The spirit is willing, but the flesh is bruised and spongy.

and they never have exactly what you need either. the number of times i’ve come home empty handed and had to buy online anyway is rediculous

I have a problem where everything that I want to buy has been discontinued years ago, so my days of research end up being all for naught by the time I’m ready to pull the trigger. I really need to start reading the publish dates on web pages…

herbs are just weeds that taste and/or smell good.

That… actually makes a lot of sense. Time could just be an emergent property of entropy. The second law of thermodynamics (the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems never decreases) could then be applied to explain why time appears to only move in one direction.

They mentioned it on NPR during the hourly news headlines yesterday.

Is an appealing an innocent verdict not double jeopardy?

would all integers necessarily be irrational in base π?

They also lay tens of thousands of eggs at once.

This is actually a result of changes to our larynx and stuff, which allows us to make such a variety of sounds when speaking. In other animals (and human babies), the air and food tubes are physically separated at rest. But in humans, our epiglottis can’t properly keep things separate because our larynx is further down in our throat.

So, I’m gonna have to deny this request on the grounds that it will necessarily break the speech feature, which many of our users depend on heavily.

Eh, not totally. Some languages have phonemes that are completely absent in other languages, and some phonemes (especially vowels, though sometimes consonants, eg: “r”) are different enough that a transliteration can never do them justice. Although, I guess transliterating into the international phonetic alphabet would do the trick…

If i recall, the main trick is to make sure there aren’t any sharp corners or other places that are close enough together that arcing can occur. But there might be some additional stuff, like coatings and other design choices that are necessary to promote even and effective heating (otherwise the microwave will heat the bowl instead of the food since the radiation won’t pass through metal like it does with plastic, paper, or glass).

A vampire walks into a bar. The bartender asks if he’d like some blood. “Just hot water, please,” the vampire responds. The bartender raise an eyebrow, but goes to get the hot water. When he places the mug in front of the vampire, he says, “I thought you were a vampire. Why order hot water?” The vampire pulls a tampon out of his bag and says, “I’m having tea.”

You’re welcome.

One time, i triggered some sort of shoplifting detection when I put my credit card up in my purse after paying. I guess the camera thought I did it in a sketchy way?

I need more of this, please.

But the developers put a story/easy mode in the game. That seems intentional to me. Maybe those games just aren’t for you if the mere option of difficulty settings bothers you so much.

Leggo my prego?

Huh, I guess I’d never really looked into the chemistry behind the distinction (which is strange because i am a chemist that loves food), but Maillard reactions involve the proteins, while caramelization involves the sugars. Though both are examples of nonenzymatic browning.

The good news is that the wiki page for caramelization says that either acidic or basic conditions speed up the caramelization processes, so i think we’re good to go in either front!

Heating a solution of aqueous bicarbonate will release carbon dioxide, too. But since we have delicious onions and stuff in there too, let’s walk through my thought process: Baking powder is baking soda + weak acid + cornstarch (to prevent premature reaction). Since the speed-up for the Maillard reaction works by deprotonating amino groups to make them more nucleophilic, the acid-base reaction that releases CO₂ when using baking powder will still occur with just baking soda + food (ie: the protiens in the food are acting as the acid). You’re probably right that using baking powder would produce more CO₂, or at least produce it faster, but reducing carcinogenic side products for Maillard reactions via CO₂ is a low-priority concern for me anyway. Just a fun curiousity that occured to me when reading the wiki page!

Sorry if my carbon dioxide subscripts don’t work. I don’t think my client supports all the fancy markdown, but i tried my best.

Oh shit. That is so cool! I knew lye was used in making pretzels, but i didn’t know it was to get the Maillard browning to happen faster. The wiki page says that one way to reduce the formation of acrylamide, a carcinogen, is by adding carbon dioxide, which is actually released when baking soda is dissolved in water will be released during cooking (edit: see reply chain below for discussion on this point)… IDK for sure if it’s enough to really help, but I’m gonna just roll with it and say it is because delicious food is delicious.