Pretty sure he would have been Sonic.

High quality Greek yogurt. The flavor and texture is very much noticeable.

I’m starting to realize high quality organic coffee is a thing too.

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Well, it has to be this one by far. https://tenor.com/view/das-boot-beer-gif-11413185

In all seriousness, I am looking forward to seeing what Mamdani can do for NYC. I am fully on board with the concept that we need more diversity of opinions in our politics.

Everyone is looking to cut off the head of the snake…until you are the snake. If it ain’t venomous or threatening, I say, perhaps then let it go touch grass?

If you’ve never been, there’s a functional oil derrick in front of their capitol complex. 85% of the state functions like the movie “There will be blood.”

They have a whole celebration around eating bull testicles. The roads are long and straight like Kansas and Iowa…oh, and they’re toll roads. Most of the people I talked to hated it there and wanted to get the hell out. By far my least favorite state I’ve visited.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent things there. Red River is cool, watching a terrifyingly enormous thunderhead clap in the distance at night is starkly beautiful. It’s chock full of tribal culture and native and folk art. It’s the birthplace of Sonic Drive Ins and one of the smartest Product Managers I know came from there. But there’s a reason sometimes Oklahoma is removed from contiguous maps of the US.

Best bet short term is to rig something that dulls the noise. A few insulated panels would do, so long as the heat isn’t too intense, but will have the unfortunate effect of reducing the heat to your residence, so you’ll need to augment that somehow. If there’s air in the line, then it’s probably not working to its fullest potential anyway.

Long term, I agree with everyone else. Have the super hire a professional. This is not one you want to DIY, especially while it’s operational. I’ve done carpentry, wiring and plumbing. I’d never touch steam, doubly so while it’s running.

Pumpkin is one of my favorite things to add to chili. It serves as a thickener and makes the flavor richer, more bodied.

Chopped Sweet potato is a vegetarian chili addition. I’m personally mixed on it, but it compliments the beans well.

Beans and rice has been the poor man’s nutritional meal for millennia. Throw in a plantain or chicken or tofu occasionally for supplemental nutrients / protein. Add hot sauce for heat. Don’t forget to add salt to taste.

It’s cheap, nutritional and has the added benefit of being tasty.

Chili is another option - tomato, beans a can of pumpkin as filler, maybe a sweet potato. Pepper and onions for taste and some TVP or Beyond Meat crumbles for some chewiness…or ground Turkey if you eat meat. It’s simple and can sustain you for a week. Spice it up with chili powder and cumin, maybe some garlic salt and a lime. I made a crockpot full the other day. There’s a reason cowboys out in the prairie ate this stuff.

I’d do like that one guy did on the streets of New York. Cash it all out into $1 bills and just make it rain. But I’d prefer do it in the struggling mountain towns around me.

The more well off ones usually have a connected airport and “fuck-you-money” level security. As someone else mentioned, helicopters are an option, or perhaps boat if they’re by a waterway.

So congratulations, you’ve trapped the community doctors and lawyers, maybe a very well off Grammy or two with limited faculties, but you’ve set off the alarm bells to the true predators of society, who’ve now made it to Madagascar and shut down the ports.

I would produce a pill that rewires the human brain to focus on the good events occurring around them and in the world.

Far too many of our societal problems are due to a significant portion of the world focusing on negative events. How many channel 9 news events are focused on car crashes or shootings? How much social media profit is based upon rage bait? How many hours wasted scrolling on insta fantasizing about being anyone but your own self?

We have within ourselves already great capacity to do great things, we just need to unchain that potential.

Yeah, I mean, Isn’t glass simply sand that just got really hot?

Things you can do yourself. Select those that are right for you:

• Most trips are <3 miles. Use a bike or e-bike where it makes sense, or public transportation if it’s built out.
• Take steps to avoid the consumer-for-the sake-of-consuming mindset. Get things secondhand or from buy nothing groups.
• Eat less meat. Vegetarian dishes can be flavorful. Even a grilled cheese and some soup is delicious. Miso also has that essential umami kick. As a reformed “need meat with every meal” type person, it’s doable, you just have to rewire your mind and gut. It’s a thing you can do to both save you and your environment.
• Donate to climate advocacy groups and call your political representatives.
• Recycle - it’s oddly getting a bad rap these days, because we’re the downstream consumer to the folks designing and making crap, but we still also have responsibility in the chain.
• Avoid things like fast fashion - buy things with sustainability built in and leave intense shipping logistics out.
• compost and grow your own food if you have the space and time. Less transport and typically better for you. At the very least, you’ll know what you’re eating.
• purchase personal carbon offsets from reputable organizations
• consider investing in a heat pump and insulated glass windows when it’s time to switch the older ones out if you have a home.
• Avoid buying items that are simply packaged water. Try to buy concentrated items and then add water at the point of use. Soaps, detergents, bottled water, flavored drinks are easy ones.
• Use a smart thermostat and set it between recommended standards for your region. You can always wear slippers / more layers to warm up when slightly cold, or run fans, hydrate and wear light clothes when a little warm.
• Procure preventive maintenance on big ticket items and use your built in paid warranties. So many pieces of equipment fail due to some minor thing that could have been addressed earlier.
• encourage others, evangelize sustainability. Political movements need to meet certain thresholds to turn into action.

