I learned about torchiere style lamps a few years ago and I really like them. You’ve seen them before. They’re usually floor lamps and they point upwards to bounce the light off the ceiling. Unless you have a dark ceiling, they do a great job of spreading the light around the room without being too bright.

Smart bulbs are, of course, more customizable, but recently I’ve gone back to analog lights I can just turn on and off.

My parents were Catholic, so they never talked about sex per se. My “talk” was my dad saying, “I want you to remember to always respect women. And that means not doing anything inappropriate.” Very informative.

OP wasn’t arguing that Italian-American culture necessarily resembles Italian culture. Of course they’re different. You’re implying that the concept of “Italian-American culture” is superficial or illegitimate because it differs from the way that Europeans talk about international or intergenerational identities, and that’s some prescriptivist bullshit. “Genuine cultural identity”? Get out of here.

I’m a white American.

Most friendly: Portugal. They seem to be a happy bunch in general, and they all seemed excited to have visitors. Lisbon, Cascais, Lagos, and all the little towns in between.

Least friendly: Iceland. They could just be less open and emotionally expressive with strangers, but unless it was a business transaction I was frequently ignored when I said hello and people seemed uninterested in having a conversation.

I frequently hear this stereotype from people who haven’t been to France. I specifically hear that the French are rude to anyone who doesn’t speak French. My experience was that they can be rude to Americans who assume everyone will speak English. I would do my best to have a conversation in French, and the locals would usually take pity on me and switch to English.

I’m not denying there are unfriendly French people, but I would expect anyone to get tired of tourists who don’t make any effort to speak the local language.

Is it possible to set up the pihole so certain devices are unfiltered? My partner works in digital marketing and needs to test that her clients’ ads are functional.

I’m naive. What’s the motive for an attack like this?

Yes, for a long time I’ve said that traffic jams are caused by brake lights, rather than deceleration alone. If you leave enough space ahead of you, you shouldn’t have to touch your brakes very often, and letting off the gas should be enough.

Capricious: From earlier caporiccio, from capo +‎ riccio, literally “curly head”. People believed that curly hair was a sign for a capricious and unruly character.

Thank you for doing what you do!

Oh my god that didn’t even occur to me. Maybe I am a beginner!

To be honest, I recently got a TCL Roku TV and I almost gave up on trying to use it as a dumb TV. I’m not a beginner at this, but setting up a network connection was so embedded in the initial setup, from the moment you turn the TV on. I did a couple factory resets and I could not figure out how to bypass it. Turns out I had to set it to “store display mode” at a certain point and then connect my other streaming device.

"Our youth love luxury.  They have bad manners and despise authority.  They show disrespect for their elders and love to chatter instead of exercise.  Young people are now tyrants, not the servants of their household.  They no longer rise when their elders enter the room.  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food and terrorize their teachers.” -Socrates ~400BC

I think about this one a lot. IIRC the gist was “Don’t tell anyone. Get a lawyer. Don’t tell anyone. Get rid of most of it.”

I hope you wrote this light-heartedly, because it made me laugh and helps me understand autism a little better.

This is how I think of it too. My body will die but my influence will continue, so I try to have a good influence.

Everyone realizes this is a joke acronym, right? Or am I dumb for thinking that needs to be pointed out?

Sekiro had several of the hardest bosses for me. God I love that game.

An attempt at humor?

If I may ask, how are you able to take a 75% pay cut and still pay your bills?