There’s a few ways to interpret this question.

‘Smooth’ and 'Chunky might refer to the size of the leaf. More processing often means cutting the tea leaves into smaller pieces, but you can also get whole leaves.

‘Smooth’ tea might be tea with no added ingredients. ‘Chunky’ tea could be tea that has fruits, nuts, or other infusions included.

‘Smooth’ tea might refer to teabags, while ‘Chunky’ could be steeping loose. ‘Chunky’ tea may also be the practice of not removing the leaves before consuming.

‘Smooth’ might refer to powdered tea like matcha - although if we are talking about matcha then the preparation involves whisking away clumps. In which case the ‘smooth’ matcha tea can be prepared with only a light stir to be served ‘chunky’ style.

‘Smooth’ might refer to a less bitter flavour. ‘Chunky’ might refer to a stronger flavour, particularly if the infusion is somehow exotic.

The most fun interpretation is that this a joke, in which case I like mine to be smooth, but a little chewy

I barely have two dollars to rub together and I still try to

I guess I’m probably overdue to make a donation myself

I also have the impression that motion blur causes frame drops. Then again, some games do seem to hiccup when turning regardless of if motion blur is enabled.

Now I’m wondering if it’s causation or just correlation. Intuition suggests that additional post-processing would at the very least exacerbate frame drops even if it doesn’t cause them itself, but I’ve never done a deep dive to find out.

I agree that it’s healthy to be able to disconnect from the news.

I also think that current events are going to get real bad, real fast, real soon. Then again I’m part of a minority that has some of the most vile rhetoric thrown at them, so that probably colours my opinion a smidge.

I hope you get to vote in the next cycle. I also hope that everyone starts doing something for their community beyond showing up to vote once every four years. The world’s not going to change for the better otherwise.

You can get pretty good results by saying, “Well {verb} my {noun}!” It always ends up sounding quaint. It’s like the mad libs of incredulity

• Well kiss my grits!
• Well steam my hogs!
• Well string my banjo!
• Well iron my shirts!
• Well paint my deck!
• Well trash my patio!
• Well crash my harddrive!
• Well tear my pants!

I have a Day of the Dead (1985) drinking game that includes taking a drink whenever the alcoholic says, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” It’s the only real catch-phrase in the movie, and since he’s usually taking a drink too I don’t feel like I’m drinking alone.

Depends on the article.

If it’s something I have a genuine interest in, then heck yeah, I read the article. I like me some long-form discussion, so if it’s a high quality article then I need to read it in order to make a high quality comment.

If it’s about politics it requires more nuance. I’m not going to stay quiet about things that do have the potential to affect me, the people I care about, and humans in general. I’m also not going to go out of my way to consume a ton of propaganda. That’s when the pithy jokes come in, usually with a goal of calling out misinformation or general assholery.

By and large, the vast majority of headlines are bait. You’re not going to get a clear picture of what’s going on from a loaded title anyway, and it’s alarming how often people make the opposite inference from the headline compared to the body of the article. I suppose it’s human nature to look for easy answers, but if you only look at the summary then you’re allowing other people to form your opinion for you. Those people always have an agenda.

In this political climate, the news is probably going to make the average reader angry. If it does that means it’s working - either because they’re consuming hateful propaganda or because they’re being agitated against the evils of the establishment. This is by design: you can garner more clicks from angry, frightened people, and they’re usually easier to control that way.

I agree that you can’t take on the burdens of the world as an individual. But ignoring problems that have no will to resolve themselves only allows those issues to perpetuate themselves. Something about evil succeeding when good people do nothing.

He is now!

Just start WWIII with Canada on a whim.

I live in Canada, please don’t. It’s challenging enough being a neighbour to the US in this political climate, being a vassal would be so much worse.

I’m queer as heck, so if I’m not killed in action it’ll be the camps for me.

Of course, if I am killed in action then I won’t have to worry about how interesting life is getting anymore. Gotta keep an eye out for those silver linings.

I’ve been thinking lately that it would be great if my life was less interesting.

Finally a community to live vicariously through

I was a little curious myself, so I found an article about it.

I admit that I don’t know exactly how a freezer works, but my impression is that the cold temperatures not only make it more difficult for the freezer to run, but apparently regardless of if it’s running they can damage the insulation.

So I suppose that even if you do disconnect the power, the damage to the insulation will cause more work for the compressor, which will increase its energy costs and cause more strain for the part.

Knowing that, if it was me, I’d probably bring the freezer in for the winter. Although I suppose if you want to keep your food on your balcony you could swap the freezer for any insulated cooler. The winter is pretty long here though, so I guess I’d just find a more permanent home for the freezer if I could

I can’t speak to public domain…

Commenter admits that it isn’t public domain. So Wikipedia isn’t a great suggestion for this answer, although I would argue that it is indeed “very valuable or worth archiving”

Wikipedia is under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License which again, isn’t public domain. However it is a largely permissible license which allows people to do close to whatever they’d like with the material - which some people might find similarity with the public domain if they don’t know how the licensing works.

I have a friend who pulled their kid out of public school largely because of posters like this.

