We can’t let them learn the secrets of our $4.99 rotisserie chickens!

Ibuprofen.

Or did you think people were just like, “Well, my knees were kinda sore going up the stairs today. Guess I’ll go slash my wrists?”

South Park didn’t invent Casa Bonita. It’s been around since the 1970s. It’s basically impossible to overstate how much people who grew up in Denver love that place, even in spite of how famously terrible the food is.

There are huge sound effects libraries that have been continuously built up and added to since sound in movies became a thing. Foley artists dip into them constantly. If you watch enough old movies you can pick out some almost 100-year-old foley effects that still get used in modern tv and movies. A lot of the time foley artists will toss them in as a joke or reference that mostly only other foley artists are going to catch.

But yeah there are a lot of foley effects that get used a ton. I hear the exact door opening/closing sound from the old AOL instant messenger used in a movie or tv show at least a couple times a year. There’s also a specific cat noise that gets used constantly which people who played Postal 2 back in the day will recognize instantly.

Word.

Hate is probably a strong word, but I don’t really care for their music. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, they’re competent musicians, but it all feels boring and generic to me. It’s bland and inoffensive, like it was written to play over a grocery store PA at a barely liminal volume for a middle-aged housewife to absent-mindedly hum along with as she compares laundry soap.

This song by Slot. I know nothing about the band except that they’re Russian so I’ve always been a tiny bit worried I was actually listening to some anthem singing the glories of the Putin regime.

Weed whackers and weed eaters were used fairly interchangeably where I grew up in the US southwest and mountain west.

If the process and tradition of it appeals to you, then sure. You can find a cheap matcha set for under $20 (I think I saw one on Amazon a while ago for $10), so it’s not like you need to spend a ton of money to try it out.

I’m kind of lazy so I use one of those electric milk frothing whisks instead of a traditional bamboo one. But if you use that type of electric frother just be sure to use it in a vessel with high sides and a fair amount of extra room otherwise you’ll be wearing your matcha instead of drinking it.

The fact that the car had brakes to begin with would suggest that it is, by design, a force which stops regularly.

Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don’t think you’re a jerk. It sounds like you’re trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It’s not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you’re being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.

Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it’s probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don’t have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that’s how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn’t have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.

Legend has it they ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.

The story behind this band is actually pretty crazy. The Shaggs were sisters who grew up in a house where there really wasn’t any music. Then their father was told by an astrologer (or some kind of fortune teller) that his daughters were going to be famous and influential musicians, and he got completely obsessed with the idea. He bought them all instruments and forced them to play (but for some reason didn’t bother to spring for actual music lessons). If I’m remembering correctly, he even pulled them out of school at some point so they could focus on music full-time.

So basically these sisters were basically locked in a basement and forced to invent the concept of music from scratch. It’s like some crazy thing an anthropologist would study.

The only reason we still know about them is because people (not the least of which being guys like Kurt Cobain and Jello Biafra) found the record in thrift stores and bargain bins and began passing copies around, and it became kind of an underground obsession among punk, indie, and experimental musicians. So they did actually end up being famous and influential in a way, but not in the way that makes anybody rich, which is probably what the dad was hoping for.

I saw a cooking or travel show that featured the guy who grows those a while back. Apparently they taste absolutely amazing, but I can’t imagine justifying spending that much money on a strawberry.

Not off the top of my head, but the paint color is called “TV Yellow.”

I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, “iT’s JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY.” None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, “It’s easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork.”

Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.

Once you’re into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you’re coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, “EmAiL! iT’s LiKe EmAiL!” then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.

Those old black and white television cameras had a lot of limitations. For instance, things that were white and glossy would cause an extra-bright flare effect that would leave trails across the screen whenever it moved, and it was even worse on video. Guitar companies had to invent a brand new shade of yellow for musicians who performed on TV that still looked white on camera, but didn’t light up like a road flare under the studio lights.

Which is a long way of saying that when it comes to those old cameras I would expect the light from a blowtorch to cause some weird artifacts.

What A Life by The Meffs was a good one. Lotta good stuff happening in the UK punk scene right now. Australia too.

Yeah, black weirdly tends to be easier to see in the dark than some other colors. It often ends up looking darker than the surrounding darkness. Slightly lighter colors like brown and gray don’t contrast with the background as much and are much harder to pick out in the dark. People who have owned a black dog and a brown dog at the same time will have probably noticed that effect. At least that’s where I noticed it.

Definitely the Internet’s superior source ofl Star Trek memes.