Those numbers are old, btw. The numbers got skewed when people were finally legally able to divorce each other freely in the 70s and without much social stigma. Modern divorce rate is more like 25-35% So that’s a good chance that wedding ring will stay on :)

Dr Pepper made with real sugar, the taste with HFCS is just not the same.

SteakEze had these microwave angus burgers that you could get at BJs that basically mimicked McDs flavor. Whenever one of us was craving fast food, we could pop it in the microwave and it scratched that itch and was much cheaper, easier and faster. Sadly haven’t seen them for sale anymore and they got taken off the website.

The thing I miss the absolute most is some fruit nectars I used to get that came in big glass bottles, by Fruit of the Nile. They had mango, strawberry guava, guava and orange mango and they were all so incredibly good. My favorite was the mango, it was rich and thick and luxurious, almost just a fruit puree. They made the best mixers. I still use the bottles around the house. I don’t think the company made it through Covid 😫

If you mean Amazon, hard at first but once you get into the habit it’s not hard at all. Whatever you would search Amazon for, search DuckDuckGo for or your websearch of choice and put -amazon in. There are SO MANY online stores out there, with perfectly reasonable prices and even free and fast shipping.

Some general recs:

B&H Photo or Microcenter for anything electronic or computer related

For clothes, if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it’s a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.

For something hard to find you can’t find another site for, try Ebay.

I’ve been avoiding Amazon for about three years now. I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. I encourage everyone to get out of the trap of thinking that Amazon is the only option.

I wouldn’t say inescapable, plenty of people can keep sexuality out of their media and there are asexual/ace spectrum creatives out there too.

Yep, it was always the women ending up conveniently nude and bound up in various methods and scenarios, the scenes were not overtly sexual so it went over my head when i was younger, but was pretty blatant when I grew up a bit.

Things I loved but don’t do anymore: Climbing trees, building snow forts, making elaborate toy castles. Falling asleep on the floor in a sunbeam next to the cat.

Things I still do: eat chocolate chips out of the bag, walk barefoot in the grass, take mediocre pictures of random things that feel really profound at the time but are immediately forgotten

My favorite chocolate bar is any iteration of the Chuao s’mores bar. The graham cracker crumble texture and the bits of marshmallow are just all kinds of mouth happy, and the chocolate is rich and smooth. As far as enjoying the chocolate for the chocolate though, Noi Sirius traditional Icelandic dark chocolate is floral and fruity with a deep rich flavor and so silky. Single origin Madagascar or Ecuadorian chocolate is delightfully complex and full of interesting fruity undertones, it makes mainstream blended chocolate seem bland. All of the pretentious type of puffery people say about wines is actually self evident and true when it comes to single origin chocolate.

For something you can find at the grocery store and just chuck in your mouth, I enjoy Dove.

This is what I keep telling my family members who have fallen down the prepper rabbit hole. They keep buying the freeze dried food and bulk dry goods and water filtration things and I ask them “do you know your neighbors? Do you have a garden? Do you have your own well?”. They buy into the marketing hard but I don’t think they have any idea what it would actually be like to lose access to infrastructure.

We have a Jackery and we’re quite happy with it. It’s come in handy for a lot of random uses and they have a wide variety of charging options and capacities so you only pay for what you need. Battery life is good, build quality is good, we have no complaints.

I was driving home from an event late at night on a highway. It was warm and my AC wasn’t working, and my eyes felt heavy. My blinks kept getting longer until I realized my eyes had been closed too long. I realized I was falling asleep at 65mph and opened up the windows and managed to wake myself up, but if the road had been any busier I could have killed someone, myself included.

38 hours, I was working on a creative project I was passionate about with a hard deadline. I worked on it basically non-stop the entire time, I don’t remember much of it though. I do remember that after about 30 hours I started seeing patterns on things, like the walls and ceiling were covered in shifting sliding wallpaper.

I read those books over and over again just to spend more time there. I still remember more details about the cultures, cities, and fashion in those books better than I could ever remember the plot. The magic and higher moral themes were very simplistic in comparison to other books but RJ really excelled at fleshing out a continent with diverse and unique peoples that made sense in that world.

In my experience it was like making new friends but more stressful.

Dating felt a lot like looking for a job, trying to find prospects, going out on job interviews but with a relationship at stake instead of employment. You start with this rough pretext of wanting to get to know each other, and you ask questions about things that are important to you, muddling through small talk. You try to be entertaining, showing your best self until you get invested enough in each other. It’s stressful but can also be exciting because when you find someone you get along with it can be exhilarating.

Then, if you know you like someone but are unsure about whether they reciprocate your insecurities go nuts. You live in two simultaneous imaginary universes where in one, things go well and you live happily ever after, in another they declare you unfit for their life goals and leave you hurting and back to the grind of searching. Then, if you get to it, there’s the comfortable period of having your relationship defined and developing on what is ostensibly a good path and you can relax more and show your “real” self. If both of you can tolerate each other at your worst, that can lead to a proper partnership which and should feel like hanging out with a best friend. Your partner becomes your go-to person to enjoy things with and consistent companion, which obviously can be really nice.

When your kid runs at you to give you the most enthusiastic hug of your life just because.

Toxic Magic fuckery could fill this entire thread. Hell, just toxic blue deck fuckery could fill this entire thread.

I have an irrational dislike of her voice and the way she talks but nothing against her as a person or a professional.

Not necessarily, people don’t travel through time in Dune but they do see through time, and Spice specifically enables humans to see the past and future. I can theorize that actually traveling into the past is something only intelligent machines were able to facilitate. It could also be a situation where the high tech solution (lasers) has already been countered (shields) so the low tech solution (swords) becomes the better weapon. It could also be by a mutual agreement, or simply lost tech.

Terminator, the Matrix and Dune are all the same universe at different points in time.

Timothy Dalton’s James Bond died deep under double cover in Hollywood in a tragic airship related rocket pack accident.

Who would find throat warbler mangrove hard to pronounce?