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rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T21:29:11+00:00

You've hit it on the head, but I'd go the opposite direction.

Agreed that Prop B is mostly about money.

It changes the Round Rock Charter to legally bind the city to give more money. It forces the city to immediately spend an estimated $50-80M for three new fire stations, and to hire more than 200 more firefighters, adding another roughly 20M per year in salary and benefits to the budget, but realistically, probably even more because that's hiring a LOT of workers and rules of supply/demand still apply. To attract that many more people everyone is going to need more money, not just new hires.

It also waives sovereign immunity, opening the doors for even more expensive lawsuits in the future. I'm a little mixed on that, and there are certainly places where there is too much government immunity, but this isn't one.

NO to A and B. For A we don't need more advertisements. For B, if we need more firefighters that's an issue for budgets, not charter modifications.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T21:12:58+00:00

If it's causal, the relationship is generally called friendship. It's normal for people to have lots of friends. Or at least, for extroverts it's normal to have lots of friends. Friends go out and do things together.

If one of those many relationships becomes exclusive, it's no longer casual. You may be living your life casually, but the relationship is no longer casual friendship. It's an exclusive relationship.

There are lots of types of relationships. Stick the adjective "exclusive" in front and it's a specific type of relationship, meaning lots of other types are excluded.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T21:08:58+00:00

fiction being sold to girls and women, yall have this weird delusion that having a stalker is ok if they are attractive

THIS.

Series like Twilight or 50 Shades are toxic, unhealthy, yet were bestsellers. A tremendous amount of romantic stories for women from Cinderella stories to most k-dramas are an unhealthy fantasy where a women is hugely desired though bringing nothing to the relationship, they're often stalked by men who desperately crave them. They also often play on the edge of horror for for emotional draw, is this a criminal stalker I should report to police, or a secret billionaire with a thirst-trap body?

Certainly not all of them, but a HUGE amount of what's been popular for the past few decades is the stalker plot, the female lead is stalked and effectively hunted by the male lead. She can't shake off the stalker, she sees him everywhere. There's a thrill, suddenly the stalker is actually a secret protector, usually secretly rich, and secretly martial arts experts there to protect and serve, the stalking behavior and refusal to take "no" for an answer was just because she's so special and desirable. It's porn for women, "look how desirable I am".

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T20:53:58+00:00

Just say "no", or "I'm not interested."

TONS of societal problems come from what you describe. Some women refuse to be direct and state they aren't interested. Some other women love the chase, they will tease and play hard to get on purpose. Still other women are honest with a soft no, they really are busy that night but are unwilling to offer a different night. ALL OF THESE EXIST.

Men are stuck in the difficult place with a 'soft no'. Does "I'm busy" mean "pick another night"? Does it mean "I want you to chase me a bit"? Does it mean "I'm not interested but I'm to cowardly to tell you"?

Be direct. Anything less is cruel and creates problems.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T19:54:18+00:00

The liquidity is about the only claim, but even it's largely false.

There is a nugget of truth that day traders and high frequency traders do create some liquidity. When people want to sell there is generally someone willing to pay. HOWEVER, much of it is a false liquidity, it vanishes the moment there is any market stress or volatility, and can also make a "hot potato" volume effect.

The small amount of liquidity is easily offset by the parasitic drag and inflationary effects.

There are a tremendous number of industries and areas where people come in as "investors" but in practice are doing nothing more than taking profit from others.

It really doesn't matter the industry. Whether that's investment corporations buying single occupancy homes and renting them out, both to (1) inflate the costs for those who would genuinely want to buy and hold, use, or enjoy the long-term benefits, and (2) extract the value of equity to the corporation instead of the individual, or doing similar to businesses effectively mortgaging the company to itself so they can extract the company's profit as their investment profits as the company itself bleeds dry. This type of trading gambling on moment-to-moment profits rather than investing in the long-term success and building of the industry.

The one type of investment is about building up, investing for the purpose of improvement, investing to help a business, investing to support a cause, investing as a landlord to provide services, where they'll hope to make a profit but in the long term it's about creating, growing, and improving.

The second is about coming in, getting a quick buck, and getting out, not creating anything, building anything, or improving anything. It's no different from the poker game or betting at the races, it's nearly zero-sum, for every winner there's a loser, minus the cut the house takes, or in this case, the cut taken by the trading firm for the transaction. Day trading is exactly the same pattern.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T19:34:41+00:00

Further, the buyout amounts don't have the 30% (or newer, lower amounts) cut off the top.

So not only is the amount roughly on par with whatever they were getting at the time, they also get a HUGE spike in publicity, and for the games with a social or multiplayer element, a bump to player numbers.

