3. Since when is the MINIMUM expected tip 18 fucking percent? I have worked as a server (20 years ago). I was expected to report a 10% minimum of my sales in tips. 15% has ALWAYS been the standard expectation for service. Now the card readers are expecting 18-25% even as prices have shot up. What the fuck is with that?!

I remember hearing in my childhood that 15% was the standard, but by the time I was a teen (around 20 years ago now) and was actually paying for some things myself, I feel like 20% had pretty much become the standard around me.

Also, around 15ish years ago I was a pizza guy in the days before Uber eats and such really took off. I feel like tipping was pretty wonky for delivery people back then. It seemed like I often got a bit over tipped on small orders, and under tipped on bigger orders.

I feel like a lot of smaller, $20ish dollar orders would give me about a $5 tip (so about 25%) and then bigger $100+ orders would give me like $10 (so like 10% )

I’m curious how common they are in Scotland, is it still something that a lot of people do or is it more of a niche thing for eccentric history buffs like myself?

Also, I may be wrong, but I think the turnips you have in Scotland are more like what we usually call a rutabaga, so they’re a bit bigger. I did actually do a rutabaga lantern one year and carved it all out by hand to have the experience, it came out well but made me appreciate how fast it is hollowing out my little turnips with a drill.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any picture of that one so it’s lost to the ages.

Yeah, after doing these for a few years you definitely get to appreciate how convenient pumpkins are.

My forstner bit method does make it goes a lot faster though. The first time I did it I think I used a spoon and a pocket knife and it was slow-going.

The simple green is because I was cleaning some stuff outside earlier in the day and forgot to bring it in

The picture the other commenter linked does show a forstner bit.

A lot of them do have teeth around the edge sort of like a hole saw, but not all of them

The main thing is that they scrape away material from the center of the hole, while a hole saw just cuts around the circumference. If I used a hole saw I’d have been left with a cylinder of turnip still stuck to the top unless I cut all the way through, a forstner bit removes all of the material

Even if they’re trained on the same data, and I suspect they are, why maintain 2 unfathomably large and probably very similar sets of data

It still might be doing it on its own based on its own internal logic

Like maybe it’s worked out that users who use miles expect the conversation to proceed in a different way than users who use kilometers and is tailoring its responses to fit those expectations.

Not that I’m ruling out that it’s something deliberately coded into it by a longshot, just kind of pointing out another possibility

But both options are terrifying when you think about them.

I made eagle a little over a decade before you did

I think there’s probably a few different aspects to this question that need to be answered.

1. Overall scouting philosophy

Overall, I’m a big fan of the sorts of programs and methods that scouting uses. The idea of boys teaching/leading boys (or I suppose maybe it’s youths leading youths or something now that girls are part of the program, which I fully support btw) is huge and teaches valuable skills on how to work with others and how to be in a leadership role, how to work with other people and their strengths and weaknesses, how to give and take instructions, how to be a part of an organization, budgeting, etc.

It teaches and gives actual hands-on experience with a lot of valuable skills- first aid, cooking, tying knots, using tools, building and fixing things, etc. that a lot of people never bother to learn.

It gets kids out in nature so they can learn how to respect enjoy, and appreciate it.

It also gives them a lot of other opportunities to see and experience different things, different hobbies, different careers, different places, activities etc. and gets them off of their phones and other devices and outside being active.

It gets kids involved with community service and helping others, and helps teach them the roles they need to play as citizens of the world, their country and community.

And it’s a great opportunity to make friends, I’m not necessarily close to or even in regular contact with the rest of the guys from my troop, but I am close with some of them, and I’m confident that any one of the rest of them would gladly help me with anything I needed if they are at all able to. It’s also a great networking opportunity, a fair amount of my closest friends are fellow eagle scouts from other places, it’s something to bond over.

And in general, it helps make well-rounded, functional adults out of kids. There are of course other ways they can develop those skills, and have those experiences, I won’t say that scouting is for everyone, but for those who do match up with it, it’s a great way to get all of that experience in one place.

