My sister used to raise her own turkeys. Up close they looked like something from a paleontology textbook, but they were still good-natured, very curious creatures. They would always come up to you and inspect you, talking all the time. Maybe they were just demanding food. Dunno.

They ate good stuff, they had a big enough pen that they could run around to their heart's content, they were basically happy turkeys. And it showed: they had a wonderful flavour and a nice texture.

...laura

Basic plug strip for the cord that comes out of my computer. I don't have a cord coming out of my armpit... :-)

...laura

It's cheaper and there's less airport chaos if you fly on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I remember a few years ago seeing the 1960s Canadian TV series Wojeck, and it carried a viewer discretion warning that the standards for personal and professional relationships had changed since the program was produced. There was a certain element of "like, duh!", but somebody had thought about it, and I had no problem with it.

Fast forward to the present day. I'm watching Swedish sci-fi show Äcta Människor ("Real Humans" in English). It quietly avoids any gratuitous sex or violence, but there is lots of non-gratuitous sex and violence, as integral parts of the plot. Like all Scandinavian shows it has interesting female characters who do in fact talk to each other about something other than men. That's the sort of culture they want, it's one I admire, and I'm cool with it.

...laura

Automate basic jobs, so I can talk to humans.

I view this as an extension of using cruise control in a car, or an autopilot in a plane. Let robots do what they're good at, so humans can do what they are good at.

...laura

My Dad was 68 when he died. My Mom was 75. I'm 53 now. If I significantly outlive either of them I will be surprised.

...laura

I think it's completely pointless.

At the latitude where I live, the sun sets after 2100 PDT in the summer. That would still be 2000 PST, with an hour and a half of twilight after that. What more do people want?

In the winter the sun sets at 1600 PST. Even 1700 PDT wouldn't buy much, particularly since that would mean sunrise at 0900 PDT.

...laura

I looked carefully at my viewing habits, concluded I was paying a fortune for the two or three channels I actually watched, and decided there had to be a better way. The major drop in the quality of the content didn't help.

I now have over-the-air TV for local news, iTunes, Netflix and Acorn, DVDs, and stream stuff. This includes a U.K. VPN account to circumvent BBC and ITV geoblocking. It all works fine.

...laura

Yup.

There are often limits on authenticity, either due to parts availability (e.g. TTL ICs), or for convenience (modern monitors, keyboards).

...laura

I wonder how many metabolic studies have been done on male-to-female transsexuals. If you start with a dmab with a small frame, you don't have to discard much muscle tissue nor gain much body fat to reach a more efficient metabolic ratio. Plus, you don't have to worry about a menstrual cycle (emotional but also physical competitors) and gynecological health. You can tweak hormonal balance to control muscle mass, so that if you expect to need more heft in a few months,you can engineer just that!
(This isn't a troll, btw, if there's any doubt in anyone's mind)

As another example, in January 2013, I discovered a cheat code in the SNES RPG Breath of Fire 1 that allows you to create a save file at a few key locations in the story. This cheat code sat hidden for about 20 years, and it wasn't until I came along and reverse engineered the game that it showed up.

Link to it: click me. Sorry for the quality; it is a really difficult thing to record when your only recording device is an iPad and there was nobody home at the time. Not to mention how hard it is to do that controller sequence and record with only two hands.

I've made a point of not memorizing checklists. Good pilots always work from their printed checklists. It lessens the chance of missing something.

...laura

Except that it was never common to own slaves. Slave ownership was primarily among Southern aristocrats--your average white Southerner wasn't rich enough to afford one.

Still laughed, though. <3

My flying background must be showing. I always review the safety information card, confirm safety equipment in my vicinity, and, yes, I actually do pay attention to the safety briefing.

But that's just me.

...laura

I've seen some really cool ads that were right on target - like the time I played a James May video on YouTube and the ad that popped up was for an electron microscope. I couldn't begin to afford the one the advertiser wanted me to buy, but I actually did poke around eBay to see if there were any old ones out there I might be able to afford. I've hit paydirt many times when Amazon and others pointed out "people who bought this also bought..."

That's the way it's supposed to work.

Then there are the way off base ads. I wonder if they are genuinely being blasted out to everybody, or if I fall off too many if-then-elses for anything more relevant to come up. These ads are invariably back-of-the-comics and/or cable tv infomercial quality, like the perennial "weird trick for belly fat" ads. I suppose I get those because Facebook et al know I'm a woman.

That's the deal we made, I suppose. A quasi-free internet supported by advertising. And, like all things, 99% of internet advertising is crap.

...laura