could have taken this in the

fourteenth century.

The interesting thing here is that it's not necessarily true that adding convenience adds cost. Pre-diced frozen onions might be more expensive in some places because there's an extra step... but they're also cheaper in some places, because it's easier to transport and store frozen food (and you can store it for much longer) than fresh food, and nobody's out there selling frozen whole onions. Pre-diced food also allows the use of unattractive vegetables, or damaged parts can be removed and the undamaged parts diced and sold, which you can't do with whole onions. The small amount of extra labour is one part of the equation re: what affects the total costs and benefits of pre-chopping, bagging and freezing onions.

There's a gut reaction to the idea that if something is more convenient for the end user, then it must be more difficult, expensive, or worse in some way to make, but that's not entirely true. It is true in many cases and false in many cases. Dishwashers use less water than sink washing, but you'll still see people hating on them because they take less labour and more labour is somehow righteous. Tumble dryers are a bad idea in many areas because they use so much electricity and damage clothing, and a good idea in others where electricity is abundant and the local weather and space availability isn't conducive to air drying. Those blender things that Americans have in their sinks look like an absurd sign of laziness and negligence to the rest of us, but if you look at how their waste disposal systems are set up, breaking down basic organics and flushing them in wastewater is actually a very convenient way of dealing with food waste in areas where composting is inconvenient and reduces the need for road transport to take away green waste in rubbish bins. Installing little electric blenders in all the sinks is a reasonable investment that reduces the need to transport and deal with waste in other ways.

Look, people are tired, there are only so many hours in the day, we're all doing our best out here.

If there's a public good that you want to happen, making it as easy and convenient as possible matters.

Indoor plumbing makes it more likely that people will stay hydrated.

Having mail delivered to your house makes it more likely that people will actually check their mail regularly, rather than forgetting to go to the post office.

Having blood drives and vaccinations at places people already go, like work, means they're more likely to go for the inconvenient needle jab. At least it's not an extra trip.

Hell, having routine trash pickup has wildly reduced the amount that people just set trash on fire or leave it laying around their yards. If you walk around an old farm, you'd better be up on your tetanus shots, at least here in the US.

- they’re Opawz pet specific dyes. Non toxic made specifically for dogs. Once they’re set and rinsed they can groom themselves normally, they pose no danger to her in any way, no fumes, there’s no bleach involved

- my dog is trained with cooperative care skills, the process is not stressful for her, she gets paid heavily for her cooperation and looks forwards to the opportunity to earn extra snacks with the grooming

May I present the best apple:

Chenango Strawberry, Ginger Gold, Viking, Wolf River... Gosh, I miss the apples in the Midwest. The varieties out here - even in the foothills - are sharply limited by the lack of cooling hours.

Anyway for OP, the answer is at least partially - apples and pears are the only fruit trees you can really grow in most of the US. Pomegranates, figs, citrus, olives, peaches - all of those are right out. It gets too cold in most of the US.

Nut trees are also pretty limited - walnuts will grow lots of places, but they poison the ground under them. Pecans, pistachios, almonds - nope.

So if you're a farmer who wants a nice shade tree that also provides food, you're probably going to grow an apple or pear tree. And when half the little farms have at least one apple tree, you end up with a lot of varieties.

We're here, we're queer, we're really fucking tired so we're just gonna go straight to biting instead of feigning polite confusion if you're gonna be a bigot this time, just so you know.

Happy Pride!

Opalized crab claw fossil, a rare geological occurrence where organic material is replaced by precious opal.

The fossil dates back to the Cretaceous period, roughly 66 million years ago, when the area was covered by an inland sea.

It was found in Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, Australia, a region known for ideal conditions where silica-rich groundwater replaced the original exoskeleton.

Here's a paper about opalization in New South Wales, Australia, which includes lots of cool pictures.

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If you wait until your AC goes out to make sure you have enough fans, there will not be fans available for you to buy. If you wait for a wildfire, no one will have KN-95s for you to buy. They will all be sold out, especially as climate change makes summers more and more severe, and fire season longer and longer.

Other tips for keeping cool in extreme heat:

Do not ever leave a child or a pet in the car while it is off. Ever. Not "just for a few minutes," nothing. Kids have died from being trapped in hot cars in temperatures as low as 70 degrees F (21 C)

Especially if you live somewhere that doesn't typically get hot, make sure you own at least 2 tank tops and 2 pairs of shorts if at all possible. Thrift them or search them on Buy Nothing/something similar if you don't have them already. You will want the option

Cotton fabric evaporates moisture quickly and sheds heat fast. Cotton clothes are great for the heat for that reason, and if you're really desperate for relief, get cotton shirts/towels/cloths wet and either wear them or hang them up in front of a fan. The fan will blow the cooler, moist air throughout the room, cooling things down

Open windows and doors on opposite sides of rooms to create airflow

Hydration tablets and electrolyte drinks are magic for dehydration. You need to replace the salts you're sweating out. Salty trail mix is also great for this (you eat it on hiking trails for a reason)

Make sure your pets stay cool! Cold packs inside fabric can be really good for this (and for you!)

