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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3184 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 17, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I was looking for this 4chan post about Monty Python and stumbled across this one.

The thread is very funny, but more than that I just marvel at how Monty Python's works have this curious property, in which the phrasing and rhythm of the dialogue is so distinctive that you can adapt it to just about any scenario or worldview and it still sounds recognisably Pythonesque (a property it shares with Seinfeld). You could probably adapt this scene so that Arthur is a "trans person just trying to live their life in peace" and the peasants are cis people badgering him incessantly, and it would still sound authentically Python.

If you heard the initialism L.N.P. in a medical context, what would you guess it stood for?

Leg, Neck, and Penis

Licensed Nurse Practitioner

Chosen

S: Hey dude. Wait, what's this? I thought you were going to wait for me before running it?

J: Oh yeah sorry, I forgot. I finally squashed that last bug on day six, and I started running it right away without thinking. This is just the boring stuff anyway, just simulated protozoa swimming and fucking, it will be about six months before people start building things and the cool stuff starts.

S: In your anthro-centric mind maybe, I was really looking forward to watching it kick off!

J: Ah, my bad. You can watch it now if you like, animals should be just about leaving the sea for the first time.

S: Yeah ok, I'll let you know if I see any people.

J: Seriously, that's half a year away. And while I did make sure their evolutionary pathway follows ours and they will look like us, proto-humans look more like apes, if you were hoping to watch them fuck.

S: Hht yeah, it was a joke. Besides you hired me to help you sell this thing to the world, so I don't have much else to do until it's ready for sale. And if we don't get a solution to The Problem from this we're all dead anyway.

Six months later.

S: How? How are they still stuck in that fucking desert? It's a big desert but it's been decades! There are adults in the tribe who have never seen grass!

J: Oh don't get me started man. I thought if I paired off the smartest ones into a tribe, genetics would get us to super intelligence faster, but I guess the effect isn't strong enough, they still spend their whole lives squabbling over minutia like everyone else. I even coded in a messenger who took the smartest one and laid out exactly what steps they needed to do to cheese the system, but they took the first ten and basically ignore the other 600.

S: You can interfere with the simulation? Then can you pick them up out of the desert? Or make it fertile again or something?

J: I could, but I don't think it's a good idea. They need to reach The Problem organically if we want them to solve it organically and some of them seem dependent on me just from my getting them away from the sun cult civilisation. I'm going to take a back-seat I think, and only interfere if they are in danger of getting wiped out.

S: Fair enough. I'm off to that Comp Sci conference you were supposed to speak at, I'll see you next week.

J: Yeah, try not to get us into more trouble with the press.

S: The press love me baby, that's why you hired me.

A week later.

S: Hey, how's it going?

J: Hey, good timing, I've got a new plan and I wanted to run it past someone.

S: Ohh, I thought I was too dumb to bounce ideas off of?

J: I didn't say that, I said you don't know enough about evolutionary programming to help me work out the algorithm.

S: You said I wasn't smart enough to help you work out the algorithm.

J: Oh fine, I'm sorry I didn't pick my words carefully enough. Do you want to hear my plan or not?

S: Hht, yeah sure.

J: Alright so I managed to keep our tribe going - actually they've flourished and populate a couple of cities now. But they aren't the strongest tribe in the simulation by a long shot - other tribes have even gotten empires going, and the latest empire actually looks like it might subsume our tribe.

S: Oh shit, that's not good! What are you thinking, some drastic interference? Wipe out the empire and give the tribe the spoils?

J: Ha, well I am thinking about something drastic, but in a very different direction. See, I think I fucked our guys a little by tribing them up like that - it's made them insular. And they're anxious too, for good reason - I've had to step in to save them a couple of times. And then I got to thinking - there are obviously smart people outside the tribe too, but we're missing out on that intelligence. We need a way to get those people involved too, so every smart person we can find works towards solving The Problem.

S: Yeah that makes sense. So what's the plan?

J: Ok we want to influence as many smart people as we can to work together, so the first thing I did was write down everything we want them to know.

S: More cheat codes? They didn't do the last ones!