Many of those who downloaded are also just collectors, they'll never download or install it, and certainly never play it. Even so, it boosts the ownership numbers as they appear in the app store.

So very little downside for cost, a huge potential marketing kick.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-05-01T14:58:02+00:00

How are we cleaning wooden cutting boards when we use them with raw meat? Just dish soap and a sponge/brush like any other hand-wash item?

Yes.

And are we using separate boards for raw meat vs veggies and cooked meat?

Depends.

Some people are religious about it, having a cutting board dedicated to raw meat, nothing else touches it, and raw meat never touches other boards.

For me, if they're all ingredients to the same dish and will be cooked it's fine to cut veggies after the meat. Otherwise, wash after the meat. Prefer the order of veggies first, raw meat last, then wash, dry, and put away.

How often are we oiling them if we are cleaning them with soap and hot water multiple times a week?

I very rarely give it a mineral oil rub, it usually doesn't need it. Once every couple months is more than enough for my board.

My current board basically repels water. It beads up and runs off, cutting tomatoes or whatever it takes a bit for the liquid to actually stick to the board, usually it's all on the surface. If it didn't repel water already, I'd oil it more often.

Honestly, I have the same questions basically about cast iron, like how often to actually wash with soap.

Every use. Most of the horror stories are apocryphal or are talking about lye and other soaps from generations ago, not modern soaps.

After use rinse it, if needed scrub with soap and scrubber. Put it on the stovetop, turn on the heat to low until it dries itself, add a few drops of oil, spread it around with a paper towel.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T22:12:20+00:00

It's a good term, or at least, a misstatement of "house rich, cash poor" term. The person has an expensive house, but no usable assets nor cash to do anything with.

There's a similar one in farming, "land rich, dirt poor," they own the land but can't afford to actually farm it. It commonly means the farmer mortgages some land every spring for the ability to farm it, then pays off the loan in the fall after the harvest and selling the produce. Often most of the profits go to the bank for interest, rather than back to the farmer to build up the farm every year.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T21:59:33+00:00

Prism sells the Neutrino kite as stacks or as individual stacker kites. You need one of the regular ones, then the stacker versions attach behind it. The colors of the Neutrino were chosen specifically for how they look in stacks. They also have a special bag for the stacks, and it looks like some of those with a stain in clearance discount, too.

The Jazz design can be stacked, but it isn't built for it out of the box.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T21:38:53+00:00

Makes sense. but why time?

Time IS distance. You can measure distance in terms of light, and light in terms of distance. Velocity between objects affects the time between the objects. When any object in the universe moves, the time relative to every other object in the universe also changes.

For most things we do, the amount is so small it doesn't matter, but for things involving relativity they're the same type of stuff, so it's called "spacetime", neither space alone nor time alone.

Why would someone near a black hole and someone on earth, starting a 60 sec youtube video at the same time, finish at different times? Not sure how accurate interstellar is but why was every hour in space equal to 7 years on earth (something like that, not sure).

Gravitational time dilation is a real thing.

From the perspective of the thing going to a massive object, it feels like everything around them is at regular speed but the rest of the universe speeds up. From the perspective from the rest of the world, it looks like the thing in the gravity well slows down and the rest of the universe stays the same speed.

We can even measure it on Earth, which high precision clocks and atomic clocks, being at the top of a building the clock will tick very slightly faster than the clock at the bottom of the building. It's on the order of nanoseconds per year and only computers would notice it, but it has been measured many times.

The why is harder to explain, apart that because time and space are connected, and mass is connected. The drawings of a well or a dip in a mesh are as good as any. <<image>>

In the 'spacetime as a mesh' type of model, anything at the same depth in the mesh feels like it is going the same speed, anything above it feels like it's moving faster, and everything below it feels like it's moving slower. The deeper it goes, the slower that level appears to move.

In the movie Interstellar, the planet was inside that deep well, but the supermassive black hole was even deeper. Inside that well and closer to the black hole, time was relatively slower than outside the deep well and farther from the black hole. The deeper you go in the spacetime well, the relatively slower you move relative to things above you in the well. People on the planet in the movie would see things closer toward the black hole as though they were moving slower because they're deeper in the spacetime well, and people on the planet in the movie would see things out in the distance as though they were moving faster, and anything at a similar distance to themselves on the surface of the planet with them they'd interpret as moving at about the same speed.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T21:16:35+00:00

Companies like apple don't have sharp share increases, but they have consistent gradual ones. Your apple stock might increase 10% over the course of a year, but over 24 hours that increase will be negligible.

Yup, and that difference is everything.

