Same! Mine’s smart, entertaining, manages my social life, probably contributes more to society than I ever will and on top of that, for reasons that still escape explanation, actually wants to have sex with me which is probably the only reason I never turned into an incel. She is easily the best thing in this house, myself included.

If we’re talking strictly flavor, I guess I prefer pizza hut. Almost never order them though because if I’m looking for that style, Domino’s is noticably cheaper for pretty similar quality. If I’m in the mood to spend money on a good pizza, I’m going to a local place so pizza hut is just at a quality/price intersection that I don’t find myself looking for.

Right? The town I live in has a couple pretty good (for the area anyway) places that seem like they struggle. Meanwhile, everyone here raves about another local chain that makes what is IMHO easily the worst pizza in the city. Maybe even the state. That’s even counting the chains.

I used to be a believer that pizza is like sex, even when it’s bad it’s still good but, this place proved me wrong. Soggy crust, unseasoned toppings and, way too many of them (hence the soggy ass crust).

So, I work in a maintenance position that really isn’t possible to do remotely but we have a fair amount of desk work too. We’re in the process of setting up a workstation to program and new head ends for our systems. The first thing on everyone’s list when we were deciding on a location was “as far from everyone else as possible” because we all know that other people being around to make small talk is a distraction that will easily double the time it takes to get this shit done.

In every maintenance position I’ve had, every one of us has had our own secret workspaces where most other guys didn’t know to look for us just so that we could get some desk work done in peace. Co-workers are a distraction more often than they are a help and I think we’ve all known this for years.

The thing is, you don’t even need to manufacture a good story. You could tell the true story of how companies have slashed overhead by reducing the amount of office space needed or how employees working from home turn out to be just as if not more productive than those working in the offices and happier with their jobs besides.

There were companies planning to move more jobs to work from home even before the pandemic because it’s a model that just makes more sense for a lot of positions. The return to office crowd could be beaten simply by pointing out the for most positions, working on-site is a needless expense. The problem is, the media isn’t willing to tell that story.

That’s the one we had! I still have that zapper somewhere…

My last car was a Ford escape called 7 after seven of nine from Star Trek. I was feeling less creative when we got our current car, a tan C-Max, and it’s just called Sandy.

The first car I had with a name was a 93 LeSabre that all my friends called “The Beast”!

Same here!

And on top of that, different translations can effectively make different stories as well. Just look at the story of Dinah. Most translations day that she was assaulted but some would suggest that she just had consensual sex. That’s a distinction that effectively makes it a different story depending on who did the translating.

That’s just enough to buy my wife and I ice cream cones at the best place in town and leave enough of a tip that we don’t feel like we’re being cheap. Date night sorted!

Depends on why/how my needs are being met I suppose. If this is a post-scarcity situation where everyone’s needs are met and no one has to work, I’d probably keep at my current job. I install and repair nurse call systems (the buttons you push in a hospital to tell the staff you need help) I mostly enjoy the work and someone is going to have to keep doing it. I live in a town with a huge hospital and could easily keep busy without leaving town.

If this situation where only my own basic needs are met and not everyone else’s, I wouldn’t keep going to that job. Management is kind of a pain and they can certainly afford to train someone who needs the work. I’d still fix whatever kind of shit I knew how to because honestly, I love working with a wrench but, I’d be doing it freelance at that point. I’d probably start by knocking on the doors of local machine shops, fixing machine tools and lasers was more fun than nurse call and if I wasn’t tied to one specific brand, I could probably keep busy without driving 4 hours a day (I quit that job because I was tired of travel). If that took off, I’d try to turn it into a business and train someone to pick up the slack so I could still take the occasional vacation without leaving regular customers hanging. If that wasn’t enough to keep even just me busy, I’d probably start asking around about other random shit that needed to be fixed. Lots of people deal with broken shit because they can’t afford to fix it and if I was only looking to stave off boredom, not having to make a profit, I could probably get it done affordably.

Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It’s mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn’t a big deal. Also, I’m problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I’d like, I get a little weird.

So, while in think there are certainly fair criticisms to be made of allowing patents on plants, the paper you linked is kind of just low quality fear mongering. It’s heavy one scare tactics and light on facts. I wouldn’t let anything in this paper keep you up at night without verifying it through a more reputable source.

To try to answer your questions though;

1. I really don’t understand why you think it wouldn’t be. There are some sources recommending that boliological waste made up of the GMOs themselves be sterilized before leaving lab conditions but if you eat a GMO and it passes through your digestive track there will be few if any living GMO cells remaining. Particularly in the case of peppers, mammals’ digestive tracts will destroy pepper seeds. That’s why they’re spicy, it’s ironically a defense mechanism to keep us mammals from eating them.

