You inspired me to look at the menu for our local Taco Bell β even without the DoorDash fees, it's only $0.86 less here in southern Ohio π
I'm confident that your enthusiasm for playing music and love of it will get you to that skill level before you know it. β€οΈ I hope to someday see you post how fucking awesome your first jam sesh with some musician friends went and how you're thinking about starting a band.
I'm cheering for you! 
I'm pretty sure you're gonna be so much better than you expect. π
I was 17 in 1999 and 20 in 2002
1999 me and 2002 me were sooooo incredibly different
honestly makes me wonder about people who didn't change a bunch from late teens to early 20s. like, that's the time of your life you're supposed to be changing rapidly and becoming a totally different person as you separate from your family and become an adult β was your childhood just that awesome and leftist or were you sheltered or what
yeah, right here with you, I'm thinking either Groyper or Boogaloo
My eyes rolled so far back into my head that they came around to the front again
Have you created a whole new genre of cookie here?? I've never heard of a pepper cookie, but it sounds awesome and I'd totally try one.
π€© I'm impressed with your ingenuity! I would never have thought of trying that.
I love y'all. RC2 might be the release.
We love you too and we're so excited to try it out!!
That is such a kind thing to say πβ€οΈ
I've gotten motion sickness ever since childhood. I remember being able to read while laying in the floor on a some road trips in early elementary school, but I had to stop by the time I was 9-10, and eventually got to the point where I needed to keep my eyes on the road to make the data from my inner ears and eyes agree, or I'd be miserable the whole time.
San Francisco Rush was the first video game to cause it and make me stop trying to play it, and I couldn't even watch my brother play Descent for more than a couple minutes, let alone play it myself. Multiplayer stuff is a lot easier; I can play Mario Kart with the family just fine, but I get very sick if I solo.
I don't usually actually throw up, it just feels terrible (overwhelming nausea, hot and cold chills, dizzy, eventually my whole body feels heavy and I have to lay down) and lasts for a while after the stimulus stops. Dramamine helped when I was a kid but even the non-drowsy kind knocked me right the fuck out, so I haven't tried it in a long time.
I just do my best to avoid situations that would cause it π€· it's nbd. Watch other people play dizzying games from far enough away that there's enough "standing still" in my periphery to keep my eyes and ears in agreement, watch the road carefully when I'm in a vehicle, avoid spinning carnival rides, etc.
SEE! I can talk, too! π
Now I'm gonna go look up "Argus monitor" and find out what they look like! Do you have any thoughts about why they're so personable?
Edit: I looked them up! π€©
What a cutie!!
π
fun things I learned from their Wikipedia article:
The Argus monitor displays great sexual dimorphism, with the female reaching an average total length of three feet (90 cm), while the male reaches an average of 4β5 feet (120β150 cm).
π Large adult sons indeed!! Would you want a male or female?
Argus monitors will often "tripod", raising up on their hind legs and supporting themselves with their tail. This unusual behavior is used to spot potential prey or enemies from a distance or when they are threatened. They exhibit this behavior regularly in captivity as well. This habit provides them a unique characteristic that separates them from most other monitors.
omg π€©ππ₯°
Its prey consists of almost anything that it can overpower.
Better stay swole! π
Recent studies suggest that the infestation of cane toads, a novel and toxic species, has severely damaged the population structure of Argus monitors within the Top End. It is estimated that numbers have dropped by as much as 90% in many areas.
Many individuals of this species are captive bred as a conservation effort against poisoning from the cane toad infestation of the speciesβ native range and as exotic pets.
You totally need a mating pair! It's for conservation!!!
I love that for you! It's great that you have friends who just love you for who you are.
So he's never voted in a presidential election?
If he was 20 as of July 13, 2024, then he would have been 16 on July 13, 2020, and in no way eligible to vote in the 2020 election
Something seems fishy about this whole thing now
the motivations of 20-year-olds can be mysterious even to the 20-year-olds
Idk, we will probably learn more soon; it's rare for a 20-y-o American to have no digital trail, so there's more information out there.
Maybe he wanted to impress Jodie Foster!
emphasis on radical?
stopped at a gas station near the Kyger Creek Plant this afternoon (visible through the trees on the right) and saw the opportunity for this lovely photo that captures the feel of southern Ohio
(if you really want to get into the vibe, it was high 80s and humid as fuck, because it was about to storm and we were next to the river - the dumpster was fragrant, and the high voltage lines were audibly crackling)
completely coincidentally, there was a billboard a few miles down the road advertising a nearby clinic specializing in lung cancer treatment
This post from @[email protected] led to me poking around /r/H5N1_AvianFlu, and I found this other post discussing a way to view H5N1 wastewater data:
I seem to have found a secret link to the H5N1 data in wastewater on the Verily website.
https://deploy-preview-14--wastewater-scan-tracker.netlify.app
To access the H5N1 data
- Click on the chart icon in the upper left, underneath the pin icon
- Ignore the text box, click anywhere else.
- Select respiratory, influenza, and subtype "H5"
- Select all locations, I used the heatmap and found Michigan and Texas to have positives.
(These instructions are for the desktop browser - someone in the comments mentioned how to do it from the phone.)
Here's the long, ugly link to the chart I generated following those instructions.
It lets you generate an image, but it also kept crashing my phone as it was loading, so ~~idk if~~ I'm pretty sure not every available site is included. (The site does that thing of gradually adding more fields to the chart as it loads, instead of taking forever to load a complete chart.)
Obviously it's not just human waste in the sewage system, but it does seem worrying, especially in light of a couple of megathread comments from @[email protected] I found while trying to figure out which community was best for posting this.
photo quality apology
Sorry for the potato picture, was getting an upload error that I think is related to file size, so I did a screenshot of a screenshot to halfass resize it.
I found these at Walmart yesterday. If I had known that my kid had been at Walmart earlier in the week with a friend and had seen these and chosen to not buy them because he thought they looked gross, I probably wouldn't have bought them, but I didn't, so I did! π
Curiosity got the better of me before anyone else, so I tried them first and then took samples around to my family.
our review
I regret to inform you that they're actually pretty fuckin good. 9/10 Oreo flavor. Husband and Chult agreed.
husband's comparison
Husband says they taste like fruity pebbles in a cookie, and I think this is spot-on. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, give this nutritional abomination a try.
dunkability
I didn't realize the oat milk had turned, so idk yet how they are dunked - probably great, tbqh. I have to go to the pharmacy today anyway, so I'll grab some while I'm out and update anyone interested.
I'm in this post and I don't like it