That’s just enough to buy my wife and I ice cream cones at the best place in town and leave enough of a tip that we don’t feel like we’re being cheap. Date night sorted!

Depends on why/how my needs are being met I suppose. If this is a post-scarcity situation where everyone’s needs are met and no one has to work, I’d probably keep at my current job. I install and repair nurse call systems (the buttons you push in a hospital to tell the staff you need help) I mostly enjoy the work and someone is going to have to keep doing it. I live in a town with a huge hospital and could easily keep busy without leaving town.

If this situation where only my own basic needs are met and not everyone else’s, I wouldn’t keep going to that job. Management is kind of a pain and they can certainly afford to train someone who needs the work. I’d still fix whatever kind of shit I knew how to because honestly, I love working with a wrench but, I’d be doing it freelance at that point. I’d probably start by knocking on the doors of local machine shops, fixing machine tools and lasers was more fun than nurse call and if I wasn’t tied to one specific brand, I could probably keep busy without driving 4 hours a day (I quit that job because I was tired of travel). If that took off, I’d try to turn it into a business and train someone to pick up the slack so I could still take the occasional vacation without leaving regular customers hanging. If that wasn’t enough to keep even just me busy, I’d probably start asking around about other random shit that needed to be fixed. Lots of people deal with broken shit because they can’t afford to fix it and if I was only looking to stave off boredom, not having to make a profit, I could probably get it done affordably.

Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It’s mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn’t a big deal. Also, I’m problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I’d like, I get a little weird.

Mine’s a little weird to explain but if a woman goes off to slip into something more comfortable (like, actual pajamas, not talking about the euphemism for changing into lingerie) I not only get turned on, I’ll get a little obsessed for a while. First time it happened was senior prom, I went with a friend of mine (just as friends) and afterwards a bunch of us ended up at her place playing video games. At one point she was like, “sorry you guys are stuck in your formal wear but I’m getting out of this thing”. She came back in sweatpants and a T-shirt and had ditched her contacts for glasses (I didn’t even know she wore glasses at that point) and for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about her for like, months. Tried talking her into dating a couple times but no-go. After that, when girls I dated would get into pajamas to chill with me for the evening, I’d always lose interest in chilling and want to take them right to bed. To this day it drives my wife nuts that she’ll buy sexy lingerie and not get more of a reaction than when she just changed into sweats.

I didn’t put the comfy clothes thing together until my wife and I started vacationing with other couples. Every time a woman we were hanging out with left to change into comfy clothes to hang out for the rest of the night, I’d be like, “Why the hell am I so attracted to Bob’s wife all of the sudden”. Eventually It clicked that I apparently have a thing for pajamas which was a huge relief because I was a little worried that I was falling in love with a couple female friends there for a minute. Turns out it’s a lot easier to turn off when you know what’s going on.

Public speaking ability. She was on speech and debate teams all through HS and college so she is utterly unbotherered speaking in front of a crowd. Once we were the best man and matron of honor at a wedding where the grooms had said they didn’t want us to give a speech, when the DJ double checked this the day of, they were clearly regretting the decision. She caught the DJ and told him to be ready for a toast in 15. She disappeared for 10 minutes, came back and gave a speech that literally had people in tears.

Meanwhile, I have threatened to leave a church if they insisted on making me read the pre written Sunday morning announcements.

Same here. Had been considering it for a while and then scheduled mine right after Roe fell. Best $20 I have ever spent.

I actually never minded using condoms and even still, I wished I’d done it earlier. So much better, even the stretch where we still used rubbers because the wife wasn’t ready for creampies yet, I came so much easier knowing there was virtually zero chance of pregnancy.

So, while in think there are certainly fair criticisms to be made of allowing patents on plants, the paper you linked is kind of just low quality fear mongering. It’s heavy one scare tactics and light on facts. I wouldn’t let anything in this paper keep you up at night without verifying it through a more reputable source.

To try to answer your questions though;

1. I really don’t understand why you think it wouldn’t be. There are some sources recommending that boliological waste made up of the GMOs themselves be sterilized before leaving lab conditions but if you eat a GMO and it passes through your digestive track there will be few if any living GMO cells remaining. Particularly in the case of peppers, mammals’ digestive tracts will destroy pepper seeds. That’s why they’re spicy, it’s ironically a defense mechanism to keep us mammals from eating them.

2. At any rate, 1is kind of a moot point because the paper you linked clearly states that wild peppers were cross bred with commercial peppers. That’s very traditional plant breeding, no mention of GMOs. Given the blatant fear mongering in the rest of the paper, I’d be floored if they missed a chance to scare people about GMOs in these peppers. So unless the peppers you’re asking about are different from the ones in the paper, I’d say they’re definitely not GMOs. Also, I don’t believe there are any GMO peppers on the market at present.

3. The short version is this. A company, let’s say Pioneer seed, patents a breed of corn that has, let’s say increased stalk strength for windstorm prone areas. A farmer buys and plants those seeds, sells the resulting crop. The only difference from heirloom seeds is that the farmer is legally prohibited from using that crop as seed corn and selling that crop.

4. So in principle, there isn’t really an impact on society from patented seeds. In practice, some of the patent holders have been overly aggressive with there enforcement. IMHO, this is a patent enforcement issue not an issue with the parents themselves. I don’t know about Europe but I know that here in the US there is a problem with dubious patents being approved and enforced but again, that’s patents as a whole not just seed patents. At this point I’d be more worried about what happens without seed patents. Nobody is going develop seeds except universitys which (at least here in the US) are criminally underfunded. Effectively, our crop technology would stagnant without serious increases in public University funding which I’m a huge supporter of but sadly, can’t imagine happening in my lifetime.