2. At any rate, 1is kind of a moot point because the paper you linked clearly states that wild peppers were cross bred with commercial peppers. That’s very traditional plant breeding, no mention of GMOs. Given the blatant fear mongering in the rest of the paper, I’d be floored if they missed a chance to scare people about GMOs in these peppers. So unless the peppers you’re asking about are different from the ones in the paper, I’d say they’re definitely not GMOs. Also, I don’t believe there are any GMO peppers on the market at present.

3. The short version is this. A company, let’s say Pioneer seed, patents a breed of corn that has, let’s say increased stalk strength for windstorm prone areas. A farmer buys and plants those seeds, sells the resulting crop. The only difference from heirloom seeds is that the farmer is legally prohibited from using that crop as seed corn and selling that crop.

4. So in principle, there isn’t really an impact on society from patented seeds. In practice, some of the patent holders have been overly aggressive with there enforcement. IMHO, this is a patent enforcement issue not an issue with the parents themselves. I don’t know about Europe but I know that here in the US there is a problem with dubious patents being approved and enforced but again, that’s patents as a whole not just seed patents. At this point I’d be more worried about what happens without seed patents. Nobody is going develop seeds except universitys which (at least here in the US) are criminally underfunded. Effectively, our crop technology would stagnant without serious increases in public University funding which I’m a huge supporter of but sadly, can’t imagine happening in my lifetime.

I hope I’m not coming off as an asshole here. Just trying to answer your questions honestly.

I had a friend in highschool who’s dad had lost part of his pointer finger to an encounter with a saw blade. He had just a little bit of the bone beyond the second knuckle that was weirdly pointed and it hurt like hell when he jabbed you with it. I know this because I used to help them build shit around their farm and if he caught us being unsafe he’d poke us in the chest with that damn half-finger while he yelled at us about it.

Those lessons really stuck too.

I’m not sure.

IMHO, the cast iron wouldn’t be too bad maintenance wise once you got it well seasoned and learned how to use it but, that takes some time so it might be more fussing around than you’d like for the first several months. And even then, you’ll probably still want a non-stick around for some recipes. The stainless sounds like it might be what you’re looking but, I’m not well versed with that. The one time I tried it, the food stuck so bad that I never tried it again but, all the recommendations I’ve read about it since then make me think that was probably user error.

So the cleanup on enameled cast iron is super easy. Some manufacturers (LeCruset for sure, probably a few others) even bill them as dishwasher safe.

The two big problems for what you’re asking for are that they’re not going to hold up well to metal utensils and, they’re really not anything resembling non-stick. I always use mine for pan sauces because the burnt on bits really add something when you delglaze them into a sauce. As far as something delicate like fish or eggs, you’re gonna have a bad time.

I think they’re a great addition to almost any kitchen but, they’re far from a universal pan.

Don’t spread outdated information.
The only thing this does is intimidate people from using cast iron at all and that’s just a shame.

Yeah, I think this was my biggest issue when I started using cast iron. I never had much luck getting it actually clean without soap and it definitely showed in my cooking. I eventually got some better advice and started having much better results. Now my CI is my go to eggs every weekend and afterwards, I throw it in the dishpan with everything else. As long as you don’t soak it, you’re fine. I think the soaking thing is a big part of why a lot of manufacturers still recommend against soap and water. It’s easier to tell people to not use soap and water than it is to explain the nuance of “wet it, don’t soak it” and “gently wash, don’t scrub into oblivion”.

So funny story. The workhorse of my kitchen is a cheap-ass enamel Dutch oven that my wife impulse bought at a grocery store 4 or 5 years before we moved in together. After we got married, I decided to get her a LeCruset replacement for our anniversary the year that cheap one bit the dust. We’ve lived together ten years as of this summer and I still haven’t had to shell out for the Lecruset. We use that thing at least twice a week, maybe more in the winter months and this thing shows no signs of quitting. At this point we’re so attachted to it that when the enamel does go, I’ll probably drill holes in it and keep it as a flower pot.

Seconding the notes in enameled cast iron. I have some and I love it to death but it’s not great as general use, is nothing resembling non-stick and most importantly for OPs question, it’s fragile as glass (because it’s literally covered in glass). Metal utensils will lead to scratches and chipping of the enamel and once the enamel chips, it’s trash unless you want to risk having glass in your food.

I’m also curious about your carbon steel though. I was under the impression that carbon steel pans were nearly as fussy with seasoning as cast iron. Is that not the case?