Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

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@ThanosReXXX Ahh, I wasn't thinking of the spelling aspect. Yeah, the DeLoreans were always cool. Seeing one should be rare. Seeing more than one is bizarre

As for smoke, you can't not brown food, meat or veggie, without smoke, nor fry chicken in any kind of oil without smoke...nor deglaze a pan without smoke. I mean that's part of the process! Browning technically is minor "burning" of a very thin layer. We're not talking billowing black smoke of a gasoline fire, we're talking about a haze that quietly fills an ventilated space. And the water vapor fills the space as well.

I don't know about Europe.....Asia mocks US portions - but Asians are eating small bits constantly rather than fixed sit-down meals It's not as different as it sounds. Though the metabolisms are amazing. US portions....I suppose it varies. It's true, but a lot of that has to do with the meal structure too. Italy does the multi-course meal thing. Here' it's just a big single serving. And "three meals a day" doesn't really happen so much anymore so if you consume all the meals at one sitting, does it count as too much food? Still, don't go by restaurants. The portions are huge. The prices match. Many people take some of that home with them. I stuff it down because I want it fresh but I feel like a rolling corpse afterward (and I only eat out twice a year or so ) Land of fast food though? Yup. The pace of life demands it!

McDonald's burgers got smaller and smaller. Mostly because they got fattier and fattier. Those burgers aren't enough food, yet they're somehow filling because you can't absorb any more cheap meat fat

Even with all those "bad American large portion fast food habits" it doesn't seem to turn people automatically obese though. I'm convinced that's a myth sold probably to protect the source of the real cause(s) mixed with American stereotyping elsewhere. Cancer rates are probably tied to our garbage chemical food, but I'm not convinced obesity is. That said, our produce is packed with GMO garbage these days....technically we should probably eat LESS vegetables and more sugar. GMO itself may not be that bad, but the whole purpose of it is to load the plant with amounts of waterproof pesticides that would normally kill it. Waterproof. You can't wash it off. You eat it. What do you think industrial strength pesticides are going to do to your innards?

I was thinking about the portion thing though. From the outside it probably looks like wealth and extravagance of American excess. But thinking about it from the inside, I realized it's rather the opposite. It's quite the opposite of traditional European opulence where the rich were all fat and eat non stop banquets. Generally here the rich eat "European" and are healthy. So what is the excess about? It occurred to me it's a result of the continuous sense of instability and insecurity of the system here. You eat all you can eat while you can still eat and enjoy it because you know tomorrow it may all go up in smoke and you'll never be able to enjoy again. Subconsciously. But it's not opulence. It's a scavenger mentality. iI's here now, I can get it now, I should get all I can now while I can. It's build on the fear of being one step away from total ruin every day. The more money and security people have, the healthier and more "European" they eat....they don't have to cram it all down, there's always tomorrow! The mentality here is more the old medieval wartime thinking "eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we all die", sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, but it informs a lot of behavior here. A recent statistic was that 50% of the US is one paycheck away from financial ruin. Half the country. Imagine how a whole civilization tends to react when half of it is overtly or subtly aware that if anything goes wrong tomorrow EVERYTHING ends - and that eventually some day will be the day that happens. From the consumer spending to the heavy eating, and a whole bunch of other behaviors that seem "excessive" from another perspective, I wonder how much of it is actually an instinctual reaction to continuous fear and uncertainty? And YOUR KIND of course preys on that ( S&M Professionals. Maybe you could advertise for Dr. Pornsack. )

I did mention before I'm a philosopher at heart. I like to think of the inner workings of why things are how they are it's thankless and penniless and will drive me to an early grave. I need more butter soaked bread now.

As for sweet foods.....yeah I admit that wile I like "sweets" I don't actually like candy. And I REALLY don't like corn syrup (except for specific foods that really require it.) Corn syrup is just evil. Even when I do buy soda I buy the "real sugar" version they started making again. This "obesity" problem didn't happen in the real sugar era...it started in the corn syrup era. Maybe that's related. And my baked goods are actual bakery goods that aren't absurdly sweet...more traditional European style bakeries, most of them family owned from the 60's (they're dwindling though...and the cake shop that opened is terrible, expensive, poor quality, and the icing tastes like licking a raw sugar cane. But I never really hear the corn syrups associated with it so much. (Of course corn is the king industry because of Ethanol...that's another story. ) Usually it's "Fatty food"...heck in my younger years if it wasn't deep fried I wouldn't eat it. Sort of. And it still didn't turn me into that. And I'm not even the atheletic sort. There's definitely something else going on. Even if it's genetic....why is it such a genetic factor here and not elsewhere? Or is it merely a result of a more advanced medical system that happened here before elsewhere were more "conditions" that would have resulted in death in infancy or before childbirth allowed more genes predisposed to such things to be propagated, resulting in a sizable population consisting of those genes that will start to emerge elsewhere now that everyone has been using such a medical system? Always so much to consider for such things. I should start a thinktank and get a few billion in government funding to embezzle expend on important studies at my institute.

Ever have American Nutella? It's awful.

