fribble
19hr ago
There were a lot fewer restaurants. I am gen x. When I was a kid, we ate out 4 times a year - for the family birthdays. Pizza Hut. My parents went to a nice restaurant once a year. On road trips - driving to a relative's house and camping for overnight was our travel mode - we ate (sandwiches and fruit) and drank (water, from home) out of a cooler in the car.
We were a typical middle class family. No fast food. No snacks from the drug store or gas store. My dad brown bagged it to work. We thought my grandparents were rich because when we visited we would eat at Howard Johnsons after church.
Now in my typical suburban neighborhood I am a mile or less walk away from like 10 different eateries. Not counting the 3 bars and 2 coffee shops. The suburban method of eating in the 70s and 80s could not support what's available in my similar neighborhood now.
I still don't eat out much. It feels like a lot of money I could better allocate elsewhere. Like on my bougie beans.
fribble
1d ago
I have one pound of beans left and the new box should be arriving soon.
I can saute my mirepoix without stressing about it. I still have terrible knife skills. I probably need to sharpen the knives.
My most recent batch was cranberry beans in the slow cooker with onions and garlic. So far I have mostly just been eating a bowl of them for dinner. It's been convenient to cook a batch over the weekend and not have to think about dinner for the week.
They are much better than grocery store dried beans. Probably not bougie prices better. I should do a head-to-head slow cooker comparison. The no soaking + faster cooking time could be the decisive vote.
fribble
1d ago
Vegetables! Corn on the cob! I really miss grilled vegetables.
I made passable sausage gravy this past weekend. Maybe eventually I will figure out grilled vegetables. They're so good.
fribble
2d ago
My husband used an LLM to manage his recipes for his diabetes. He would provide his recipe and the resulting blood sugar. Use the LLM to bounce ideas off when the results weren't as expected and it made it easy for him to track changes over time.
If he knew he was going to have a meal that might blow out his blood sugar he could easily get meals that were blood sugar neutral from the LLM. It was a quick query, which worked better for him than paging through recipe books and spread sheets. And since he trained the LLM on his food choices and what they (typically) did to his blood sugar, he had a bespoke meal service at his fingertips.
(He also used them for art work trained on his art work. Collages without all the cut and paste up. But that's a bit less generalizeable.)
I only use ai/ml at work. But I have debated asking it for recommendations to clean up my computer and email. Things have gotten out of hand.
fribble
2d ago
I did it in the dark ages before ot was a thing. I wanted to sock away money before having a kid in case things went wrong and I wouldn't be able to return to work immediately. I worked 2 full time and 3 part time jobs. I didn't engage in time theft - I worked my claimed hours. One full time job was in person, one was fully remote (back in 2000, it was nice) and my 3 part times were all previous employers who would mostly let me work remotely with the occasional in person deployment/training/hardware wrangling.
It was challenging to juggle and I have pretty good executive function. I think most modern "over employed" folks are engaging in fraud & I have problems with that. I have thought about doing it again once I get all the household stuff under control. Just two jobs though. Maybe even a full and a part time instead of two full time. I value my sleep more these days. But I like being busy and my hobbies generate nothing useful.
I recommend overlap in skills. All of my jobs were programming but the two full time used different languages, fortunately the 3 part time overlapped. Schedule things very carefully. Be up front. I was good and my companies were willing to deal. It also meant if I needed to take a long lunch at my in person job for a meeting at my remote job, I didn't have to hide it.
I got pregnant after about a year of this. Even got paid maternity leave from one job. I dropped to one full time job when I had the baby. Too hard otherwise.
fribble
4d ago
Rereading all the Philip Marlowe books. Why does no one say davenport anymore?
fribble
4d ago
I hope it does scratch that itch and that you or she are able to figure out how to help her get more human connection.
fribble
4d ago
My mom is in her 80s. She does normal human things. She makes her meals, cleans her house, volunteers in her church. She goes on regular walks around her neighborhood, acts as surrogate mother/grandmother to her neighbor & neighbor's kids... She and her sisters recently got home from their yearly sister trip. Vacation bible school just finished and my mom planned the activities and pinch hit for the toddler teachers as usual. Though she is slowing down - she set herself up to be a baby wrangler more of the time. Once summer is over she will resume teaching her regular (adult) Sunday school class. Since COVID I call her weekly and last week she told me about a radio interview with a Swedish Heavy Metal band and how surprised she was to enjoy their music; I gave her some tips for how she could find more of their music.
Replace my weekly phone call with chatgpt. Maybe. Have her train it to basically meal plan and prep grocery lists for her. Fine. Replace her church and social interactions? To her detriment. Take the place of her biblical research for the classes she teaches? Not if I want her brain to continue functioning optimally.
I am lucky she is well integrated in her neighborhood and her church. If she weren't I think we would need to figure out how to do that rather than try to replace it with an ai friend. If she were bed bound I might think differently. But most older folks are just older and a bit slower. They still have plenty to offer the world and a lot of reasons to participate in it.
(Exploiting ai is a thing. If your parent is at risk from kidnapped grandchild scams over the phone, consider them at risk from ai scammers as well.)
fribble
5d ago
You could donate free meals through Red Emma's which would hit your local/vegan/direct wants ...
fribble
5d ago
I can see how it might work for an older person who is too enfeebled to really get out. But that person is also at tremendous risk for being taken advantage of and if I were evil I would be salivating at how easy it would be to get these old folks to bury me in gift cards.
But for other lonely people? If my gen zer kid is spending time with chatgpt instead of figuring out real relationships, I am worried.