I hope I’m not coming off as an asshole here. Just trying to answer your questions honestly.

I’ll go first.

I had a long distance GF when I was in my 20s. We only saw each other about once a month so obviously we spent a fair amount our limited time together fucking because, 20 year olds.

So, we’re going at one Saturday afternoon and halfway through, I hear a group of guys on the other side of the bedroom wall making fake sex noises to mock us. Normally a pretty passive guy but in what might have been my most “establish dominance” moment to date, I just fucked her harder because she was a screamer and I knew she’d drown out any noise these dudes were making.

Anyway, that’s how we found out that the exterior walls of that apartment were just as thin as the interior walls.

Not playing with it yet but, the wife and I just decided to order a Lelo Tiani. We’ve been seeing a bunch of ads for a similar toys on TicTok. https://www.lelo.com/tiani-duo

I like to say “don’t become an anecdote.”

Lol, this makes me think of a guy I went to highschool with. He was a farm kid who would get up early and work around the farm before school. One day he spills gas on his flannel shirt before school but doesn’t have time to change so he figures it’ll air out enough on his way to work (it didn’t). Second or third class of the day was shop. He starts working in the welding booth without stopping to put on the flame retardant overcoat. A hot spark hit that gas soaked flannel and dude light up like the human torch. He had some serious burns but makes a full recovery. For years after that though, the shop teacher used to say to anyone who complained about the overcoats, “go ask Phil if they’re worth it or not”.

I had a friend in highschool who’s dad had lost part of his pointer finger to an encounter with a saw blade. He had just a little bit of the bone beyond the second knuckle that was weirdly pointed and it hurt like hell when he jabbed you with it. I know this because I used to help them build shit around their farm and if he caught us being unsafe he’d poke us in the chest with that damn half-finger while he yelled at us about it.

Those lessons really stuck too.

I’m not sure.

IMHO, the cast iron wouldn’t be too bad maintenance wise once you got it well seasoned and learned how to use it but, that takes some time so it might be more fussing around than you’d like for the first several months. And even then, you’ll probably still want a non-stick around for some recipes. The stainless sounds like it might be what you’re looking but, I’m not well versed with that. The one time I tried it, the food stuck so bad that I never tried it again but, all the recommendations I’ve read about it since then make me think that was probably user error.

So the cleanup on enameled cast iron is super easy. Some manufacturers (LeCruset for sure, probably a few others) even bill them as dishwasher safe.

The two big problems for what you’re asking for are that they’re not going to hold up well to metal utensils and, they’re really not anything resembling non-stick. I always use mine for pan sauces because the burnt on bits really add something when you delglaze them into a sauce. As far as something delicate like fish or eggs, you’re gonna have a bad time.

I think they’re a great addition to almost any kitchen but, they’re far from a universal pan.

Don’t spread outdated information.
The only thing this does is intimidate people from using cast iron at all and that’s just a shame.

Yeah, I think this was my biggest issue when I started using cast iron. I never had much luck getting it actually clean without soap and it definitely showed in my cooking. I eventually got some better advice and started having much better results. Now my CI is my go to eggs every weekend and afterwards, I throw it in the dishpan with everything else. As long as you don’t soak it, you’re fine. I think the soaking thing is a big part of why a lot of manufacturers still recommend against soap and water. It’s easier to tell people to not use soap and water than it is to explain the nuance of “wet it, don’t soak it” and “gently wash, don’t scrub into oblivion”.

So funny story. The workhorse of my kitchen is a cheap-ass enamel Dutch oven that my wife impulse bought at a grocery store 4 or 5 years before we moved in together. After we got married, I decided to get her a LeCruset replacement for our anniversary the year that cheap one bit the dust. We’ve lived together ten years as of this summer and I still haven’t had to shell out for the Lecruset. We use that thing at least twice a week, maybe more in the winter months and this thing shows no signs of quitting. At this point we’re so attachted to it that when the enamel does go, I’ll probably drill holes in it and keep it as a flower pot.

Seconding the notes in enameled cast iron. I have some and I love it to death but it’s not great as general use, is nothing resembling non-stick and most importantly for OPs question, it’s fragile as glass (because it’s literally covered in glass). Metal utensils will lead to scratches and chipping of the enamel and once the enamel chips, it’s trash unless you want to risk having glass in your food.

I’m also curious about your carbon steel though. I was under the impression that carbon steel pans were nearly as fussy with seasoning as cast iron. Is that not the case?

“Bro, we hitting the bar tonight?”

“Hell yeah! I’m three beers away from extra heavy drinker status this month. Let’s get that AB-Inbev cash!!”

(Sounds of chest bumping)

Yeah, I also met my wife online back when you’d lie about meeting someone online. Spent our first couple years telling people we met “through a friend of a friend”.

I’m guessing this was around the time you guys met since she introduced me to StumbleUpon shortly after we started dating.

Have you ever read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser? I’ve never read anything that made feel so terrified and hopeful at the same time. The number of close calls (that we know about) that we’ve had but, cooler heads (or random chance) saved us at the last moment is both horrifying and grounds for having a fair amount of faith in most people to do the right thing with these things. Of course, the amount of times we were saved by random ass chance is absolutely terrifying.