WTF-Beta

As a kid, I used to love candy lipsticks - tasty and a way to feel grown-up (they colored your lips pinkish).

Hooray!
Thank you all who worked on this.

I bought a butternut squash for the first time just to make this recipe and this excerpt from the instructions has me stymied:

"1 large butternut squash (about 3 pounds), halved vertically* and seeds removed"

This baby is not only heavy and solid, but I absolutely can't imagine how the vertical halving is supposed to take place without a machete somehow held in place (large vise?) and halving part of a hand all the same.

Having recently read that many (most?) ER visits are precipitated by trying to halve avocados (I myself had to go to urgent care not long ago thanks to a deepish cut from inept use of a sharp kitchen knife), I do NOT want to repeat the experience - only much more seriously! (Cleaver?)

Someone please tell me the secret is to bake the squash in the oven first! Carving pumpkins is daring enough!

said in Someone gave a damn:

@jon-nyc
Well, don't forget, just because he goes to that restaurant daily, it doesn't mean he doesn't eat anything else!

Reminds me of something I read about Japan. Elderly people there who live alone, sometimes make arrangements with their neighbors to signal to each other whether they are alive (or just need to be checked on).

They signal others whether they need assistance by whether or not they leave their shades up or down. I forget which meant what, but the arrangement is that they check on each other by the position of their shades.

Apparently, there are a sad number of such solitary elders whose bodies are found post mortem (often by the smell). Needless to say, they don't want that to be their undignified fate so they have made that working arrangement.

There are a great number of people living alone (often in advanced years and perhaps especially in Japan where families are small - frequently childless, and longevity also common). Thus such strategies are an ingenious precaution for self-protection.

For that matter, I read in the NYTimes that it's all too frequent that deceased people are found in the same fashion by the police - sometimes with no clear contact information. (It's a nightmare situation all too easy to imagine with the passage of time. )

It seems to me an elderly celebrity with dementia and Parkinsonism, looked after by his younger wife, was fairly recently found days after he died when his wife herself predeceased him. She had succumbed to some rare disease carried by rodents - her dog having died too. Without her care, her husband himself passed away. (Anyone remember their names?)

One of my neighbors down the street, whose children were supposed to look after her (but didn't), fell, breaking her hip. She wasn't found for days, unable to get up or contact emergency services. It was a terrible experience.

I only heard of it from her when I visited her during a blizzard checking on her and offering to buy her food or other necessities. (I nearly froze to death wading through deep snow to her house, leaving small children at home alone while I trudged to her house!). Not sure how I had even become aware of her situation. I found her bed-bound, bad leg elevated, fridge full of rotten food.

Her story ended happily - as far as such things go - A third daughter living far away took her mother to live with her until her death.

The negligent children, however, had treated her with shocking cruelty for as long as they lived in the same town. I only learned of it during my chance visit.

It was a completely unworkable arrangement the family had worked out for her - to deposit their elderly mother in a house alone in a place where she knew no one (relying on those selfish and uncaring children who treated her abominably. Sad story for as long as it lasted.)

@jon-nyc
Well, don't forget, just because he goes to that restaurant daily, it doesn't mean he doesn't eat anything else!

How could they not know who you are if you have to provide your address for delivery and ID yourself to pay for it via whatever payment you use? (Might they base their charges by zipcode?)

@Bernard said in RIP Frank Gehry:

He built art works. I love his buildings.

RIP

I'm unable to pull up the pictures (and whatever text there is) - just Guardian solicitations.

said in 3 hours and 42 minutes:

said in 3 hours and 42 minutes:

@ShiroKuro

And it's not only their pretense of caring (and thanking you for you alleged patience), but their ALWAYS claiming call volume just happens to be extra high that day!

OK, here's another circumstance invented in hell: when you finally get a CS person on the line (with faulty English) only to be disconnected and unable to get back to them because of the call center's incapability of making outgoing calls.

Not only do you have start all over with the wait, but your complex issue has to be explained from scratch (not infrequently RIGHT when you were on the verge of resolving your problem!)

said in 3 hours and 42 minutes:

@ShiroKuro

And it's not only their pretense of caring (and thanking you for you alleged patience), but their ALWAYS claiming call volume just happens to be extra high that day!

OK, here's another circumstance invented in hell: when you finally get a CS person on the line (with faulty English) only to be disconnected and unable to get back to them because of the call center's incapability.

Not only do you have start all over with the wait, but your complex issue has to be explained from scratch (not infrequently RIGHT when you were on the verge of resolving your problem!)

@ShiroKuro

And it's not only their pretense of caring (and thanking you for you alleged patience), but their ALWAYS claiming call volume just happens to be extra high that day!

Until Skype as discontinued I had it made - calls on hold were made out from Skype so I just left it on while I not only made other business calls on my phone, but accomplished other business.

I'll never forget the credit card company wait when during the hold time, I showered, went shopping, made dinner and came home to find the same music playing.

If you can manage to use a regular other phone productively while you wait (provided they give you an approximate hold time), it's not a problem.

I take that back. If you're calling a company which only responds to you on your home phone (which they recognise you by), it can be catastrophic. (Thinking of our West Penn Power electrical company). I needed to reach them to change the expiration date on the credit card they billed me by.
By the fourth month of getting expanding bills.
including interest, I finally got through. Still PO-ed.

And it's SO infuriating when they have a voice mail set up that gives you several tiers of optional extensions none of which applies to your issue!

Good for them!
It always bothers me that CEOs of the big tech companies don't allow their own children access to the internet, phones, games until they're no longer children per se.

Clearly, they know the hazards of their product for immature brains.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+CEO's+of+big+Tech+forbid+their+children+access+until+they're+older&oq=what+CEO's+of+big+Tech+forbid+their+children+access+until+they're+older&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAtIBCTE5MDc1ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

@ShiroKuro said in Just my luck…(health update):

@AndyD its called contrast bathing!

https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/patient-information/contrast-bathing-for-the-hand-and-wrist/

I’m gonna google and see if anyone talks about it for toes!

JK.
Sort of.

The company who's been fraudulently collecting to sing it (movies and whatnot) now has to refund $14 million

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/happy-birthday-is-public-domain-former-owner-warnerchapell-to-pay-14m/

Well, Trump sure is lucky he doesn't depend on obtaining a visa to a country as fincky as he's made the USA to be (not that it's not overall a good idea.)

I think it would bar quite a number of foreign dignitaries, actually.

@wtg
I would have thought that a symbol of a garbage can with a cross through it, meant NOT rechargeable...

I'm clearly an ignoramus.
Who is she?
(I'll start with her not being Taylor Swift - or for that matter, any pop star.)
But begging your pardons, who is this some-kind-of-celebrity? Perhaps I could benefit from a brain chip implanted - one containing all the catch-up current events I seem to have missed.

Making a note of the one you chose, CHAS. Your description did it.

Say, have any of you heard of the "purple" mattress? My son got one a few years ago and loved it. Too bad he decided he had to sell it when a first move arose. Turns out that though they seem to be universally comfortable (and expensive), they're just horribly heavy.

(They're one of those odd ones that come in a smallish box, that explodes to much larger after you open the box. Also, stupendous warrantee. and he said it WAS as comfortable as they bragged.

But it turned out moving it (and/or putting it in storage - where it would have taken up an undue amount of space to avoid its becoming deformed leaned on a wall) would not have been cost-effective

Apropos, how often do you flip your mattresses?

Oh, no. Duplicated again. Don't know if I'll get the hang of this platform, however welcome it is. (Maybe I'm pressing "submit" too often. I do it because it seemed otherwise the post remained open to editing.) Let's see what happens now.