J: Yeah no, no more cheat codes, that was probably a bad idea in the first place. What I'm doing is trying to make working together to solve The Problem their highest virtue. So it's stuff like 'other people think just like you do so if you want to know if someone will approve of what you are doing imagine someone doing it to you and how you'd react.' and 'if you spend all your time trying to make money or gain power you won't have time to spend on doing the only thing that matters - solving The Problem.'

S: Ah, nice, and you're going to send that bot you programmed in around to tell smart people this stuff?

J: Oh no, I can't use that thing - I rushed it and missed a bug in its evolutionary algorithm I think, because it just keeps growing eyes, it's covered in eyes now. If that thing told me to do anything I'd do the direct opposite.

S: So you're building another one?

J: Sort of. I didn't have time to figure out what I'd done wrong with the evolutionary algorithm again, so I built... A person. This guy. I coded all of the messages into him and I'm going to inject him into a random member of the tribe. Then when he grows up he'll be my messenger.

S: He... He looks like you.

J: He is me. Well, I'm him. In the simulation I will be him and he will be... Oh forget it, you're not going to be able to wrap your head around this.

S: Jesus, you are such a asshole.

I knew what the punchline was going to be by the 5th line, but you still got a chuckle out of me.

Cheers, I was partly inspired by the conversation you and @FCfromSSC had with @fuckduck9000 about God's capriciousness and partly by my love of shaggy dog jokes.

Meet me at the Bay Area Secular Solstice! = D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast

Why is a radio broadcast dedicated to the maritime conditions of the British Isles so soothing for British landlubbers as to constitute a sleep aid?

I think the answer goes back to primitive psychology. The sense of hearing is for surveying the environment for cues related to reward and threat. Somehow in man’s evolution, we transfigured our sense of hearing to the meanings of others via words. (Civilization followed suit, but in the beginning was the word.) Yet our desire to continually survey our environment for reward and threat remained. In a natural environment, there is never actually a moment of silence, and so humans do not find complete silence as comfortable as familiar sounds.

And so the Shipping Forecast is a great sublimation of our innate desire to survey the environment. The environment becomes the weather of the seas around your home. The familiar voice rattles off the threats and rewards around you in words, which makes the primitive man inside all of us feel safe. (Other auditory sleep aids are similar: rain on a roof tells us environmental detail; a child falling asleep to adult conversation; etc)

I usually put on a playlist of TV shows or youtube videos to fall asleep to. When it's TV shows, I like Star Trek TOS, when it's youtube videos, it's usually either someone commenting on or commenting on highlights of a playthrough of a game. There's a specific kind of content that work best; something I'm at least somewhat curious about, to attract my attention over my own thinking, but I'm not interested enough to fight sleepiness to watch/listen.

It works great. I'm usually falling asleep within 10 minutes, and if I ever wake up during the night, I start watching the video and usually fall right back to sleep.

Relatedly, I have found the audiobook for the Martian to be really relaxing to fall asleep to. The sounds of a hyper-competent person methodically solving problems with good cheer scratches an itch deep in my monkey brain that ocean sounds or traditional ASMR cant quite hit.

It's also akin to counting sheep. It distracts you from any problems you were thinking about.

The broadcast makes you think about numbers while picturing places and weather. All delivered in a calm soothing voice.

We often ask what we're reading, but as a person of drunkenness, might I ask, what are you drinking?

My most recent whiskey acquisition is a bottle of Four Roses single barrel, barrel-proof bourbon that turned out to be delightful. I'm not sure that these are quite up to the their newly raised, over $100 MSRP, but it is a very good bottle.

On the beer front, I've shifted to keeping my barrel-aged stouts as weekend treats to get a couple pounds of weight off. Nonetheless, we are approaching the weekend, and I'm likely to pop a bottle of 3 Sheeps Barrel Select Wolf. Alternatively, I have a bunch of Central Waters anniversary stouts still, with both the Elijah Craig-barreled and Pappy-barreled variants on the shelf.

Greatly enjoying the Point Beer Cookies and Cream Stout at the neighborhood bar rather than the typical New Glarus Spotted Cow. Otherwise, just shifting into the cold weather standbys:

  • Hot orange spice (usually Bigelow Constant Comment) tea with Angostura bitters and either Korbel brandy or applejack
  • Homemade apple cider
  • Tom and Jerry (hot eggnog with brandy)
  • Mulled wine

I am not much of a drinker, and have never been drunk. So, my choice of alcohol is almost entirely about taste.

