Mountain lion only describes one type of habitat cougars live in, they have the widest distribution of all the big cats and live in a variety of habitats, including the Everglades swamp in Florida, in canyons, and in areas with a lot of scrubby brush they can ambush from.

Someone has to stock and clean and maintain all that space and pay for the electricity it takes to illuminate and air condition such a huge area. Good luck convincing people to increase their taxes in exchange for indoor tennis courts and lounging areas. I love the idea of having more free community spaces, but the last city I lived in had the downtown library basement essentially become a homeless encampment until they closed off that entire floor of the library and then the city sold the entire library to developers who plan to demolish it and build something else there. With people struggling financially and spending most of their time staring at screens, there isn’t much demand for government spending on new public spaces.

Well keeping it cheap and poorly regulated helps feed into the dependence on it. If it was treated like a precious good only meant for essentials that can’t be replaced by anything else, maybe we wouldn’t have ever built up sprawling suburbs and exurbs that require a car to do every little thing, are searing hot asphalt hellscapes to walk through, and are poorly served by mass transit systems because of the previous issue. Maybe we also wouldn’t have plastic in mothers’ placentas today if we had cracked down early instead of covering it up for the oil producers’ sake.

Oil is a finite resource, if all the droughts and mayhem from climate change don’t get us first, sooner or later the party will end and we will have to become a non-fossil fuel dependent world again. I doubt we will produce enough vegetable oil to replace it.

I find it helpful to have the thing being imitated as part of the name, but not the full name. It makes for an easy way to know what the taste and texture should be and how it can be used in cooking. My kid developed a dairy allergy recently and vegan butter in particular is so easy to substitute in old favorite recipes without changing the flavor much or cooking method. As for meat imitations, a “vegetarian steak” (or ham) label conveys a lot about the texture, moisture, saltiness, and cooking techniques you can expect to use while a generic name such as “plant protein block” leaves you much more clueless as to what the texture and cooking method is meant to be for that item. I don’t think it should be legal to sell plant substitutes as only “steak “ or “butter”, but calling it “plant steak” or “plant butter” is way more straightforward and easy to fit on a label than a lengthy description of “plant patty with a fibrous, chewy texture and savory flavor resembling steak.”

You’ve lost Fox News viewers at “(not all, obviously)”. Nuance isn’t allowed, people can’t be varied and have different interests within a particular group. All sneakers are the same, so Trump shoes equal grandpa’s New Balance shoes equals shoes from the latest brand collaboration with a celebrity that isn’t Trump.

The point is that it would be better as a nightmare that never truly happened instead of our present reality.

It costs $7 million for a 30 second spot. The Super Bowl is the only event where you can find 1/3 of America watching it, including many who are not into sports but dragged by loved ones to a Super Bowl party, so advertisers have a long history of trying to come up with the most flashy, catchy, outlandish, high production ads they can produce in the hopes that it sticks in the audience’s mind and gets people talking about it so they will tell the other 2/3 of America about talking frogs or whatever the hot new thing is. Each year there are whole articles out there about “this year’s best Super Bowl ads”.

You have to keep in mind that American football is extremely suited to ads with all the breaks in play, so it has been a favorite of advertisers for a long time. I don’t know why so many people fell in love with a game with so little action in the first place, but this is the end result of that.

ICQ is still around, seems like it is mainly used by Russians now.

Actually, the premiere of Alberta is trying to privatize the province’s healthcare. Just look up pretty much any Danielle Smith speech on health care, it is insane what she is attempting. I have come to the conclusion that Alberta is the Texas of Canada. They love the oil industry, hate the government, want to privatize everything, and even have their own half-hearted secession movement.

For that matter, Alberta even toyed with replacing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with their own local provincial police. I am American so I don’t entirely understand the situation, but it sounds about like if Texas decided to kick out the FBI and have the Texas Rangers take over FBI duties within the state.

At one point I had every other Friday off and even having the three day weekend only every other week was really refreshing and such a nice break. I miss it, I’ve been hoping it becomes more common.

The Boring Company is alive and well in Texas, they just held a job recruiting event a few weeks ago.

https://www.teslarati.com/the-boring-company-jobs-texas/

Heck yeah! That movie was a delight with catchy music and entertaining choreography, plus it was refreshingly bizarre while also being relatable. I don’t normally watch movies more than once, but I was planning to watch this one again once it came to streaming. My boyfriend hasn’t seen it yet so this is just enough of a reason to bring him to the theater instead of watching at home. Besides, Dune has been delayed and that was the next one we were planning to see in the theater so it will be a while before we visit the theater again.