It depends on what I’m doing

If I’m going somewhere out of easy driving distance and hoping maybe some friends will come along, I’ll start floating the idea about a year out, start making more solid plans about 6 months out. Give people time to get passports, save up for plane tickets, etc.

If it’s an overnight to a long weekend with just me and my wife, maybe a couple weeks, we could probably do day-of sometimes but we gotta make sure someone can watch our dog.

There’s a large park in my area that has a lot of deer. There used to be no hunting of any kind allowed in the park. You pretty much can’t drive through any area of the park without seeing a few dozen deer.

The result was, predictably, since we have no real predators left in this area, that the deer population exploded. The deer ate a lot of vegetation, there were a lot of car accidents involving deer, and it even got to the point that a lot of the deer just were not even very healthy because there was too much competition for food and numbers of other animals also took a dive.

Maybe 10 or 20 years ago they implemented some deer culling programs to thin the deer population, and so within my lifetime I’ve seen biodiversity explode in the park, I’m seeing lots of different plants and animals that I don’t remember seeing as a kid, the deer are healthier, car accidents are down, basically all of the issues have improved dramatically.

And probably the craziest thing to me is that around 100 years ago or so, give or take a couple decades, deer in my state were in really sad shape from overhunting and deforestation. There was even one hunter who believed that he may have shot the last deer in the state (he probably didn’t, but the fact that he believed that was the case speaks volumes about how few deer were left)

The state of course put a lot of programs into place to rebuild the deer population, hunting licenses, tags, seasons, limits, and other restrictions and various other conservation programs, and the deer pretty quickly rebounded, so well in fact that the pendulum has arguably swung too far in the other direction and we now have too many deer in parts of the state (personally I think it’s a bit odd if I see less than about 6 deer on any given day, and mostly all I do is drive 20 minutes to and from work, and walk around my neighborhood)

And circling back to dogs, until very recently because of those restrictions put into place, you could not use dogs in any capacity to hunt deer in this state. A lot of the damage done to the deer population a century ago was by commercial hunters who would often use dogs to help drive large numbers of deer. A couple years ago they did finally change the law to allow dogs to assist in tracking wounded deer.

I also strongly support reintroducing predators, however in my area, it probably won’t be feasible without some major un-development, deer may only need a home range of about a mile or so, so they can carve out a decent life in isolated pockets of woods and fields scattered around suburbia, many larger predators like wolves, bears, mountain lions, etc. on the other hand may need a range of tens or sometimes even hundreds of miles, so it would be hard to get them established here (although our coyote population has been growing and adapting well, so they may be able to start filling some of that role)

I feel like there’s some room for nuance here. I don’t like using dogs to hunt down live uninjured game in general, flushing, chasing, treeing, etc. that just seems like unnecessary stress for the animals which should be avoided.

But I have no issue using tracking dogs to follow a blood trail and find a wounded animal after it has been shot, which could mean the animal can be humanely dispatched more quickly, or to retrieve dead game, like with waterfowl hunting since ducks and such are often shot over the water making them difficult to retrieve.

There can be some narrow exceptions for people who are actually subsistence hunters and rely on hunting for a significant amount of their food needs

There’s also cases like feral swine that are often hunted with dogs, they’re invasive and can be very damaging to the environment, can be aggressive towards humans and can present a health hazard for domestic pigs in nearby farms, so it’s often important to keep their numbers in check, so it might sense to allow dogs for that purpose if it makes the hunters more effective.

You could chant primary colors at kindergarteners online line for a maximum of 20 hours per week, or in person for a maximum of 10 hours per week

That may work for you, and if it does I’m happy for you, but for me, as much as I want more time for myself and my hobbies, one thing I want even more is to not ever spend any amount of time doing anything even remotely like that.

I also have no real interest in working abroad even if I didn’t think that job sounded horrible. A week or two of vacation, sure, but by the end of week 2, I’m ready to go home, and that’s really the point here, I want to be able to just stay home, and only leave when it’s to do something I want to do.

The problem is that the one thing I want to do that I’m not already doing is “not work”

I don’t have any grand plans to take up new hobbies or anything in my retirement (though I’m sure I’ll continue collecting hobbies just as I always have) I just want to be able to do them on my own schedule

FYI, there’s a little debate over this in the English language, but many would say that the proper demonyms are Afghan for the Pashtun ethnic group, and Afghanistani (or rarely Afghanese) for people from Afghanistan regardless of ethnicity.

Afghani is their currency.

I believe it comes from a discrepancy between the Persian and Pashto languages. Afghani being the correct term in Persian, and Afghan being the term in Pashto.