My top are:

  • Catalan Vermuth : Casa Mariol ships in the USA or MorroFi if you're in Barcelona. It's the best. I'm glad I found it later in life. If I'd found it at 18, I'd be an alcoholic.

  • Vinho Verde : The cheap trader joe's stuff is great. Perfect with fresh sea food. Perfect for lunch. Perfect for those who don't want to feel like alcoholics for day drinking. Also a great cooking wine.

  • Azulejos Tequila : It was the first Tequila I tried, and could not for the life of me figure out why people in the USA hated tequila. Unfortunately, my first experience with cheap shots was all I needed to understand the unwarranted Tequila hate. AzuleJos is not only excellent tasting as a sipping spirit, but it has the prettiest containers.

  • Taylor Fladgate 10 year tawny port - This rubs my Vermuth itch in the USA. If you like sweet wines, but like more character than just plain sugar, then this is the one for you. Perfect dessert wine.

I've been drunk twice in my life; both times from a cooking or workplace accident leading to me getting a face full of ethanol vapor and I still have at least 60-70 bottles collected.

You don't gotta be alchy to enjoy a fine booze; and not being a drunk means I can make my really good bottles last for months or years.

My lime tree is going nuts right now, so I've been drinking down my worst bottles of tequila, mezcal and rum in mixed drinks. Interestingly, a Mezcal margarita with with no triple sec, a small amount of agave syrup and hella orange bitters actually LOVES my most paint thinner and burning glove flavored mezcal.

Bad rum on the other hand is basically useless; it's bad because it tastes like weak fake caramel and suger instead of a tire fire; so there's not alot there to play with.

I've stopped drinking since I poured my entire 80-bottle bar down the drain while shitfaced and remorseful. Best decision ever. Currently I only have a bottle of dry sake, some Early Times for winter toddies, and a bottle of Talisker Storm. Only have 1 drink about twice a week and feel way better than before.

Water, gatorade, iced tea and black tea.

Never liked the taste of booze and thank god for that.

Same; a relative is a huge fan of herbal remedies, so we always had tinctures of echinacea etc. around for colds. I have thus always associated the taste and smell of alcohol with medicines and cleaning supplies.

That said, I could probably get used to soda mixes or half-water wine like the Romans drank. I just haven’t had a social/economic need, and given that I know the struggles of people in AA and Al-Anon, I figure it’s best not to even try at this point.

Black tea, mostly. (Psych meds prevent me from having alcohol.)

I'm working through a case of Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine. It's such a great clean and crisp tasting sparkling wine, one of the best.

I bought it for a friend for his wedding, but his soon-to-be-wife couldn't hide her crazy for another few weeks and he dodged a bullet.

I used to think all whiskey tasted basically the same, until I got my hands on this bottle of Redbreast. Probably the best whiskey I've ever drank.

I’m mostly drinking Coke Zero straight. I got a deal going on at the gas station down the road, $10 for a month worth of free drinks. Max one fill up per day. !sodadrinkers

I picked up an excellent bottle of Knob Creek Rye, a single barrel pick from a local liquor store. It's high proof, has a wonderful waxy cedar flavor, with a background savory note that reminds me of olives. In the past I've mostly focused on Scotch, but I'm eager to find some more exciting American whiskies like this. I got to try some George T. Stagg at a whiskey tasting recently, unfortunately it was like the 7th thing we had and my palate was pretty much fried, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate it.

I tried my first Indian whisky recently, the Indri Three-wood single malt. For about $55, I'm very happy with it; it has a lot of notes I don't usually find in whisky, like mango and lemon peel. I need to give Amrut and Paul John a try; I've heard good things about them. I also enjoyed the Cotswolds English single malt, which is similar but has more of a peaches-and-pears fruity flavor.

Knob Creek Rye is my "daily driver". Ubiquitous, affordable enough to justify mixing, and hops over the good-enough-to-drink-neat bar with ease. I simply love it, and part of its appeal is that it's a respite from the whiskey hunting rat race bullshit.

If we happen to have similar palates, may I suggest finding Noah's Mill? A bit more uncommon and a heavy hitter at 114 proof. Good enough that I recovered from my first night of horrifically over-indulging with it and continue to have it as a staple.

