Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX He's certainly not natively fluent, but I absolutely notice stark and consistent improvement over time in Anti's language to the point I expect it will over time arrive at "as nearly natively fluent" as you can get without having lived in a country with that native language. Which definitely deserves credit. Many (most) people will never get that far with a language without living there.

He may be a teacher, but he's not an English language teacher, and even if he were, he's elementary level. I can say with extreme confidence his English comprehension for an elementary level teacher is VASTLY superior to the high school level foreign language teachers I had in my high school in the languages they covered. They had, at best, "tourist travel" level understanding of the language, and I can guarantee not one of them could have sounded coherent on a French/Spanish/Italian/Japanese forum at the time

Aaahh, cream cheese...as a topping/milk replacement. That sounds a lot more appealing. I'm sure it will show up eventually. And maybe not at the high end. I was picturing a tea mad by steeping cheddar curd....

@NEStalgia I figured you did, which is why I also added that first clip specifically, which explicitly states "it's not like the cheese that you put on a pizza". Some people might even have a picture of molten, orange cheddar in their minds, and that would even make me retch, but like I said, it's basically just a sweet topping, and more along the lines of cheesecake than actual cheese. I would have done something about the name, though, to prevent exactly these kinds of erroneous assumptions...

@ThanosReXXX Even cheddar curd tea would be better than McDonalds' "Sweet Tea" though...

@NEStalgia Says you.

It’s amazing how these how these things work: 12 hours after proclaiming that never, ever, under any circumstances, ever do I get a chance to play video games when the sun is up, I’m at home with a sick, but not super sick kid, and we did some late morning Labo. The little pet house from the first variety kit. I wish the different activities had play counters. Since August, he’s probably spent a combined 20 minutes getting his finger licked by that little creature while the playhouse is vibrating from the joy con. I’ve been careful not to leave him alone with it.

@ThanosReXXX If you haven't had that "tea" that's about 15% tea and 80% corn syrup....you are forgiven for thinking it might not be worse. It's like a tea flavored jolly rancher, liquified, and in a cup.

@NEStalgia - I’m not certain, but there’s a chance HFCS isn’t even legal where Thanos lives. This is hard for me to believe, but it seems there are countries in this world where the general consensus is that it’s unhealthy, and possibly even poisonous, to put it in everything we eat and drink.

@bimmy-lee Wait, WHAT? That actually sounds wrong, in SO many ways...

@NEStalgia Good sir, it would seem that you have forgotten that we don't use diabolical substances such as corn syrup over here. Only real sugar. And I've never really tried crap like that at McDonald's in the first place. The handful of times that I ever find myself in a McDonald's to begin with, is when me and my friends go to the cinema. A burger and fries is then mostly the meal of choice before the movie starts.

@bimmy-lee My government told me it's perfectly safe, so I'm certain it's perfectly safe. They wouldn't lie. The FDA exists for our safety! Now I'm aggravated and need to sip my fluoridated water. How's my ConAgra and Monsanto portfolios doing? Things are looking up!

@ThanosReXXX FWIW, corn syrup is perfectly fine and is a different thing from high fructose corn syrup. Normal corn syrup, sold as Karo (light and dark corn syrup) is a perfectly normal sweetener and is an essential necessity for some foods like pecan pie and shoo fly pie, Derby pie, etc. Also critical in some candy making (including home made type old timey candies.) HFCS is a factory made toxic abomination that exists in a majority of our food even though it shouldn't.

And Sweet Tea is kind of a southern specialty, I hear, and even the real, sugar based one is pretty disgusting to my northern palate. But the McD's HFCS based monstrosity is a whole other level of gross. When they first introduced it, I got it to try it and promptly dumped the rest of the cup and filled it with normal tea....one sip was too much.

@ThanosReXXX Just let me pee in my musty-bug infested Dreamcast sports edition in peace.

@NEStalgia even as a southerner, I prefer unsweetened tea so that I can taste the actual tea. However, the only acceptable sweet tea is one with raw sugar.

