Do, um, cosmonauts still carry sidearms?

Fun fact: in Shakespeare's day, the "fake blood" was pig's blood. Someone would go buy a few buckets of the stuff from the butcher's before each performance, and they'd pretty much slosh it all over the stage when anyone died. Think "Kill Bill".

I read Master and Commander a while back, so I know about the grog, yeah. I was actually thinking of an earlier period, before grog – like, early 1600s. Maybe I should have said "Age of Exploration".

That's actually a really good question. I remember reading an article about small-scale mango farmers in Haiti who were selling to the US for the first time and simply couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that an American consumer wouldn't purchase a piece of fruit with a bruise on it.

Any international numbers for comparison? It seems like a lot, but as you mention, there are certain losses that are unavoidable. A per-capita comparison against a country that consumes a higher percentage of produced food would help put this in perspective.

Ooo, fun! I'll have to get together with my historical preenactment group.

What about on Age of Sail ships? I hadn't actually heard the medieval version before, but I have heard that everyone on long sea voyages drank alcohol because the stagnant barreled water would quickly become undrinkable (and possibly fatal). And obviously salty ocean water wasn't an option.

What about on Age of Sail ships? I hadn't actually heard the medieval version before, but I have heard that everyone on long sea voyages drank alcohol because the stagnant barreled water would quickly become undrinkable (and possibly fatal). And obviously salty ocean water wasn't an option.

We already have this, and we know what happens: Korea wins.

Surf n' turf, man!

We shall raise them in the Grand American Tradition:

I feel like most of these are either parodies of super villains or deliberately constructed codependencies. Isn't it more fun to have a list of accidentally codependent villains?

J.K. Rowling's publishers actually released the last chapter of the book online, and it's free to read! Do a search for "Harry-Voldemort Slash Fiction" (the publisher's internal codename for the excerpt). It'll probably be the first result that comes up. There might be a different author listed, but that's just a…

==Chart Key==
Pepperoni: Yes

I have a pie chart explaining why you should always order a larger pizza:

More and more, I'm realizing that, to achieve anything, you have to want that thing desperately and intensely, while also being 100% okay with utterly failing to get it. It's a curious piece of cognitive dissonance, but if you can do it, it makes it so much easier to pick yourself up and try again.

Shakes fist
POOOOOONNNNIES!!

Apocalypses are pretty manly. Just sayin'.

I would be very careful about deploying irony in a comment thread about hipsterism. The health effects could be disastrous.

Banjos are fucking awesome, forever.