nobody alive today was alive and in the military for any major conflict that we were actually victorious in

There are still a handful of WWII vets kicking around

Also depending on how you want to define “major” and “victorious” you could maybe make an argument for Dessert Storm, and possibly the 2003-2011 Iraq War. (Whether we should have been involved in those wars in the first place, and how those wars were fought are separate issues, and I certainly wouldn’t call them “unqualified” victories, but I do think there are absolutely certain angles you could look at them from and make the argument that the US was the victor in those conflicts)

Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres

It was really more of a way to get people to drive more and so have to buy more tires (hopefully Michelin)

The original guide had things like maps, tire shops, gas stations, and tire repair instructions. Back then, cars were still new to a lot of people, and Michelin figured that a lot of people probably wouldn’t know where they could go get gas or new tires or whatever, but if they had that information people might be inclined to drive more. If you didn’t know where you could get gas along your trip you may not want to take that drive after all.

Then after a while they started including things like restaurants to give people more of a reason to go driving around.

How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs?

It’s advertising. If you make it into the guide, more people are going to hear about and want to come to your restaurant. And since the guide has such a good reputation, it’s seen as a badge of honor that this restaurant/chef is good enough to be recognized with a star.

Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something?

No, they were renowned tire manufacturers. But they were French and that probably didn’t hurt the branding since French food has such a good reputation. I’m sure subconsciously on some level a lot of people are going to give a bit more weight to a French company rating restaurants than, for example, an American one.

What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar?

Why bother when Michelin was already doing it? You don’t need to buy Michelin tires to eat at a Michelin-Stared restaurant. Regardless of where the guide came from it got people driving around more and needing new tires.

There’s other travel guides out there, some focus more on other things besides restaurants, some focus on areas not covered by Michelin, some overlap or compete with Michelin or position themselves as sort of an anti-Michelin because they disagree with the criteria Michelin rates restaurants on.

And I’m sure some of them are or have been in the past published or sponsored by tire companies. But Michelin managed to get into the game early enough and did it well enough that they just became sort of the restaurant guide.

And other tire companies have taken other advertising routes that are maybe a little less obvious. Let’s consider the Goodyear blimp flying over sporting events. I’m sure there’s a small element of “you should drive to sporting events to see our blimp ~and also wear down your tires a bit in the process~” at play there.

Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?

Yes it’s still the Michelin tire company. I don’t have any real insight into their corporate affairs, so I don’t know how much crosstalk there is between the tire-manufacturing and the guide-writing parts of their business these days, but it is still the same company.

1. A “truckers” (CB) radio is exactly what I was suggesting FRS radios as an alternative to.

2. I suggested them because they are much simpler to use. With a mobile base station you need to figure out where to mount it in your car, where to mount an antenna, tune that antenna, how to hard-wire it into your car’s power (or splice an adapter onto it to power it from the cigarette lighter), whereas with a walkie talkie you just need to turn it on, put it on the right channel and push a button.

(Handheld CBs do exist. I’ve very rarely seen them for sale in a brick and mortar store)

3. It’s probably gonna depend on where in the country you are, but CB radio equipment is in fact not commonly available at gas stations and truck stops around me. It’s something I actually actively look for and take notice of because I’m a bit of a radio geek. In fact, if I needed to tell someone where to get a CB locally, their best bet for that would probably also be the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something, and even that would be hit or miss, some TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOSes don’t actually seem to carry them, but every TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOS I’ve ever been in absolutely has at least one set of FRS radios for sale.

Because they’re fucking everywhere, something like 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of one.

It’s basically shorthand for “this is a common and readily available thing that you can acquire anywhere in the country for cheap even if megacorps have driven all of the local specialty retailers out of business in your areas”

As opposed to something like a HF ham radio which is a specialty item that no big retailers like walmart, to the best of my knowledge, carry, and so you’re probably not going to be able to find it locally.

I keep a CB radio in my car, and have a few friends with them

It is actually really handy when you’re road tripping together in different cars to be able to just grab the mic and say something to the other vehicle when you need to stop for a bathroom break or you’re having an issue with your car or want to give them a heads-up about whatever.

If you’re fairly close together a set of cheap FRS walkie-talkies from Walmart does the job just as well. Probably worth stepping up to CB if you expect to lose sight of the other vehicle though, range is usually a bit better.

It’s especially handy if, like me, you go camping and such in rural areas with unreliable cell coverage.

