😅

“Mom has been texting me for the last twenty minutes. She wants me to come home. It’s a four hour drive, when the roads are clear, and from what I hear everybody is trying to get somewhere right now. There’s no telling if I’d even-”

“Everybody else has left. All the other kids were picked up, the other staff left. They gave me all the keys. I promised to stay and wait for as long as- well. Even if some of the parents show up, I guess some of them won’t, so I’m just waiting. Until.”

[Clears throat.]

“A couple of people came after everybody left. Peter, one of Aidan’s fathers, gave me three hundred dollars for staying. What am I going to do with money? It’s- anyway. I kind of get it. He wanted to give me something.”

[Audio ends]

[Audio starts]

“They’re all between 2 and 4.” Sniff. “They’re so little. Too little to really- maybe if they were older, I’d have to tell them something. But um. I’m just- trying to stay calm and keep them happy and occupied. I think that’s the best thing, right now.”

[Heaving breaths.]

“I normally use this recorder to help me remember stuff. It’s just, uh, habit to talk to it. I don’t know. They’re napping, right now. I’ve got the baby monitor, they know that if they talk into it, I’ll come, so-”

[Sobbing.]

[Audio ends]

[Audio starts]

“Mom keeps texting, so I blocked her. I sent her a text telling her goodbye, first, but. I do. But these kids need me.”

[Sniff.]

“I tried calling their parents again, but I can’t get anybody. It’s just busy signals. I called the firefighter station, 911. I can’t get through to anybody.”

[Shaky breath.]

“I went out into the yard. Um, I think they can play. It’s nice out, and you can’t really see it yet. Little bit of a glimmer, if they ask I’ll just tell them it’s a plane, but it’s nice out and we’ve got hours before-”

[Murmuring child’s voice, indistinguishable.]

[Audio ends]

Artist removes 1 inch off the peak of England’s highest mountain; Brits want their inch back.

It is still England’s highest mountain, but Scafell Pike is ever so slightly smaller now after an artist stole the top inch of the summit to display in a gallery.

Oscar Santillan, 34, was accused of vandalism after removing the stone pinnacle of the 3,209ft Lake District peak for an exhibition in London.

Or maybe he’s just ordering a decaf.

Maybe she’s ordering sugar free because she’s diabetic, and you’re about to put her six feet under.

Or maybe she’s just ordering sugar free,

Maybe they’re ordering non-dairy because they’re intolerant, and you’re about to ruin their day. Maybe they’re allergic, and you’re about to sponsor an all black event in an open field.

Or maybe they’re just ordering non-dairy.

Maybe they ordered gluten free because they can’t process it, and you’re about to destroy their digestive tract.

Or maybe they’re just ordering gluten free.

Maybe they’re ordering this way just because they don’t want the food, for whatever reason.

she doesn’t need to be dieting

Ugh, non dairy milk is so hard to steam, and drinking soy is a fad anyway

Life is short, eat the damn cheese bitch, it won’t kill you

I’d have to go open another bag of the gluten-free, and I don’t wanna walk all the way to the back room to go get it

At least once, I caught it maybe 3 seconds from disaster- someone with a life-threatening dairy allergy had ordered a soy latte. She told me at the register that it was a deadly allergy. I even wrote on the cup “ALLERGY- NO DAIRY”.

I caught the barista in question rolling her eyes and saying under her breath, “skinny bitches and their fake allergies, trying to get shit for free” (this particular coffee shop had a policy where a dairy allergy meant you didn’t pay the extra fee for non-dairy milk).

I saw the barista rinsing the dairy pitcher, put 2+2 together, and yelled out to the customer to stop her. She hadn’t started drinking yet, but she did lick the drips on the lid- she still needed her Epi-Pen and to go to the hospital.

Suffice to say that barista was fired on the spot… but there are many more people like that. Far too many.

Make the food/drinks people order, the way they fucking order them.

Even if she had just been trying to save the 50 cents…. so what?