Things I’m less a fan of, and a lot of this is going to come back up in the rest of this comment as well

The BSA is a somewhat conservative organization. “God” is in the scout oath, and technically there’s a religious requirement to be a member. There’s also definitely a patriotic and semi-militaristic aspect to it, lots of saluting the flag, reciting the pledge, uniforms, etc.

2. The national organization

The BSA does have ties to the military, the NRA, and other organizations I don’t particularly care for, and the national organization where the overall direction and policies are set so those grievances I have basically come down from there.

They’ve been slow to change with the times, it took far too long to allow LGBTQ scouts and leaders, the religious requirement needs to go, girls probably should have been included in the program from the beginning, etc.

They definitely mishandled the sex abuse issue for far too long.

The current leadership are spineless cowards who have shown willingness to give into the current administration.

But a lot of that is happening at arms-length from the day-to-day scouting experience, which brings me to…

3. The local council and district

A lot of your scouting experience will vary depending on where you are in the country. My local council was pretty cool, others not so much. They actually tried to allow gay scouts back in the 90s but were made to stop by the national organization. Overall they made a solid attempt at insulating us from the worst of national’s bullshit.

Not that they were perfect, there’s definitely room to criticize how they handled the sex abuse issue at their level as well, there were some instances in my area where that happened,

4. The individual unit

My troop was pretty great. We had no abuse issues. We paid some lip service to the religious requirement but it was never really harped-on. My leaders had pretty diverse political philosophies running almost the whole political spectrum. One of them was, if not quite openly gay, didn’t exactly try very hard to hide that fact. He was also very active at our district and council level, so again, locally they were pretty willing to bend the rules when it made sense.

And I think that’s something important I took away from it- that some rules should and others should not be bent. I actually first learned the term “plausible denial” from one of my leaders. They absolutely never compromised on policies that could put us in any danger. Part of the policy was 2-deep leadership, where no youth should ever be alone with an adult leader, and they absolutely kept to that without exception.

And when we did something stupid and dangerous, they would absolutely read us the riot act.

But the BSA has some weird rules about, for example , things like paintball, airsoft, and I think even laser tag, basically anything where you’re pointing a “gun” at another person. So if we found ourselves somewhere where that was an option, our leaders would say their piece about the BSA not permitting that activity, and then make sure to be nowhere near that activity so they wouldn’t see us if we chose to ignore that stupid rule.

And they knew their scoutcraft inside and out, and made sure we did as well. As I got older, I started to appreciate that they were basically just scouts who also got older. You could see that little mischievous glint in their eyes when they got to set something on fire or so something fun with an axe.

But not all troops are created equal, some are kind of eagle factories that forscus more on just rushing kids through the requirements to get eagle over actually putting on a good program. Some get byble-thumpy, or weird in other ways. Some just lack resources, money, equipment, knowledge, membership, etc. to put on a good program.

5. Little outside the shop of what you’re asking, but girl scouts

The girl scouts can actually put on a really cool program. I’ve seen girl scout troops that went far harder than my own troop did. When I did northern tier (a boy scout program canoeing in northern Minnesota/Canada) we crossed paths with some girl scouts doing a similar program, who were going further and longer than we were, and had heavier gear than we did. I’ve seen girl scouts backpacking along the Appalachian trail, some of their service projects put ours to shame.

But most girl scout troops, unfortunately, aren’t that. And a big part of it is that a lot of the troops are kind of temporary.

My troop is coming up on its 100 year anniversary in a year or two, and still going strong. Some of the leaders and committee members have been involved in the troop since before I joined, there are some 2nd and I think even 3rd generation eagle scouts whose father and grandfather earned eagle from the same troop. They have a garage full of gear, generations of experience on how to run a scouting program, money in the bank, a library of just about every merit badge book ever written, 2 offices dedicated to their own exclusive use in their charter organization’s building (a very liberal Lutheran Church with a gay pastor) and if all the leaders were to drag out every canoe, kayak, row boat, fishing boat, etc. they owned, it would probably put some countries’ navies to shame.

Not to mention ongoing recruitment efforts in schools and such. We had new kids joining every year even as older kids were aging out of the program.