@bimmy-lee There are countries? How about the majority of the world? Corn syrup is far from being the most widely used sweetening agent on this planet. And it is unhealthy, and besides that, it ruins the taste of quite a few foods and drinks. Boy, is Europe going to be an eye-opener for you, food (and taste)-wise, if you ever decide to come and visit the Mad Titan...

@NEStalgia You haven't drunk REAL sweet tea, unless you've drunk Turkish tea. That's basically just tea-flavored hot syruppy goo in a cup.

@HobbitGamer Well, luckily that sports edition is black, so stains won't stand out so much, let alone any "yellowing".

At least you have one redeeming factor there with your understanding of how to actually sweeten your tea.

@ThanosReXXX - Your joke/sarcasm/BS detector is slightly off today concerning my posts. My wife is in integrative medicine and goes to great lengths to keep HFCS, food dye, and various Monsanto chemicals out of our food at home.

I like that most fast food places in Arizona have unsweetened tea as a drink option.

The "sweet" option is way too sweet, I just add a tiny little bit of it to the regular tea. So I basically use the sweet tea as a sweetener.

if this is some mobile game garbage I'm starting a riot outside your Toronto studio
It's been 7 flipping years since Blacklist and you teased us so hard with Sam Fisher in Ghost Recon Wildlands

@bimmy-lee Yeah, you probably got a point there. My bad. Had a bit of a hectic week, so "TGIF" is most certainly appropriate. And in fact, thinker/muller that I am, until a day or 4, 5 ago, I was actually still digesting the impact of that movie we discussed a while back, so that is also why I haven't e-mailed you yet, because I kinda wanted to practically completely get it out of my system, to sort of be able to take a step back and analyze it with a more clear, objective mind, instead of being in the mind-blown/frazzled/fazed state that I was initially in, also due to other, ongoing happenings.

And of course, that was kind of expected, because stuff like that almost never comes alone, and suffice to say that once you're in a certain mood, other things also influence you much more than when you're in your best form/shape, mentally speaking, even with nice or beautiful things, such as happened with that music show that me and @Tyranexx discussed a couple of pages back, after I posted a string of videos from it.

So, now that I'm slowly leveling off again, I apparently still don't have all my faculties about me. Then again: you never using any smileys also doesn't make it any easier, my friend.

But having said all that, Europe is STILL going to blow your mind food- and taste-wise, so that statement stands.

@BlueBlur101 Ooh... "You need to understand the darkness to be able to face it ..."

Catchy and exciting.

While I understand why corn is subsidized by the USDA and why CS/HFCS is used in place of sugar by many manufacturers (as it's cheaper), I still find it appalling that the stuff shows up in foods where you wouldn't think it would exist. I normally try to avoid foods with it other than when it's attached to a rare treat that I enjoy. I've gotten VERY good at reading labels.

I try to avoid a lot of majorly processed stuff these days other than, again, the very rare treat. And yes, weaning yourself off of that much sugar and having the occasionally rare sugar binge day REALLY opens your eyes to how much of that sort of stuff is in our processed food. No wonder a lot of visitors out of the country think our stuff is way too sweet.

I mostly stick to honey and molasses as sweeteners, though I do stock both regular and brown sugar for baking. I don't tend to use them otherwise.

@ThanosReXXX We'll see. The OCD and anxiety-related tendencies that I have are definitely still being worked on. I get WAY too nerved up about things sometimes. Usually the stuff that didn't really warrant much of a raised heart rate.

@ThanosReXXX - Well, I’m not holding it against you considering the actual joke was a sad truth you don’t have to worry about. It was a tragedy of a joke. NES got it because it’s part of his daily life, like it is mine. Poisoned food is what freedom tastes like.

Yeah, I would make the central focus of a European vacation about good food and drinks! And you can email me any time you’re comfortable doing so, whether it’s about something specific, or you just want to talk bad about @HobbitGamer using curse words.