You do occasionally also get helpful heads-ups from truckers if you’re listening to channel 19 about road conditions, police activity, traffic, etc. but mostly it’s just idiots babbling about conspiracy theories and immature bullshit.

I’m pretty much in the same boat, 720p looks fine to me in the vast majority of cases, and while I’m not great at going to my eye doctor regularly, the last time I had my vision checked it was fine, and it was right around the time I was shopping for a new TV and upgraded from 1080 to 4k, and still had a 720p in my bedroom.

If I looked really hard at them, I could tell the difference from the 720 to the 4k, but truth be told, I’m just not scrutinizing the picture quality of my TV that much.

I think the basic premise of your question is kind of flawed.

Generational age brackets are always a little fuzzy, but most definitions tend to define millennials as people born from about 1981-1996

Which means come the end of the 90’s, the oldest millennials were just turning 18, the youngest were just entering preschool, the “average” millennial would have been about 10. Personally, I was 8 in 1999.

So most of us weren’t exactly politically-aware in the 90s, let alone actively criticizing anything besides homework. And a lot of us probably had parents who wouldn’t have let us listen to RATM because of the parental advisory sticker on their albums.

My main concerns at the time were things like video games and cartoons

Then right around the time we started to be old enough to really form political opinions, 9/11 happened and the world went insane around us.

Around 10-15 years ago I worked in a pizzeria with a little sports bar. We had more than a couple people who were there almost every day.

I still stop by there once in a while, and without fail I run into at least one of those old regulars every time.

I have a big bushy beard which somewhat limits my costume options if I’m going for any kind of accuracy unless I want to wear a mask

My two standby costumes that I dust off when I find myself with unexpected Halloween plans are

A lawn gnome. I dye my beard white, put on a blue ren faire sort of tunic, a wide belt, and a red pointy hat

And a Monty Python lumberjack. Red flannel shirt partially unbuttoned over a bra, suspenders, high heels, and a knit hat. I also have a big ol’ double bit felling axe I may trot out if the occasion warrants it.

I suppose I can also lose the heels and bra and just be a regular lumberjack.

It is a bit outside of my area of expertise, but if I understand what you’re asking, the police usually aren’t going to just call up your family and say “hey, your adult child just did a crime and we thought you should know”

Unless there’s a good reason for them to do that. If they suspect that you may be a danger to your family, they’ll of course advise them and give them some more details.

Or if they’re trying to locate you, they’ll probably contact your family, but usually they’re going to keep details vague, they probably won’t come right out and say “we think your kid just robbed a gas station o do you know where he is so we can arrest him?” They’ll probably keep it to something more like “he may have been present during a robbery and we have some questions for him”

But of course every situation, police department, individual officer, etc. is unique, so I won’t claim that there’s absolutely no situation where that might happen.

The specifics are probably going to depend on where in the world you are, in the US it’s generally going to be a no unless you’ve specifically listed them as an emergency contact, they’re your medical power of attorney (which is separate from legal power of attorney) etc.

I work in 911 dispatch, so I’m not specifically covered by HIPAA, though we have some similar regulations and obviously we rub up against the edges of the healthcare field. My wife also works in a psych hospital, and my sister in a nursing home so I get to hear a lot of stories about stuff like this.

My wife has to deal with a lot of cases where a parent is trying to contact the hospital about their adult child who’s a patient there, but since they’re not listed on the correct paperwork the hospital can’t even confirm that their child is in fact a patient there, even though they were standing right there next to them when they were admitted a couple hours earlier.

–

I get calls at work a lot because someone’s child/parent, boyfriend/girlfriend, brother/sister etc. was taken to the hospital by ambulance earlier, and when they called the hospital they can’t tell them they’re there because they’re not on the paperwork, so they call us freaking out trying to figure out where their loved one is, and all I can say is that they were transported to the hospital, I can’t tell if they haven’t finished signing it, already been discharged/left AMA, if they possibly had to be transferred to a different hospital, or more likely the hospital just can’t confirm anything because the person calling isn’t an emergency contact.

–

Recently I had a call from a woman who was freaking out. Her husband was missing, his car was in the driveway, and she saw a lot of blood around the house.

While she was on the phone with me her friend was calling the hospital to check if he was there, but the hospital couldn’t tell her.

Then her friend gave her the phone, and since she was listed as an emergency contact they confirmed that he was in fact there.

What happened was that he had a bad nosebleed and had his brother give him a ride to the hospital, but didn’t tell her and of course he was an older guy who never has his phone turned on.