Most efficient place for a cold, wet towel to cool you down is the sides of your neck, your hands, and the soles of your feet (but NEVER put ice against your bare skin!)

Don't really expect anything of yourself between 1pm and 4pm - that is the hottest part of the day, and so it's the time you need to be the most chill (ba-dum tss). Movement creates heat (hence why you shiver, hence why exercising warms you up), so try to do as little as possible, and especially try to save errands and exercise until dusk

Many places now have heat shelters. Look them up in your area. The public library is often a spot for these, and if not, still a really good and FREE place to stay all day with AC

Plants cool things down. Standing on the grass will leave you measurably cooler than standing on the asphalt two feet away. Stay on plants, stay in the shade, and do what you can to add plants and green spaces to your area, to help keep it cool

If you live in a wildfire hotspot, try your best to get an air filter or air purifier now, because there will be none left by the time you need one

If you do end up near a wildfire zone: any smoke you can smell is smoke that can affect your lungs. Leave the house as little as possible. Duct tape the seams around windows and exterior doors to help keep out the smoke. And pack a go bag (change of clothes, toiletries, important documents, medications, spare food and water, essentials for pets or kids)

Know what heat exhaustion and heatstroke look like, and how quickly you are at risk. Particularly if you are chronically ill, have/had long covid, or are taking certain medications, you may get heat exhaustion really fast. (I've gotten it in literally 15 minutes flat. It does not need to take very long - if you're beet red and have a pounding headache, that may be heatstroke, take it fucking seriously.)

If you do have known issues with heat tolerance, consider carrying around a thermometer on hot days. Check your temperature if you start feeling "off", or routinely while in the heat. If you're running a fever, you're either sick or have heat illness, get the fuck out of the heat. (Be aware that for oral temperature, you need to have not eaten/drank anything in the last 15 minutes. Armpit will do in a pinch. I am not sure how well infrared works if you're in the "clammy" stage of heat exhaustion.)

If you already have heat exhaustion or heatstroke, fans and wet towels may not cool you down sufficiently. Cold drinks, icepacks, or a cold shower/bath are faster in an emergency - they cool you directly, rather than using sweat/evaporation to cool your skin. If you have limited resources to cool yourself, focusing on pulse points/big veins can help, like putting an ice pack on your neck or the inside of your wrist. Think like a vampire.

Cotton can be ok, but linen is better if you can get it. Polyester and other synthetics are typically fucking hot, avoid, avoid. Check your clothing labels - even "obviously" cotton things like t-shirts may actually be 50%+ polyester.

An adult human can only absorb about 1L of liquid per hour. Staying hydrated in extreme heat can be very difficult, because you may be losing more than 1L per hour. Using a timer to make sure you remember to drink can help.

If water suddenly tastes disgusting, check your electrolytes. Having emergency Gatorade (or similar) on hand can be helpful, because not only does it have electrolytes, but it tastes gross and sweet and chemical to most people who aren't low on electrolytes. No shade toward people who inexplicably like Gatorade on its own merits - but if it suddenly starts tasting way better than usual, take that as a sign. The rate at which people lose electrolytes through sweat varies wildly by person, even without chronic illness in the mix.

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for your pets. Providing cool water and cool places to lay down is helpful. Panting is bad, but many animals are uncomfortable well before that point. (Mine usually start laying around on the coolest ground available and refusing to play around 80F. They are, however, extremely fluffy cats.)

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for anyone you're responsible for, especially children and elderly people, who are more vulnerable.

Support and patronize your local libraries; they're an invaluable resource for anyone without A/C in this fucking world, in addition to all the other great work they do.

I just wanna see how we crash this plane

# of likes = # of passengers on board

# of reblogs = # of flight hours the pilots have

* I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

*The King in Yellow

* The Lottery

* The Masque of the Red Death

* The Monkey’s Paw

* The Most Dangerous Game

* The Nameless City

* The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

* There Will Come Soft Rains

*The Yellow Wallpaper

* The Veldt

* “you think those were fucked up? What about [X]!”

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.

Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.

Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.

Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbians’ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.

Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.

I went to right-click a file today and was met with an "Ask Copilot" prompt, despite having diligently removed every trace of the scourge from my computer any time it's ever been installed in the past. When I went and looked in the program list and indeed found "Copilot," it said it was installed today, 4/16/26.

Enraged and confused because I have Windows Updates turned off for this machine, don't install anything unless I can check what's in the patches, and haven't ran any updates since the end of March, I went rooting around in the logs and found that the culprit was... the latest update for Acrobat.

I went to their stupid support website, and their stupid chatbot confirmed it:

Do not leave it unpatched. Get rid of it completely.