If you go the qbittorrent route, my piece of advice is to always check the settings after any updates.

It was maybe around 8 or 9 years ago, but after one of the updates, all my settings got wiped and set back to defaults I assume.

I didn’t notice until I ended up getting a nastygram from my ISP.

It’s never happened since, but needless to say I always double check now.

I don’t know if it’s my “favourite” but I remember how hilarious it was the first time I heard that original Resident Evil line about “you, the master of unlocking”. Granted, at the time I assumed it was all intentional B-grade horror movie parody.

Honestly, I know it’s not the same, but that’s why I have always gravitated towards “news aggregators”, basically the sites that bore progeny like Reddit and Lemmy, where you’re presented with links to news or random websites and people have their say about it in the comments.

I never heard of Third Voice and truthfully anything that is 100% reliant on a third party app or plugin / extension / mod / etc probably isn’t my bag of tea, but still a cool idea.

The single, simple answer is the one that you don’t want to hear: There is no clean split. Bats are a large and diverse group of flying mammals just like birds are a large and diverse group of flying dinosaurs.

The simplest answer I can come up with (because it’s actually a very complicated and convoluted topic that I wouldn’t truly do just anyway) is: Most birds can fly because they are an offshoot of one group of dinosaurs (avian dinosaurs) that survived the last great extinction when their non-flying non-avian dinosaur relatives did not. Basically the ones that couldn’t fly mostly went extinct. And mammals mostly don’t fly, which is possibly because several groups of vertebrates beat them to it and essentially filled all the niches that would have been available to flying animals, kind of blocking that path for them.

Obviously that’s nowhere near the full story. There are lots of other factors at play, like some of the peculiarities of mammalian and dinosaur physiology that made one group better suited to flight than the other, ramifications of the great extinction that killed non-avian dinosaurs as well as most large animals in general and whole swaths of other species, and so on.

I see this from two different perspectives:

1. There are some ingredients I just don’t like the taste of. But, in some recipes and if prepared properly, I’m fine with them. Green beans are an example. I don’t like them. But creamy green bean casseroles are fine and vegetable soup with green beans is totally acceptable.

2. Then there are things like desserts that I’m picky about because if I’m going to screw up my metabolism and caloric intake for the day, it better damn well be worth it. I’m not going to waste my time on a substandard sugar and/or fat filled treat. I’m going to skip on that dry cake, jello salad, faux ice cream, fake chocolate sludge, etc.

Really depends on the situation.

If I’m just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don’t hunt, but I’m not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.

And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I’d take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I’d go there and take what they had to offer.

At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.

A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don’t go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper – in moderation – so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.

When I’ve just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I’d just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.

Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.

Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.

Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.

So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don’t have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that’s still a meal even if that’s not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that’s still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you’ve got.

People living in cities sometimes leave and many have not lived in a city their whole lives. Additionally, the power can go out at night in cities. For instance, where I live we sometimes get tropical storms, winter storms, and other disasters that can knock out power for hours (and even days) even inside the city – I imagine that’s not uncommon elsewhere. A lot of cities in poorer nations ration power or only have electricity available during certain hours.

So, overall, I would say that it’s probably not the case that “most” people have never seen a full starry night unless you’re getting super technical and pedantic about the word “full” to where you’re specifically asking about a completely unobstructed view with 0% light pollution, in which case then I would say that almost nobody has seen a full starry night in that case, regardless of whether or not they live in a city.

Cormorants?

Intentionally inflammatory posts? I haven’t noticed an uptick, honestly. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one and doesn’t mean I won’t notice now that you posted it.

But I will say that I’ve basically stopped checking my notifications because all of a sudden it seems like almost every time I go in there, I’ve got at least one insufferable, hostile, negative, etc response or message in there. It didn’t used to be that way.

Mostly I assume we must’ve recently gotten an influx of new users from Reddit or someplace similarly toxic. Things usually get a bit unfortunate for a time when that happens.

Are you asking about antiperspirants specifically or are you using that term to more generally refer to things like deodorant, perfumes, etc?

What was the recovery from that surgery like? Any pain / discomfort / concerns?

I am considering getting lens replacement for my dog if I can come up with the money, but financial concerns aside, my other biggest concern is how stressful / painful / risky that kind of procedure might be for her.

I’ll probably butcher this fact, but 20/20 vision does not mean you have perfect vision. It means you have average / normal vision.

I’ve always had 20/20 (or perhaps better) vision. But now that I’m on the downhill side of ancient, I’m noticing that my vision is blurry. Especially while watching TV, reading, etc.

Yet, at both my primary care provider and at the optometrist, I’m able to accurately see all the letters on the vision charts and based on that I have 20/20 vision.

The optometrist (or maybe it was an assistant) explained that it’s pretty common and that 20/20 is just average vision. It doesn’t mean your vision isn’t blurry and it doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from glasses.

The more you know!