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Damn you, Nintendo eShop discounts. I was determined to stay physical, and now look what you made me do:

Also no thanks to Nintendo Life and their "get them now, because there's only one day left" article...

@NEStalgia Aha, I see. Guess our personal definitions of smoke differs wildly. To me, the only smoke I actually see during baking, or rather: grilling, is when I put meat on the barbecue. Meat that I bake in a pan only gives of a mild, highly translucent vapor cloud every now and then, more than likely due to the water inside the meat. If that is smoke, then it's smoke for sissies.

As long as I can still see my stove and.or surroundings, and I'm not suffocated and coughing because of billowing blue-black clouds of smoke, then it isn't what I would call smoke.

And the kind that I do experience, only takes an opened window to get rid of. That's just your average cooking fumes, which truly IS mostly steam and a percentage of fat/grease. And as I already mentioned several pages ago, that's easily taken care of by actually keeping your kitchen clean. I almost never wake up, walk into my living room and think: "yegh, my entire house stinks of what I cooked yesterday". The only exception to the rule being when I use the deep fryer, because obviously, that's just a big pan full of oil, so there's no escaping that scent when using that to fry stuff.

So, let's just call 'em cooking vapors, instead of the far too heavy label "smoke", and be done with it.
Even a single cigarette gives off more smoke than what I cook in an entire week...

As for obesity, I'm not saying that everyone is automatically turning into a tub of lard, but on the other hand, you can also not say that having an unhealthy diet isn't at the very least one of the major contributing factors to it. Most people don't have a fast metabolism, and don't stay skinny regardless of what and how much they eat. If you add up all the factors involved: unhealthy diet, overuse of pharmaceuticals, diet sodas and too much processed foods, then it paints a pretty clear picture that all of these factors combined are the culprit, and not just one or the other. Well, in most cases at least. There are of course always extremes.

But you're smart to just go back to normal sodas, though. Any and all products with natural sugars are far less dangerous and/or damaging to your health than all these artificial surrogates. The only exception is foods sweetened with the Stevia plant, which is obviously a natural ingredient.

And of course, the most important thing with all of these products is moderation. It's more than okay to have a cake, a cola, or whatever brand of soda, a pizza, a burger and fries, as long as they're not part of any regular and/or daily diet. Although one glass of sugary beverage a day is still well within the confines of what is considered to be okay...

And I don't think I'd have to make much of an effort to advertise for dr. Pornsack, seeing as his name alone is already all or even more than all the advertising that he'll ever need, probably...

I am curious about American Nutella now, though...
Then again: if that's also far sweeter than the version that we have over here, I think I'll pass.

@Tyranexx I don't necessarily need the latest of the latest phones, but I do want something relatively up to date, and something that can at least stand the test of time, without falling behind update-wise and such.

And to be honest, I've personally never understood the whole "I broke my phone in the first week that I owned it" thing, because I've never managed to do that, but apparently, it's pretty normal, seeing as when I look around me when traveling to and from home, I see dozens of people having phones with cracked screens and what not. The first thing that I do, when I get a new phone, is buy a decent cover for it, and I don't mean a screen protector...

I also never just buy them, because the last year models I usually go for, are still anywhere between €350 - €500, and for me, that's just far too high of a price to be spending all at once. Those kinds of amounts are exclusively reserved for video game consoles, but not for a small communication device that you slip into your pocket and forget about, for most of the day. The reason I usually take the two year subscription plan, is because I can then pay off the phone, and not notice that I'm paying a bit too much for it, but at least I don't have to fork over several hundreds all at once.

So, what exactly is wrong with public transport? I reckon it's not quite the same over there as it is here, but still...

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@Tyranexx Yeah, malls are sadly not expected to last in general which is insane. They survive everywhere else in the world. They build strip centers with big boxes completely encasing the malls and then can't figure out why the mall can't survive. The 90's messed up the malls so badly here though. Back in the 70's and 80s when the malls were new they were almost bazaars. They had all kinds of weird stores and kiosks of all weird varieties. Something for everyone. Then in the 90's the remodeled all the malls into sanitarium-white and filled them entirely with women's clothing stores and little else, most of which were all owned by the same 4 companies. So when it appealed to less people, and then those 4 companies faltered and closed stores it was like 6 stores at a time in every mall in the country. The's the retail equivalent of the Irish potato famine. So now we have sprawling big-boxes on every street corner. And they still have the same 10 stores in every center.

@ThanosReXXX Fry bacon with no ventilation and see what happens. But not just that, just stick a whole chicken breast in a pan with a little oil. Smoke is smoke. Haze is haze. If you have to scrub a constant film of grease off your walls weekly you're doing it wrong. So much for Europe doing things smarter....

Still your ventilation is better than you indicate. If I cook something that does leave that "haze" it's going to be 3+ days that when you walk in from outside you smell food. That's not a normal house (here) If I cook a pan of has browns (potatoes...that need to be browned....with some onions...in oil.... you're going to smell it a few days.) And that's with the recirculating/charcoal filtration hood.

