This was after Trump had said, "She's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again." Heh.

Venezuela is a very minor player in the US illegal drug market. Mexico, Colombia and China (for the precursor chemicals of fentanyl) are the primary sources. So the drug angle is pretty bogus. Don't forget the oil vice. In the sprawling cities and countryside of America, with EVs unaffordable to most of the population and mass transit unavailable or unworkable, we become hopeless petro addicts. Working people have to get to work, and often have no choice but a fossil fuel burner. The people who can make bicycles and buses work for them have already done so. It's as if, to use a drug analogy, you suffered migraines and the only remedy available at the pharmacy was oxycontin.

If I thought Turnip were capable of forming longterm geopolitical goals, or hiring people capable, I would guess it's about forming an array of MAGA satellites in Latin America and eventually expelling the wicked Commies from Cuba. (52nd state, anyone?) And us becoming the World's Biggest Most Beautiful Petro State. If I didn't know that Turnip's wank-fantasies usually shift every few weeks, and how horribly this goat rodeo is pollling, I might almost believe that could be the dominant MAGA administration theme. Remember Greenland? A month of obsession last winter, then forgotten for six months, then a rather lame attempt to rekindle the land lust. Now again sliding out from the Teflon coated interior of Turnip's head. It's all tv, bread and circus of the week, shiny objects to dangle in front of maga-babies. Venezuela meanwhile turns into a bloodbath, as various factions rush into power vacuums. Fresh sectors of the economy also ravaged by the loss of tourism. Somewhere in MAGAland, a few synapses may be firing and some realization that this idiocy is killing them in the November Congressional race. ETA: the charging document hilariously wants to indict Maduro on a 1930s statute banning machine guns. Tell me this administration is anything but a clown car.

For want of a nail, the war was lost. For want of a hyphen, the joke was lost.

It's like the Dupont thing at Parkersburg WV with C8 (aka PFOA) - bullshit studies relying solely on Dupont/Chemours data and industry contributors. We really need those editor gatekeepers. As a sometimes renovator, I'm aware of how JM sought to scrub their public image by starting a line of itch-free roll insulation, stressing how safe it was for workers. IIRC, it's called encapsulated - no fiberglass bits will touch your skin or get breathed in. That reboot probably helped save their asses.

A spoon, probably. 😁 I would say as a topping for rice or a side dish with something like curry. Non Hindu Westerners also use it with meat dishes, as a sweet/piquant topping.

AP NewsTesla loses title as world's biggest electric vehicle mak...Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics, expiring U.S. tax breaks to buyers and stiff overseas compet And industry leadership in EVs requires constant technical innovation (e.g. SS batteries), along with having at least one line producing simple bare bones sedans affordable to Millennials in the middle class. Fancy sporty cars are fun, help reduce testicular shrinkage in midlife males, and help establish brand visibility, but you can't depend on them or on dumpster-trucks, or on theatrical drug induced looniness from a CEO, to maintain your market share. When I heard that BYD was selling a subcompact for around 9K (USD) in China, I sorta knew Tesla's days as the reigning EV monarch were ending.

Yeah I have noticed that, and though my brains fills in with a firm T, I have heard people say Toronto with just a slight flap. I think my Canuck friend may have been defending that alveolar flap as constituting a soft T. It is, in AmerE, sometimes hard to distinguish a D and a flap T when spoken rapidly. Ew may bee rite about dat.

News story seen today: Under a new law, California's 800,000 rideshare drivers have the right to unionize starting on Jan. 1. Does that mean they will charge less? 🫣

Oh FFS, it's Tuh Ron Toe. I've been there, had a Canuck friend who lived there for decades, never heard anyone drop the second T. In writing, sometimes they refer to TO (as in Toronto, Ontario). Someone just made up a fake shibboleth. Or yes, maybe AI slop. I just read that someone (s) concoted a non-existent fireworks display in Birmingham, btw. Thousands showed up. TWICE. Not AI, just a-hole pranksters. (Full Disclosure: there is an impish part of my psyche that was a wee bit amused at the image of all these people milling around wondering where the fireworks were...one could even argue that the prank did bring people together and create, at least briefly, a festive NY gathering.)

Ghirardelli has a good "intense dark" at 72%. Just the right note of bitter for my palate. Amano Madagascar is also a good small batch dark. My main criterion is a short ingredient list. And all brands have tested with some cadmium and lead, so that suggests saving for special occasions. As with a lot of foods, I would suspect that pretty high consumption is needed to get to noticeable toxicities. I've heard theories that some of Van Gogh's problems related to his use of cadmium yellow pigment.

I prefer the Belgian - more cacao less milk. Really, straight dark is the best. And Belgium and France both do that well. Happy 2026, you Limeys and random Euro trash! 😃

Some of the pub grub when I was in London was not bad, and filling, if you had walked for miles and needed calories. But when it came to truly good food (with actual roughage) my mainstay was a Greek restaurant, with Indian a close second.

Pretty familiar with all that, but (as your industry handbook makes clear, and thanks for posting that) there would be some technical expertise involved there - possibly beyond a lazy man (me) in a home kitchen. As I said, there are commercial brands that take that extra step, but haven't seen them on the shelves hereabouts. Let me provide a summary of Chapter 11: Fart. Fart again. Keep farting. DO NOT sit down (this will trap the farts and pain will ensue). It is my pleasure to close out the year with this public service message.

Good luck. I haven't found any cultures that make milk real digestible for me, and I was warned that most cultured milks still retain some lactose unless they specifically start with a LF milk. I think you need high temps to caramelize lactose, and the commercial ones I've seen go with adding lactase enzyme. If you simmered per a dahi recipe, then maybe you caramelized the lactose pretty well. And maybe also got some Maillard reaction as well, if there was browning at all. I've settled with a skyr that's made from oats, or sometimes coconut and yellow pea protein. IIRC, authentic skyr differs from yoghurts by adding a yeast species during the low temperature part of the process. It also uses the common bacteria like S. thermophilus, L. bulgaricus, plus some Icelandic legacy cultures. The stuff I buy doesn't use yeast, probably due to spoilage issues with large scale commercial production and shelf life requirements. Hint of cucumber sounds pretty good.

That must be nice for the male employees. I was in a group, in a small French town, which was invited to meet the mayor shortly after debarking. I was dead tired and didn't anticipate that he would serve us the wine produced by his family's vineyard and that it would be an insult to turn it down. It struck like vodka. Tasted better, though (vodka has always tasted like liquified Band-Aids to me). Anyway, it fixed the jet lag by advancing my clock several hours past CST.

I take @Genady point about defining what values constitute "real" freedom. As others have gone into at considerable length, a lot of freedoms (when defined as capabilities to do things) originate from being social animals who can work cooperatively and thus don't have to spend all their time fending off starvation and danger. Capability freedoms (e.g. I want to climb Everest) are launched from platforms of freedom from bare subsistence. Then there are expression freedoms (e.g. artists or social critics), which depends not only on a social web to ease subsistence, but also on cultural structures that allow challenging, fringey, cringey themes to reach a public. Related category of freedoms might be spiritual freedoms, which allow choices within a social structure as to how one finds meaning in life, the universe, etc. And there's freedom from political oppression, which influences all the others I mentioned in the context of modern nation-states. If you start to look at how these different categories interact, maybe you can get an idea of what freedoms have value and are real.