Along with @TheDag I have ratcheted back my drinking considerably. My med check in October revealed a dodgy eGFR suggesting my kidneys are in pisspoor shape. But when I drink it's lowbrow. There's something called 発泡酒/ happoushu in Japan that's not quite beer (fewer hops or something, or maybe more hops) and is cheaper than even Asahi Super Dry, amd my go-to is one made by Suntory called 麦地とホップ. Yeah. I am drinking one now and cooking down some beans and chopping peppers for fajitas. I also drink vodka. The other night I had some Jack Daniel's. If it's wine my preference is Spanish in particular anything from the Rioja region. There's a nice cheapish one by Marques de Riscal which is a Tempranillo..

Non alcohol wise, does anyone else like Lapsang Souchong tea? My fave and hard as hell to find here. My stash I brought from the US. I also have some lovely Jasmine tea given by a former student who is apparently Chinese, though I never realized.

Edit Is it Daniel's or Daniels?

Are you a nihonshu fan? There's a lot of jizake where I live, it's one of my weaknesses, especially a warm glass when it's cold.

I've never developed the taste, and after a rather punishing hangover years ago brought on by a foolishly long drinkup I've never gone back. What brand do you prefer, if any?

The trick is to find a Japanese friend who enjoys it and asks what's good locally. The national brands (Ozeki, Gekkeikan, etc) are mediocre and overpriced IMO. Assuming you live in greater Tokyo, there's lots of good stuff to choose from depending on your taste. I'm a big fan of dry floral sakes and sakes that you can heat up. If you're not sure what you like, head to brewery that has a tasting.

My "daily driver" is probably Daisekkei -- slightly sweet but not sugar, very delicate aroma, heats well. Delicious on a late summer or eaely autumn day. Now it's getting cold here so it's Nanawarai time -- when heated, it's dry and sharp, almost a bit spicy.

You should also try unfiltered nigorizaki. It's like amazake in thickness, but more alcoholic. Some places also sell "doboroku" which tastes even coarser and is supposedly similar to peasant homebrew sake way back then. Tasty but not something I'd drink every day.

Back in the day I was in a smallish town in Wakayama and they had a local brand called 鶴の滝 or "falling crane" shōchū and I was introduced to it by a woman I worked with. I remember liking it, drinking it お湯割り in winter. My wife's hometown (or near enough) is where they make しろ, which is of course popular nationwide, but they also make all kinds of kuma shōchū (kuma is the place name obviously) and rave about it. The menfolk down there start with beer (never with rice, if you're eating rice you aren't drinking, and vice-versa), then eventually move into shōchū after the first tallboy. I have a friend (American) who swears shōchū is a clean drunk, i.e. he never gets a hangover if he sticks to it. The reason mine (my hangover) was so bad back in the day was probably due to mixing (it was New Years in the Japanese countryside with the whole extended family back so god knows what I actually drank, but really bad sweet Japanese wine was part of it.)

I've had nigorizake and enjoyed it--it was similar in my mind to that Korean makkori but I may be way off. Both were opaque, that might be as far as the similarity goes. I prefer nigori to regular sake actually, but only cold, and in a little box. I've a pair of chokkuri and an o-choko that a ceramic-inclined friend of mine made for me long ago that go to waste most of the time unless I have guests from abroad and want to pretend I'm Anjin-san.

"To health, wealth, and a steady hand."

a fellow happoshu enjoyer. I find it hard to distinguish from "real" Japanese beer, and it's quite a bit easier on the wallet for sure. Liquor being so cheap here is the real win though, I can get imported US bourbons for cheaper than in the states...

Spanish wine: Try Matsu El Recio. Really good for the price.

I'll look for it, thanks.

Whatever happens to be cheap, I have no desire to cultivate fine taste in liquors, I'm in it for the ethanol and extra flavoring to make it palatable.

I don't ever buy alcohol on my lonesome, it's usually only at parties or when hanging out with friends. Besides, it's ridiculously expensive here, a beer costs the same in India as it does in the UK, and more premium drinks are double the price smh.

Is beer really that expensive in India? Seems much more expensive relative to other lower income countries, and all is presumably produced domestically.

It was like 1.25 pounds a bottle in the UK, and the same in India. Now take PPP into account..

