If you asked me about last Wednesday or the one before, I could probably tell you eventually. You might get a lot of detail about the rest of the week along the way, because I’d have to piece together what I did and which day Wednesday was.

It would be about the same if you asked me about the current weather moments after I walked inside. I might be able to tell you, but I’m going to have to build the memories on the spot.

Immigrant/emigrant sound too similar to be generally usable. Lawless and lazy probably aren’t the culprit here.

You can, but plugging thumb drives into work machines is not always kosher

One of the uses of notepad was also that it’s installed by default, and was a place you could be assured wouldn’t mess with your text. No formatting, no weird characters you didn’t ask for.

Notepad++ is great, but you can’t be assured it’s installed on any arbitrary Windows machine.

They also get more bitter the longer they’re cooked. Even with the new variety, I suspect boiling Brussels sprouts might be off the table. Higher temps, or raw (shredded and put in a salad) may get you results you actually like.

Roasting at 230C (450F) for up to about 20 minutes should be good. You may be able to go as high as 260C (500F). If they look slightly burnt when they come out, that’s good. The bitter flavors that develop from burning are related to sugars, so brussel sprouts are largely immune.

I didn’t have brussel sprouts I liked until the 2010s, but now they’re one of my favorites.

There are good sauces you can make from canned tomatoes in 20 minutes (depending on your prep speed).

My go tos are Putanesca & Vodka sauce, but there’s a lot more you can do. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything has a simple recipe and then a big list of variants, most of which can be done in 20 minutes.

Hot take means something else here. In common usage usually only the first half applies, that is, “piece of deliberately provocative commentary”

It’s a motorized wheelchair that takes up twice the space and is way more expensive to build.

Or worse: it’s in telephone mode now, so obviously you only want the sound from the “call” because there’s no other reasons the microphone could be on.

Sleater Kinney

Fugazi

Jawbreaker

Rainer Maria

The Thermals

A solid chunk of Philip K Dick’s output worked better as movies/TV than as books.

There’s definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren’t popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would’ve given him more time and resources to revise future works.

A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.

The decision to use Adobe suite is more likely to be a company wide decision. Part of Adobe suite lock-in is also familiarity making things faster. By promoting others, that may help future generations avoid at least part of the problem.

Google services may be much more piecemeal. Even if the boss personally happens to think there’s a productivity benefit to using a given search engine, it would be unusual to block others.

Practicing what you preach is sometimes important, but I’m not sure how much it bears on these issues. A single company eschewing either won’t make a difference. Getting the public to slowly consider alternatives may.

Maybe folks just like symmetry.

If your comments are going to gum up the thread with a segment that they don’t think will have any effect, what’s a few more to match?

As a kid I had heard Got my Mind Set on you by George Harrison on the radio once or twice.

A few years later when I was starting to listen to music for myself I heard the Weird Al parody, and wanted to track down the original. I didn’t remember any lyrics to the original so the best I could do was accost people with a very poorly sung chorus of “this song is just six words long.”

It didn’t go well. I didn’t find the original until the Internet had caught up enough for me to find it easily.

I had a similar arc with Downtown by Petula Clark. Thankfully without me trying to sing a parody chorus at anyone.

It really depends what sort of recipes you’re making, but for cooking very loose approximations are often fine.

I often have to convert to weight/mass in order to find out how much of an ingredient to buy. I have no idea how many cups an eggplant is. But once I get it home the recipe might as well say “however much eggplant you have.”

If I’m truly off, I will typically scale up the recipe adjusting for the extra meat or vegetable content. I’ll more or less assume that 1lb of meat is interchangeable with 1lb of veggies. That’s not quite true, in particular with salt.

Your mileage may vary though. Some recipes and ingredients are much more sensitive to deviations.

There may be an earlier version, but I know this as an old Emo Phillips joke

I’ve run into it when interacting with folks who grew up in the south. It seems moderately common there. With folks who grew up in the northeast, I haven’t seen this be a thing.

You may have missed the point of the example. It asks about steering wheels, and immediately transitions to vehicles that don’t have steering wheels.

Yes! The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum were both great. If you’ve read more of his work and have a recommendation for where to go next I’d love to hear it.

On the topic of Italian authors, I loved Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler” as well. I didn’t really expect it to pay off as a cohesive work. I was mostly along for the ride and was pleasantly surprised.

Cheerios and Bugles (each separately). Nothing in either item should make them smell like death. But every flavor of either I’ve encountered always has. They’re not even the same kind of grain.

I’ll eat most ingredients in a wide variety of contexts. It’s pretty rare that I’ll find something that I don’t like, and can’t eventually find a way to like.

I’m not expecting them to be amazing, but them being substantially worse than bland and boring is still a surprise.