And in Dutch "gift" has both the German and English meaning.

It's also pronounced pretty close to the English 'note'. So I'll allow it.

Except of course for the Samsung Galaxy Edge.

Wait? You are defending the banana peel throwing and stuff like that? That's the most racist bull shit there is. Those fuckers should be banned from the stadiums immediately.
Probably not what you meant though.

I was halfway into writing a reply comparing the usage of the word race as regarding to humans and to dogs. And trying my best not to make it sound racist.

Wow, that matches really well with the delusions I had during a massive, traumatic bad trip 20 years ago, that took me over a year to recover from.
I actually had to stop reading for a minute to check if it didn't trigger a flashback. So if you're trying to drive me insane, good job!

Yeah, I get that. But I think it's a small minority that would use an option like that regularly. I know I wouldn't, I love food too much. It's not like soylent is taking over the world by storm, as far as I know.

Also, even if it would be possible for some advanced society to simulate realities all willy nilly, WHY would they do it? And why on such a massive and prolonged scale to render the likelihood a billion to one that we're not in one?

And even IF meals-in-a-pills were technically feasible, why would people ever use them except as a last resort in survival situations?
I'd much rather keep eating decent meals or even mediocre sandwiches then just pop a pill every day.

The copy I had of Brave New World, had a great prefix Aldous Huxley added somewhere in the fifties. Something to the effect of "of course I should have included stuff like nuclear powered cars and vacuum cleaners, if only I'd known".

Haha, hadn't heard Rapture of the Nerds before, that's great.

Great points. Also, even if we are able to make completely lifelike VR sometime in the future, that does not mean we could now be living in a simulation like that at all.

When I read phrases like "commonly used to clean the soldering iron" in that article, I was pretty sure it's not the stuff I'm talking about. Then it said "in […] the Netherlands, it is still widely used in […] candy known as Salmiak" so it definitely is. All this talking about it gave me a craving, so I'm eating…

Well, I'd hardly call the things I'm talking about 'gourmet burgers'. And they have silly names like Big Tasty McBacon or Royal Angus Deluxe.

Where I live, McDonalds always has at least one kind of burger on offer that's more luxury and expensive than a Big Mac (low bar, I know). These always are limited time offers, often with some special seasonal theme. Is this not a thing in American McDonalds?

Hey, both fennel and licorice are delicious! Although the best licorice also contains salmiak, something native English speakers find so disgusting, they apparently don't even have a word for it. Spell checker disapproves without a suggestion and google translate comes up with "sal ammoniac".

Yes, like I said: just about anything.

The cat in my student apartment hunted bats. She would jump up and grab them out of the air when they flew over our balcony. In almost total darkness. If you've ever seen a bat fly around, you know they are pretty fast and erratic fliers. It was incredible.

I once saw a documentary that claimed that of all mammal predators, the ordinary cat is the most efficient. Both the wild ones and domesticated cats gone feral. When they target a prey, they get it over 75% of the time.
And apparently the Lynx is the least efficient, with a success rate of about 5%.

Aha! I did get sick quite soon after entering Nepal. I've always blamed India and thought I picked it up before crossing the border. Maybe I was wrong and have been falsely accusing India for all these years.