It's down to very high liquor taxes.

A man after my own heart! I like a nice bourbon, and will have a glass of wine with dinner or if I visit friends, but if I'm buying liquor I used to feel like I was cheating myself if I didn't get as high a proof as possible, and since then I've just stuck with it. I can't go guzzling shine or grappa or poitin any longer so I try to balance the proof and the flavour.

Generally that used to mean bacardi 151, but that got discontinued, and everclear tastes like methylated spirits, so these days I drink absinthe. All the shit about tripping on it is nonsense (even the kind with wormwood, which is how it's supposed to be made, but usually isn't these days) but it is overproof, and tastes great on the rocks (with a dash of sugar is traditional, but I have never found it makes much difference) or mixed with orange or raspberry cordial/soda, and makes some outstanding cocktails.

My favourites being the Maiden's Blush - take 1 part of that raspberry cordial and 1 part of your absinthe and add 1.5 parts gin and 1 part lemon juice.

And Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon - I will let him explain: "Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.” In my experience it works out to about 1 part absinthe to 4 or 5 parts champagne. Fair warning though, they are hard to drink slowly, they go down too easy.

And the last on the list is my variation on the bachelorette party classic the Fruit Tingle where I substitute the vodka for absinthe (or just add absinthe if I have both and feel like getting sloppy) - 1 part vodka/absinthe, 1 part blue curacao, 3 parts lemonade (or 2 and your extra spirit) and 0.5 parts raspberry cordial.

I feel you, even if I'd settle for like a dash of lemon juice or a lime cordial to pure ethanol and call it a day haha. Well, if someone else is going to the trouble of all that mixology, might as well have it too!

I wouldn't describe myself as a person of drunkenness - though I enjoy drinking a lot, I almost never drink alone or on habit, and only occasionally at social events. I usually drink whatever draught cider is available. I used to drink more spirits but I find they get me too drunk.

It's probably for the best that I avoid drinking habitually, though. If I weren't so vain and just wanted to enjoy myself I would probably drink every night, because it's just so pleasurable.

My beer drinking is the least interesting. I'm generally trying to do low carb, so Miller Lite, sometimes Michelob Ultra if they are out of Miller.

Hard liqours have been more fun. I've been enjoying Gin lately. The Juniper aroma and taste is just something I find easier to slide into on a random night. I'll go back to Whiskeys with friends, but the harsh smokey and peaty flavors I like in a Whiskey are not tastes I'm always in the mood for. I've also been enjoying some Rye whiskeys lately.

I've gone through a few sampling kits from the website Flaviar.

Costco holiday punch "margarita." Last night we I went out and got a blood orange cider. I am not classy in this respect. My husband has been getting Costco scotch, which he says is surprisingly quite good.

Regional beers. Oktoberfest season is a cue for all sorts of grocery stores to carry at least something decent.

For liquor, nothing special. I’ll buy middle-of-the-road vodka or rum if I’m mixing drinks.

I'm a simple man. I strayed into my first relatively nicer whiskey for my 40th birthday. A bottle of Dalmore 12 Year. I kind of fucking love it. I'm used to enjoying the taste of whiskey for a moment or two and then knocking it back before the burn/aftertaste kicks in. The longer I keep Dalmore in my mouth, the better it taste though. I guess you really do get what you pay for.

Keep going IMO. An 18 year old expression of the same juice is going to be VERY good if you're happy w the 12.

Milk the bottle for 4+ years to justify the price. Easy

I still haven't had any Dalmore drams for some reason. The 12 sounds like it has the kind of sherry-heavy character that I love in scotch. I'll have to pick some up!

The other day, I was staring at Dalmore Cigar Malt and wondering if it's worth the price. One of my local bars has pours of it for a non-crazy price that I'm meaning to try one of these days.

I was super tempted by the Cigar Malt when I was shopping. I often have my whiskey with a cigar! But, the bump from an $80 bottle to a $120 bottle was just too rich for my taste. I'm just stingy like that.

I'm trying to stay almost entirely local. Like within an hour of my house. That gives me a couple wineries, a half dozen breweries (including Yuengling!) and a couple distilleries. I still have some Scotch around, and some prosecco and Bordeaux, but my daily drivers are all local.