Yeah, the "diet" sodas always confused me....nothing about that seemed wise. Though I know plenty of people that chug them and are bean-pole thin. I've never tolerated that stuff. I didn't even like corn syrup soda (New Coke! All these things these kids missed....imagine life without remembering the New Coke travesty! )

As for Nutella...yeah...everything here is sweeter. Even Coke is made with a different sweeter recipe for US distribution than the rest of the world. And it's all corn syrup. or worse. Nutella here isn't like the european one. Cadbury eggs aren't like the British ones. I remember the British ones before Hershey got the contract....it was like a whole other food. Everything that's mass manufactured sweets is too sweet here. I go for dark chocolate, bakery cakes and the like. People that know to temper the sweetener. Supermarket cakes....eeewwwww.....the icing is like eating a Jolly Rancher (which people seem to love here, and the scent alone nauseates me.) I miss European Nutella and Cadbury. It's pretty much impossible to find here anymore since it got popular. All you can find is the nasty American one even in little importer stores. I think Amazon has it for like a million dollars a jar from scalpers in Europe.

Phones: I don't do contract phones, I just do prepaid and buy the phone outright. Why "finance" things in payments. If I can't buy it now I don't want to gamble that I can "buy it" over 2 years. I still don't understand the value of a phone contract other than "interest free financing for qualified buyers." A 2 year commitment because I can't actually afford the thing I want to buy doesn't sound appealing.

Public transit: I dream of an all public transit future. Self driving cars can't come fast enough. Eff cars. It's not 1925 anymore. That was fine when there was one car per family and only men drove to work every day and there was half the population here and less than half in Europe. BUT public transit here......is different. Busses are ghetto mobiles where everyone else is someone you don't really want to be in a confined space with. Taxis are....well...taxis, and trains are imaginary things that we thought existed, and that show about Thomas tells us they may have, but we're pretty sure they went extinct when the Triceratops did. In major major metros they exist. Outside of them, they don't. And the light rail was destroyed in the 1950s by Goodyear, Firestone, and GM to force people to buy more cars and parts. What's left is very regional. Some locales have quality but sparse rails. I bet in Seattle or San Fran busses are actually nice. Try it in Manhattan or DC sometime and you will SWIM back to Europe

I've heard even Chicago is dreamy compared to the East Cost cities! That's like saying "I'm going to upgrade and move to Cambodia!"

@HobbitGamer I call it smoke if it reduces visibility. A visible haze is still a visible haze.

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@ThanosReXXX They don't look like they should be effective but they sound remarkably effective indeed if they actually accumulate gunk to clean and suck up the fat clouds. That's a marked difference to my situation: Zero external exhaust of any sort whatsoever. Any fat cloud that goes in the air will be there coating something until I die. Cleaning counters is one thing, but it embeds in the carpeting, upholstry, everything. The recirculator supposedly traps some, but it doesn't, it blows most of it back out. Aluminum mesh only catches so much without proper exhaust.

I agree with the diet soda though!

I shall weep every time I see the real Nutella I used to know so well.......

As for transport, yeah...I don't mean just people you don't want to be around. I mean mostly derelicts, junkies, and general "undesirables"/social outcasts, trash EVERYWHERE. It's more of a prison transport with random pickups. Obviously if you're in a downtown during lunch rush it's much more respectable. But that's the outside cases.

Actually I had to laugh, I mentioned I was playing Train Sim World on XBox. They really modeled it accurately. On the LIRR and Amtrack NEC they show the stations and trackage as they really are. Cracked, crumbling, dirty, garbage everywhere. Everything looks unsanitary. (the trains are rendered a lot nicer than reality though...but the stations are accurate.) Then they render German trains and everything is relatively clean, orderly, and shiny. British train stations are somewhere between, not quite as unnaturally clean as the German stuff, but not looking like a a screenshot of an Arkham game quite like LIRR and NEC.

Oh, I know what the Japanese transit system looks like . Crowded is an understatement, people volunteer to be stuffed in by force just to make the train. But the weird thing is it's clean and orderly, and is filled with relatively "normal" people (the groping issues aside.) Here, you generally have a good idea the people on the other end are going to mug you, you just don't know at which station. (Not joking, the one route I did used to take was fairly famous for random muggings and murders aboard.....and you do NOT want to step off in most areas it travels....) that wasn't the area with the Cayennes, that's the area the Cayenne owners bypass and park under their law firm's building. Despite the crowds, I truly envy Japan's transit system. That thing is a work of art.

That's interesting pricing. They don't really have many plans like that here anymore. Mostly they sell "unlimited" calling only, with different big buckets for data. 1GB plans are defintiely the very budget end of things here. I actually do have one with limited minutes, but it's an ancient grandfathered plan from a promotion, they don't sell them anymore ,and I'll probably ditch it soon since the promos sometimes end up the same price to get more with unlimited calling. If only they fix their broken website. But, man, even prepaid $25/mo is probably the cheapest you'll get away with here....and honestly most plans are $35-50.

That makes a little more sense. Most people still do the contract payments thing. I've just never understood it. But then I don't understand credit and financing like rjejr and I talked about. I either have the cash or I don't and shouldn't buy it....just the way I view the world (land/houses being the exception since it takes a lifetime to raise the money for it...)