Right now, I’m working a ton (72 hours per week) and my wife is working and going back to school, but every Tuesday is an entire day together. We just started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the first time, and we look forward to it all damn week lol. We started like a month ago, but we’re still only just now wrapping up the goblin camp. We both were already really familiar with 5e DnD, so a lot of the mechanics feel pretty intuitive to us. I have gripes with the camera (PS5 version) but overall it’s a fantastic experience.

Before picking this up on sale, we were passing the controller back and forth through Astro bot. Also amazing! We rolled credits, and I’ll probably aim for the platinum trophy at some point without her. There’s truly not much left before we snag that, so she’s not missing out.

I totally agree. I’m not sure what career you’re looking to launch into, but it definitely makes more sense to just meet expectations at your current job and save your energy for whatever studying or networking or whatever you need to do to get to where you want to be. Your time here is short; your spare time is shorter; your fully able-bodied spare time is already running short. Take a Saturday off and do that hike you’ve been putting off or visit that city and walk around or whatever. Fun activities will be a lot more draining and require more time to recover from when you’re older and your knees and back have more wear and tear from the labor you’re doing now.

I think it’s getting more and more common to see stores running a skeleton crew. Your store will probably downsize through attrition. They’ll just expect the same amount of same quality work to be done with a reduction. Don’t speed up. Tell others not to speed up either. This is not a temporary hurdle to get past, it’s a test run to see if it can be the new normal. And when it fails, they’ll still try to avoid hiring and just throw a few extra hours at the part time people. I hope that they can understand that their availability needs to be pretty firm and they don’t give an inch on that. I had a conversation with somebody like a month ago about encroachment on their work schedule and it was really helpful for them to hear me tell them that their availability is their availability and that “the hours outside of that are not for sale.” Your time is your time, and what you do with it is your business and nobody else’s.

I don’t know much about tablets and opened this thread just to see if I could learn something. I think it might be a good idea to add this detail to the main post. I’ve seen some other people mention battery life as a downside to some options, so if battery life isn’t a factor since it’s gonna be plugged in most of the time, adding it to the body of the post could nudge people to recommend options that they otherwise wouldn’t have bothered to mention.

Good luck!

You probably already know, but in case you don’t, bring adapters for your phone charger and whatever else because their outlets are different. Their grid is 50Hz instead of 60Hz in the US.

Idk, call ICE on yourself or criticize a genocide enough and you might get a free flight to El Salvador. Last I heard, setting a Tesla on fire might do it now too. Pretty soon, maybe just voting for a Democrat books you a flight. We’ll see.

I don’t know of any piston that can initiate a fusion reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to be possible. But I think that such a thing would take teams of top researchers decades to figure out with any sort of reliability.

Regarding the rankine cycle, the diagram would need to be much more detailed. From what I am understanding of your diagram, no it couldn’t work that way. I don’t know a lot about fusion, but from my experience in fission nuclear power plants and combined cycle natural gas plants, I can make some assumptions about what to expect from a rankine cycle plant regardless of fuel source. You would need to ensure that only superheated (dry) steam is ever touching the steam turbine blades, and there is a ton of essential equipment that does exactly that. There are a ton of resources out there to learn more about this, and I’d recommend searching “rankine cycle explained” on YouTube to get started. General overview stuff might touch on things like drums and reheaters and condensers and vacuum pumps, but every little piece like that could use its own deep dive, really. It’s fascinating stuff.

Overall, I think there is already a general understanding of how to make a fusion rankine cycle power plant work, and it’s now just a matter of getting a sustainable reaction and then finding the optimal design and operation to safely and reliably maximize the extraction of that thermal energy to perform work. Should this be more like a BWR or a PWR plant? What do refuel outages look like? What sort of preventive maintenance will be required? What sort of hazards will workers be exposed to, and how can we mitigate that?

I’d love to see commercial fusion reactor plants in my lifetime, but I don’t think I’ll see it. We’re pretty close to seeing fission SMR plants really get going. As much as I hate AI shit, their data centers are power hungry af which has pushed these companies to think about providing their own on-site power to relieve strain from the grid, and these SMRs are kinda perfect for this. If we could see that scaled up or at least batched into array designs, we buy a lot of time to figure out fusion while shifting to a greener energy solution or at least replace the existing and very much aging fission plants we already have. And maybe SMRs can teach us something about fusion along the way.

Stay curious :)

So you mean more like a power plant? Are you thinking like brayton cycle, rankine cycle, or both (combined cycle)?

I don’t know much about fusion, but a big part of how a brayton works at that scale is air. For a jet engine the combustion expands, spinning the turbine or afterwards, and this spins the axially connected compressor section which sucks and squeezes air prior to the combustion chamber. A piston engine would be less continuous, so might be better suited? But in any case, this relies on whether fusion moves a shitload of air like a combustion engine does, (and like I said idk if it does,) and if it does then I guess it could be possible so long as pressures and temperatures stayed within metallurgical limits. I also don’t know how economical it could be, but let’s pretend that this is entirely exploratory and costs don’t matter. I’m not gonna shit on your idea because the truth is that I don’t know and you could be predicting a breakthrough idea 100 or 50 or 20 years ahead. Is fusion something that can quickly explode like in a piston engine in the first place or would it be better to run continuously through a turbine? Is that even possible? Idk.

