Definitely not St Lucia. Mountains there look like the ones you see in Chinese paintings. Smooth, not craggy, which I think means they’re limestone.

Dear white female Alabamians of voting age: you have brought this on yourselves. Please wake the fuck up and stop voting against your interests.

There were al Quaida camps in Afghanistan. It made sense to go there after 9/11. We actually took an intelligent approach there: hire the warlords who were already opposed to the Taliban, who were harboring al Quaida.

Yeah, I preferred Bernie, too - but he lost the primary. When it came down to the general election it was Clinton v Trump. So for me, not very exciting, and some issues (like wall street and secrecy) vs OMG terrible. Not a difficult choice.

Same here.

BTW/FWIW, I travel with camera gear. I recently flew some regional jets. I was pretty sure my standard-sized carry-on was going to get gate checked. Feeling a bit uncomfortable about having my gear out of my sight, I found a laptop bag that would also carry a camera body and a few lenses. I picked a Tenba DNA…

Traveling with a partner? You can drop your checked bag fees by half, if you’re not traveling super-heavy but still need more than will fit in a carry-on. Get a single large bag to check. The most common max checked-bag size is 62 linear inches (add up all dimensions). For example a bag 27" x 21" x 14" is 62 linear.

If you’re running a recent-ish version of Android, you can block spam in the Phone app.

Wack a mole is fun - at the carnival. For incoming spam, not so much.

Just don’t do that upwind of me :-)

...My son doesn’t like apples if they’re “brown” but...

Bauxite mining environmental damage to the side, there’s a lot of of energy required to extract aluminum from bauxite. Much less to convert scrap aluminum (old cans) into more raw aluminum.

If you have kids, and they aren’t already good swimmers, drownproof them. It might save their lives. It works best if you are a ‘floater’, but if you are not (I’m not, can sit on the pool bottom with full lungs) it’s useful if you get into trouble (e.g. cramp in the middle of the lake).

“throw, don’t go,” meaning you should toss something like a kick board or beach ball to the person in danger

That strap system is a ‘borrow’ from the RCMP uniform hats. (kind of a pain if a hat blows off and you’re mounted on a horse, also kind of a pain if you have to keep the chinstrap super tight just in case a breeze might come from behind)

That strap system is a ‘borrow’ from the RCMP uniform hats. (kind of a pain if a hat blows off and you’re mounted on…

One data point: I managed to wear out my Tilley (took about 10 years). I sent it to them, they sent back a new one, no questions asked. BTW, you can just throw this hat in the washer when it gets dirty or sweat stained.

One data point: I managed to wear out my Tilley (took about 10 years). I sent it to them, they sent back a new one,…

New Englander here. I make a lot of chowder. The classic way to thicken is to start with more potatoes than you really want in the final dish, scoop em out, into a blender/food processor with some broth, mix it back in.

No, but it’s definitely got a different texture than chicken. 

Like oysters? Yeah, me too. My wife and I were recently in Charleston SC, which is famed for oysters. I asked a number of locals and kept getting pointed to Bowens Island Restaurant.

I lived in a frat for some years, and would often make chocolate pudding the night before I had a super early class. My pudding kept disappearing.