Regarding changes to lyrics: I haven't heard it, but my mom told me she heard the updated lyrics to Hard Knock Life, which went from "no one cares for you a smidge when you're in an orphanage" to "no one cares for you a bit when you are a foster kid." She was pretty horrified by it; on the one hand, it's more…

Hear, hear! I've also noticed that of all my married and engaged friends, only one person has parents who split up. All my friends whose parents divorced (myself included) are not married or engaged, though many are in long-term relationships. I've often wondered whether that trend among my friends might hold any…

Thanks. Everything turned out ok, but it was a bit frightening during that holiday.

I was almost certainly roofied, or otherwise drugged at a night-before-Thanksgiving hangout, and my friends didn't realize. I woke up in a dude's bedroom (thankfully unharmed) in the middle of the night and had to walk home feeling like shit. Thanksgiving day had me mostly confused and ultra-hungover trying to figure…

Yukon gold potatoes are fairly perfect for mashed potatoes with skins. I find red potatoes to be a bit more stiff, though still fine for mashing, and the skins don't break up as much.

I think I listen to both resonance and variability pretty critically- I touched on both qualities. And while resonance can be faked, it very frequently isn't, so it's a good measure for me. And I hear you on the differences in how to listen to electronica. It's a very weird experience, considering our centuries of…

I think that when I listen, I pick out the value of sound resonance as a signal of sound quality. Generally speaking, synth recordings have little to no ambient resonance, and this makes it more difficult for me to qualify than an instrumental recording that includes more varied tone qualities and colors- and even a…

Nope, can't participate in the hate parade for Puppy Surprise. I loved the shit out of my Kitty Surprise and I still have it today, even despite the fact that I REALLY wanted puppy surprise but my parents were cat people and weren't about to encourage my puppy-loving ways.

I had 3/5 on midrange headphones.

I'd guess New Jersey would be pretty well-represented in state tattoos. Related: My cousin from a rural southern area came up to visit me in Philadelphia and she mentioned noticing a tattoo on some guy's arm. She was convinced it was Italy, and that this man was attractive because he was exotic. She eventually pointed…

The small family farms that I have visited have all "humanely" dispatched their livestock by either shooting the animals in the face or cutting the jugular and letting the animal bleed while the heart remains beating and the animal still moving. Either option seems like it would be violent and jarring to the casual…

I've handled and dissected and discussed many, many brains in my lifetime, but somehow elements of this were still very weird to me. The dura mater was clipped away with seemingly less precision than any of my freshman year non-major anatomy students. So... good job students?

My brother and I went to Legoland in San Diego together as adults with no children recently. So it's not true there, anyway. Dunno about in Denmark. Also, it was a BLAST.

I've never heard that suggested. The idea of salting the water is to make it boil at a slightly higher temperature so that the boiled food cooks a little faster. Still, a salt sprinkle has little effect on cooking times.

This article immediately made me think of this Calvin and Hobbes: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbe… (and the overall story arc). So sorry about the ordeal :/

I've got nothing against whatever people want to do to have a healthy baby born. I do, however, always feel bad for my Mom, who had to have an emergency C-section to have me. The epidural didn't take at first, so she felt the incision, then she had to be totally knocked out, and when she woke up she wasn't allowed to…

That writer wants to improve her life using "ancestral health principles." Hunting-gathering by necessity isn't the same thing as an intentional diet plan based on any kind of principle beyond "feed my empty stomach." No need to try to make it sound fancy. Perhaps she might like to try medieval bloodletting for her…

It's nothing like how an octopus (or other cephalopod) actually swims. As you note, they move fluidly, because they use jet propulsion from a funnel system rather than their legs. The "undulating flappies" are more for steering and perhaps sensory input. This robot is dumb.

But that isn't how octopuses move mid-water. They use jet propulsion through the funnel at the bottom of their bodies. Their legs don't do an inefficient sidestroke motion, they streamline the legs behind them for speed. They do sometimes use that puffing motion to very slowly push themselves upwards if they make an…

I was just listening to a Schumann quintet today and thinking how metal it sounded. I mean that entirely sincerely, haha.