I've been digging this cool absinthe a local distiller makes. I'm not sure why it seems to get me drunker than other stuff.

Lagers and pale ales benefit so much from freshness that sticking to local stuff has some big taste benefits. We've got a great little brewery around the corner and the difference that getting something that just got kegged a couple days ago makes is huge. Drinking local is consistently one of my favorite things about visiting new places as well.

Absinthe has always had that reputation! I'm not a huge fan of it on its own, but I do love a Sazerac.

I'm not a POD anymore. But I'll be having wine pairings with the courses at a fancy restaurant tomorrow. I'll report back here with tasting notes. Assuming I can remember some of the words used to describe wine lol.

Update:

Wasn't particularly wowed by the wines, so didn't bother to think much on them. Didn't think they matched all that well to the food, with the exception of a semi-sweet Riesling with the salmon. That was a great match.

Jammy! The wine was jammy. Always sounds sophisticated.

Pairings are usually lost on me outside of the basics (e.g. big cab with steak) because I don't know wines well, but it's still pretty fun.

I remember a few ranges on which to place a wine.

Color, clarity. Sweet vs dry. Acidic sharpness vs round. Noticable tannins (the sensation of the wine drying out and nibbling on the flesh in your mouth) or not. Full body or thin. Long finish or not, does it stay after swallowing, cheaper wines just disappear.

It's all the aromas and flavors I'm no good at finding any words for.

Nothing alcoholic. My current drink of choice is water with a squirt of lemon juice. Some Borjomi mineral water when I feel like it.

Our local Pils.

I'd drink whisky if anyone gave me a bottle, otherwise it's too expensive.

But in truth I don't drink at all because there's nobody to drink with.

For hard liquor, usually bourbon, usually Bulleit or Woodford Reserve. I've found $20-50 is my sweet spot for 750ml bottles of liquor.

For beer, usually a local lager, pilsner or wheat ale.

I tend to semi-binge drink- I will go weeks/months without having anything, then I'll get in the mood to buy a bottle, then have at 1-2 glass each week night, 2-3 each weekend night until it is gone.

If for whatever reason my pattern gets broken (I get sick or have plans that preclude drinking) I'll stop early and then pick it back up weeks/months later when I get the urge.

Honestly it is the same pattern I follow with games/books as well, like a very specific kind of addictive personality.

Get at some Basil Hayden. Much better than Bulleit and only a little more expensive.

Depends what you like; bulleit being low sweetness and rye forward makes it fairly unique in the reasonably priced range of big marketshare bourbons, IMO. I find Basil Hayden has a slightly overripe bannana fermented funk to it that I enjoy in rum but find distracting in whiskey (could be my pallet being oversensitive though, or just a bad bottle.)

Basil is indeed a sweeter bourbon, but that is my preferred taste. I don’t dislike bulleit, but if I’m going for something without the sweetness, I would tend toward whiskey.

Interesting - there seems to be some regional pricing going on with that one. Where I lived before, it was (and double-checking, still is) a full $20 pricier than Bulleit, but here it is only about $10 more. I'll have to check it out.

Bourbon prices are the one thing that in my lifetime I really, really feel inflation. Bourbon was the thing when I started drinking, because for the quality it was so cheap. Relative to Scotch why was so heavily premiumized, or Canadian whiskey that was so boring.

I feel like the better deal these days is Japanese single malt.

McAfee's Benchmark Old No 8, is a very good value bourbon with a long name.

Surveying my shelf at the moment, my favorite thing I have in the sub-$50 range is probably Eagle Rare. Depending where you live, it can be a pain in the ass to find, but it's a damned good whiskey for $40. Right on that line, Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel is genuinely excellent and better than most of the more expensive bottles I have.

I've had Eagle Rare and quite liked it, but spot-on in terms of availability. I've only snagged it as a consolation prize in a Blanton's raffle.

Yeah, the only times I've gotten bottles are at the "instant rewards" thing that my local liquor store does where the allocated (but not super rare) bottles will just get placed in a cabinet where you need to spend $X on something else to get them. Not a bad deal all in all since there's usually something else I'd like anyway, but it's wild how scarce some of these things have gotten.

