MrsDoyle

Reading the labels on junk I’m tempted by helps me. That much sugar, really? How many calories?!? Palm oil, ugh. And wtf is pentasodium triphosphate?

Also, when I buy a bag of carrots, I peel them and put them in the fridge, so when I feel snacky I can munch a crispy carrot.

That’s not great, I hope life is treating you well now. Keep up the good work here! I love your history posts especially. ❤️

Words to watch out for are things like “attacked”, “bashed” or “slammed” instead of “criticised”; “forced” instead of “chose”, eg “company forced to cut jobs”; “muzzled” or “gagged” instead of perhaps “censored”. The implied violence charges the story emotionally, it’s the most common form of news manipulation. They’re trying to make you feel - usually fear or anger - rather than think.

Crossing the street is a thoughtful thing to do, and I for one appreciate it.

Exactly. Everyone in Scotland knows what town former prime minister Gordon Brown lives in. Thanks to Google Maps, we know the exact address. It’s the only blurred-out house.

I tripped and fell over one time and the racket I made woke my dog up. He looked across at me lying on the floor, yawned and went back to sleep. “Still alive? Jolly good. Wake me again at dinnertime.”

Oh I’m sorry, did I break your concentration?

Aw man, I shot Marvin in the face.

You know what they call a quarter pounder in Paris?

And you will know that I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

Oh dear, I didn’t read them! Little England xenophobia at its finest.

That’s true actually - they are escalating pretty hard already.

As a long-term peacenik though, I hate the thought of gun battles on the streets. I wish you all the very best. I first visited the US in 1976 and have toured around a lot since then. My one single bad experience was Homeland Security when transiting through LAX. We’re tourists not terrorists, jeez cool your jets! I can’t imagine how bad ICE is.

I suspect your government would love it if you started shooting. They’d declare martial law. Goodbye elections, hello police state.

This happened in my country in 2021: https://youtu.be/ZZcoXdZeabA No guns involved, just a load of people prepared to stand around all day blocking the vans.

Get yourselves organised.

What’s bizarre to me is that in the olden days, ie pre-internet, millions of people happily paid up every single day to read the news in a format that was stuffed with adverts. Newspapers, remember them? The ads helped pay production costs. People sometimes bought newspapers FOR the ads - job search, car sales, accomodation, real estate.

I pay the Guardian £75 a year - slightly up from the £60 it was when I first started the online ad-free subscription like ten years ago or whatever. This is because I hate the intrusive nature of online advertising, and I appreciate most of the Guardian’s journalism. It seems like a good deal to me.

Planning what will probably be my last ever trip to NZ to visit family, with a stopover in Japan on the way back. Happening in Oct/Nov.

I fully support the choice to remove the bins. I visited a beauty spot in Scotland recently that has a coffee van in the carpark. The young couple I took there went to add their empty cups to the already overflowing bin, and were baffled when I insisted they take them to the car, which was ten steps away. “But there’s a bin!” Yes you numpties, and the wind is already spreading its contents everywhere. Be part of the solution, not the problem.

Erm, more than a few arrived in chains, entirely against their will.

UK: I don’t know if it’s produced domestically, but pasta is dirt cheap. Own brand spaghetti can be under 60p a kilo. Tinned tomatoes are also cheap, so there you go - dinner.

Potatoes and brown onions are fairly cheap, ditto carrots.

Eggs, of course. £2.70 ($3.50) a dozen, medium free range.

People pay huge amounts of money for clothes with adverts on them.

Switzerland? Apart from a bit of aerial bombing during WWII it’s been a pretty peaceful border since that time Napoleon invaded.

I have two feeds: one is “subscribed” for all the stuff I’m actually interested in, and the other is “all”, for when I’m up for a bit of US politics, Reddit-bashing and weird German memes…

pleasant texture

I’d go with “rubbery”.