Afghani is pretty widely used in English, and even appears in some dictionaries, but many argue that it’s not correct.

So a person is an Afghan, they eat Afghan food, wear Afghan clothing, have Afghan customs, and their currency is the Afghan Afghani (in case some other country ever adopts a currency called the Afghani and you need to differentiate between them)

That’s kind of the point of this thread though isn’t it? Weird food pairings that sound crazy but actually work if you’re brave enough to try them

Elsewhere in this thread you’ll find a lot of sweet/salty/savory pairings, one that’s particularly relevant is adding chocolate to chili. Lots of chili will end up getting served with some shredded cheese, or some sour cream (sour cream is kind of next door to cheese when you think about it) so not too far off from a Mexican hot chocolate without the meat.

Cheese is dairy, and there’s no shortage of milk and chocolate creations, like hot chocolate itself

Cheese can go with sweet things just fine, plenty of great fruit and cheese pairings, cheese and honey, etc. (if you haven’t tried it, some warm apple pie with some sharp cheddar cheese on it is great, also sounds crazy to some people but if you ever do a cheese fondue odds are you’re going to be dipping apple slices into cheese)

You’re probably even familiar with a couple pairings of chocolate and other cheeses, things like chocolate chips in cannoli, chocolate cheesecake

The zest has a very concentrated flavor, but not really any acidity.

However, ook into “super juice” it had a moment in fancy cocktail circles somewhat recently as a way to get more citrus juice from less fruit and also a product that will last longer in the fridge without the taste degrading.

Basically you peel your citrus, mix the peels with some powdered citric and malic acid (the ratio of acids depends on which citrus, I think lemon juice gets straight citric, lime and orange get a mix) and let them sit for a while, the acid pulls some of the oils and such out of the peels making “oleo citrate”, then you blend the oleo citrate and peels with water and strain out the solids and you’re left with something that is nearly identical to actual juice (and you could, of course, mix in the actual juice from the fruits as well)

I feel like there is probably something there you could work with to punch up your juice a bit. Maybe if you’re able to separate out the oleo citrate you could use that as sort of a citrus extract. Or if you just want more acidity and don’t need the flavor enhanced you could just add a bit of acid to the juice.

A Puerto Rican coworker turned me onto hot chocolate with cheese in it. I believe the traditional method is basically just to put some cheese in the cup and you end up with a melted glob of cheese to eat with a spoon as/after you drink it. I’ve played around with that as well as actually incorporating the cheese into the drink itself, melting it all together on the stove.

Kind of gets you some of that well-tested sweet/salty/savory combo. I dig it in a Mexican hot chocolate with some cinnamon and chili powder.

I believe the traditional cheese is edam, I’ve tried that as well as cheddar and a few other cheeses, they all seemed to work pretty well, try it at your own risk if you go for anything too funky

Technology connections on YouTube did a video on mini fridges a while back. He focused on the peculiarities of one specific model, but one of the things he did to try addressing some of the issues with uneven cooling was add a fan, and he found that it didn’t really help and made things worse in other ways.

IIRC, the fridge was designed expecting that certain parts would be cooler than others and accounted for that in how the compressor cycled on and off, but with the added airflow those parts stayed warmer than expected so the compressor never shut off.

This fridge very well might be different, and maybe the fan is helping in your case, but you might want to check that video out so you have some things to look out for in case it’s causing other issues that you may not be thinking about.

Long before I was born, my town was a working class mill town, steel mill, tire factory, textile mills, etc. the steel mill is still there, but it’s not a big feature of the town like it once was.

Even up into my lifetime, it was still essentially a working class town, nothing wrong with it, perfectly safe town, walkable, convenient to pretty much every major highway, public transportation, major shopping areas, etc. but it just had a little bit of a reputation for being kind of a slightly lower class town compared to a lot of its neighbors.

Within the last decade or so it’s kind of exploded, property values have gone through the roof, lots of cool bars and restaurants, a whole bunch of new high rise apartment buildings, etc. It’s attracted a lot of yuppies and priced a lot of the old families out of the area. It’s also created some significant traffic and parking issues, with new apartments and such bringing in more people, and people wanting to come into town for the bars and restaurants and such the infrastructure just isn’t there for that many cars.

I can’t afford to live there anymore, but with my parents and relatives who still live there not getting any younger, sooner or later I should be able to snag up one of their houses, my sister already managed to snag my grandmother’s house for herself.