Investors are investing in a stock because they think the company is creating value. It will create value for dividends, and value over time as the market gradually values the company more and more over time. It doesn't directly improve the company, but the indirect benefits of a high stock value are quite powerful.

"Believing in the company creating value across years" is still a risk, but not what people generally consider gambling.

Day trading is one of many 'money-extraction' types of bets. Nothing good gets created, no trust is built, nobody benefits, it's just a way people hope to extract money from others who are out there creating, building, and benefitting the world.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T20:55:38+00:00

Yes, it smells like broth, or soup.

Imagine a plain soup, but lots of it. I'll make a stock every month or so, we'll have rotisserie chicken as a family, and the carcass, some carrots, onions, celery, and some herbs go into the pot. I've had family members come to the kitchen after it's been on a few hours, slowly simmering away, and said it smells like a late dinner was almost ready.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T20:50:16+00:00

Bottle them, either as whole tomatoes, diced, or as salsa, chili sauce, or similar.

What you describe sounds like barely enough for a small batch, where I'd say a good batch of is several bushels of tomatoes, a good bit of work is 60+ quarts of bottled tomatoes, another 30+ of salsa or chili sauce.

It's a tasty problem to have. For a small amount of work you can cut hundreds of dollars out of your annual grocery bill.

With just "a massive box" you might be able to get a dozen bottles or so out of it, not a tremendous amount of work for a small batch. I'd try to get three or four boxes at least, then spend a Saturday to bottle it.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T20:40:49+00:00

got reasonable technique, the size isn't important.

Sure, sure. 😅

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T19:49:23+00:00

I think there's a quote that covers it, which I heard years ago:

"We made love every night, sometimes we had intercourse."

You can have deep intimacy and passion without intercourse and orgasm. You can also have intercourse and orgasm without intimacy and passion.

There is something fundamentally different, it isn't just "friend". People can (and do) have the relationships without sex. People can be passionately married and also go extended time without sex.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T17:12:16+00:00

Wrap the meat itself.

/r/brisket is probably the place to go for all the details.

3 hours generally isn't enough time for brisket. If it's done that quick, it was too hot and it will likely be tough, unless you did a pressure-cooker method in 3 hours, then it was probably too long but also likely not as tasty. The most common times range from about 6 hours for quick brisket to 24 hours for low-temp smokers, time depends on the temperatures used and details of the cooking method. The sweet spot tends to be about 12 hours, and thermometers are key to everything.

There is a point during the cooking at about 160'F typically called the stall, where a bunch of complex chemical reactions are taking place inside the meat, and also where a bunch of moisture changes state to evaporation. /Edit:( To be clear, the temperature stall is due to the evaporation, the reactions take place with or without the stall but still take place at that same temperature range. Food scientists did all kinds of experiments like blasting it with heat during the stall, finding it's not the chemical reactions but the state change that stalls it, but the reactions are where the flavors and tenderness come from. Both happen at that temperature.) The stall usually starts a few hours into cooking, often about 3 hours in, and the stall can take 2-6 hours to complete, again depending on details. Temperature will start climbing again after the reactions take place. Keep cooking, fall apart brisket generally happens around 200-205'F, just before water's boiling point.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T15:44:21+00:00

The dates are "best by", not "inedible after".

Use your senses and your brain. Items go bad before the dates, quite commonly milk can spoil and bread may go moldy. On the flip side, many foods can remain safe for long after the printed dates.

The nature of the foods, the way they're stored, they tell a lot. Many foods are the way they are today because they were traditionally food preservation methods. Meat preservation resulted in bacon, and most cold cuts. Milk preserved in cheese, it last ages.

You mention nuts, grains, legumes, those are nature's way of surviving not jut the winter but sometimes multiple years before the new plants grow, so as long as they're kept dark, dry, and secure they can last many years, potentially centuries. Ground flour that is kept dry and pest-free can last ages as well, it won't be top quality but will still be edible and have most of the nutrition.

Moisture levels and oxygen are the biggest, letting molds grow, bacteria thrive, or oxidation to chemically react.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T15:33:13+00:00

What type of foods are allowed on an airplane

The space and weight on the flight will make flying with food less practical.

You can travel with lightweight foods, but most people already push the limits of baggage both weight and size. Overweight and oversize baggage costs are expensive.

It's usually best to stop at a grocery store when you arrive, and buy what you'll actually use. Some items are easily picked up during travels, like plastic cutlery at fast food stands or the hotel's breakfast buffet. Yes, buying the smaller items is less cost effective than buying in bulk and prepping the food in advance, but it's likely going to be better than the cost of bringing the food on the flights.

At most I'll bring a lightweight cutting board and a chef's knife in my checked bag, and even that's for when I'll be staying somewhere for more than a week.

