Even in fairly sensible states and for egg freezing, they may want you to jump through hoops.

As part of the process my significant other apparently had to either tell them I didn’t exist, or they’d want to talk to me for permission to freeze her eggs. Even if we were married, they’re her eggs not mine. It’s completely inappropriate to need to talk to me.

It’s not uncommon to mention the president who started an agency in little blurbs describing their history. Like with the Environmental Protection Agency & Nixon.

Even your first painting in the series was recognizably him. You’re right about the expression, although I sure can’t point to what tiny detail doesn’t match.

Regardless, you’ve made great progress and I hope you keep sharing with us!

There’s still something to assembling it yourself. Viewed as an educational activity, it easily clears the bar for photo quality.

Yes you can get better photos by buying something else used, but that doesn’t mean this doesn’t have value.

At the same time it’s the map’s job to describe the world. Even for something like nation states where there’s an official name, the map uses the common name. Our maps say France, not French Republic.

Changing the displayed name for a body of water shared by several nations doesn’t make much sense, especially when the common name has yet to follow.

At least that’s from the perspective of one of the goals the map ostensibly wants to serve.

Thibault? That’s the first 2 syllable French name that comes to mind that I could see people mangling to Tubbo or Tugboat

Is that a Vermin Supreme reference?

Were you intending to link a song, or reply to someone besides OP?

All things which I don’t know how to spell are smarter than humans.

Proboscis monkeys are divine beings.

Or worse: it’s in telephone mode now, so obviously you only want the sound from the “call” because there’s no other reasons the microphone could be on.

A solid chunk of Philip K Dick’s output worked better as movies/TV than as books.

There’s definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren’t popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would’ve given him more time and resources to revise future works.

A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.

It really depends what sort of recipes you’re making, but for cooking very loose approximations are often fine.

I often have to convert to weight/mass in order to find out how much of an ingredient to buy. I have no idea how many cups an eggplant is. But once I get it home the recipe might as well say “however much eggplant you have.”

If I’m truly off, I will typically scale up the recipe adjusting for the extra meat or vegetable content. I’ll more or less assume that 1lb of meat is interchangeable with 1lb of veggies. That’s not quite true, in particular with salt.

Your mileage may vary though. Some recipes and ingredients are much more sensitive to deviations.

There may be an earlier version, but I know this as an old Emo Phillips joke

I’ve run into it when interacting with folks who grew up in the south. It seems moderately common there. With folks who grew up in the northeast, I haven’t seen this be a thing.

You may have missed the point of the example. It asks about steering wheels, and immediately transitions to vehicles that don’t have steering wheels.

Yes! The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum were both great. If you’ve read more of his work and have a recommendation for where to go next I’d love to hear it.

On the topic of Italian authors, I loved Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler” as well. I didn’t really expect it to pay off as a cohesive work. I was mostly along for the ride and was pleasantly surprised.

Cheerios and Bugles (each separately). Nothing in either item should make them smell like death. But every flavor of either I’ve encountered always has. They’re not even the same kind of grain.

I’ll eat most ingredients in a wide variety of contexts. It’s pretty rare that I’ll find something that I don’t like, and can’t eventually find a way to like.

I’m not expecting them to be amazing, but them being substantially worse than bland and boring is still a surprise.

That does sound great! Ham isn’t necessarily a bad ingredient, it’s just unusually difficult to tell if it’ll be good or it’ll suit your tastes, especially with more inexpensive kinds.

It’s hard to see where I’d choose it over another topping, but I imagine with most pizzas I don’t really care about ham’s failings.

Pineapple and anchovies might be the two stanard toppings that are really build-arounds. Most other standard pizza toppings seem closer to “do whatever, it’ll be fine”

The ham used on pizzas around here (northeast US), usually isn’t salty enough to work on a Hawaiian pizza. It’s often deli ham, which runs the risk of being sweet, but otherwise flavorless.

Bacon or pepperoni work better. Jalapeno also helps.