What a good tip! I soak cut potatoes in a warm brine before making oven fries but would never have thought to do that with frozen, I would have thought they'd dissolve or something.
Around then, yeah. We had an odd confluence of events, landlord selling house out from under us right when I got some bonus $ that would make it possible to do beginning renovations and found a house that was solid but very oddly arranged so people didn't buy it and I could bargain, and a zero down government loan. I was utterly convinced we were buying at some peak, but fuck me, prices just kept getting higher until they now make no sense. I'm sure it's a bubble, housing has to have a relationship to wages in the area.
The city has some programs to help people buy a house, forgivable down payment grants - if you live in the house 20 years you don't pay it back - and others to help low income homeowners with repairs, but of course the wait-list is insane. They are trying though.
On deserving anything - none of us deserve what we get. There are so many who work so hard and get nothing, so many who do nothing and get so much. I often think I am lucky because I'm not in pain constantly, can see and hear and feel, and that is more than many people get, but I don't deserve it more than they do - that just isn't the way things work.
I do think you can earn things and deserve them (sort of) in that way. Like wages.
Better as I get older at least. Other people seem to think I am a good person but I guess we all have impossible standards for ourselves. By Dorothy Parker standards no. "If you have two coats you stole one from the poor." I don't have literally two coats but a dozen sweaters, which are short season items here.
To the extent you can be good and live within the system, yes.
If standing before God and he asks if I did everything I possibly could for those who needed it most, no, I have not, nor have I always been a friend to myself.
Tornado but it was a block away - the sky was GREEN. I looked out the window and thought "that's odd" then my brother called and said there is a tornado by you go take the kids to an interior room (hallway was best we could do). It knocked down a checkers and a car dealership, tossed cars around.
Two good jobs and digging out from each of us being single parents before we got together but no, we are ok. Can't retire or anything like that but not one bad month from homeless anymore.
I was even in a position to help a friend with a (no interest) loan when she had a very bad month, it was tight for us but not impossible, and my husband did not get mad or worried at all that I did that, so I would say we are well off?
The overall economy is made up of a lot of data points - we are a little bit worse off than we were in terms of cash flow, but wealthier because we bought a house before (well at the start of) the bubble.
Until cars can talk to each other and all are self driving, I prefer to drive. When they know to cooperate and not crash, self driving cars will be better drivers than people I think.
But mostly I take the electric bike. Like, driving a car is lazy enough, I don't need the car to drive me.
Such a difficult question as I do enjoy cooking in general. But sourdough bread has to be the winner. It's magic. Anything that has a magic transition like that I enjoy making. Mayonnaise, meringue. Banana bread goes through a stage that looks like vomit, then as I add ingredients, a silky batter.
I also like hosting Thanksgiving at my house, staging all that cooking, making everything nice.
No I think it's more like hiring someone to do the work (as in the comic). Beyond using Autotune or making a collage, turning something into something else.
If you are just asking CAN the AI be used as a tool for art, maybe? If I ask it to show me something then use that "something" to make a different work, I don't think that's different from finding that inspo elsewhere. Like if I theoretically asked an AI "what else can I do with all this basil" and it gave me a list and I made a version of one of those ideas, I would still think I was the chef.
Digital freehand art takes a lot of practice, one of my kids does both offline (watercolors, pens, acrylic paint) and digital drawing and they are equally challenging.
Oh my God here too. The city wanted to build a parking garage and one after another, the houses on that lot had "accidental" fires that burned them completely down. I don't think it was organized gangs though, just the city and property owners defrauding insurance.
I'm in the Continental US and our contractor told us about building a porch on his personal house. He was in a historic district and not allowed to make changes without a waiver, even though the porch would make it more like the houses around his, it was not an allowed change. He went through the proper channels, nothing. Until someone he was whining to told him "go on Tuesday, Manny is working. Give him the papers & $500 in an envelope.". That worked.
So sometimes here too, all it takes is a bag of cash and the right worker.
I saw a trailer for Annihilation in the theater and was so excited because I thought it was the Ian McDonald Chaga story (1995) So disappointed it was not, more horror less sci fi, action, drama. Well plenty of action, I was just disappointed because the look of it and trailer really truly did look like the Chaga. The storyline so derivative and ten years younger.
There is still some around here, but not like in the past, nobody was shaking us down for protection money in our little storefront (that used to happen in the same neighborhood) but a lot of the drugs still come through those organizations and there are still gangs around - there was a police standoff with a biker gang a few blocks from my house once, they shut down the streets.
I guess the US is too big and disorganized.
Now - LA in the early 1990s - I stayed there awhile and holy crap, anything people say about gangs during that time is true. The police were a big violent gang, the prisons had gang riots, I knew people in gangs even though it wasn't my world, it was widespread. So disorganized organized crime, there was a lot of that back then
What a good tip! I soak cut potatoes in a warm brine before making oven fries but would never have thought to do that with frozen, I would have thought they'd dissolve or something.