Like all cases of gentrification it has its plusses and minuses. The bars and restaurants and other new businesses are pretty great. Getting priced out of the town my family has lived in for over a century kind of blows, even if I have a roadmap laid out in front of me to get back. Some of my favorite cheap dive bars are no longer very cheap or divey, which is a bummer. The traffic can be a nightmare when you have to deal with it. The character of the town has definitely changed, there’s a definite difference in attitude between people who have deep roots there, own homes, and intend to spend the rest of their lives here and the newcomers, landlords, house flippers, renters, etc. who don’t have any real attachment to the town.

English

A very tiny bit of French, I can understand more than I can speak if they talk slowly, my French education was kind of shitty and it’s been well over a decade since high school since I’ve really used it so

I’ve been learning Esperanto on Duolingo, it’s been going pretty well, I’m just about at the point where I can confidently read a book without having too look up too many words. I’m far from fluent, but I getting there.

Like others have said, I’d give scraping it off with a razor blade a try, glass is actually significantly harder than the steel of the razor so it’s difficult or impossible to scratch your glass with the blade. Razors are cheap and readily available (if you don’t already have some kicking around) so you have basically nothing to loose by trying it. Also mentioned we’re magic erasers/melamine sponges, also a pretty solid bet, they basically work like micro sandpaper.

Failing that, I’m no chemist, but from googling around a bit for siloxane and solvents, I think your best bet for solvents youre likely to find at most hardware stores are mineral spirits, turpentine, and xylene, which should all be readily available in most hardware stores in the paint section with other paint thinners. From what I could find, it kind of looks like you’re going to want a non-polar solvent, not a polar solvent like acetone. They may dissolve it outright, or may at least soften it up enough for you to scrub or scrape it off easier.

Also what I gleaned from Google, is that siloxanes are basically silicone, so you may also have luck with products to remove silicone caulk, I know goo gone makes a product for that purpose (although it looks like the main ingredients in that stuff are acetone and benzyl alcohol, which are both polar solvents, so I have no idea how that jives with what I was getting from my other Google searches that suggested non-polar solvents, so again, I’m not a chemist and I’m out of my element)

Any solvents you end up trying, just make sure you’re following proper safety precautions, and be careful about anything else you may spray, drip, splash it on, you might ruin finishes, strip paint, damage plastics, etc.

Not quite what you’re looking for, but I recently did NYC to Montreal on Amtrak, about a 12 hour ride (officially it’s somewhat shorter, but delays can happen at the border crossing, and as others have noted Amtrak doesn’t have right of way over freight trains so you may get delayed over that, I’d plan on about 12 hours on this particular route)

Overall I enjoyed my experience. It would have been faster to drive or fly, but that comes with its own hassles, and since it was snowing for a good part of our ride, I definitely appreciated not having to drive through that.

The seats (all coach class on this train) were pretty roomy, plenty of leg room, and comfortable enough for my tastes. There’s power outlets at every seat, the wifi is basically useless so plan on having any movies or ebooks or whatever you want to watch downloaded before you go.

The cafe car onboard doesn’t have an amazing selection, hot food is pretty much all microwave stuff, but I found it adequate to hold me over, I wasn’t looking for a gourmet meal, just some snacks and drinks, and it was pretty nice being able to enjoy a beer or two on the train ride.

On the ride back, it seemed like the train’s air conditioning wasn’t working well and it got a little warm, not ridiculously hot, but enough that you might want to take off an extra layer or roll up your sleeves. They also mentioned that since their train fleet is aging a bit, some of them can start to leak a little in the rain, we didn’t experience any of that even though it was raining a bit, but that’s something to keep in mind.

We didn’t have any issues with the bathrooms, but at least on that route they won’t get cleaned during the trip, so if they get too gross they do sometimes apparently have to put some of them out of service.

I’ve seen a couple places offering what they’ll call something like “enhanced ebooks”

I admit that I haven’t given any of them a try, but the gist is that they’re an ebook with some extra multimedia content. It kind of looks like some places that do them do the absolute bare minimum to slap the “enhanced” label on them and just add some extra pictures and maps and such, and others go whole hog with added video, the full audio drama treatment with sound effects, different actors for the various characters, narration, etc. so some of them may potentially fill the role you’re looking for

You’re being really critical here for no good reason, it almost feels like you’re the one with a troll account.

You could clear up your confusion about the username by a quick Google search. The library of babel is a story Jorge Louis Borges, about a vast library that contains every possible combination of letters and words, and if you Google “dhcmrlchtdj,” you can see that it’s one combination of letters that he specifically calls out to illustrate that point.