Regarding the rankine cycle, that’s the assumed application of fusion power. It’s just the newest, best idea for how to boil water to superheated steam to spin turbines and condense back to feedwater. I only even bring this up because you specifically mentioned a steam generator, and that really only makes sense if you’re utilizing the rankine cycle. Combined cycle would be using that piston/turbine engine thing from earlier but recycle the exhaust heat to a HRSG which loops to a steam turbine and condenser and back. But you need a large volume of fairly continuous hot exhaust flow for this, so it’s wholly dependent on that thing I said I don’t know lol.

We need some input from people who know something about fusion. I don’t really know how we would control fusion while throwing a shitload of air into it and getting an even bigger shitload of air out the other end. Without that input, idk how anything other than rankine could be managed.

I know you said first person and I’m gonna mention a third person one that’s fun, so I’m sorry if first person was truly a necessary piece of this for some reason…

Warhammer 40k Space Marines 2 came out pretty recently and it kinda feels like it’s 80-20 Gears Of War and Doom. You can play co-op for both the main campaign and a separate side mission kind of thing, and the side thing is highly replayable because you level shit up as you go and then you can play on higher difficulties to get more loot. But they can spoil the story if you do a bunch of the missions ahead of the story chapters since you’re kinda playing out the B squad adventures concurrently with the A squad missions. There’s also a pvp mode, and a horde mode is coming too.

It’s far from perfect. Load times are very long. The lore is tedious if you don’t care, but it’s honestly so fun that I don’t care that I don’t care about the lore. The devs are very much actively working on the game, bringing frequent updates and fixes, plus just straight up rolling out free additional content when ready. And there is crossplay if one of you is on console and the other is PC or something.

The party is 3 player, but if you just want 1 on 1 time with your friend, you can set your party to private and have a bot play your 3rd and he will heal you when you go down and help with the fight somewhat. This is especially nice while you’re learning the game.

Usually 20-25% unless the service is inexcusably bad (like 1-5% of the time, and even then I’ll tip like 15%). I’ll typically approximate 20% and round up to the nearest dollar, then maybe add a dollar or two. I remember 15% being standard with it being acceptable to go down to 10 or up to 20; 18% was sorta my standard at the time, and I’d only go as low as 15%. I’ve only ever asked to speak to a manager three times that I can remember, and both times were due to what the kitchen sent out to me. I still tipped fully to the server since it wasn’t their fault. I was a chef for years, so I know how stressful it gets back there, but there’s still no excuse for the dishes I’ve sent back. There’s usually an offer to cook something else, but if I’m sending food back it’s because I don’t trust the kitchen to send out food that won’t give me food poisoning.

Tipped minimum wage here (and therefore all tipped wage) is $2.17/hour. I believe that these businesses should be forced to pay proper wages, but stiffing your server doesn’t achieve that. These people are on their feet running around for hours and they usually don’t have enough support or leadership to do their job as well as they’d like to, and then they’re too exhausted and broke to study or work to break into another industry. We’re gonna have a lot of 30-50 year old servers living paycheck to paycheck until their knees and back give out. I’m down with tipping an extra couple bucks so they can get some Dr Scholl’s.

For political disagreements, be wary of fruitless endeavors. 20 replies back and forth are pointless. Most of the time, my goal isn’t to change that person’s mind; it’s to be the voice of disagreement so that others can either be exposed to my views and their rationalization or so that others who silently agree with me can see that these views aren’t unpopular. After enough time passes, I tend to state that I’m disengaging because it’s no longer going to catch the eye of many of these people.

In general, be courteous. Most people aren’t assholes. Some people will have a bad day and maybe will take it out in you, but gently asking them to be courteous and not take their bad day out on you usually spurs some introspection and improves the interaction. If it doesn’t, then they’re really not mature enough to further engage with. Respect yourself and don’t allow anybody excessive opportunity to ruin your day.

$90k is absolutely life changing for most people. That’s a down payment on a house plus moving costs and upgrading appliances and furniture. That’s the difference between poverty and living comfortably. If that’s not life changing for you, then I’m not sure you’re familiar with the struggle, in which case I strangely both pity you and envy you.

Sure you’re not gonna buy a mansion with $90k, but you could go from renting a shithole apartment in a shithole town to owning a home in a decent area with access to better employment to sustain a much higher quality of life. $90k is a ticket to escaping geographical and financial shackles.

I’ve had my Earfun Air Pro 3 earbuds since like July and I like them okay. Currently on sale for $76. I used to eat in front of my TV in the living room even when alone, but now I just sit at the dining table and pop these in. Especially with Vanced YouTube. The ads on the PS5 YouTube app became obtrusive to the point that I just don’t use it anymore. I’ll also pop these in while doing chores around the house. They pair to my phone and Steam Deck without issue.