The Blanton's hype is similarly silly. It's a good whiskey! But the secondary market prices are just stupid. If available at MSRP, they're a good buy, but I cannot imagine spending the $150-200 they're going for at aftermarket sellers.

Cheap lager. Which is fairly decent in Czech Republic. Maybe every third day. 3-4 if working outside doing physical labor in summer.

Cheap vodka, rum more often. I'd buy pure alcohol if there was some on sale for such use, tbh. I sometimes drink expensive rum, probably would more if I wasn't earning $5 an hour.

But hey, I'm not a person of drunkeness. Never been drunk in my life. I get a feeling of pressure inside my forehead after say 200 ml of hard liquor or equivalent, and never feltl like drinking anything more to find out.

But hey, I'm not a person of drunkeness. Never been drunk in my life. I get a feeling of pressure inside my forehead after say 200 ml of hard liquor or equivalent, and never feltl like drinking anything more to find out.

Sounds like you do have a decent tolerance, though! 200 ml of hard liquor would have me well into drunk territory.

By hard liquor I mean 37% stuff, not 50% insane drinks.

I'm 7/8 Slav, 1/8th German, so maybe...

That’s essentially 5 shots. If you did them in a row right after each other you’d be drunk unless a seasoned alcoholic. But over a few hours (even 2) I very much doubt it.

Oh, I absolutely would be. Though I'm unsure how much of that is due to me being a lightweight (both literally and figuratively) and how much of that is just having a lower cutoff for what I consider to be "drunk."

I hate Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving I had three kids in the ICU for breathing problems. This year I forbade my husband from making Thanksgiving dinner, despite how irrational it is. I tried to explain to him, it's not really superstition, it's more like how some people hate Christmas because a relative died on Christmas. It's like that but slightly less drastic. Thanksgiving is now associated with Children's Hospitals.

Then he bought several pies for the donation drive at work. The minute after he checked out, I got a call from my daughter's school to pick her up due to a cough, and not bring her back without a doctor's note. A couple days later, I'm in the ER with a sick 8 month old.

I think I am now superstitious.

Edit: baby is fine, just has RSV and an ear infection. We're home now and I will have a Thanksgiving dinner out of spite for the supernatural miasma (or viruses) that plague us.

We've been sick all week, and now our daycare is closed due to sickness. It's everyone, everywhere during this time.

RSV or something seems to have hit everyone I live around. My daughters have had off and on coughs for like two months now. I think they keep just getting reinfected. Cuz they'll go a week or two without a cough, and then three weeks with one. Talking with my family that lives nearish, neighbors, friends that live in the area, co workers, and people from my kids' schools. Everyone has had something like it. My mom tells me that this is normal for having kids between 2 and 5 and having them in daycare.

I'm just hoping to avoid another winter like the one I had in 2020. It was a stomach virus, then a cold, then covid, and finally the Flu. All in one winter. (For those wondering the ordering from worst to not bad was: Flu > Stomach Virus > Covid > common Cold).

Have you checked to make sure your property isn't built on any old Indian burial grounds? Maybe you should try obvserving Unthanksgiving Day next year and see if your outlook turns out any better.

Missed opportunity to call it Thankstaking Day.

It's just RSV season, and my kids seem really prone to complications from it for whatever reason.

All 3 of them in the ICU? Do they have autoimmune issues? RSV isn't normally that severe.

Actually I have a puzzle if you're interested.

3 year old female presents to the ER with the following symptoms:

  • Fever. High of 104.5, has not gone below 101.3 in five days despite parents alternating Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen every three hours.
  • Lethargy. Does not respond to parents saying name, wakes up when IV line is placed but goes back to sleep, fell asleep standing upright.
  • Lack of appetite. Not drinking fluids, no urination in 24 hours.
  • 40-50 breaths per minute, heart rate is 40-50 bpm (not a typo, and yes she is 3 years old.) O2 is 90-94%

Nasal swab comes back indicating RSV and Parainfluenza. Chest X-Ray is clear, chest sounds clear on stethoscope. No change to vitals after receiving fluids. No post-nasal drip or other symptoms.

She was born at 40+2 (not a premie) and has had no prior medical history.

The patient is admitted to the hospital. The reason given on the admission paperwork is "Dehydration." An EKG reveals nothing unusual. There is no change to her heart rate or temperature even under hospital care. She still sleeps most of the day.