Girl scout troops kind of tend to form from scratch when the girls are daisy or brownie aged, and tend to be just that one group of girls until they all either age out or quit.

So you lose out on the older kids helping to run the program and teach and lead the younger kids, because they’re all pretty much the same age.

And, at least 20 or so years ago, it could be hard to find an existing troop to join if you wanted to. I know there were some occasions my troop wanted to extend invites to other local organizations to take part in events we were doing, other troops are easy to find, the BSA has a website where you can find a local unit, their meeting schedule and contact info. At least back then, there wasn’t anything comparable for girl scouts, and even when we tried reaching out to their council we couldn’t get that info. If you didn’t already know who the local girl scout troops were and how to get ahold of them, you were SOL.

And you also don’t get those years and generations of built up knowledge and resources to pull from, which is part of why so many of them are so dependent on cookie sales to fund their program (not that there isn’t valid criticism of how the cookie money gets distributed and used)

And, a lot of times, the leaders tend to be the girls’ moms, and the sad truth is, a lot of women didn’t get the same opportunities to learn outdoors skills that a lot of men do, which further limits what they can do.

I’ve also heard, but can’t confirm, that some of their adult leader training is a bit excessive. Like there might be a training you have to do to take the troop camping, and another training if you want to have a campfire, and still another if you want to go on a hike or go fishing, etc. and I also remember hearing that you have to pay for all of those classes. Take that with a grain of salt, because I don’t have any firsthand experience with that.

But overall, when it’s run well, I do like what I’ve seen of the girl scout organization, and I like their values a little better than the BSA, they’re a bit more liberal.

–

Long story short, I like the overall aims and methods of scouting. I have a lot of criticism of the organization overall. If I had kids, I’d hope they’d want to be in scouts but I’d also be a little choosey about which troop they joined.

The majority of hunters and fishermen I know, which may not be representative of them as a whole, are in it primarily to supplement their food budget

Not that they don’t enjoy it, but the enjoyment comes mostly in the same kinds of ways they enjoy camping and hiking and such- being out in nature, sometimes with friends, seeing wildlife, etc.

A lot of them also come at it at least partially from a conservation standpoint. In my area deer are pretty overpopulated and they do need to be kept in check, and I don’t think wolves and mountain lions are going to be reintroduced to my east coast, largely-suburban area anytime soon.

And from an ethics standpoint, if you’re going to eat meat, I feel like there’s something to be said for eating wild game that got to live a free natural life as opposed to factory farmed meat. As well as knowing where your food is coming from and being willing to do the dirty work yourself, a lot of people are really disconnected from where their food comes from and don’t fully appreciate that meat comes from a living animal, and at least the hunters I know really try to respect that, regarding it as something almost sacred, and do their best to make sure that it’s not going to waste.

A lot of things of course come down to individual state and sometimes local laws/regulations

But crossbows are definitely very popular for hunting in areas where they’re allowed.

My state lumps them in with the regular archery season, wouldn’t be at all surprised if other areas have a separate crossbow season.

We also have a muzzleloader season, and a season specifically for flintlock muzzleloaders (as opposed to muzzleloaders that use a percussion cap)

Until recently we had some CFLs in the light fixture in our rarely-used guest bathroom. I just painted that bathroom so while I had the fixture off the wall I went ahead and replaced the bulbs with LEDs

I suppose my car headlights and such are still halogen and I think the dash lights are mostly incandescent. The interior dome light has gotten an LED upgrade though.

The maglite I keep in my car emergency kit is still the incandescent or halogen bulb it came with when I bought it for my first car 15+ years ago, and I probably have a few more incandescent flashlights floating around in various toolboxes and such.

I think I have one string of incandescent Christmas lights still in use during the holiday.

And the light in my oven is incandescent.

I’m not anti-nuclear by a longshot

But I think the time to be building new nuclear plants was probably 20 years ago and that window has kind of passed.

The unfortunate truth is nuclear plants take a long time to get approval, build, and start generating electricity for the grid, and there’s only so much you can or should do to try to speed that process up, because if you cut too many corners the potential for things to go wrong is enormous.