And like you said, an involuntary commitment is a serious issue to contemplate and a sensitive topic for a lot of people, I think it’s pretty understandable that someone may not want to share a lot of details about what their friend is going through.

Again, things are going to vary from one place or a person to another and I’m afraid there probably isn’t a simple, satisfying, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s a lot of room for improvement at basically every level with mental healthcare, though it’s pretty hard to pick one or even a couple things and say “do this one thing differently and things will be better” because each of those one little things tends to lead straight down a rabbit hole of 10,000 other things that would also need to change for it to work.

Some very broad categories of things I’d like to see improved

More funding, resources, training, etc. there’s only so many psych hospitals, so many beds, doctors, nurses, etc. so even if we could somehow funnel everyone who really needs treatment down a path towards getting it, there’s really no way for them all to get it. We need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to access high quality mental healthcare.

A whole lot of education, public awareness, societal changes, etc. need to happen. There’s still a whole lot of stigma and taboos about mental health issues and treatment. People don’t know what’s involved, are afraid of getting branded as crazy, don’t know what resources are available to them, how to access them, what their strengths and limitations are, they can’t afford it, a long stay in a psych hospital may mean losing their jobs or their home. Damn near every night I get a call for a domestic where I hear one of the parties yelling at the other that they’re going to get them committed, and often there’s no real sign that anyone involved actually has any kind of mental health issue, they’re mostly just idiots or assholes, so it’s usually an empty threat and paints the picture of treatment being some sort of punishment or a weapon to use against someone, and that sort of thinking really damages the reputation and efficacy of mental healthcare.

There probably need to be new categories of healthcare created, or if they do already actually exist, they need to be expanded. I can’t tell you how many calls I get a night from people who clearly have some kind of psych issues, but wouldn’t meet the bar of being a danger by any reasonable definition. I could probably rattle off a dozen names and addresses off the top of my head of people that I speak to almost every shift who probably really need to be in a psych hospital for a while to get themselves straightened out, but since they’re in no way dangerous, our hands are kind of tied, and the best we can do is offer them a mental health crisis line they can speak to, or send a cop out to check on them, make sure they’re ok, maybe talk to them for a while or leave them some pamphlets or business cards or something for resources they can try and hope they take the next step themselves, or at the very least tell them to stop calling 911 (which doesn’t really have any teeth, no one really wants to go through the paperwork and court hearings and such to get them in trouble for abusing the 911 system, I’ve only heard of it actually happening once in these kinds of cases in the 5 years I’ve been working here, and in their minds they’re calling about an actual emergency, and we don’t want to discourage them from calling if/when there actually is something going on, it’s happened before that they’ve actually called in a real incident) so there needs to be some sort of middle ground between hauling them off kicking and screaming to be committed and just making suggestions and hoping they follow through with them, and I don’t really know what that middle ground is.

Never been committed or had to go through the process myself, but I do have some second-hand knowledge from my work as a 911 dispatcher.

Most important to keep in mind is that the specific laws and processes are going to vary depending on what state or country you live in, who can initiate it, what’s involved in the process, how long they can be held, what the process is is to extend that hold if needed, etc. will all vary a bit.

Most commonly, the requirements include something like the person must be a danger danger to themselves or others, and the relevant law will likely spell out how that is determined.

In general, an involuntary commitment should be a last resort. Probably not surprisingly someone who doesn’t want to be there probably won’t try very hard to keep up with their treatment, and since they can usually only be held for a few days without taking extra steps to extend it, they may be able to keep themselves out of trouble for just long enough to get released and then go right back to whatever they were doing to get committed in the first place. If you can somehow convince them to go of their own free will, they’re probably going to be a lot more cooperative, and sometimes, depending on the exact circumstances, it can actually be harder for them to leave before they’re better when they go voluntarily than when it’s involuntary.

On the other hand, they also believe that we were created in his image, so perhaps he created atoms because he himself is made of atoms.

40mph is probably a bit extreme, but “20mph, tops” is also pretty low

E bike laws, terminology, and manufacturers can be kind of a wild patchwork of nonsensical bullshit but a lot of states recognize, with some degree of regulation or restrictions, what have commonly come to be called class 3 e bikes, that can go up to 28mph, and in my shopping around I’ve seen plenty that advertise that speed or even higher.

There’s a lot of imported e bikes that play fast and loose with the regulations and their quality control, and I’m sure there’s a dedicated bunch of people tinkering with their bikes to make them go faster and remove built-in restrictions, so there’s probably a lot of people zooming around at 30+MPH