If I decide a solitary widowhood isn't my jam and start using chatgpt to fill a void instead of joining a social org, I am worried.
Heck, if my geriatric mother spends her walks chatting with her ai friend rather than her neighbor, I am worried.
In the absence of any better options, ok. Better to have a fake friend than no friend, maybe - I am not convinced fake friends solve for loneliness. But if the fake friend is impeding actually finding real interaction? I'm suggesting against it.
fribble
8d ago
I decided to get a plumber to evaluate my sump pump situation. The guy who came is the best tradesman I have dealt with in forever.
First, he didn't insist everything be brought up to code if he were going to touch it.
Second, he offered multiple options ranging from "you pay me to make sure your minimum viable solution is in fact viable" to "perfect repair."
Third, he answered every one of my questions thoroughly and made sure I felt my question had been answered.
And most importantly, he let me dither over the various options, including me talking myself from the cheapest to the most complete, and insisted I take the time to review each bid before deciding, which he emailed that evening.
If his work is half as good as his estimate process I will be pleased.
I managed to do the deck repairs. Now I need to seal the wood. Next up will probably be deciding if I will replace the broken glass panes in my windows myself. And replace the cords that are broken. And reglaze them. And remove the paint from the ones that have been painted to return to the pretty stained wood. All because if I replaced our wooden windows with aluminum or whatever they are now made of, my husband would return from the dead and throttle me. Fortunately I can check out a variable temp heat gun from the library.
fribble
10d ago
I am by virtue of marriage. I don't really count because I don't have a grudge against Mayflower.
fribble
11d ago
Come to Baltimore. Very Catholic. The kids from the nice families go to Catholic school. (The ones who aren't Jewish, that is.)
fribble
11d ago
Wouldn't you tell any creepy new comers to knock it off? Why should it matter if they're creepy towards person A vs person B?
No young people could join Ham radio clubs if they adhered to your standards. Or become masons. I hear VFW halls also run really old. And DAR meetings!
fribble
11d ago
Thank you! I will get supplies in and pick a weekend to work on this soon. Especially since I am thinking chicken pot pie and chicken and dumplings are also going to need a roux.
fribble
12d ago
The bean club folks on Facebook suggest cooking the beans in a pressure cooker (most seem to use the instant pot) to deal with hard water if you don't want to use store bought water. Maybe give that a try?
I think some of us are also just sensitive to the taste of baking soda. There are some candies that use baking soda and I find them inedible. Baking soda biscuits are ok, I think the salt helps moderate the taste.
fribble
12d ago
Heh. Now I want someone to try out dating apps by discussing beans and their bougie bean club.
fribble
13d ago
Mediocre gravy is mediocre gravy. I have never successfully made a roux. We will see how it goes!
fribble
13d ago
That sounds good. I bet it would be nice w/lemon juice as a lighter alternative to the oil, too.
fribble
14d ago
Lentil and carrot salad is awesome. It lasts days and days. And it's full of carrots and lentils!
I also made the san franciscano beans in the crock pot with just salted water. Then I sprinkle them with some cheese on top of some tortilla chips. Put in the toaster oven for a few minutes and then sprinkle with chopped lettuce. It works out really nicely. Not as convenient as the lentil & carrot salad though.
I kept some of the bean water and I am debating seeing if I can turn it into meringue like you can with garbanzo bean water. How weird would that be?
These beans are cooking up easily. Still skipping the soaking. I have about half a pound of prepared beans left, and 2 lbs of dried beans.
I may have to pause the bean experiments though because my daughter says she misses biscuits and gravy. Biscuits are no problem but my husband made the gravy. I guess between the two of us we can figure it out. But I envision a lot of X-and-mediocre-gravy meals until we get it dialed in.
fribble
17d ago
Whittling. Sharpening pencils. Cutting errant threads. Screwdriver. Letter opener. Package opener. Cutting an apple. Peeling an orange. Opening annoying plastic packaging.
fribble
17d ago
I started carrying a pocket knife when I got my first pocket knife as a kid. I didn't stop until I got a job where it was considered a weapon and prohibited. I have never stabbed anyone. My pocket knife lives in my hiking day pack now.
I also used to carry a lighter (and still do in hand warmer season) and I have never set anyone on fire.
I occasionally carry a pocket harmonica. I have committed music with it. I can understand being disinvited for that.
fribble
19d ago
I have memories of the hostage taking. It was a very large part of my childhood (constantly on the nightly news and in the - 2 daily - newspapers). In high school (in the 80s) when one of my classmates grumped about our English teacher's love of making us memorize things, the teacher retorted we would appreciate it if we were held hostage.
I have one acquaintance who feels strongly about the USS Liberty, and he's old enough that he has memory of it. I think that matters.
Why isn't it plausible? We also only had 1 TV and when I was in college it was too expensive to make phone calls home so we sent letters. No one sends letters anymore.
Life changes. I have lived the rise and fall of video rental stores for example. They didn't exist when I was little. One of my teenage jobs was managing one, they were everywhere. And now there are very, very few. I took a picture of a pay phone in the wild the other day to share with my kid because she didn't recall ever seeing one. They also used to be all over the place.
Fast food places popping up everywhere and people eating it weekly instead of rarely is just one small change. Everyone needs their fancy coffee nowadays. Wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s. My dad wasn't weird for brown bagging lunch every day. I have worked in offices where I was considered odd for bringing my lunch every day. That shift alone would support a lot of fast food/gas station food. Even my current coworkers who bring their lunches regularly (buying lunch is inconvenient) often plug the machines for sodas/snacks/energy drinks or roll in to work with a purchased breakfast/fancy coffee.
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