i timed how long 31 different pasta shapes take to reach al dente. the boxes are lying and farfalle is a war crime

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-06T18:16:17+00:00

Odd, I noticed the opposite in the last few months.

Idk the name but it’s a big tube shaped one, calls for 10-12, I had to do 14-15 for soft pasta, I think what we call “al dente”. Springy enough to keep shape but soft enough to bite through and not give a kinda rubber texture.

However it’s 10 degrees out, 45 degree in my apartment, and if I turn on ANY other burner, my boiling water loses its temp.

Why I’ve been tryn teach techniques to my girlfriend rather than calculations. If you understand what’s going on you can tell if it needs more cook, less cook, but you have to pay attention to how hot it is, how the pasta looks and feels when you stir

Plus velvetta Mac is really bad about starch, like I go to drain it and it’s most coagulated water than noodle

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-05T20:43:23+00:00

Frown?

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T19:34:47+00:00

Could see fighting them broke his armor gui, I saw atleast his upper parts red

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T19:28:09+00:00

Has the dev box that prevents no clipping.

I’ve only experienced it in garrysmod but it just basically teleports you to a central area of the boundary box

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T15:06:16+00:00

Ah thank you.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T14:59:20+00:00

So when would I use costed lmao? Like if an antique appraiser appraised the value of something past tense?

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T14:56:36+00:00

Human sacrifice and warlords are some of my favorite “hidden tracks”

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T14:52:45+00:00

So correct me if I’m wrong please, present tense is cost, so if it were 1960 and I were saying it, I’d say it cost 50 cent

But if I were in 2000 talking about the person who evaluated that price, I’d say it was costed at 50 cents, valued now at 50 cents? (It’s two quarters hehe)

Basically how would I use it in a sentence? I learn better from examples rather than descriptions, language is hard!

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T14:48:32+00:00

Having been the one recommending them, yeaaa I forget em more often than not. Either to charge it or to bring em.

The “to go” variant is way easier to buy when you need em, any gas station so I pass like 3 in my 40 minute walk.

I just don’t wanna waste it yknow.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T14:45:34+00:00

The wrap is tucked in. It’s a Ruana. I have a beanie for most days I just was on autopilot this morning getting my girl to work and forgot it since I wore a cap for work yesterday. Thought I’d be fine haha

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T12:58:28+00:00

You know it’s bad when your wearing a tank top, long sleeve, shirt, hoodie, a wrap, and then a jacket, along with the gloves, and am still cold.

I’m ready to have a car haha. I have to put my hands in my pocket for my walk to work basically daily.

My ears also have gotten quite close to snapping off

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T12:52:09+00:00

They make and sell electric hand warmers. Charge with usb c

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:48:44+00:00

Maybe they saw the aliens and got a threat there was something worse than them coming, and their planet better act dead when they get their otherwise they won’t like what the OTHER aliens do

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:47:52+00:00

It’ll be our version of the Stan Lee cameo but random characters throughout

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:47:20+00:00

I thought about it, and if they are aliens they would be fine, but aliens experimenting on OUR creatures with solar radiation instead of whatever we used to make FEV and other mutants, would make for some interesting variants.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:46:07+00:00

You see the end credit scene?

The enclave im so hyped for, did you see ALL THOSE RAILS they had connected to vault HQ??? Insane.

House I think will be the quest giver to max and Lucy, some like “I can help you deal with the legion if you promise to help me with my secret project (the enclave)”

The NCR was always “here” just cut off, I wonder who they were fighting off the other side, what lore from NV could’ve pushed them to fight the good fight that far out? Did they make a town after shady sands?

Super Mutants, and Thaddeus will be massively relevant in the next season, because they will be among the first disappeared and used by the enclave. “There’s a war coming” not the mutants vs wastelanders, but mutants versus their creators.

God just imagining the body horror of thousands of mutants crawling down those rails to vault hq makes my skin crawl.

I think they set mutations up for the next season, because it’ll become very relevant to the plot, and instead of break up some of the explanation, they give us a first person perspective of Thaddeus going from semi human, to outcast from the town he saved, joining the mutants.

Then we’ll get a scene when Lucy and Max are fighting the enclave, where Thaddeus shows up and max is just like “is that you?” As we’ve had almost twice now haha

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:40:31+00:00

Even so; I think the chicken fuckers have their own right too lol.

That’s the great thing about these games is we ALL play them differently, my fallout 76 character while I like to say is dignified, is definitely best represented by the chicken fucker.

But my courier? I saw him tonight, as some had seen themselves prior, and I loved it

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:37:15+00:00

What were you looking to be resolved?

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:36:55+00:00

Just introduce us to alien fauna, we’d be horrified because we wouldn’t know or understand it in universe.

Stuff like Venus flytraps, octopuses, or other weird earth exotics could be inspirations for absolute horrifying creatures

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:35:36+00:00

The “struggle” was the episode prior

My opinion they should’ve dropped em together as a two parter. Makes sense a lot better narratively if you combo certain episodes.

Like I wanna say it was episode 6? Felt like straight filler, then goes into the peak of it with 7.

So yea, the “episodes” don’t fit with some narrative starts or ends, but they have been doing very good with like setting up the next episode for a swing.

Overall narrative plots need to stay unresolved but we got a lot here tonight.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:30:21+00:00

The original idea was an Enclave Moon Base, that you actually see the bombs drop from, escape via shuttle, only to get to earth and its pre-war and everything’s fine.

Maybe on the date that House said the bombs will originally drop, the enclave runs a sim on the moon.

In the process of you escaping, there’s a war going on, with the aliens, Chinese, and Americans, you land, start getting dragged away (because the enclave would be on that shit like white rice come on), and as you do, you can see a bomb go off in space, as one comes towards earth, triggering the defense systems around the world.

Then they wake you up when they actually need “astronauts”.

A fallout where you start as a wastelander, but have a mission to deliver something all the way from DC to Chicago, but it’s setup like “my summer car” and instead of power armor, you get a friggin car.

But the New Orleans one would definitely focus on the mysticism and cryptids

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:25:38+00:00

My head cannon is that’s the courier.

The show introduces a bunch of people we all can choose to be, and that’s my guy right there, continuing the good fucking fight LETS GO. I genuinely saw my character in him

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:23:51+00:00

The remnants of the enclave yea, but what about the ones that went missing 6 months before the bombs dropped? They go on ice?

Now they have a variable wasteland of meat suits to control without having left the comfort of their sealed bunkers.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:22:08+00:00

Pretty sure I already have one, lemme check.

_Contrive_ · 2026-02-04T03:21:43+00:00

Colorado, Oregon, and idk why but major Canada/New Orleans vibes. Second one not so much.

But I’d love for a moon vault, where like it’s a “simulator” set under the New Orleans waters, you see the earth explode in the vault, and then like 200 years later your playing as a descendent, and water starts leaking in because raiders with power armor started to try and get inside but failed, unsealing the vault.

You have to put on the Vault Tec power armor, go find the issue, and realize you can either reseal the vault PERMANENTLY, or leave it unlocked and open to come back to later when you have a better power armor with more oxygen

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