numberfour002 @ numberfour002 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

the taco bell near me is always on point.

I want to know where this unicorn exists!

I've tried going to Taco Bell three times, three different locations, over the past 3 - 4 years and I've regretted it every single time.

The last time I went to one, it was like almost everything that could go wrong did. Long wait of 20+ minutes. Employee(s) smelled strongly of weed. The 5-layer burrito was disgustingly dry and missing about 2 layers. And the price for 2 crappy, tiny burritos and a drink was around $12.

Back when I used to eat there more frequently (broke college kid), the same exact meal was less than $5.

I am specifically mentioning hummingbirds, since that's the title, in the image, and the bulk of the discussion in this thread when I looked at it this morning. That being said, no, I don't think it has to be hummingbirds.

Keep in mind, these flowers are significantly smaller than most (if not all) hummingbirds, and hummingbirds themselves are amongst the smallest, if not the smallest, birds in the world. So, any species of bird that these flowers attract are going to be significantly larger than the flowers.

Not to mention that virtually all birds that feed from flowers have excellent visual acuity, that's almost a requirement for them to be successful with this feeding strategy. It seems highly unlikely that the birds would have a difficult time identifying that these are flowers and instead confusing them as a flock of miniature birds feeding from the plant. And, to me, that pretty much negates any argument for selective pressures on the flowers to have birdlike appearance for that purpose.

At least with the example of the "bee orchids" I mentioned in a prior comment, the selective pressures and the overall context make sense and appear to explain why the flowers have evolved to look like female bees and wasps. But the "hummingbird flower" from Australia that kind of resembles the profile of a hummingbird if viewed from a specific angle and out of context doesn't really hold up, in my opinion.

I completely disagree, we can know for sure. This plant is native to Australia. There are no native hummingbirds in Australia. The flowers evolved to look like this before there were hummingbirds around it.

Seeing the up votes and down votes in this thread, I realize this is an unpopular "opinion" but the flowers didn't necessarily evolve to look like hummingbirds specifically. That many people see it as looking hummingbird-like is more a reflection of the human mind's ability to find patterns and connections even when they don't exist. It's interesting and pretty for sure, and definitely a curiosity.

Same thing for the "monkey orchid". You see a monkey because the flowers are photographed at an unnatural angle and forced perspective, the photos online where the effect is most visible are the ones with lots of compression artifacts and generally poor quality, and because of the power of suggestion. If you saw these in person (without prior context of the photos), there's a good chance you wouldn't even notice the face-like visage unless pointed out.

On the other hand, the "bee orchids" actually are an example where it seems that the flowers have evolved in a way that specifically mimics the appearance of bees (and wasps). These flowers mostly attract male bees and wasps who confuse them for lovely lady bees and wasps and try to mate with the flowers. In the process, they pick up a pollen sac / pollinia, and if all goes well they end up pollinating the flower (or move on to pollinate another one).

Fruits, and by extension peppers, evolved to be eaten. Peppers are the fruit of the pepper plant, and generally speaking, fruits act as an enticement for animals to eat them and thus distribute their seeds.

It's just that hot peppers specifically appear to have evolved a strategy to dissuade mammals from eating them, since the chemical that causes them to be hot primarily affects mammals, but not birds. It's actually not an uncommon strategy, many fruits are distasteful or even poisonous to certain animals, but are perfectly edible to other animals in a way that suggests it is specifically beneficial to be eaten by some but not by others.

While you're at Lowe's be sure to pick up a pint of plunger oil, which will help keep the plunger lubricated and prevent the plastic from degrading like this. It's not expensive and it's not hard to use. All you have to do is lick the plunger clean after each use, allow it to air dry, then apply a small dab of the oil, and rub that in with a soft natural fiber cloth. A plunger can last you a life time with proper care.

Odds are slim they'll survive to 2025 drinking at that pace.

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

It happened to me. In high school. It was part of a play we were doing for our drama class. It was stupid then. It's stupid now. But it happened to me. And it can happen to you.

Where I live, the grocery prices aren't up anywhere near the double or triple that other people have mentioned. The basics / necessities have generally seen more modest price increases over the past few years. There have been obvious exceptions like when there's been shortages of specific things or like if I were to compare out of season produce prices to the prices of stuff when its in season, but in those cases I just go without (which also kind of proves they weren't necessities to begin with).

For the most part, any luxury items or luxury brands that have dramatically increased their prices and engaged in shrinkflation, I stop buying that stuff or cut way back. Even if I can afford that stuff, I'm not going to pay the prices. And if I weren't really able to afford to feed myself, I would definitely not be buying anything like that. No organic apples for me. No potato chips. No microwave meals. No soda.

In my adult life, I've twice experienced food insecurity. I can't speak to anybody's situation in specific, but for me what worked was willingness to be flexible and getting creative. I would grow as much of my own food as I could, even in a small shared living space I could grow some lettuce or spring onions in a window. I was also pretty knowledgeable about edible plants, including local/wild stuff, so that helped to supplement my diet as well.

