You really did stop right when it started getting good again. I started to check out after Kevin and the nth time that Castiel got thousands of people/angels killed, but I knew things were getting back on track when s11e1 basically started with Sam saying ‘wait, when did we forget that we’re supposed to be trying to…

Yup, and the power companies seem to have their fingers in all other aspects of local governance too. This happened to my brother (massive bill due to previous ‘meter error’). When he tried to contest it they threatened to shut off his power if he didn’t pay the whole thing immediately, and when he went to the cops…

Totally agreed. The only reasonable exception is when taking friends/family (whose food tastes you know well) to a type of restaurant where they have absolutely no experience with the food. Ex., when I’m taking my parents out for Korean/Ethiopian/Peruvian etc., I’ll generally order for the table, with their consent.

Input from another visitor to the UK who happily uses the rail system... I’ve done London to Portsmouth, Dover and Cardiff, and also Manchester to the Lake District, and Newcastle to Carlisle (for a Hadrian’s Wall hike).

Plus, IMO, someone who is moral because it’s simply the right thing to do > someone who is moral because they’re following instructions and/or they’re afraid of burning in hell.

The version that shows up a lot in WaPo advice columns is “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” Which, admittedly, doesn’t make as much grammatical sense as yours, but it is a good kick in the pants for perfectionist procrastinators...

Isn’t that partly due to the change in pressure? I feel like I read somewhere that deep sea fish always have huge bulby eyes like that when we see them, because they expand once they’re brought up to the surface. But not a scientist...

Rumor was, Starbucks intentionally over-roasts the beans so that the coffee is bitter, so people will buy the more expensive mochas etc.

Along the ‘too clinical to be sexy’ line of thinking, part of the problem for me is that “moist” in the baking context essentially means “spongy,” and that is... not a word that seems healthy in the ladybits context.

Growing up I was allowed to say hell and damn, but sucks was absolutely forbidden because it was crass. While I think avoiding words entirely just because they have to do with body parts/sex acts is a bit old-fashioned, I do think people would say “sucks” less often if they actually thought about what it means, and I…

My mother’s trick for steamed broccoli was to steam it in chicken broth - any veggie is attractive to a kid if it’s salty enough.

Yep - my mother would put mushrooms in everything, and while I love them now, it turns out a lot of kids just don’t have the taste palate for them. I always thought I was a picky eater growing up, turns out I just honestly didn’t like my parent’s 3-4 favorite ingredients.

Yeah, on that note the easiest way to get a kid to eat veggies seems to be disguising them with salt/fat/carbs. We regularly had “broccoli soup” growing up, which was just broccoli florets cooked with a packet of lipton noodle soup - really high salt intake, but I probably ate 1-2 full heads of broccoli every week for…

Not remotely related to the article, but speaking of the Boston Tea Party: I was at the Boston Tea Party Museum recently, and when they asked where I was from, I got to say “D.C. - where we still have taxation without representation.” Which is kinda ridiculous, historically speaking.

Best trout I ever had was at a little seafood place in Portugal where they baked it in salt. We asked what was freshest, so the waiter opened the window and yelled out to ask the fishermen who were coming in...

For me it’s the constant sour-grapes look on her face. Black Widow will likely be the first MCU movie I won’t  get around to watching.  

Starred, then I realize I actually feel the exact opposite. I like King’s short stories and fantasy stuff, but I find that his horror books tend to be 500 pages of crappy people doing mundane crappy things, followed by a fantastic final 2 chapters.

Only time in my life I’ve had an honest-to-goodness blackout panic attack was watching the end of The Mist.

I’m always glad when the dangers of climate change are given the popular spotlight, but a small part of me is yelling “how dare you create a ‘blithering idiot’ spoof of my man Hornblower!”

...unless you have one of the many regional US accents where ‘I’ sounds a lot like ‘A’. (I is often written as ‘eye’ but technically dipthong comprised of ‘ah’ and ‘ee’; a number of accents simply drop the second sound. Think about how people from South Carolina say ‘Carolina.’). Then the only difference between the…