I know of someone who’s diabetic so they can’t have regular coke. If they do, it can land them in the hospital. They regularly have to check their drink to make sure they got Diet Coke because people don’t care enough to take 10 extra seconds to get them what they requested.

I get that food service jobs suck, I’ve been there. But if someone orders something a certain way, please just make it that way.

internet shaquille's basics but especially:

making rice

making scrambled eggs

making oatmeal

levels of cooking meat

using & storing vegetables with recipes in the description (this one has a bit of Sassiness directed at people who dont like vegetables but the content is solid)

food safety + a recipe to demonstrate

how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)

cooking techniques playlist

how to cut x

basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:

freezer meals,

weeknight meals,

kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &

kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)

basic knife skills

picking the right pan for each recipe

j. kenji lopez-alt's tips and tricks playlist

egg recipes

a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles

and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:

j. kenji lopez-alt (various)

marion's kitchen (southeast & east asian, western/asian fusion)

maangchi (korean)

future neighbor (mostly korean)

the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have "specialty" ingredients)

family recipes playlist by made with lau (chinese)

not another cooking show (various)

cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)

you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)

how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)

internet shaquille (various)

babish culinary universe (various)

i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part

Hey, it’s Hershey. We already got our first exciting fan letter! Let’s see what it says

It’s from Forrest. Hi, Forrest! You suggested that we should delete our account on July 17th, 2021. 

most big herbivores are, frankly. if you have a pretty steady supply of food and don’t have to worry about missing a hunt and starving to death, you can afford to throw your weight around more and generally be more aggressive!

that’s why the most dangerous big animals in the world are almost all herbivores.

Picture, if you will, the humble redneck. They await the approach of big, fast domestic mowers. John Deeres, Cub Cadets, even weird modified Chinese stuff they looted from Aliexpress. There is jubilance, but that soon comes to an awkward hush. An unfamiliar engine note approaches.

My International 1480 combine harvester, all ten tons of it, is barrelling down the highway at a clip somewhere between “tepid” and “jaunty.” Even though I have shown up for a race, I am sandbagging a little bit, making sure that the bets get settled against my vehicle before I show them the might of a fully operational monster such as mine.

Technically, there is no violation. I had looked at the rulebook from every angle in the previous year: it has the correct number of wheels, the proper agricultural intent, and with precise work on the tiller, it can even (poorly) mow a suburban lawn. Is it modified? Oh yes, yes indeed, but I see the nitrous bottles poking out from the rows of Kubotas at the starting line.

And when I leave the starting line, it is a thing of beauty. At least for a few milliseconds. It seems that the wizards at International Harvester simply did not comprehend of a situation in which the frame of their combine would be launched into the air by means of one thousand eight hundred foot-pounds of supercharger-bolstered torque. I had erroneously believed that the loose soil of the rural community would let the wheels dip in, but now I am facing directly into the sky, having twelve o’ clocked hard on my wheelie, shooting flames from my exhaust and whirling vertical blades of death towards the grandstand.

Ok so for a lawn mower race, most people are gonna show up on machines about this size

This is an average riding lawn mowers, the kind used for neighborhood lawns. A lot of middle-class households have one.

This is a Combine Harvester

This is the specific model op mentions.

This is not a domestic lawn mower. This is industrial farming equipment. It is BIGGER.

For perspective, a lawn mower would be about the height of one of the front wheels.

So op shows up to a Lawn Mower Race on this thing–which technically isn’t against the rules, since a harvester technically can be used to cut down grass.

Important to note: op has also apparently modified the engine. This isn’t just industrial farming equipment– it’s souped up industrial farming equipment. This is a Pimped Out Crop Harvester.

So op shows up to the starting line on this thing

and op GUNS it.

Here is a concise illustration of what happens next:

90 degree rotation skywards. Another fun detail is that the “whirling vertical blades of death” are now sticking out in the air, presuming twirling gesturing threatening like a maniacal edward scissorhands in the direction of audience bystanders.

Girls supporting Girls.