I don't think I've seen that brand in stores in my area, but if I do, I'll give it a try.

The Tabasco is a dumbed down version of sriracha. So don't go in expecting it to be a perfect reproduction of the Huy Fong brand or you will be disappointed. It's more garlicy, a bit sweeter, and not as hot. But at least it hasn't been out of stock for a year+.

A couple of months ago, I broke down and opened my last bottle of the Huy Fong I had in stock. The best by date was January 2024 and I had no intention of selling it, so figured I'd enjoy one last round of the sauce.

In the past year and change, I've tried all the sauces that my local grocers carry in-store. I have settled on the Tobasco version. It's different from Huy Fong brand and takes some getting used to the differences, but pretty much all the stores in my area carry it, the price is reasonable, and it has its own merits.

I've tried some of the more niche brands, but they tend to cost more and are harder to find or impossible to find in-store and honestly I'm just tired of looking and trying new ones all the time when it's so hit or miss.

The worst sriracha I've tried (so far) is the Chickfila sriracha. It's basically Asian inspired ginger flavored sugar syrup with no real redeeming quality in the context of sriracha sauce. If Huy Fong is your jam, this is pretty much the furthest thing away from that which you could possibly imagine.

BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE WHAT I TYPE OTHERWISE HONEY I LEFT MY GLASSES IN THE BATHROOM AND MY KNEES WON'T GET ME BACK THERE ANY TIME SOON

Probably because the study itself, which is linked in the article that's merely summarizing it, discusses tea and a variety of other lifestyle choices / habits that they investigated.

OH MY GOD I LOVE THE HARRY POTTER REFERENCE!!!!

just kidding

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying it's bad or that it's worse than the competitors.

But, it's one of the chains where I've experienced employees that very clearly smelled strongly of weed (like they have just freshly smoked up or had some in their pocket) while making my food or serving it to me. At least in my region where weed isn't legalized, it kind of has a reputation of being one of the cooler "stoner friendly" chain restaurants in terms of employment opportunities and the few people I've known who worked there at some point are or were heavy, frequent users.

I'm not hating on people who use drugs, but I don't think it's all that far fetched to believe that working under the influence is going to increase the odds/frequency of silly screw ups similar to the BLT-less BOLT in the photo and given the reputation of that company (in my circle, region, etc), it doesn't seem at all like a weird joke to make. Really, it applies to a lot of restaurants in general.

50 hours sounds like that's average for how long it takes for food items to be fully digested and completely excreted from the body under normal circumstances, but not necessarily an average minimum amount of time for how long it takes food to start exiting the body in feces.

Those are very different data points, especially in the context of a discussion about spicy foods.

Spicy hot foods are typically spicy because of a chemical called capsaicin, which is an irritant in mammals. In high enough amounts and/or in sensitive people, capsaicin can irritate the lining of the digestive system and that irritation can have a laxative-like effect to varying degrees. In response to irritation, digestive motility / speed will increase, and the general trend is that the quicker something moves through the digestive tract, the less completely it is processed and digested.

Basically, if someone eats too much spicy food for their tolerance level, it is fairly typical for that to move through the digestive system more quickly than average AND the feces will contain proportionally more capsaicin. So, bowel movements less than 24 - 50 hours after eating the spicy food and a burning sensation associated with the act due to undigested capsaicin actually does make sense.

Okay, but I'd rather breed chupacabras. I do have a gift for making things suck, after all.

I feel like this is on brand for Jersey Mike's, though. I'm pretty sure the only way to get fired from Jersey Mike's to show up sober for your shift.

I don't know that I fully qualify as "gave up using Linux", but I gave it up for daily personal use, so maybe that counts? I'm definitely not opposed to picking it back up again one day, though! And I do have a Linux device (Steam Deck) that I use frequently, so it's not all doom and gloom.

For probably 10+ years, I used various flavors of Linux on my personal laptop. But around 8 years ago or so, my then current laptop was getting old and getting to the point where it needed to be replaced. At the same time, I was also wanting to get back into gaming so I opted for a laptop that came with Windows by default (Linux gaming at the time left a lot to be desired).

I did try to go the dual boot route with that laptop, but man it sucked. No matter what I tried, the touch screen functionality either didn't work at all, or it was too buggy to be useful. The graphics card performance was terrible. That was still in the era where finding the right wifi drivers could be a chore, and even then they weren't exactly the most stable. It was one problem after another. So, I gave up on Linux for personal use, entirely.

Now I have a different laptop that I specifically verified has decent Linux compatibility and there's much better Linux support for games but at the end of the day, I just find that my time and interest in tinkering with the OS has diminished, so I'm sticking with what works (even if it's FAR from perfect).