My first thought went to Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

Now I’m wondering: was Spike based on Bugs?

That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.

I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.

But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.

This is true of an enterprise/company union. Industrial unions tip the seesaw to the other side.

except Noah; wtf was that

I'm going to hazard a response to what you found wtf:

Aronofsky's Noah is told with a Jewish perspective on the story. In Jewish tradition, Noah is a notable person, but he is not admirable. In Genesis it states that Noah was righteous in his generation. Rashi, a leading rabbi in the Middle Ages, said in regards to that statement: "Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation he was accounted righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance." (https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.6.9?lang=bi&aliyot=0&p2=Rashi_on_Genesis.6.9.2&lang2=bi)

Jewish sages, too, have long criticized Noah for accepting God's dictate that he will destroy all life on earth without argument. That's in contrast to Abraham who, when God said he would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, argued with God and got him to agree not to destroy the cities if there existed ten righteous people in the cities.

So Aronofsky shows Noah as a religious extremist who does what God says without question. It's a sometimes ugly portrayal, but it fits with an interpretation of Noah that sees him as the best the world had on hand, but not the best that mankind can be.

I’ve been using Instapaper for years. It does the job.

I did not expect to see a Dane Cook reference today.

I’m partial to Christ Chex myself.

Huzzah! Everyone move to Northside so we can support more bodegas!

Terry Pratchett’s DiscWorld series.

I thought Inc-El was a play on inconel and that this meme was about how extremely cool the Cybertruck is.

I was confused.

Then I thought about it.

Went with the Ioniq 5. 5k miles in and I love it.

I bought my first electric car in December 2023. I ruled Tesla out because of Elon Musk.

Sure. Something like OP was going for.

Checking for my own knowledge: pulp it, then strain it, then thicken it. Is that the correct sequence?

I’d go fierce on it with an immersion blender to get it smooth. What was your process for blending it?

Chili and cinnamon rolls. Are you from Kansas?

Good lord your work is impressive.

Makes me think of the Rat-thing from Snow Crash. Is that sucker nuclear?

See Deuteronomy 22:5. From what I can tell, Dennis Prager treats the bible as a foundational document in his life. The thought process probably comes from that verse.

The article is about direction, not position.

The report is even already way off regarding Slovakia, who just elected an authoritarian with sympathies towards Russia. Romania is a bit shaky too, they have very little trust in the democratic government, and could probably easily be swayed by a populist who says what they want to hear.

The article uses the report to show that Slovakia and Romania have improved relative to their prior measurement. It is silent on their positions relative to other democracies.

I have a friend named Dave who wore so much patchouli that, if I went by his house within twenty minutes after he left, I could follow his trail through the open neighborhood and find him on scent alone.