The clincher was when they were going over some material about classroom / playground behaviour and bad feelings. They colour coded the feelings, like Blue is Sad and Red is Angry. Yellow was Wiggly, which described most fidgeting behaviours.

Teachers were telling kids that if you had any of the bad feelings you had to quietly sit by yourself until you’re feeling better.

My friend has ADHD and took exception to the idea that being fidgety was a ‘bad’ feeling. And in general, none of these are ultimately bad feelings to have. I mean, nobody really wants to be sad or angry, but telling children they’re bad for having feelings is fucked up no matter how you slice it.

I admit that if a child is disruptively angry, then a timeout is warranted. We have the same rule for adults, and if you can’t control your temper then you need to cool off before you can be civil again. But telling kids that they can’t hang out with their friends if they’re feeling sad or fidgety is just cruel and pointless. It has potential to cause a lot of harm to a child’s development for the sake of ‘classroom discipline’

I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager.

I thought that too, but it turns out I just got fat

I think it depends on what you may or may not have an opinion about.

Extreme example: if you don’t have an opinion about nazis, you might be a nazi

I heard a story about a professor studying crows (or possibly ravens).

For an experiment he put on a Halloween mask and started harassing the birds until they’d swarm him and chase him away. Then he’d leave and come back without the mask and the birds would be pretty chill. A few days later he’d bring our the mask and he’d get swarmed again. I think he got some volunteers to wear the mask too, and they had the same experience. The birds were trained to hate masks.

Anyway, one academic career later and he finds the mask in a dusty office something like forty years later. He decides to try it again, and the birds swarm him.

The mask hadn’t seen the light of day for decades by this point. My understanding was that none of the birds from the original experiment would have still been alive.

The implication that the professor arrived at was that these birds had folklore which they’ve passed down through the generations. So they’re teaching their kids to hold onto their grudges even longer

There’s a couple things at play here when you talk to people online.

Ultimately, there’s a difference between feeling attacked and being attacked. Both are common in online discussions.

Why do people attack people?

The anonymity and distance of the internet makes it easier for people to share strong opinions - for better or worse. There’s a certain amount of psychology around the design of social media that pushes people towards confrontation.

Sometimes aggression is the default state for people. Depending on your world view that might be either sad or necessary.

That said, I believe there’s a difference between a justified attack and an unjustified one. If someone is spreading hate, we all owe it to the community to fuck that person up with our words. If someone shares a harmless opinion then there isn’t much call for a personal attack.

Why do I feel attacked?

If you feel attacked on the internet, there’s ultimately two possibilities: you’re being attacked or you’re mistaken. For the sake of this section, let’s say you’re mistaken.

Non-verbal communication is an essential part of communication between humans, and is something that’s hard to replicate in text. Ultimately, our non-verbal cues set an expected tone.

Sometimes when writing we recognize this and use a tonal indicator to set expectations. Emoji 🙄, gestures *rolls eyes* and, appending flags /s are all ways that we might set tone. These three examples all indicate “sarcasm” which for many people seems to be the default way to express themselves.

Sarcasm in particular is problematic because it often inverts the meaning of what was said. The phrase, “oh yeah, brilliant idea” has opposite interpretations if you’re being sarcastic. Sometimes the writer assumes the reader will know what they intended because they were feeling sarcastic when they typed it. Of course, as a reader we have no way of knowing what the writer’s feelings were at the time of writing.

Another element at play here is that a good deal of conversation on the internet is debate. Some people equate disagreement with condemnation, so if your feelings are hurt by that it’s common to lash out. Many debates on the internet start civilly enough and then deteriorate to name calling and cursing in short order. It’s wise to try to be the bigger person and assume no malice, because once it gets out it’s hard to put back.

Statistics and Bias

You probably had the right idea that only about 1% of users are active commenters. Similar to that, there’s also a phenomenon where the most vocal (and often inflammatory) users represent a similarly small portion of the group.

Our brains are evolved for survival, so they pay special attention to negative stimuli. Basically, they’re always looking for trouble, and if you’re looking for trouble you’re likely to find it.

What this ultimately means is that we remember the bad things far more memorably than the good things. It also means that even if a small percentage of people are attacking others, because they dominate the conversation we start to believe that everyone carries that opinion. But as you point out, 99% of users aren’t even commenting, so we really don’t have a good grasp on what the larger population is like.

It also means that if you exercise your block list, you don’t have to put in too much work to remove the most hateful people from your feed.

Closing

Anyway, I think you have the right idea. It sounds like you don’t go looking for fights.

I try to keep a similar philosophy. If I disagree with someone then I’ll seek to empathize or educate. However, if someone is vocal about my erasure or directing hate and violence towards people then I’ll let them have it. I figure those people are looking for trouble and by golly I’ll give it to them - it’s always morally correct to punch a nazi.

As a general rule when seeking knowledge you should define what your Three Letter Acronyms (TLA) are. I don’t know what these are even with a smidgen of context

If it’s legal or political you should probably specify what country you’re referring to when you’re in the world community

Coolio, thanks for the detailed reply

I’ve got lots of new stuff to check out now!

Oh sure, I don’t disagree with that.

But I also don’t think a group of teenage soccer players are the people who deserve to receive extrajudicial violence