Solar and wind can be deployed a lot faster and we need that grid capacity now and at this point I think we’d probably be better served by building out as much solar and wind as we possibly can

I feel like that’s probably a huge misrepresentation of something legitimate.

Like maybe the found an activities coordinator or recreational therapist or something and asked them what they were doing that day and they answered “well right now I’m unpacking these groceries for a cooking class we’re doing tomorrow, and then I’m gonna go get things ready for game night, and I’m gonna be teaching them how to play mahjong”

Or maybe they just found the kitchen staff playing mahjong on their lunch break after unpacking a bunch of groceries.

I visited Iceland over the summer. In the Perlan science museum in Reykjavik they have a replica of a plaque that was installed at the site of the former glacier Okjökull. It reads, in English

A letter to the future
Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.
In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done.
Only you know if we did it.

Followed by the global atmospheric CO₂ reading for when it was installed in August 2019, which was 415ppm

This year we reached 432ppm.

I’m going to go ahead and assume hegseth can’t grow a decent beard.

Every veteran I know who can grow a full beard did so pretty much immediately after getting out of the service.

And most of the rest are at least rocking a mustache or goatee if they’re able to.

There’s some valid reasons to not allow certain styles of facial hair in the military, like they can effect the seal of a gal mask, if you were to find yourself fighting someone hand-to-hand, a longer beard is one more place they could grab ahold of you, maybe a fire hazard in some conditions, or harder to decontaminate if chemical or bio weapons are used, etc.

But this doesn’t feel like it’s about that, I think he just doesn’t like beards and I think it’s because he’s jealous.

My dad has a '93 Ford Ranger

4 cylinder, 7ft bed, single cab with a bench seat. Gets around 20mpg, which honestly isn’t too shabby even by new truck standards.

Over the years it’s moved a lot of furniture, picked up a lot of bulky lumber and such from the hardware store, picked up a few decent sized loads of firewood, and generally done everything most normal people would need or want a truck for.

The bed is pretty low compared to modern trucks so it’s easy to load and unload, back it up to a curb and you can pretty step right off the sidewalk into the bed with the tailgate down

I have complaints about it, but they’re nothing most people couldn’t live with. It’s 0-60 time is probably best stated as “eventually,” especially if you’re carrying anything significant in the bed. And with no weight over those rear wheels it’s kind of shitty to drive on anything besides dry paved roads so 4wd would be nice. And of course after 30+ years it’s got some quirks and little things that are broken.

But if I could buy basically that exact same truck today, maybe as a hybrid or EV, I’d jump on it. I don’t need more performance, I’m not going to use it to haul a bed full of gravel or anything, we’ve never had to tow with it, and when I’ve towed with my own car it’s never been anything more substantial than a teardrop trailer that a Prius could probably just about handle if they came with a tow hitch.

I really like the maverick, it checks a lot of boxes for me and is overall pretty similar in size to my dad’s ranger but that short bed annoys me, I can’t fit a couch in that.

I’m not exactly some kind of cheese expert, but I’ve eaten a lot different cheeses in my day

I’d agree that on average, unpasteurized cheeses taste better

But some of the best cheeses I’ve had have also been pasteurized.

I think it’s mostly the size of the difference kinds of operations and how much care they put into their products.

There’s a lot of mediocre manufactures making pasteurized cheese and they’re making industrial quantities of it.

Whereas the companies making raw milk cheeses tend to be smaller operations where they’re putting more care into their product. They can be choosier about where their milk comes from, and are more hands-on with the process.

But if you can find a brand that puts that kind of care into it but pasteurizes their products, I haven’t found there to be a dramatic difference.

I feel like you’re severely underestimating how much and how many ways dogs can be useful dogs can be useful in hunting.

Sure, they can give chase as persistence hunters, like you said

But they’re also useful for tracking, let’s say you shoot a deer, and unfortunately it’s not a clean kill, and it runs off into the woods. You might spend hours, even days trying to find that deer, following tracks and blood trails that may stop in places and be impossible for a human to pick back up, but a scent hound can follow that trail, saving a lot of time and energy .