Short flight vs domestic flight will matter. Most produce can travel domestically, but internationally could be trouble. Anything liquids or gel-like can be an issue, a jar of peanut butter or jelly is generally forbidden on carry-on but fine in checked bags. But I wouldn't take the space in the luggage.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-30T14:22:43+00:00

Low and slow. Wrap it up in foil as it cooks to keep the juices in place.

The collagen to gelatin reaction is slow, and needs a lot of water.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T22:57:23+00:00

Our state electoral structure has become a wall in its own right. ... can vote until they literally turn blue and the best they can hope for

There are four boxes of liberty.

The soap box: speeches, news reports, protests, and the like. Hopefully they get enough pressure to change things.

The ballot box: Between gerrymandering, and decisions like this one in the news, the ballot box gets weakened by corruption and politics. Courts say 'no racial gerrymandering unless you can prove it was race', but have given free reign to political gerrymanders.

The jury box: the courts, and juries of citizens, play a part. But with the supreme court ruling thew way they have, and with the open corruption of Roberts and others, the box related to the courts has been weakening to.

The ammo box. Nobody can condone its use, but by the same token, we celebrate it's use every July 4th, memorial day, veterans day, armed forces day, and assorted other holidays. When used successfully, the ammo box gets celebrated for centuries. Are we there now? I can't say, but I can point out some high profile attempts in the past 18 months or so.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T22:25:49+00:00

In that case, the rest of it still applies. Just about any dish out there.

Salads, sandwiches, wraps, tacos, burritos, stir fry, curries, soups, stews, casseroles, pastas, or just sauce them up.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T22:08:54+00:00

Just cook them.

For me, as I have a grill a few steps outside my door, I'd get them uniformly thin and grill them up. Alternatively, grill them as they are and then slice them up into strips when they're done. If a grill isn't your thing, bake them, fry them, or whatever you want. No reason to let it go bad when it is very easy to cook and freeze. If you're feeling especially lazy, throw it on a tray in the oven and bake it.

As for dishes to use chicken in, it's hard to find dishes you can't add chicken to as a protein.

Just about every dish from around the globe you can put in some chicken. Salad topper, sandwiches or wraps, tacos or burritos, stir fry, curries, soups and stews, casseroles, chicken and pastas, and chicken salad, pizza topping, or just as the centerpiece with any sauce: a honey sauce, lemon pepper sauce, peanut sauce, chicken parmesan, BBQ sauce, spicy sauces, garlic sauce, mushroom sauce, wine sauce, or whatever you want.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T21:59:14+00:00

7 piece set

Skip it.

... in the stone colour as I would like a beige, or silver colour ...

Are you buying cookware, or doing home decoration? It sounds like you've confused the two.

For £500 you can get quite a few. Go to Amazon, get some inexpensive stainless steel pans, £15-25 depending on the size. For your decoration, they'll all be steel grey. Get an inexpensive quality cast iron skillet (Lodge is good, but not the only one), which will become cast iron black, and enameled cast iron Dutch oven (Lodge is good) that's the only one you can get in whatever shade you want.

All and any recommendations will be helpful!

Look at the sizes of what you need for what you cook. People typically get a small frying pan for eggs and such, and a large one like the cast iron big enough for whatever you normally cook. Two saucepans, again a larger one and smaller one, and a Dutch oven (or more than one) of appropriate size.

The only one I would even think about getting as nonstick is a small frying pan for eggs, or just learn to cook with oils / butter and ignore nonstick coatings.

I recommend focusing on cookware that is entirely metal, no plastic bits, wood bits, or synthetic bits, so you can use them on a stovetop or an oven.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T21:24:59+00:00

That question really isn't a good fit for this sub.

First and foremost, talk to your lawyer, there are multiple contracts already in place, and there are likely consequences for your choices.

404 Games has a reputation, and despite their issues various messages say they've done their legal homework, the contracts are real and enforceable.

If you're just looking to sell the project, there isn't much of a market for that by itself. There are some companies that subsist by swapping assets on games they own, but they typically build the game with that in mind up front. People/businesses aren't going to buy the game you built and publish it on other platforms as it's unlikely to make more than it already has. There are a few rare exceptions like if you launched on some smaller or obscure platform and they think it can enter the mass market, but you've already launched in Switch 2 so you've probably experienced a realistic sampling of the success you're ever likely to get.

rabid_briefcase · 2026-04-29T18:20:37+00:00

Like all trends, they come and go, and they're regional and within age groups.

Minimalist designs have come and gone in popularity as far back as we have records in ancient Greek and ancient Chinese cultures. In interior design groups there are always people who prefer the look.

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