After eight days of admission, her care team runs another test, an MRI of her head, and discover something that changes their treatment. They discover bacterial sinusitis, and treat with antibiotics.

She is discharged to home on day 11.

They think the low heart rate was due to exhaustion. Another theory is that she just has an "athletic heart" whatever that means.

I'm no paediatrician, if you think adults can be finicky, kids quadruply so!

They tolerate with alacrity what might off an adult, and then fall over after a stiff breeze.

At any rate, bacterial sinusitis is usually a secondary infection on top of a viral one, IIRC, likely due to the RSV and parainfluenza. The diagnosis given at the end seems to me like the doctors going "we have no fucking idea what's going on here, but she didn't die on us, so we were doing something right". By athletic heart, they mean the observation that extremely fit people often have resting heart rates below what's consider normal, which is entirely benign or even a sign of excellent cardiovascular health. I have no idea how that's applicable for a toddler, unless you breast-fed her on the really good shit haha, but I have no other diagnosis myself.

There is something I've wondered, but I suspect a doctor in real life would not confirm it because the profession is hard enough as it is. Should they have identified the sinusitis sooner? Might they have identified it sooner if it was not for the weird heart rate serving as a massive red herring?

They only did an MRI because they were concerned that something was going on with her brain that was preventing it from regulating her body temperature and heart rate. (The MRI was also the reason she was in the ICU. The hospital would only perform it on patients that young if they were fully sedated and at that point they were settling in for a long haul of tests and whatever came after.)

RE: Athletic heart, my wife is a cardio bunny and often has a very low resting heart rate. Every time she's connected to a machine, the machine goes off until they just turn the damned thing off. It happens. When I was in better shape around the time I got my 2nd degree black belt, the same thing happened to me.

It's funny because this kid is the biggest lollygagger. She will insist on being carried half way through every walk. She will pause for 15 seconds every time she goes through a choke point (hallway, doorway, any other constricted area) with people behind her. Her response to another kid snatching a toy away from her is to stand there and wail as loud as she can, even if the kid is half her size. So this hypothesis is kinda funny to me, but to the doctors who don't know her maybe it sounds more reasonable.

They had RSV and Parainfluenza simultaneously. I don't know if there is a lot of research into how severe these two are in combination, but my n=3 says it seems to increase severity in small kids.

Ukrainian toilets are so much better than American toilets. I've literally never clogged one. Except one in Balakliya that was a different kind. Isn't it interesting how there are different types of toilets? I wonder why.

I've lived in America my whole life and have never clogged a toilet. I tend to have soft poop though, so maybe that's why? Or maybe it's being average weight instead of obese.

I have had two roommates whose excrement is the radius of the average cheap water bottle. Neither was obese. I, on the other hand, am obese, but mine is closer to the radius of the plunger handle I got to know all too well when they lived with me.

All three of us are Americans of mixed British Isles and Swiss/German extraction.

Well, I also use a lot of toilet paper.

I've never had a toilet clog on me in India, or seen a clogged one for the matter, and believe me I've dropped some timber. I would wager it's all the TP gumming up the works in most of the West.

Well, that's also a weird thing. I've noticed Ukrainians sometimes don't put their toilet paper down the toilet, but I always do, and I've never had a problem except in America.

I remember reading an askreddit thread of a European or possibly Australian asking why there was so much toilet clogging in their media when it literally never happened to them. Some people who had experience in America and different countries explained that American sewage pipes were an inch or more smaller than European sewage pipes.

I couldn't find that specific reddit thread but there was a thing that had this link: https://pottygirl.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/why-do-american-toilets-clog/

Which suggests the clog factor is mostly about different design.

Or Americans are taking mega shits.

Interesting!

Moving away from plumbing and washroom discussion: what are you doing in Ukraine? Do you live there?

I came as a humanitarian volunteer, but I haven't been doing much lately, so I'm going back to the US soon.

Probably the absence of low-flow design downstream of environmental regulations.

No, even with the old ones.

I remember gags in sitcoms about people buying Canadian toilets to get around regulations

related

(The toilets in Canada suck now too -- maybe Ukraine can get some funding for the war effort by exporting blue & yellow versions?)

Sorry if this is culture war. It didn't occur to me at first.

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