I had other earbuds before this that were about $35 but not noise cancelling. They fell out of my pocket while I was out of town, so I splurged on something that would sound better, and I’m happy with them for the price point and form factor.

Excellent thought, but we’re on public sewer. That’s why I’m confused about why they would’ve been bleaching the water heater.

Built shelves into the back wall of the garage. It’s been great for storage.

Installed a water softener, but more on that in a minute.

Also wrote with sharpie on the wall of the maintenance closet the dates of routine PMs for the furnace and water heater. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that they weren’t particularly diligent about the water heater stuff. It just said “bleach” and dates, but they clearly weren’t flushing it properly. I found and removed probably like 15-20 pounds of scale and replaced the lower element that it killed. I have a theory that they installed the water softener well after living with hard water for a while, and by then there was already a bunch of scale in the water heater. Combine that with dosing bleach which is higher pH and not properly flushing it out and they welcomed crystallization of the dissolved solids that were already there. Then under deposit corrosion killed the lower element. I’m not sure why they felt the need to dose bleach though. That would only really attack organics, and the water is already treated before coming through. Idk, it’s my first home so maybe I’m the one who’s a clueless idiot here, so I shouldn’t judge too harshly here lol.

I appreciate the response. I’d heard that it’s similar to pork, and I’ve heard of prion diseases like kuru being a problem (which might be a non-issue if lab-grown maybe?)

It makes sense for religions to have a problem with it, possibly all meat made this way and not just human as it’s “unnatural” or whatever. I’m no expert on religions of the world, but I’m not aware of any explicit directive to not eat human meat, but it wouldn’t surprise me either way really.

So I guess assuming it were safe to eat which was my assumption, only secular people would really consider it. But maybe a lot of religious people wouldn’t bother with any of the lab grown meat in the first place, so it’s possible that lab grown human meat would be tried by as many people as any of the other options.

Yeah, asking for real. We might see such a scenario come to pass in my lifetime. If there’s no human suffering and nobody has to die for it to occur, is there anything other than “seems icky” that would stop most people from at least trying human meat at some point in their life? Would it be illegal, legal but restricted, or as legal as beef? If not illegal, would you try it, and if so, how?

Without hesitation. If the taste, consistency, nutrition, and price are all the same, then the only differences would be whether an animal was bred to suffer until slaughter and the likelihood of illness from consumption. I’m assuming that stuff like e coli would be nearly impossible through this. Plus less demand on farm meat means less chance of coronavirus mutations like the 2009 swine flu outbreak. And less of a need for the real estate, feed, and potable water to grow those animals. I must be missing something because I’m struggling to see a downside here.

I’m sure that, in the same way that there’s still a market for objectively inferior exploitatively mined diamonds as a status symbol instead of lab created diamonds, there would still be a market for rEaL meat where “you can really taste the suffering” or whatever.

Now here’s the more interesting question that actually has me on the fence: if “growing any kind of animal tissue” is what has been achieved, where would you stand on consuming lab-grown human meat? Is it immoral? Are there risks? Should such a thing be restricted in some way like alcohol or handguns? What would be the proper etiquette and presentation and everything if it became socially accepted? What wine would pair best with it? Or would it be more of a beer pairing? If this weren’t socially acceptable, would no-suffering chimpanzee meat be okay?

If it only takes a small cell sample, would it be unethical to dig up extinct animals like mammoths or dodo specifically to enjoy their meat? If that’s okay, and it chimps are okay, would neanderthals be okay to eat? Where would we draw the line?

I think you’re already forgetting just how prevalent the story of the murder was. It wasn’t just local news. It was unavoidable.

Luigi is innocent until proven guilty. I think it’s weird that cops found a backpack in central park with no real evidence, but found a gun, a suppressor, and a written confession that started off with praising the cops on this guy who decided to get McDonalds in the middle of the day. I’m not saying that the cops planted evidence to have somebody to finger, but it seems convenient.

My wife and I hung out with a couple just a few times. They were cool, but it’s hard enough to find time when my wife and I are both off and awake; lining that up with two other working adults (plus they have a kid) was impossible to do regularly.

I can get along okay with pretty much anybody, but most people I’ve met have proven to be a little too incurious or even hateful for me to want to go out of my way to spend time with. With every passing year, I value my time more and more (as I’m sure almost everybody must) so it’s hard to justify setting time aside for building friendships with people if I don’t naturally want to hang out with them. That having been said, I work rotating 12 hour shifts, so I’m not off every night and weekend like a lot of people are, and even if I am off I may be swinging my sleep schedule to prepare for not being off. A lot of people just can’t understand that yes, I may be off that day, but I didn’t get home until after 0500 and I need to sleep at some point. Or yes I’m off that day, but I need to be in bed by 2000 at the absolute latest because I need to get up at 0230 for work the next day.

I would recommend making a friend or two with neighbors if your work schedule isn’t as shitty as mine is lol. Especially if your neighbors suck less than a lot of mine have. Just don’t force a friendship where there doesn’t need to be one just so you can feel better about asking them to water your plants while you’re away for the weekend. If they’re cool, they’ll do it for you just knowing that they can ask you to return the favor down the road.