If it’s just not wanting to deal with people, it seems like most restaurants do takeout, since COViD.

Last Spring I went to this Thai restaurant I’ve been eying. The restaurant was pretty much what you’d expect and the food pretty good. Most of that meal we were the only customers, but there was a steady stream of takeout orders. That seems typical now

My remaining fast food vice is Chipotle.

We have a bit of a tradition going. When my teenager drives over from his mom’s house Friday after school, I send out a Chipotle group order so he can pick what he wants, and it’s ready for pickup as he approaches.

So fast, so convenient

Burritos are not food if you get them from taco bell

Do they have options?

I gave up Taco Bell after college as “not actual food”, and for decades only went to McDonald’s in a road trip or Wendy’s for a frosty. There was a cheap local-ish burger joint that sometimes took their place but it was a bit out of the way …… then we got Chipotle and Panera!!! Fast food that’s actual food and not quite as bad for you. And now it’s the same price or cheaper.

My burrito cost less than your Big Mac meal while being more filling. It has less sodium, less saturated fat, actual fiber and vegetables, and tastes so much better.

We do have at least one authentic burrito place that’s even better and cheaper but you can’t order online. Chipotle group orders are the god of food apps

Then go for a burrito

Don’t wait. Come talk to us. Yeah things are hectic with demands flooding in from all directions but we want to make your job easier and better

It all depends on whether they’re competent and can act together for their goals. Many of those goals are truly horrible, but

• Trumps first term was incompetent, fractured. Despite all the chaos and destruction, they did nowhere near as much damage to peoples lives and democracy as they wanted to
• My conservative brother is all too typical, dismissing the worst statements as “he’s not serious. He’d never do that”. We have to hope people like my brother are right
• their goal is narcissism and their methods are stoking outrage: is it possible they’re not actually evil, don’t actually pay attention to what comes out of their own mouths? Are they even capable of working together? Making Trump rich and stoking his ego would be a travesty, but far less damaging than what he says he’ll do

They’re convenient scapegoats that can’t defend themselves. “Look, it’s a witch! Burn it”

The problem is the consequences are not immediate. This is like making a child sit in their room because they scribbled on the wall in crayon last week. They don’t have the capacity to make that connection.

If renewed inflation takes another four years to really build up, guess whose fault that becomes? If the climate gets worse over years, decades, generations, no blame here. If Russia invades the Baltic states after consolidating Ukraine, it couldn’t be due to appeasement here. If they succeed in replacing the merit-based civil service with partisan hacks whose only skill is “loyalty”, clearly it’s the swamp that needs to be drained.

Looks a lot like lack of awareness to me. The price of pretty much everything has at least stabilized or is down from the peak. Individuals are better off today than recently.

However prices are shockingly high compared to four years ago. Many are worse off than four years ago. The economy is trending much better at the individual level but people can’t get past the four years of buildup to realize that it has turned around

I his whole idea is awfully reminiscent of a certain political party insisting ACA is bad and needs to be repealed? Why? It’s bad? What are you going to do instead? We have a concept.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the idea but yes there needs to be something do do with criminal offenders as either punishment or protecting civilization from repeat offenders. There needs to be some way for offenders to regret their actions or some opportunity to re-think their choices. Reforming civilization to address those who are in actual need is the first step, as is redirecting away from prison where you can, but it’s nowhere near sufficient. Way too many criminals are actual criminals

If those are valid substitutes for prison and they do exist, then why does prison still get the bulk of the offenders? I’m all for your idea but reality seems to be proving those solutions do not apply to most cases of criminal justice

Yeah that’s unpopular - I shared that view in the early days of unibody construction but manufacturers can do a lot more with that now. Why not judge whether it’s a truck by whether it can do truck things?

We’re way past the point where trucks are used for stereotypical truck things and they’re used for a much wider range of uses. Most don’t need to be so heavy duty to fulfill their use case.

Unless you’re also going to claim we don’t need 80% of the trucks we have, you’re just being pretentious about the need for heavy duty vehicles and what manufacturers are able to design

For newbies to home automation, it’s finally getting to the point where we should recommend Matter/Thread.

I mean, I won’t use it yet because I have mature Zigbee and Z-wave meshes, and use Home Assistant, but they want to run HomeKit and don’t seem to want to do their homework

Everything is in git, and I tend to use IntelliJ as an IDE. So my projects are all in ~/Ideaprojects/[PROJECTNAME]

I thought I read about this for real a while back? In a bid to make plastic decay faster, make it out of cellulose with embedded bacteria that can break it down. It still happens too slowly for most plastic packaging

I used to live in a townhouse and no one would bother going along the row. Finally we got together with other residents and set up a table in the parking lot next to the street. That was a lot of fun hanging out with the neighbors all evening, handing out candy

Pre-COViD we used to take out the screen in our storm door (and after put in glass for winter). It really freaked some people out when we reached through to hand out candy! Even better when someone didn’t keep a good hold on the dog and he leaped through! Of course today I have a pit bull instead of mini poodle so that wouldn’t go over as well

Wait until your furnace dies and see if it was closer to ten years or to 25 years?

Add up your maintenance costs over the life of the furnace and decide whether your actions could have saved enough money to change your behavior?

But seriously I’m not sure there is a clear provable answer until it happens, and even then ….

…… so for me, I tend to look at how expensive it would be to replace the furnace and decide to do everything I can to extend its life

Right it’s just an electric resistive heater in a radiator shape filled with an oil to circulate heat.

• no combustion
• no hot surfaces
• more consistent heat
• generally more engineered for continuous use than other space heaters
• generally have tip sensors (depending on country)

When my ex wanted a space heater, I insisted that this be the only type, for safety. And of course not allowed to use a power strip or extension cord with it

In some states