Or of course just sniffing out an animal in the first place.

They can be retrievers, if you shoot a duck over the water, you now need to find a way to retrieve it from the pond. If you don’t have a boat, that basically leaves swimming out there, and if the weather is cold, that puts you at risk of hypothermia. Many retriever breeds are much better suited to cold water than we are and could swim out to retrieve them with no problem. Or if you shoot something in dense brush they may be better able to retrieve it than you would without having to bushwhack your way to where it went down.

Breeds like beagles are incredibly effective for small game, they can flush them out of hiding spots for their human to shoot, or to tree game

And dogs can be used to great effect driving deer, flushing them and chasing them towards the hunters. This was actually so effective that some places have laws on the books that you can’t use dogs to hunt deer because back in the days when commercial hunting was more of a thing, it drove some deer populations to near extinction.

For some dangerous game like boar and feral swine, their role might be more to catch and hold the animal for the hunter to dispatch safely.

And that’s not to mention the value they can have for herding and guarding livestock, especially if you’re otherwise trying to go it alone or with only a small group of people, because you’re likely going to have other tasks to see to besides just constantly watching over them. To some extent, donkeys can fill a livestock guardian role, but if you need to round up a flock of sheep, they’re not going to be much help with that.

In any of those cases, they’re not necessarily generating value on their own, but they can significantly improve how productive you can be with minimal effort on your part.

As for barking, that’s a mixed bag. Yes, if you’re trying to avoid detection, it can be a detriment. But in other cases it can be a deterrent, making intruders and predators wary of intruding into your territory knowing that there’s a dog around, and it can give you an alert when there is an intruder.

And in some cases and environments, they can be useful as small draft animals, dogs can pull small carts and of course sleds.

Not every dog can fill every role of course (although some can certainly fill multiple roles) and they may not make sense for every scenario, but I think they’re worth a lot more consideration than you’re giving them.

Pumpkin does have some flavor, and it’s a pretty nice one IMO, sort of sweet and earthy

But it’s pretty mild, it doesn’t bring a whole lot to the party compared to a lot of things you might add it to like coffee. It would probably come through a little more in something more mild like oatmeal.

In most grocery stores (at least in the US) carry cans of pumpkin puree (not to be confused with pumpkin pie filling which is usually right next to it on the shelf which has added sugar and spices) if you want to get a sense of what just straight pumpkin tastes like, or mix it into something else (it’s an ok source of fiber and some vitamins, and like I said, it’s tasty, just kind of mild)

FYI Pumpkin spice is pumpkin pie spice.

Most “pumpkin spice” flavored things contain 0 pumpkin. And pumpkin doesn’t exactly have a particularly strong flavor on its own. The flavor people tend to associate with pumpkin are the spices you typically add to pumpkin pie.

And it’s basically just a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, and sometimes allspice.

I mean, Erasmus is a pretty well-known historical figure (and where, I assume, that programme gets its name)

That’s where my mind went first.

Turns out we’re both wrong and it’s just OP’s name like he said in the other comment, but I’m curious how you made that connection? Not passing any judgement on it, just curious since your brain reached a different conclusion than mine and I’m curious how you got there.

Depending on how we’re defining “seen” I’m betting it’s some guy running a hot dog cart or sweeping up trash or something in a busy intersection like Times Square or Shibuya Crossing

Sure, if you’re a performer like Taylor Swift who’s filling giant stadiums or what-have you, you might see 100k people a night.

But you’ll probably see at least that many people passing by if your job is to stand around in Times Square all day too.

And Taylor probably doesn’t have a gig every night, while the dude with a hot dog cart might actually be out there 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

And on his days off, there’s a decent chance he’s probably gonna be out and about seeing faces too. He doesn’t have a private shopper to go do his grocery shopping and bring it to his mansion on a few acres of land in some rich neighborhood, he lives somewhere in or near NYC, probably commutes on the subway, seeing untold hundreds of more faces, and honestly probably sees about 100 faces anytime he walks out his front door and walks to the corner store to grab a snack.