–

My sister once had a patient who had apparently led one hell of an interesting life, and at different points had been a doctor, a lawyer and a priest, so aside from his resume sounding like the setup to some kind of joke, he also knew his way around all of the ins and outs of how the whole system worked, but being a patient in a nursing home with probably the early stages of dementia setting in, he wasn’t always acting rationally, and apparently it was an absolute nightmare for the staff and his family to navigate the changes he was making to his paperwork while he was there.

I have a friend who used to work for a big time tech company with lots of defense department contacts, one of the sorts of companies where if he talked about his company helping the government read peoples emails and track you online and such, you couldn’t really be sure if he was joking or not.

He no longer works for that company, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t joking by the way.

I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of really smart people in my life, and I like to think I’m not an idiot myself, but this guy is hands down the smartest person I’ve ever met and it’s not even close, he is scary smart.

And he made insanely good money while he worked for them, and the kind of shit they did on the company (and by extension, the taxpayers’ dime,) was insane, they were regularly flying out to Vegas and putting it all on the company credit card.

So yeah for a talented person, there is really damn good money to be made if you can get security clearance.

Depends a bit on what you’re doing with them

For hard-wearing work pants, I think Duluth firehouse pants are pretty hard to beat

Dickies or Carhartt are solid, more-readily-available options

If you’re looking more for lightweight hiking pants, I used to have a pair of north face zip-off pants I really liked, but I’m not sure if they still make the same or similar model, but I’d take a look at their offerings. They were a bit pricey but not outrageous.

Barring that, a lot of my outdoors clothes tend to be Columbia.

For sort of a middle-of-the-road that can kind of fill either role, I’d probably go for BDUs. No specific brand recommendation, there’s a lot of companies making them, and while I haven’t tried them all, the ones I have have been pretty much the same. Just kind of get whatever you can get a good deal on online or whatever your local military surplus place stocks.

Mines a 16 cup model, so that could be the difference.

I don’t think mine has ever moved at all when I’m using it, and I’ve done just about everything you could ever want to do with a food processor.

The only time I’ve seen it struggle with anything was when I had it almost full of ground beef to make homemade hot dogs. It got it done, but it wasn’t happy about it, and I’m pretty sure that emulsifying that sort of quantity of meat would be a struggle for any machine that could reasonably fit on a countertop.

I honestly can’t say I’ve experienced that.

It might be that newer or different models are lighter, like I said, mine is over 10 years old.

Or it could be down to something goofy like your countertops being smoother than mine (not unlikely, I have some shitty laminate counters that are pretty beat to hell)

Yeah, ours works great as a dehydrator, I just wish it came with more dehydrator racks. You can order more I’ve just never gotten around to doing it

We do also have a breville toaster oven/air fryer (slightly different model though) and do love it. Probably use it more and get better results from it than our regular oven.

It is not, however, the greatest air fryer out there. It’s certainly passably but we definitely get better results from the crispi, and the Ninja is much easier to clean.

I whole-heartedly recommend their toaster ovens without reservation. And if you lack the storage/counter space for a dedicated air fryer o it will certainly do.

My one wish is that they’d make a toaster oven with a rotisserie.

My wife worked at a fancy kitchen store for a long time. She tested out a whole lot of small appliances, demo’d them for customers, saw what people returned and exchanged, etc. and generally knows what’s what.

And her general advice is to go breville for basically every small kitchen appliances. I can really only think of 4 exceptions- KitchenAid for stand mixers, Vitamix for blenders, croquade for waffle makers, and the Ninja Crispi for countertop air fryers.

I’ve really put our breville sous chef through it’s pages over the years, Shen had it since before we started dating to easily more than 10 years, and it’s still going strong.

I’ve had frog, it’s practically the original “tastes like chicken” food. They have maybe the slightest bit of fishiness to them, but nothing a little bit of seasoning won’t almost totally cover up.

Similarly gator is also almost a dead-ringer for chicken, just chewier (not surprising, I’m pretty sure just need to look at a gator to be able to tell it was gonna be tough and chewy)

So I’m thinking odds are that dino tastes like chicken.

It’s become a new years tradition to just play a bunch of random asylum movies just to have something on while we’re hanging out and so we have something to occasionally point to the TV and comment on.

We usually try to pick a known movie that we can start at a specific time so that something cool happens at midnight. A favorite is Hitler getting punched in the balls in Kung Fury