I see you've never played "Dragon's Lair", where every scene was cell animated and the player "chose" the path that the animation would take.
Wolf314159
Somehow I think the national lab test company's lawyers have got them covered. This wasn't exactly a fly by night, no name company. Having in known third party send you a medical bill months later is pretty fucking common place. This was just one anecdote of many, not an isolated incident.
The best part is the random bill.
- Go to the doctor. Get blood drawn.
- Doctor send the blood to a lab for the test. Doesn't tell me who. I don't care who. It's their subcontractor, let them worry about it. *Go back to the doctor or get a call for results. Pay the doctor the standard co-pay. *Months later a random company sends me a bill. This is a company that I have never interacted with or entered into any contract with, for work that somebody else (presumably my doctor, but who the fuck knows for sure) asked them to do for them, sending the results to that other person and NOT to me.
The system is broken. If any other company subcontracted a part of their work to a third party, you as the client would reasonably expect that work to be paid through the original contract, not get a bill directly from the subcontractor. I didn't hire them, the doctor hired them. As far as I'm concerned, that's the doctor's subcontractor and their debt, not mine. I paid the doctor already.
Or another variant.
- Go to the emergency room.
- Get separate bills FOR THE SAME SERVICE from the hospital, the doctor, and somehow the hospital again but this time it's the emergency room (which is somehow separate with a different billing company).
The system is not just broken. It is designed to fleece us and train us to always accept whatever debt the institutions decide to levy on us without question.
A chain is 66 feet long.
Songs are cheap. Ever heard of buying something for a song?
It's because that recording industry, the RIAA vs. the MPAA, has had a stranglehold on the industry and artists for much longer. They are much better at exploiting artists while paying them next to nothing.
Mpd + a frontend of your choosing, I prefer ncmpcpp, will run on just about anything and is remotely controlled through apps or ssh. Mpd is great when the server is physically connected to the audio output device. I use it to remotely control a speaker connected server that can also run Plex (because I prefer plexamp for streaming and syncing to my phone, other android devices, and smart speakers). They both look at the same directory of a collection near 30 years in the making with hundreds of thousands of files and a wide array of formats.
If I'm going to skin or peel the vegetable, I go with the cheap stuff. If I'm eating the skin then I go organic. I never buy the prewashed lettuce and salads when they are on sale because those have already started to go bad usually. And when it comes to things like berries, strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers I go with whatever looks like it will taste the best. Cheap blueberries for instance, absolutely do not hold up against the good stuff; life is too short for tart blueberries.
Spoken like someone that also didn't pay attention in class.
If you think that, then you weren't paying attention.
Come you fools, obviously if you were not there and alive in person, the context of this comment clearly implies that you should have been paying attention in history class.
Think about how crazy attached that lady seemed for screaming for her bird from dawn to dusk. Now imagine that she is a parrot attached to you and multiply the crazy by 10. Now you want to travel and leave this emotional wreck with strangers in a strange place for a bit.
From what you've said in the rest of this thread, most parrots would not be a good fit for your lifestyle or level of experience. I guarantee that it will be traumatic for you and the bird. If you're still serious about pursuing this, then it is absolutely critical that your first step be to volunteer at a rescue or care facility of some kind for birds specifically. Get dirty, get bitten, get some training, get some experience, and get some contacts for help when things inevitably go sideways. You'll hear first hand all the stories about: someone's loved pet that turned into depressed wreck on their owner's death; or the parrot that was caged alone and never received any attention and went mad; or the malnourished parrot that was fed only seed; or the parrot that was bought as a gift and abandoned; or the family pet that permanently maimed and disfigured a child because of improper training and supervision.
I've known a few bird people and their unifying characteristic is a very high tolerance for noise, mess, chaos, bird shit, and emotional codependence. It takes a very special kind of person with a lot of extra time and space to care for parrots full time in a healthy way for either party.
Parrots do not make good pets. They can be kept in captivity, but they require specialized care by experienced and trained caregivers. They are a LIFETIME commitment that may very well outlive you, so don't forget to include them in your will.
The branding is gross sure. The bacon itself may be gross too. But I'll sometimes make something similar, but it's fully candied bacon as a brunch/cocktail snack and not ideal for breakfast.
Bake bacon as usual (bacon spread in single layer over cooling rack in sheet pan goes in cold oven, heat to 200°C/400°F). Prepare spices: mostly brown sugar, other spices to taste; cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, paprika, and mustard. Figuring out the proportions is left as an excerise for the reader, mostly because I don't remember at the moment. Once the bacon is mostly cooked, but not crispy yet, pull the bacon out, dredge in spices, and return to cooling rack in pan assembly. Return to oven and check every 3-5 minutes until done to your preference or the sugar starts smoking. Adding the sugar towards the end allows the fat to render without burning the sugar.
I've felt that. In my story, I'm an adult out on a date. I order a molcajete dish from the local Mexican restaurant. I've had this dish before at a few places. I know it's usually spicy. I want this. I have a vague memory of the waitress confirming I was okay with a spicy dish. I enthusiastically confirm.
I had never encountered this level of spicy before. Those other molcajete dishes I'd had were milquetoast. This was flavortown gone nuclear. My entire head turned red apparently. The sweat started on my forehead, then my neck, and eventually my entire head was running like a sock over a faucet. I hadn't encountered real heat like this before. I was in experienced, so I didn't know that drinking my beer between bites was only making the heat worse. The waitress kept bringing them though. At one point I could hear people laughing together in the kitchen. It was a quiet restaurant, we may have been the only ones there at this point.
I was not bowed or broken. I ate the whole damn thing. It was otherwise also a delicious dish and now that I had broken through into the fire dimension I was tasting flavors I didn't even have words for. These flavors were here the whole time but I couldn't experience them until I had set my mouth on fire. I eventually won the day, or so I thought until the next day when dinner had it's revenge on the way out.
Jalapenos don't get the respect they deserve. Sure they don't have the face melting power of some other peppers. But they taste fucking great in ways the other peppers can't match. They are also sneaky. I've had jalapeno with little to no heat, almost like a better tasting green bell pepper. And I've had jalapeno that were face melty sweet awesomeness. The secret I eventually learned was to seek the peppers with those little brown stretch marks. More stretch marks mean more fire.