One of the wittier guys in the trailer park I grew up in did that trick where it looks like you can pull one of your fingers off from one hand. As an 8 year old, that was fucking cool. Perhaps you could even augment it with some fake blood.

Another time he did the quarter behind your ear trick and then gave us the quarter.

To this day, I still remember him more than any shucker of a Milky Way or Babe Ruth candy bar. So yeah, go for it, make an impression.

And it burns burns burns. My lung’s on fire.

My lung’s on fire.

Grew up there. Myrtle Beach is the kind of place where everyone has 3 jobs and no money. The place thrives on tricking others into relieving them of theirs.

However, can also confirm it’s an easy place to catch crabs.

4/5 - coming of age film about a scrawny, scrappy poor kid. Opening shot is a fight against other kids in a trailer park to level up in status. Or maybe even earlier to my mom standing there pregnant, and then her mom punching her in the stomach upon finding out her teen daughter, though as much as she had tried to shut her away, had somehow gotten herself knocked up. And then following the resulting trail of blood. Regardless, it starts out by getting the shit kicked out of me a few times.

Sprinkle in the multiple times I almost died, slipping on wet cement that had just been coated with muriatic acid, that time a demented kid tightened a noose around my neck, the countless nights I’d wake gasping for air with my chest heaving because we had a cat urine and roach problem and couldn’t afford an inhaler. That one time two girls thought it would be funny to see how long they could hold me underwater, at a pool, of course unsupervised, and only stopping just so as things faded to black and all I heard was this saint of a kid saying to them “Stop! He’s dying!” Nary a parent in sight.

The sex, the drugs the drinking all at 13.

The divorce, the handoffs from family member to family member moving each year. Finally settling into a mountain town in rural Appalachia. Having a town general store purveyor of goods taking me under his wing. Learning a passion for the outdoors and skiing.

Going mudding in a Honda Accord with a bunch of other delinquents. Going streaking after we got stuck. Flash forward to a court house and nearly going to jail for vandalism and other stupid teenage mistakes.

Going back to the area I was raised and finding that everyone had 2 kids and a drinking problem…or worse.

Flash forward to the struggles of leaving my past behind. Failing out of university after 9/11. Constantly watching those two planes smash onto the twin towers in a dark dormitory until it was etched into mind.

And then more struggle to leave my past behind as I sought out a soulmate. Dropping out of the Peace Corps due to it.

Quitting my job and finding a love for cycling. Being given a dog who hated wheels, but even she eventually fell in love with cycling. The smartest, best damn dog in the world.

Nearly dying another handful of times. Motorcycle in the mountain roads of Tennessee, more motorcycle, sliding in the snow with a big rig behind, that time wrecking it the one dumbass time I went for a joyride after drinks. Being on the 3rd floor of a house as it collapsed on a rainy day in high winds and walking out mostly unscathed.

Discovering a love for travel. Still trying to escape my past, but working on it, like really really working on it. I try not to die anymore.

Could call it something like “The dirtbag’s field guide to survival, part one.”

If Daria got a movie and it did pretty well, surely you can.

There are all sorts of classes available at top schools via opencourseware. You can take the highest tier courses that the US has to offer, and become educated. While not degree offering, it still would look great on a CV, if you can somehow prove you did the work.

Free books. A few years ago, I read a free electrical engineering book available on the internet, which I found fascinating. It has been a little helpful in practice as well, but I think it’s just cool to know how capacitors and motors work. Public libraries exist for a reason. Gutenberg is another option.

Many 2 year community colleges are now free tuition if you reside in the state.

And of course, there are still ways to get a degree cheap, if the paper is important to you. I finally landed at WGU 15 years ago and it was very reasonable, and has paid dividends on my original investment.